Modeling time-dependent interactions of events in probabilistic risk assessment

Speaker: Dr. Man Cheol Kim, Associate Professor at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Korea

A brief abstract of presentation: 

Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is a quantitative method to estimate how safe a nuclear power plant is. As PRA tries to capture various safety aspects in a nuclear power plant, the need to properly model the time-dependent interactions of events emerges. Simplifying assumptions that are currently used extensively in probabilistic risk assessment may lead to an overly conservative estimation of plant risk, which may distort the overall plant risk profile and the associated accident management strategy. With an example of station blackout, accident sequences are decomposed and time-dependent interactions of events are identified. Mathematical formulas are developed to calculate the conditional core damage probabilities corresponding to the identified accident sequences. A conceptual comparison between static PRA and dynamic PRA is also briefly discussed.

A brief bio: 

Professor Man Cheol Kim received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees all from the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He is an associate professor at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Korea, and currently visiting OSU during his sabbatical year. Before joining Chung-Ang University, he worked as a senior researcher at Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute for seven years. Recently, his team revised internal events, seismic, and shutdown PRA models for a nuclear power plant in Korea, as a part of multi-unit PRA research in Korea. He was also actively involved in the integrated system validation of APR-1400 nuclear power plants in Korea and UAE, stress tests of operating nuclear power plants in Korea, and the validation of accident management plans for Korean nuclear power plants.