THE DIALECTICAL THINKING ABOUT DETERMINISTIC ANDPROBABILISTIC SAFETY ANALYSIS

摘要

There are two methods in designing andanalysing the safety performance of a nuclear powerplant, the traditional deterministic method and theprobabilistic method. To date, the design of nuclearpower plant is based on the deterministic method. Ithas been proved in practice that the deterministicmethod is effective on current nuclear power plant.However, the probabilistic method (ProbabilisticSafety Assessment - PSA) considers a much widerrange of faults, takes an integrated look at the plant asa whole, and uses realistic criteria for theperformance of the systems and constructions of theplant. PSA can be seen, in principle, to provide a broader and realistic perspective on safety issues thanthe deterministic approaches.In this paper, the historical origins anddevelopment trend of above two methods arereviewed and summarized in brief. Based on thediscussion of two application cases - one is thechanges to specific design provisions of the generaldesign criteria (GDC) and the other is therisk-informed categorization of structure, system andcomponent, it can be concluded that the deterministicmethod and probabilistic method are dialectical andunified, and that they are being merged into eachother gradually, and being used in coordination.