RISK-INFORMED DESIGN AND SAFETY REVIEW OF HTR-PM

摘要

HTR-PM is the abbreviation of the demonstration plant project which will be built in China with a pebble bed high temperature gas cooled reactor design. Due to the unique features of the reactor, the Chinese safety authority recognizes the big challenge it will bring to the current regulation and decides to launch the pilot use of PSA in the design and in the safety review in an extensive way, based on the consensus that PSA should be the necessary and efficient key to solve the puzzles. This paper will present and discuss the aspects which PSA has been successfully used during the design and safety review of HTR-PM project, including safety goal, plant operating modes definition, beyond design accidents, emergency planning and so on. Every aspect may require some philosophically innovative efforts, however moving to the risk-informed decision making and regulation will be adhered as the common opinion arrived by the authority and the designer. Working processes and results for some of the aspects will also be explained. The paper will also address the methodological issues for performing design PSA. Although most of the traditional PSA techniques are still valid for HTR-PM, a few new techniques are introduced into the framework in order to tackle the problems such as passive system reliability evaluation.