PROBABILISTIC RISK ASSESSMENT FOR BACK-END FACILITIES: IMPROVING THE TREATMENT OF FIRE EXPLOSION SCENARIOS

摘要

Probabilistic Risk Assessment is a central component of the BNFL approach to safety assurance. It is well suited to the wide range of processes carried out on the Sellafield site. The company was one of the pioneers in the introduction of the methodology to the nuclear chemical industry developing numerical criteria against which the acceptability of operations could be judged. Now, two decades later, BNFL continues to invest in the development of the technique.rnWith the maturity of the methodology assessors are adopting standardised, generic approaches to improve consistency and lower assessment costs. This allows assessment effort to be invested in re-examining high consequence or operation limiting scenarios and the benefits of four such re-examinations have been discussed in this paper.