Comparative study of worker and general public risks from nuclear facility operation using MACCS2

摘要

Over the last five years, the US Department of Energy (DOE) has attempted to establish quantitative risk indices as minimum acceptance criteria for assurance of safe operation of its nuclear facilities. The risk indices serve as aiming points or targets to include consideration of all aspects of operation including normal conditions as well as abnormal, design basis events, and beyond-design basis events. Although initial focus of the application of these safety targets had been on DOE's reactors, more recent assessments have also considered non-reactor facilities including those encompassing storage and nuclear processing activities. Regardless of the facility's primary function, accident progression, event tree/fault tree logic models, and probabilistic (dose) consequence assessment model must be implemented to yield a fully integrated analysis of facility operation. The primary tool for probabilistic consequence assessment in the US is the MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System (MACCS). In this study, two version of MACCS are applied to representative source terms developed in the safety analysis associated with a waste processing facility at the Westinghouse Savannah River Company's (WSRC's) Savannah River Site (SRS). The MACCS versions are used to estimate population dose and subsequent health effects to workers and the general public from the SRS referenced facility operation. When combined with the frequency of occurrence evaluation, the margin of compliance with the safety targets may be quantified.