engleski

A meta-study of nuclear power plants operational experience topical studies examining trends, characteristics and lessons learned

With the goal to improve regulatory and operational aspects of nuclear power plants (NPPs) safety topical studies (TSs) are performed at the European Clearinghouse on Operating Experience Feedback (CH OEF). These TSs are investigating NPPs events in order to analyse trends, dominant causes and derive relevant lessons learned like in comparable activities. Analysed events are coming from 4 sources covering 10-20 years of experience. Three events sources are from countries with significant number of NPPs in operation (i.e., U.S., France and Germany) and one source is OECD/IAEA International Reporting System (IRS). Country specific sources are representing a comprehensive and consistent database of their NPPs operating experience. The IRS database is exchange platform for 33 countries with voluntary contributions of event reports potentially important for NPPs safety. The IRS database lacks comprehensiveness but it still presents a valuable source for the study of OE. The CH OEF has performed 19 topical studies since 2008. Topics are proposed by the European nuclear safety authorities, but can only be performed if the number of related events in the databases is sufficient. Depending on the topic, the number of relevant events from each source varies from ~1 to several hundred. Methodology to perform topical study is to study, characterise and analyse selected events in order to create lessons learned (conclusions). Dominant characteristic and derived lessons learned are not only related to specific topic. The question is how many of these common findings we can find by looking to these TSs together and could we derive some new insights. There might be potential to learn from studying similarities among individual topical studies. Perhaps most important contributing factors and especially important lessons learned could be identified or even some new insights could be derived from the meta-study (or combined analysis) of these individual TSs. The four recent topical studies were selected to perform this initial meta-study: Maintenance, Loss of off-site power and station blackout, Cooling chain, and Cracks and leaks. Meta-study approach will be to perform statistical and qualitative analyses of selected four studies: first separately for each of four events sources, and then if possible make both analyses also at the combined level. The expectation is to gain from this meta-analysis some more aggregated awareness and hopefully find out some new insights about the most important contributing factors and lessons learned for the safety of NPPs.

accident, nuclear safety

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