Abstract

Seismic analysis, design, and qualification of systems, structures, and components (SSCs) is a significant contributor to the capital cost of a nuclear power plant. To reduce capital costs of advanced nuclear power plants and make commercial nuclear energy more competitive, innovations are needed in their structural design and construction, and not just in the reactor core and associated systems. Seismic isolation has been identified as an important cost-cutting technology that enables standardization of equipment across various sites. This paper develops and demonstrates a cost- and risk-based seismic design optimization of a representative safety system in a nuclear power plant with the dual goals of minimizing overnight capital cost and meeting safety goals. The design optimization can also include component seismic isolation, in which case, the optimized design includes a set of equipment that needs to be seismically isolated to minimize capital cost. The open-source codes MASTODON and Dakota are used for seismic probabilistic risk assessment and design optimization, respectively. A generic nuclear facility with a safety system comprising SSCs that are common to nuclear power plants is considered for the demonstration of the design optimization and is assumed to be located at the Idaho National Laboratory site. Generic costs and seismic design cost functions are assumed for the SSCs of the safety system. The sum of the costs of the SSCs is minimized in the optimization process, while the risk of failure of the safety system is provided as a constraint. Results show that the optimization process reduces capital costs significantly while automatically prioritizing the safety of SSCs that contribute most to the risk of the safety system.

摘要

系统、结构和部件 (SSC) 的抗震分析、设计和鉴定是核电厂资本成本的重要组成部分。为了降低先进核电站的资本成本并使商业核能更具竞争力，需要在其结构设计和建造方面进行创新，而不仅仅是在反应堆堆芯和相关系统方面进行创新。隔震已被确定为一项重要的成本削减技术，可实现各个站点的设备标准化。本文开发并演示了核电厂代表性安全系统的基于成本和风险的抗震设计优化，其双重目标是最小化隔夜资本成本和满足安全目标。设计优化还可以包括组件隔震，在这种情况下，优化设计包括一组需要进行地震隔离以最大限度降低资本成本的设备。开源代码 MASTODON 和 Dakota 分别用于地震概率风险评估和设计优化。一个具有安全系统的通用核设施，包括核电厂共有的 SSC，被考虑用于设计优化的论证，并假定位于爱达荷州国家实验室场址。假设安全系统的 SSC 具有通用成本和抗震设计成本函数。在优化过程中，SSC 的成本总和被最小化，而安全系统的故障风险被提供为约束。