General Safety Assessment of Seismically Induced Hazards for NPPs

Abstract

Design basis earthquake may cause various internal hazards in nuclear power plants, such as fire, explosion, flooding, missiles, high-energy pipelines break, etc. In addition, earthquakes may also cause non-seismic items to fall or collapse, thus affecting safety-related systems or equipment. As the subsequent situation induced by earthquake is quite complex, no practicable methods have been presented yet to be used for the safety evaluation after earthquake. This paper introduces a feasible safety assessment concept for the above-mentioned hazards caused by the design basis earthquake based on the engineering practice experience. This general assessment concept based on the deterministic approach could be used for guidance of safety evaluation during or after earthquake for nuclear power plants.