Risk and Safety Analysis of Nuclear Systems

An authoritative guide to enhancing the safety, reliability, and availability of nuclear energy systems

The catastrophic events of March 2011 in Japan serve to remind the next generation of nuclear professionals that a nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere. This timely resource provides a necessary introduction to risk and reliability assessment as well as an overview of nuclear power plant safety analysis, augmented by real-world examples drawn from design and operating experience. Developed in conjunction with Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences (NERS) 462, a course offered every year to seniors and graduate students in the University of Michigan NERS program, this book is needed more than ever, as nuclear power is once again becoming a viable option for new electrical generation facilities.

The first half of the book covers the principles of risk and reliability analysis, the techniques used to develop and update a reliability database, the reliability of multi-component systems, and Markov methods used to analyze the unavailability of a system with repairs. The second half covers applications of the methods for probabilistic risk assessment of complex engineered systems, together with deterministic safety analysis of nuclear power plants. Also featured are:

• Fault trees and event trees used in probabilistic risk assessments
• Failure modes of systems
• A review of major accidents and incidents in commercial nuclear plants over the past three decades
• Passive safety features of advanced nuclear systems that are under development
• Advanced topics such as dynamic event tree analysis and binary decision diagrams for fault tree evaluation
• Approaches taken for risk-informed regulations for nuclear plants
• More than sixty solved examples and more than 140 exercises

Presenting synergistic coverage of both probabilistic and deterministic risk assessment techniques for nuclear systems, this text is invaluable for advanced undergraduate students in nuclear engineering, first-year graduate students, and practicing engineers in the area of risk and reliability assessment, particularly those in the nuclear industry.

About the Authors

JOHN C. LEE, PhD, has been Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Michigan since 1974, following five years of employment at Westinghouse Electric Corporation and General Electric Company. He has written for approximately 180 publications on broad areas of nuclear reactor physics and engineering, including nuclear systems analysis and diagnostics. Dr. Lee is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society.

NORMAN J. McCORMICK, PhD, is an emeritus professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington who retired in 2003. From 1966 until the early 1990s, he was a professor of nuclear engineering. Dr. McCormick is the author of the book Reliability and Risk Analysis Methods and Nuclear Power Applications (upon which part of NERS 462 is based) and has authored approximately 150 journal articles. He is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society.