Safety management in NPPs using an evolutionary algorithm technique

The general goal of safety management in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) is to make requirements and activities more risk effective and less costly. The technical specification and maintenance (TS&M) activities in a plant are associated with controlling risk or with satisfying requirements, and are candidates to be evaluated for their resource effectiveness in risk-informed applications. Accordingly, the risk-based analysis of technical specification (RBTS) is being considered in evaluating current TS. The multi-objective optimization of the TS&M requirements of a NPP based on risk and cost, gives the pareto-optimal solutions, from which the utility can pick its decision variables suiting its interest. In this paper, a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm technique has been used to make a trade-off between risk and cost both at the system level and at the plant level for loss of coolant accident (LOCA) and main steam line break (MSLB) as initiating events. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.