The seismic reliability of VVER-1000 NPP prestressed containment building

The failure probability assessment of the containment building is an essential feature of the Level 2 PSA studies of nuclear power plants. The primary purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the methodology of evaluating containment seismic induced probability of failure without containment pressurization. The Loviisa, Finland site is one of the most seismically stable in the world and the numerically evaluated seismic induced failure probabilities are not representative for other sites. In addition, the containment concept described in this paper is not the typical Russian design which uses helical tendons in the cylindrical part of the structure and has a ring girder at the spring line of the structure. So the conclusions reached are applicable only to the containment configuration described in the paper. The geometry of the containment was determined by its preliminary design. The seismic hazard of the plant site was assessed during Level 1 PSA of the Loviisa plant. The initial information for seismic fragility analysis of the containment is the seismic response of the structure. The structural model for response analysis was the stick model. The stress analysis of the containment was carried out using the shell element model. The fragility evaluation of the containment was performed with the PROBAN-program The structure was modeled as a parallel system consisting of the most heavily stressed elements. The resulting fragility curve gives the conditional probability of failure as a function of peak ground acceleration. The seismic hazard and the fragility were convolved to obtain the annual nonexceedance probability distribution for the collapse frequency of the structure.