Risk effectiveness evaluation of surveillance testing

摘要

In nuclear power plants surveillance tests are required to detect failures in standby safety system components as a means of assuring their availability in case of an accident. However, the performance of surveillance tests at power may have adverse impact on safety as evidenced by the operating experience of the plants. The risk associated with a test includes two different aspects: (1) a positive aspect, i.e., risk contribution detected by the test, that results from the detection of failures which occur between tests and are detected by the test, and (2) a negative aspect, i.e., risk contribution caused by the test, that includes failures and degradations which are caused by the test or are related to the performance of the test. In terms of the two different risk contributions, the risk effectiveness of a test can be simply defined as follows: a test is risk effective if the risk contribution detected by the test is greater than the risk contribution caused by the test; otherwise it is risk ineffective. The methodology presentation will focus on two important kinds of negative test risk impacts, that is, the risk impacts of test-caused transients and equipment wear-out. The evaluation results of the risk effectiveness of the test will be presented in the full paper along with the risk assessment methodology and the insights from the sensitivity analysis. These constitute the core of the NUREG/CR-5775.