Nuclear Safety Associates (NSA) and Engineering Planning and Management (EPM), have combined their expertise in nuclear safety analysis, risk assessment and regulatory compliance to offer advanced services and solutions for nuclear plant licensees addressing seismic hazards and risk assessment.
The EPM/NSA team offers a comprehensive set of services to support nuclear power plant licensees responding to the NRC initiatives listed in 50.54 (f) letters in response to the Japan NTTF recommendations. The EPM/NSA capabilities with respect to NTTF recommendation 2.1 includes the following:
- Site-Specific Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) and Ground Motion Response Spectra (GMRS) development
- Seismic Equipment List Development
- Seismic Walk-down Support
- Structure and Component Seismic Fragility Analysis
- Seismic Plant Response Analysis, including:
- Seismically-induced initiating events evaluation
- Seismically-induced accident sequence evaluation
- SSC failure evaluation (seismically-induced and non-seismically-induced)
- Seismic correlation/dependency evaluation
- Screening of high capacity SSCs
- Relay chatter evaluation
- Seismic HRA evaluation
- Seismic PRA Quantification
- Seismic Margins Analysis (EPRI or NRC method), including:
- Review Level Earthquake (RLE) selection
- Systems analysis and/or success path selection (methodology-specific)
- Screening of high capacity SSCs
- High-Confidence, Low Probability of Failure (HCLPF) evaluation for unscreened SSCs
- Treatment of non-seismic failures and human actions
- Evaluation of containment and containment systems (methodology-specific)
- Relay chatter evaluation
- Development of Alternatives for Reducing Seismic Risk
- Peer Certification Review Support
- NRC Request for Additional Information (RAI) Support
For the Seismic PRA and Seismic Margins Analysis, NSA provides seismic equipment list development, seismic walk down, relay evaluation, seismic fragility estimation, seismic plant response analysis, building structure response analysis, plant system response analysis, seismic functional sequence analysis, seismic systems analysis, seismic HRA evaluation, seismic margin evaluation, and the seismic analysis report.
The NSA technical team is led by a team experienced in seismic analysis; Sam Swan, Jim Beavers and Tony Chung.
The EPM/NSA team has also developed an introduction to seismic PRA Methods course designed to explain the methodology necessary to meet the NRC requirements in the Generic Letter. The course discusses in detail the safety significant topic of seismic hazards and risk assessment including issues relevant to NRC Generic Issue 199 “Implications of Updated Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Estimates in Central and Eastern United States on Existing Plants.” Topics include an overview of seismic analysis methods and terminology, seismic margins approach, seismic hazard evaluation, fragility methodology, and Seismic PRA accident sequences and quantification. Click here for course description and registration information.
The EPM/NSA team can offer seismic analysis and risk assessment services to support and complement your facility’s engineering team at whatever level of involvement you require. In addition to seismic Generic Letter response support, our services can be customized to address your unique engineering needs through the development of specific engineering solutions for your particular facilities and circumstances.
