Work

Probabilistic safety assessment of nuclear power plants considering climate change

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) must take into account the impact of Climate Change (CC). In this paper, to do this, a PSA framework is developed coupling a CC impact assessment model, a source term estimation model, an atmospheric dispersion model and a groundwater contaminant transport model. The impact of CC on aquifer contamination is analyzed in terms of i ) increase of accident initiating event frequencies due to CC-induced natural events and ii ) alteration of hydrological conditions due to the CC influence on physical variables (e.g., temperature and precipitation) that affect atmospheric dispersion and groundwater transport of radioactive contaminant. An application of the proposed framework is performed with regards to the estimation of the peak dose following a hypothetical severe accident in a NPP site in South Korea. Under the assumptions made, CC is found to worsen the consequences of such accident in terms of groundwater radioactive contamination.

Source: Reliability Engineering & System Safety

DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2025.111590

Authors: Thomas Matteo Coscia, Francesco Di Maio, Gyunyoung Heo, Enrico Zio

Institutions: Politecnico di Milano, Kyung Hee University, Centre de Recherche sur les Risques et les Crises, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris

Language: English

Topic: Risk and Safety Analysis

Subfield: Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty

Field: Decision Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Climate action, Clean water and sanitation

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,830