A global sensitivity analysis framework for guiding the design improvement of new concepts of small modular reactors
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are new concepts of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs), and their safety assessment cannot rely on lessons learned from operation or on field data. Assessing their safety requires a careful combination of engineering expertise, and of physical (laboratory) and virtual (simulation) experiments. Modeling the system response accurately, in consideration of the engineering design and physical aspects of SMRs requires computationally burdensome computer models, whose complexity makes their response difficult to interpret, limiting their use in the decision-making process. To address these issues, we propose a Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) framework that combines recently introduced global sensitivity indices based on Optimal Transport (OT) with a graphical visualization tool based on CUmulative SUm of NOrmalized Reordered Output (CUSUNORO). The OT-based indices allow us to identify the most important inputs, whereas the graphical representation of the latter enables us to identify the safety critical ranges of these inputs. The proposed framework is applied to a case study concerning Small Modular Dual Fluid Reactors (SMDFRs), a new SMR concept. The numerical experiments show that the approach makes the simulations interpretable and makes it possible to provide guidelines for improving the SMR design by ensuring that the operational settings are far from the Critical failure Region (CR).
Source: Nuclear Engineering and Design
Language: English
Subfield: Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,710
OpenAlex ID: W4413637496