Probabilistic Safety Assessment Studies For Research Reactors

The trust of public in the nuclear energy does not necessarily accompany the development of scientific studies and technical methods for radioactive release prevention. Whatever the prevailing attitudes at a certain period of time towards the nuclear and whatever the regulation requirements, Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) stands as the main way to quantify risk and to analyze the safety of a project and of the operational configuration of a nuclear reactor. The nowadays growing extent of safety evaluations for nuclear installations includes PSA for licensing and operation of research reactors. The work describes a wide range of PSA level 1 and level 2 aspects, from component failure data to accident sequences quantification illustrated for a research reactor. Deterministic analyses were also done for calculating the radioactive inventory and release of fission product in cases where accident sequences are leading to fuel damage.