Ensembles of climate change models for risk assessment of nuclear power plants

Climate change affects technical Systems, Structures and Infrastructures (SSIs), changing the environmental context for which SSI were originally designed. In order to prevent any risk growth beyond acceptable levels, the climate change effects must be accounted for into risk assessment models. Clim...

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Main Authors: Vagnoli, Matteo, Di Maio, Francesco, Zio, Enrico
Format: Article
Published: SAGE Publications 2017
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48587/
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author Vagnoli, Matteo
Di Maio, Francesco
Zio, Enrico
author_facet Vagnoli, Matteo
Di Maio, Francesco
Zio, Enrico
author_sort Vagnoli, Matteo
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Climate change affects technical Systems, Structures and Infrastructures (SSIs), changing the environmental context for which SSI were originally designed. In order to prevent any risk growth beyond acceptable levels, the climate change effects must be accounted for into risk assessment models. Climate models can provide future climate data, such as air temperature and pressure. However, the reliability of climate models is a major concern due to the uncertainty in the temperature and pressure future projections. In this work, we consider five climate change models (individually unable to accurately provide historical recorded temperatures and, thus, also future projections), and ensemble their projections for integration in a probabilistic safety assessment, conditional on climate projections. As case study, we consider the Passive Containment Cooling System (PCCS) of two AP1000 Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). Results provided by the different ensembles are compared. Finally, a risk-based classification approach is performed to identify critical future temperatures, which may lead to PCCS risks beyond acceptable levels.
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spelling nottingham-485872020-05-04T19:05:47Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48587/ Ensembles of climate change models for risk assessment of nuclear power plants Vagnoli, Matteo Di Maio, Francesco Zio, Enrico Climate change affects technical Systems, Structures and Infrastructures (SSIs), changing the environmental context for which SSI were originally designed. In order to prevent any risk growth beyond acceptable levels, the climate change effects must be accounted for into risk assessment models. Climate models can provide future climate data, such as air temperature and pressure. However, the reliability of climate models is a major concern due to the uncertainty in the temperature and pressure future projections. In this work, we consider five climate change models (individually unable to accurately provide historical recorded temperatures and, thus, also future projections), and ensemble their projections for integration in a probabilistic safety assessment, conditional on climate projections. As case study, we consider the Passive Containment Cooling System (PCCS) of two AP1000 Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). Results provided by the different ensembles are compared. Finally, a risk-based classification approach is performed to identify critical future temperatures, which may lead to PCCS risks beyond acceptable levels. SAGE Publications 2017-09-11 Article PeerReviewed Vagnoli, Matteo, Di Maio, Francesco and Zio, Enrico (2017) Ensembles of climate change models for risk assessment of nuclear power plants. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part O: Journal of Risk and Reliability . ISSN 1748-006X http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1748006X17734946 doi:10.1177/1748006X17734946 doi:10.1177/1748006X17734946
spellingShingle Vagnoli, Matteo
Di Maio, Francesco
Zio, Enrico
Ensembles of climate change models for risk assessment of nuclear power plants
title Ensembles of climate change models for risk assessment of nuclear power plants
title_full Ensembles of climate change models for risk assessment of nuclear power plants
title_fullStr Ensembles of climate change models for risk assessment of nuclear power plants
title_full_unstemmed Ensembles of climate change models for risk assessment of nuclear power plants
title_short Ensembles of climate change models for risk assessment of nuclear power plants
title_sort ensembles of climate change models for risk assessment of nuclear power plants
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48587/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48587/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48587/