Industry-Average Performance for Components and Initiating Events at U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plants (NUREG/CR-6928)

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Publication Information

Manuscript Completed: January 2007
Published: February 2007

Prepared by:
S.A. Eide¹, T.E. Wierman¹, C.D. Gentillon¹,
D.M. Rasmuson²
C.L. Atwood³

¹Idaho National Laboratory
Risk, Reliability and NRC Programs Department
Idaho Falls, ID 83415

³Statwood Consulting
2905 Covington Road
Silver Spring, MD 20910

Anne-Marie Grady, NRC Project Manager

Prepared for:
²Division of Risk Assessment and Special Projects
Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001

NRC Job Code Y6546

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Abstract

This report characterizes current industry-average performance for components and initiating events at U.S. commercial nuclear power plants. Studies have indicated that industry performance has improved since the 1980s and early 1990s, so the characterization of current industry-average performance is an important step in maintaining up-to-date risk models. Four types of events are covered: component unreliability (e.g., pump fail to start or fail to run), component or train unavailability resulting from test or maintenance outages, special event probabilities covering operational issues (e.g., pump restarts and injection valve re-openings during unplanned demands), and initiating event frequencies. Typically data for 1998–2002 were used to characterize current industry-average performance, although many initiating events required longer periods (ending in 2002) to adequately characterize frequencies. Results (beta distributions for failure probabilities upon demand and gamma distributions for rates) are used as inputs to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission standardized plant analysis risk (SPAR) models covering U.S. commercial nuclear power plants.