Fire Safety in Nuclear Power Plants: A Risk-Informed and Performance-Based Approach

Abstract The consideration of risk in regulatory decision-making has long been a part of NRC’s policy and practice. Initially, these considerations were qualitative and were based on risk insights. The early regulations relied on good practices, past insights, and accepted standards. As a result, most NRC regulations were prescriptive and were applied uniformly to all areas within the regulatory scope. Risk technology is changing regulations by prioritizing the areas within regulatory scope based on risk, thereby focusing on the risk-important areas. Performance technology, on the other hand, is changing the regulations by allowing requirements to be adjusted based on the specific performance expected and manifested, rather than a prior prescriptive requirement. Consistent with the objectives of risk-informed and performance-based regulatory requirements, BNL evaluated the feasibility of applying risk- and performance-technologies to modifying NRC’s current regulations on fire protection for nuclear power plants.(1) This feasibility study entailed several case studies (trial applications). This paper describes the results of two of them. Besides the case studies, the paper discusses an overall evaluation of methodologies for fire-risk analysis to support the risk-informed regulation. It identifies some current shortcomings and proposes some near-term solutions.