Development of a fire incident database for the United States nuclear power industry

The Nuclear Power Industry in the United States has identified a need to develop and maintain a comprehensive fire events database to support anticipated performance-based or risk-based fire protection programs and regulations. These new programs will require accurate information on the frequency, severity and consequences of fire events. Previous attempts to collect fire incident data had been made over the years for other purposes, but it was recognized that the detail and form of the data collected would be insufficient to support the new initiatives. Weaknesses in the earlier efforts included the inability in some cases to obtain fire incidents reports, inconsistent of incomplete information reported, and the inability to easily retrieve, sort, analyze and trend the data. The critical elements identified for the new data collection efforts included a standardized fire incident report from to assure consistent and accurate information, some mechanism to assure that all fire events are reported, and the ability to easily access the data for trending and analysis. In addition, the database would need to be unbiased and viewed as such by outside agencies. A new database is currently being developed that should meet all of these identified need. (author)