Evaluation of air traffic hazards at nuclear plants

Analytic models have been developed and applied by the authors to investigate the hazards to a nuclear power plant from air traffic. Separate models applying to collisions with and crashes into the plant, respectively, employ concepts of traffic density and crash site distributions. These, along with the more conventional concepts of accident rates and effective plant area, are used to determine the annual strike probability of aircraft into safety-related plant structures. Although the models are quite general, they are applied to two specific flight patterns of common interest. The probability maps which are obtained may be used to resolve siting problems in a quantitative manner.