A study on resilience management of nuclear power plants based on the lessons learned from Fukushima accident

Management for resilience of nuclear safety in severe accidents was studied based on the lessons learned from the emergency responses at Fukushima Daini NPP and Fukushima Dai-ichi NPP during the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Firstly, it was found that continuous planning activities during the progress of an emergency, reflecting information from plant parameters and response action results, was critically important in the Fukushima Daini event. Reflecting this lesson, the concept of an Incident Command System was advocated and applied to nuclear emergency management, with specific improvement ideas such as a phased approach in response planning and common operation pictures. Then, from an analysis of the accident at Fukushima Dai-ichi Unit 2, the operation of Filtered Containment Venting System was advocated to be more flexible than conventional ideas based on the anticipations of plant behaviors. Finally, the above improvements were integrated in a model to improve resilience of nuclear safety in severe accidents. (author)