The PRA resolution of an SAR issue for Savannah River reactors

A level-1 probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) was completed in July 1990 and revised and updated in January 1993 for the U.S. Department of Energy production reactors at the Savannah River site in Aiken, South Carolina. The PRA has since been used several times to guide risk management decisions, as well as to quantify absolute risk and to help in understanding system interactions. This paper describes one of the risk management applications in which PRA analysis determined that a reactor subcriticality issue being considered for inclusion in the safety analysis report (SAR) is low enough in expected frequency that it can be excluded