Optimal safety goal allocation for nuclear power plants

This paper is on the development of a methodology for safety goal allocation given cost functions and Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) models. The safety goal allocation problem is formulated as a constrained nonlinear optimization problem. Based on the decomposition principle, the safety goal allocation problem is first reduced to a lower order optimization problem. Then, a set of optimization algorithms is used to solve the decomposed optimization problem. In order to introduce expert opinion, weighting factors are incorporated in the objective function. Computer software was developed to perform the optimization and sensitivity analysis. The proposed method is demonstrated by using an industrially developed PRA model. (author)