Multicriterion benefit evaluation methodology for safety enhancements in nuclear power plants and application for FLEX strategies

Highlights: • A multicriterion benefit evaluation method is proposed for nuclear power plant safety enhancements. • Evaluation criteria include public risk, occupational risk, plant cost and revenue. • Correlations and causations among evaluation criteria are modeled. • Decision maker's preferences of plant safety and economics are reflected. • A nuclear power plant safety enhancement, FLEX strategy, is evaluated as a case study. This paper proposes a multicriterion benefit evaluation (MCBE) methodology for evaluating costs and benefits of implementing safety enhancements in nuclear power plants. The MCBE methodology establishes a comprehensive evaluation scope using multiple evaluation criteria (including public risk, occupational risk, plant revenue, and plant cost) and multiple contexts (including plant normal operations, incidents, and accidents). The MCBE methodology formulates a benefit or cost element as the product of a monetary consequence and its occurrence-likelihood change. The MCBE methodology also incorporates a decision maker' preferences toward occurrence likelihood and monetary consequence into cost and benefit estimations through a modified usage of cumulative prospect theory. This paper applies the MCBE methodology to the implementation of diverse and flexible coping strategy (FLEX) in a generic nuclear power plant as an illustrative example. The FLEX benefits are evaluated through three types of influence paths: plant safety enhancement, risk-informed activities, and potential additional credit of FLEX in supporting plant operation and maintenance-efficiency improvement. The benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) of FLEX implementation is calculated. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to examine the impacts of modeling assumptions and input parameter values on the BCR.