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Basic course in Nuclear Power Safety, given as mandatory course in the MSc Program “Nuclear Energy Engineering” at Department of Physics.

 

Contact person:

Weimin Ma (weimin@kth.se)
Division of Nuclear Power Safety

 

Course Objectives

Nuclear power safety is a highly multidisciplinary subject with diverse topics, ranging from risk perception to multiphase flow regimes. This  course aims to instill in students not only basic principles and concepts, but also philosophy of nuclear power safety, as well as incentive to study further. Learning-by-doing approach will help achieve the course objective.

Nuclear Power Safety (NPS) is paramount to both economic performance and public acceptance of nuclear power. The ultimate mission of NPS is to ensure that release of radioactive materials from a nuclear power plant and its effect on plant personnel, public health and environment is as low as reasonably achievable. The technical contents of NPS address both Probability and Consequence of the radioactive release from the plant under normal, abnormal and accident conditions, including severe accidents. The NPS course aims to provide students with basics they need to be able to address the following questions: What are possible accidents? How do they occur? How often they occur? What are consequences? Given fundamental knowledge of NPS, students can identify and apply appropriate concepts for prevention of accidents and mitigation of their consequences.

After the NPS course you shall possess a basic understanding of the principles, issues and tools in nuclear power safety. The Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) are achieved if you demonstrate that you are able to:

  • ILO1: Define safety design requirements and explain how they are achieved in design, construction and operation of a nuclear power plant;
  • ILO2: Identify key milestones in accident progression scenarios (from design-basis accidents to severe core-melt accidents) and relate them to respective prevention and mitigation measures;
  • ILO3: Perform a scoping assessment of a perceived threat against plant safety barriers using contemporary knowledge and methods in safety analysis.

ILO1 and ILO2 require declarative knowledge of the risk of nuclear installations; history, philosophy and principles of nuclear power safety; safety design requirements, and functioning knowledge on how to apply them to achieve safety requirements in design, construction and operation of nuclear power plants.

ILO2 also addresses both declarative knowledge on state of the art in understanding of (i) how accidents occur and progress, and (ii) measures utilized for prevention and mitigation of accidents; and functioning knowledge on why and how different stages of the accidents scenarios require different countermeasures (preventive and mitigative), and consequences of mistakes in selection of accident management strategy.

ILO3 is focused on development of high-level functioning knowledge. The task (scoping assessment of a perceived threat) will require students to make a step beyond common acceptances in order to question high safety standards of existing and future reactor designs.

 

Course content

The course addresses both fundamentals of safety design and methods for safety analysis of nuclear power plants, with emphasis on Light Water Reactors. Topics covered include

  • safety characterization and safety features of nuclear power plants
  • reactor safety principles and criteria
  • design-basis and beyond-design-basis events
  • accident phenomena, including severe accidents
  • safety systems, containment performance
  • deterministic safety analysis (basic elements)
  • accident modeling and simulation codes
  • probabilistic safety analysis (basic elements)
  • analysis of operation transients, accidents and severe accidents.
  • emergency operation procedure, accident management
  • safety issues and safety issue resolution
  • operating experience, regulation and safety culture

 

Course instruction

The course workload is distributed as follows:

  • 38 hours of classroom work (26 hours of lectures and 12 hours of seminars) and
  • 120 hours of students’ independent work (~50 hours of reading the course literature, ~70 hours of work with the course assignments).

 

Examination

To pass the course you should

  • Attend at least 10 lectures and all seminars. In case if you cannot attend a class, you have to inform course leader by e-mail in advance.
  • Pass the course Project assignment. You will present and defend your work (a safety analysis case) in two seminars (first progress report and second presentation of the final results). Finally you will provide a report on the project work for evaluation. Provide feedback to your peers with review of their projects reports and presentations.
  • Pass the exams. The examination consists of a quiz within course lectures and the final written exam.

 

The grade for each element is pass/fail.

  • Project assignment (presentation, peer review and report)    -3p
  • Quiz                                                                                        -1p
  • Final exam                                                                              -2p

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