A design-phase PSA of a nuclear-powered hydrogen plant

Abstract

A probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) is being developed for a steam-methane reforming hydrogen production plant linked to a high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactor (HTGR). This work is based on the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute's (JAERI) High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) prototype in Japan. The objective of this paper is to show how the PSA can be used for improving the design of the coupled plants. A simplified HAZOP study was performed to identify initiating events, based on existing studies. The results of the PSA show that the average frequency of an accident at this complex that could affect the population is 7 × 10 −8 year −1 which is divided into the various end states. The dominant sequences are those that result in a methane explosion and occur with a frequency of 6.5 × 10 −8 year −1 , while the other sequences are much less frequent. The health risk presents itself if there are people in the vicinity who could be affected by the explosion. This analysis also demonstrates that an accident in one of the plants has little effect on the other. This is true given the design base distance between the plants, the fact that the reactor is underground, as well as other safety characteristics of the HTGR.

Integrated hazard and operability study using fuzzy linguistics approach in petrochemical industry

“…The advantage of the HAZOP technique is teamwork approach. The final output from HAZOP study is a HAZOP work sheet (Nelson et al , 2007) (Figure 1).…”

“…design engineers, production engineers, discuss systematically all the parts of the underlying Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID). Nelson et al , 2007 have used P&ID of methane reforming process for an HAZOP study. After analyzing each line in the P&ID, they suggested the HAZOP action report with the help of qualitative guidewords (more, less, none, reverse …) deviations from design intent.…”

Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling to Simulate a Combined Reforming Process for Syngas and Hydrogen Production

“…Among candidate thermochemical cycles of water splitting process for hydrogen production investigated and evaluated (Ponomarev-Stepnoi;Forsberg;Nelson et al;2007), the high-temperature steam electrolysis (HTSE) and the Westinghouse hybrid sulfur process (WSP), and the sulfur-iodine (SI) thermochemical process are the most developed (Orhan et al;2008). However, these technologies are still at the lab-scale test stage and require further development and technology demonstration on a large scale to test their system integrity and their operational and economic feasibility.…”

Preliminary Failure Modes and Effects Analysis of the US DCLL Test Blanket Module

“…Simion (1993) evaluated hydrogen cooling systems for generators in nuclear power plants, but used operations experience to give a hydrogen leak frequency with fire or explosion of 6Eí03/plantyear rather than model the pipework and cooling system components. More recently, Nelson (2007) used a combination of chemical industry and gas reactor-light water reactor data to quantify a hydrogen production plant risk assessment. Given these findings-the sparse data available is a fair comparison to the data used and that several studies have used nuclear power plant data to apply to gas systems, the data used are considered to be reasonable values at present.…”