An advanced German approach for screening within the framework of probabilistic fire safety assessment studies

Abstract

As part of a larger nuclear regulatory investigation project, a contribution to the development of methodologies for the fire hazard assessment has been provided. Within the framework of probabilistic fire risk analyses, a methodology for the selection of critical plant areas as starting point for the detailed analysis has been developed. This method is mainly based on the systematic compilation of comprehensive fire related information for each individual compartment. The primary information gathered is used for ranking of compartments in terms of fire load, conditional fire occurrence frequency, and possibilities of fire propagation. For the implementation and application of the methodology within the framework of probabilistic safety assessment studies, an ACCESS database has been developed, both for compilation of the raw data as well as for further data analysis.