Analysis of historic fires to determine most frequent challenging events. (April 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Salvi, Urvin; Lattimer, Brian Y.; Alhadhrami, Saeed; Wang, Jun; Sahin, Elvan; Duarte, Juliana Pacheco
• Is Part Of: Progress in nuclear energy. Volume 146(2022)
• Publication Date: 2022-04
• Subjects: Nuclear power plant -- Probabilistic risk assessment -- Fire event database -- Fire scenarios -- Fire severity classification -- Data analysis -- Uncertainty quantification; Nuclear energy -- Periodicals; Nuclear engineering -- Periodicals; 333.7924
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pnucene.2022.104146
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0149-1970

Abstract

Abstract: The fire probabilistic risk assessment framework for nuclear power plants relies on experimental data to determine expected fire behavior or to validate models to predict fire conditions in the plant. To support reducing the uncertainty in this experimental data, a research effort was conducted to identify the most frequent and challenging fire scenarios using historic fire data from nuclear power plants in the United States. To support this effort, an electronic version of the publicly available Updated Fire Event Database developed by Electric Power Research Institute was produced resulting in data on 2111 fire events, 540 events were labelled as being challenging fires with 74.2% of these challenging fire events being due to eleven selected fire types. Of these fire types, electrical and electronic equipment, transient combustibles, and liquid fires were the most frequent of the challenging fires. The fire scenario specifics were characterized for each of the eleven selected types and then related to existing fire experiments. Highlights: Approximately 25% (540) of fire events were categorized as challenging fire events. Challenging fire events mainly occurred in the turbine building. These events typically involved electrical panel, pumps, and transformers components.