Risk Analysis Research at NPRE to Enhance Economic Viability of Nuclear Power Plants While Maintaining Safety
Abstract: The Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA) research laboratory (http://soteria.npre.illinois.edu/) in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) focuses on the advancement of Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). As one of the key areas of scholarly developments, SoTeRiA conducts research on integrating safety risk and financial risk by developing an Integrated Enterprise Risk Management (I-ERM) framework to promote the sustainability of the U.S nuclear fleet. In I-ERM, in-depth causalities for physical degradation mechanisms (e.g., Stress Corrosion Cracking) and social contributing factors (e.g., human and organizational factors) are incorporated explicitly into an integrated, time-synchronized framework to assess safety and financial outcomes associated with alternative Operation and Maintenance (O&M) strategies. I-ERM can help decision-makers enhance the economic viability of nuclear power plants by cost savings and avoidance of production loss, while satisfying regulatory safety requirements. This talk will highlight some of the methodological and application features of the I-ERM framework.
Bio: Tatsuya Sakurahara is currently a Research Assistant Professor in NPRE. He is conducting research in the SoTeRiA laboratory to advance science and applications of Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) by contributing to multiple collaborative studies including a National Science Foundation (NSF) project for big data analytics in PRA, a Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) research for Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), a DOE NEUP project for advancing the PRA algorithm for the deployment of new technologies, an academia-industry project on Fire PRA with the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company (STPNOC) as part of the U.S. Industry Opportunities for Advanced Nuclear Technology Development Program under DOE, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) project for assessing pipe failure rates in advanced water-cooled reactors.
Dr. Sakurahara received his Ph.D. under the supervision of Associate Professor Zahra Mohaghegh in NPRE at UIUC. His Ph.D. research developed the Integrated PRA (I-PRA) methodological framework for Fire PRA by coupling a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) fire model with a human performance model for manual suppression and integrating the fire-human coupling with the existing PRA model of nuclear power plants. For I-PRA, he also developed advanced techniques for uncertainty analysis, importance measure analysis, and the simulation-informed common cause failure modeling. Dr. Sakurahara holds an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering and Management and a B.S. in Environment and Energy System Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan.
