SAFETY MARGIN ASSESSMENT OF BELENE NPP PROJECT FOR EXTERNAL EVENTS Marin Kostov* * Director, Risk Engineering Ltd,

Sofia, Bulgaria Following the event in Fukushima the European Commission has required a re-assessment in the European Union of all nuclear power plants in operation and under construction with licensed design. The Belene NPP project is under licensing review process by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRA) and currently it is formally outside the category of the nuclear power plants under construction with licensed design. However, following the process described in the EU Stresstest Specifications the Bulgarian Nuclear Regulatory Agency has required performance of stress-tests as a targeted re-assessment of the plant safety margins in natural disasters which could lead to severe accidents. The BNPP site is situated in the north of Bulgaria on the right bank of the Belene branch of the Danube river between the 567 and the 571 km, opposite Belene (Persin) island, about 7,5 km to the south of Bulgarias national border with Romania. There are no residential areas within 3 km radius around the Belene NPP site. The natural area near the Belene NPP Site is +20.0 m above the sea level. Embankment rising at +25.5 m elevation protects the natural area near the Belene NPP Site from the Danube river. The graded design elevation of the Belene NPP Site is +28.5 m above the sea level. Two Units with Pressurized Water Reactors and all main and auxiliary buildings, structures, systems and components needed for these units commissioning and operation are planned to be built at the Belene Site. The Belene NPP is designed with a Pressurized Water Reactors, V 466 type with four coolant loops, based on WWER AES-92 plant design which successfully passed all the steps of the analysis of compliance vs. the European Utility Requirements in 2006 endorsed by the major European Utility Companies for generation III of LWR nuclear power plants. Pursuant to the requirements of the Terms of Reference for Belene NPP design (approved by NRA and accepted by the Designer), plant safety and respectively the safety of the structures, systems and components (SSC) has to be confirmed for horizontal seismic impact 40% higher than DBE (i.e. absolute peak ground acceleration 0,336 g). Immediately after the seismic event in 2007, that has caused significant problems for the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPP in Japan, an extensive program for review and re-assessments of the external impacts safety margins of Belene NPP project have started. The requirements of the European Commission for performing stress tests coincided with the completion of the safety margins evaluation. The report issued covers all the aspects of the external impacts, including seismic events, flooding, large commercial aircraft impact, external blasts, etc. Here we present only some of the aspects concerning the seismic hazard evaluations. The comparison between the recent seismic hazard studies and the design response spectrum is presented in figure 1.

28

Figure 1. Comparison between the design response spectrum and the review response spectra (UHRS) The comparison shows that 1.4 DBE design spectrum envelopes in the entire frequency range the newly evaluated equal hazard spectrum with 0.0001 probability of exceedance. These results demonstrate that the design requirements are sufficient to guarantee the seismic stability of SSC in conformity with the contemporary regulations for nuclear installations. The seismic design basics of Belene NPP, as a method for definition and recurrence periods for the different seismic levels, is in conformity with the requirements of the Bulgarian and international regulations. The equal hazard response spectra are required for the probabilistic safety analyses and they are only supplementary to the seismic design basics. The performed complementary studies aimed at updating the seismic hazard and generating equal hazard response spectra, confirm the site seismic hazard assessments, which are conducted so far and served for the licensing of the site. The updated seismic excitation assessments show margins as required by the Terms of Reference, i.e. demonstration of plants safety for seismic impact 40% higher than the design basis seismic acceleration. The paper reveals the procedure followed for seismic hazard reassessment, and the treatment of the uncertainty propagation in all analyses.

29