Simplification of the Plant Models in PSA

Current Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) techniques are not usually utilized for day-to-day applications in nuclear power plants. The major reason for this anomaly is the complexity of plant models developed for PSA studies and the multitude of resulting fault trees. This impediment can be overcome by the use of simplified plant models. However, oversimplified models usually result in loss of valuable information and therefore. simplification approaches have to be used judiciously in order to achieve accurate and meaningful results. For this reason. development of an appropriate simplification approach must be performed using extreme caution followed with results verification in sequence as well as system levels. If there are no significant differences between the simplified and the original models, the simplified model can be efficiently used in the application of the PSA. This paper presents a methodology for how to develop a suitable simplification technique and the results of its verification for sample systems and sequences. The results show that the utilization of simplified plant models will significantly reduce the number of fault trees with no significant loss of accuracy.