Comprehensiveness of scenarios in the safety assessment of nuclear waste repositories

•Comprehensiveness can be interpreted based on the conclusiveness of safety statements.•Comprehensiveness thus requires the quantification of residual uncertainty about risk.•In this regard, probabilistic approaches appear more suitable than others. The comprehensiveness of scenarios for the safety...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inReliability engineering & system safety Vol. 188; pp. 561 - 573
Main Authors Tosoni, E., Salo, A., Govaerts, J., Zio, E.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Barking Elsevier Ltd 01.08.2019
Elsevier BV
Elsevier
Subjects
Algorithms
Bayesian analysis
Bayesian Networks
Comprehensiveness
Computer simulation
domain_shs.gest-risq
Engineering Sciences
Humanities and Social Sciences
Nuclear accidents & safety
Nuclear engineering
Nuclear safety
Probabilistic methods
Radioactive wastes
Reliability engineering
Repositories
Safety
Safety Assessment
Scenario Analysis
Statistical analysis
Uncertainty
Bayesian Networks
Uncertainty
Scenario Analysis
Safety Assessment
Comprehensiveness
Networks
Bayesian
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Summary:•Comprehensiveness can be interpreted based on the conclusiveness of safety statements.•Comprehensiveness thus requires the quantification of residual uncertainty about risk.•In this regard, probabilistic approaches appear more suitable than others. The comprehensiveness of scenarios for the safety assessment of nuclear waste repositories has been studied from many perspectives. In this paper, we offer a generalized interpretation thereof through an explicit quantification of residual uncertainty, which makes it possible to derive conclusive statements about the safety of the repository. To support the operational evaluation of comprehensiveness, we develop a probabilistic methodology which uses set inclusion to capture epistemic uncertainties and propagates these in Bayesian networks to obtain bounds on the probability that the reference safety threshold is violated. We also present analyses which can help in achieving comprehensiveness and describe a novel algorithm for the efficient selection of computer-simulation inputs. The methodology is illustrated with a case study on a near-surface repository in Belgium.
ISSN:0951-8320
1879-0836
DOI:10.1016/j.ress.2019.04.012