SEISMIC REEVALUATION AND UPGRADING OF NUCLEAR-POWER FACILITIES OUTSIDE THE US USING US DEVELOPED METHODOLOGIES

Several seismic licensing and safety issues have emerged over the past fifteen years for commercial US Nuclear Power Plants and US Governmen t research reactors, production reactors and process facilities. The m ethodologies for the resolution of these issues have been developed in numerous government and utility sponsored research programs. The reso lution criteria have included conservative deterministic design criter ia, deterministic seismic margins assessments criteria (SMA) and seism ic probabilistic risk assessment criteria (SPRA). The criteria for SMA s and SPRAs have been based realistically on considering the inelastic energy absorption capability of ductile structures, equipment and pip ing and have incorporated the use of earthquake and testing experience to evaluate the operability of complex mechanical and electrical equi pment. Most of the applications to date have been confined to the US, however there have been several applications to Asian, Western and Eas tern Europe reactors. This paper summarizes the major issues addressed , the development of reevaluation criteria and selected applications t o non US reactors including VVER reactors of Soviet origin. (C) 1998 E lsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.