Probabilistic safety assessment of nuclear power plants considering climate change

Thomas Matteo Coscia, Francesco Di Maio, Gyunyoung Heo and Enrico Zio

Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 2026, vol. 265, issue PB

Abstract: Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) must take into account the impact of Climate Change (CC). In this paper, to do this, a PSA framework is developed coupling a CC impact assessment model, a source term estimation model, an atmospheric dispersion model and a groundwater contaminant transport model. The impact of CC on aquifer contamination is analyzed in terms of i) increase of accident initiating event frequencies due to CC-induced natural events and ii) alteration of hydrological conditions due to the CC influence on physical variables (e.g., temperature and precipitation) that affect atmospheric dispersion and groundwater transport of radioactive contaminant. An application of the proposed framework is performed with regards to the estimation of the peak dose following a hypothetical severe accident in a NPP site in South Korea. Under the assumptions made, CC is found to worsen the consequences of such accident in terms of groundwater radioactive contamination.

Keywords: Probabilistic safety assessment (PSA); Nuclear power plant (NPP); Climate change (CC); Atmospheric dispersion; Groundwater contamination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reensy:v:265:y:2026:i:pb:s0951832025007902

DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2025.111590

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