Safeguard assessment in nuclear power plants (NPPs) operations using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and production function

Abstract

The safeguard assessment has been investigated for the nuclear material in the nuclear power plants (NPPs). It is important to keep the secure operation in NPPs against possible terror attacks. The random sampling of Monte-Carlo method is used for the quantification of the basic events in 5 kinds of interested NPPs. Using the matrix form analysis, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is applied as the maximum pair values with multiplications which is decided by reactor characteristics. The range of the secure operation is between 0.006167 and 0.004680 as relative numbers in the lifetime of 60 years. This means the highest value in the range of secure power operation is about 1.3177 times higher than the lowest one. The consistency has the highest consistent values in 14 th and 26 th years as the lowest values of the C.I. (Consistency Index) and C.R. (Consistency Ratio). The value of Nuclear Production Function (NPF) of the Cobb-Douglas function has the maximum value of 0.642836 and the minimum value of 0.0932656, where the refueling period is specialized as the power production change. So, the highest value in the secure power operation is 6.8925 times higher than that of the lowest power operation in this study. Finally, the nuclear safeguard protocol (NSP) is constructed for the safe operation successfully.