Fuzzy based risk assessment for decommissioning concrete bioshield structures in nuclear power plants: Structural risks and worker safety

Abstract

Few studies have assessed the safety issues involved in decommissioning nuclear facilities, especially from a structural and job perspective; in most developed countries, the focus is generally on the radiological risks. This study highlights the inadequacy of existing deterministic risk assessment methods, which cannot account for the uncertainty and complexity of hazards that workers are exposed to. We instead propose a fuzzy logic based safety assessment model that can analyze and compare alternatives utilizing a step-by-step risk quantification and multidimensional approach. This enables personnel to assess the various risks involved when decontaminating and decommissioning nuclear power plant structures that cannot be quantitatively assessed owing to a lack of data. Our proposed fuzzy based risk assessment model can also be applied to risk assessment in other engineering fields that depend on the judgment of experts supported by little or no statistical data.