Technical Advisory Committee of the Nuclear Risk Research Center
Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry
1-6-1 Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 100-8126 Japan
November 15, 2017
Dr. George Apostolakis
Head, Nuclear Risk Research Center
Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry
1-6-1 Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo, 100-8126 JapanSUBJECT:PROPOSED NRRC RESEARCH PLAN FOR FISCAL YEAR 2018

Dear Dr. Apostolakis:
During the eighth meeting of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of the Nuclear
Risk Research Center (NRRC), November 6-10, 2017, we met with the NRRC staff
to review the proposed research plan for fiscal year 2018. The purpose of ourreview was to provide comments on the technical merit of the research plan and its
relevance for supporting NRRC's current mission.
CONCLUSION
We did not identify any major research gaps that require attention in the plan forfiscal year 2018.
BACKGROUND
One of the most important objectives of the research plan is to present the technicalcontext of the research needs including the proposed rationale, current state ofknowledge, and potential contributions and significance of the research to theobjectives of the center. Our review of the research plan focused on the objectivesof each research task, understanding the relative priorities and relationships among
those tasks, and identifying any major needs for additional research. We did notreview the technical details of individual research activities or their completion
milestones, except as needed to understand how those activities are integrated
throughout the plan. We will comment separately on the technical elements ofindividual research projects in our detailed reviews of those projects.
DISCUSSION
The Risk Assessment Working Group (WG1) and the External Natural Event
Working Group (WG2) presented the research and development (R&D) plans in-1-

each of their areas. Broadly speaking, the scope of WG1 activities covers a wide
range of issues related to Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 probabilistic risk
assessments (PRAs) and some important supporting technologies, such as humanreliability analysis, methods for analyzing internal fires and floods, and risk
communications. The WG2 activities include research related to external hazards,
such as seismic events, localized fault displacement, tsunamis, extreme weather,and volcanic hazards.
The presentations described the overall framework of the research to support
various NRRC objectives and goals, such as providing support for nuclear power
plant restart activities and enhancing risk assessment methods for use in riskinformed decision-making. The presentations discussed potential gaps that are
being addressed and the major components of the research to address those gaps
(e.g., development of databases based on Japanese experience for WG1, anddevelopment of probabilistic hazard analysis and fragility methods for WG2). The
research timelines and schedules were also included to demonstrate how the short-,intermediate-, and long-term goals are being met. The presentations were very
useful for an understanding of the scope of the various NRRC activities. They also
provided clear context for how the detailed activities in specific areas fit into theoverall research scheme. This overview provides a comprehensive understandingthat will help us to have more effective discussions with the NRRC and provide more
useful feedback on specific topics, as well as identification of research needs forcorrelated topics.
We did not identify any major research gaps that require attention in the plan forfiscal year 2018.
Considerations for Future Reviews
Based on our discussions with the NRRC research team, we offer the following
considerations that will improve communications and mutual understanding of how
NRRC research plans address the organization of research tasks and justification ofpriorities.
A successful R&D program must be clearly aligned with the overall organizational
goals and ensure coherence among the components of the research. Also, practical
R&D programs cannot be designed to address all conceivable issues or to addresseach issue in the same level of detail. Therefore, there are always difficult trade-offs.
To demonstrate how the research program achieves these goals, it is essential todefine clear outcome objectives for each R&D activity to:(1)

Align each outcome objective to a major organizational goal (e.g., NRRC's
short-term goal to support nuclear power plant restarts and NRRC's longerterm goal to support development of high-quality full-scope PRAs for all
nuclear power plants).

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(2)

Improve coherence 1 between different activities (e.g., use of the same
fundamental risk assessment methods and models to quantify risk from allhazards).

Thus, the overall research plan should include the following major attributes:•Alignment: The research plan needs to have a strategy that is fully alignedwith the broader NRRC goals, is not focused too narrowly on individual topics,
and accounts for the practical constraints within which the organizationoperates.

•Coherence: The NRRC's stakeholders have a variety of objectives, with acorrespondingly complex set of near-, intermediate-, and long-term needs.
The NRRC is embarking on a set of research activities that will eventually
support the development of high-quality full-scope PRAs to support riskinformed decision-making. Coherence in the methods, models, data, andguidance developed through this research will provide assurance that thoseobjectives can be achieved in a technically integrated manner.

These attributes will then support effective planning, execution, and review of theR&D program to ensure that the infrastructure (i.e., programs, tools, processes,personnel, and training) and associated priorities are adequately considered to meetthe stated outcome objectives.
Sincerely,John W. Stetkar
Chairman
REFERENCES
1.

"R&D Plan for FY 2018, Risk Assessment Research," Presentation to NRRC
Technical Advisory Committee, November 7, 2017, Proprietary.

2.

"Development of the Fire PRA Guide," Presentation to NRRC TechnicalAdvisory Committee, November 7, 2017, Proprietary.

3.

"Study on MUPRA [Multi-Unit PRA]," Presentation to NRRC TechnicalAdvisory Committee, November 7, 2017, Proprietary.

4.

"R&D Plan for FY 2018, External Natural Event Research," Presentation toNRRC Technical Advisory Committee, November 8, 2017, Proprietary.

In this letter, we use the term "coherence" to mean the quality of being logical andconsistent to form an integrated risk assessment.

1-3-5.

"PTHA [Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Analysis] and TFA [Tsunami FragilityAnalysis] in Tsunami PRA," Presentation to NRRC Technical Advisory
Committee, November 8, 2017, Proprietary.

6.

"Technical Issues to be Studied in Ikata SSHAC Level 3 Project," Presentationto NRRC Technical Advisory Committee, November 8, 2017, Proprietary.

7.

Nuclear Risk Research Center (NRRC), Central Research Institute of ElectricPower Industry (CRIEPI), "Fire PRA Guide, Volume 1," Draft Chapter 1,Chapter 2, and Appendix A, October 2017, Proprietary.

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