NE 560 Probabilistic Risk Assessment and Management (formerly 591-606)

3 Credit Hours

This course is focused on the principles of probabilistic risk assessment and management of complex engineering systems, with a particular focus on nuclear power applications. Topics include fundamental safety and risk concepts, accidents and risk management, a review of major probabilistic risk assessment studies, hazard analysis, qualitative and quantitative systems analysis, human and software reliability, and uncertainty quantification. Emphasis will be placed on the risk-informed and performance-based design and licensing of advanced nuclear reactors under development

Prerequisites (Recommended)

Probability and Statistics for Engineers (NC State ST 370) OR Introduction to Probability (NC State MA 421) or equivalent. Contact the instructor if you don’t have the exact prerequisite course to discuss your background.

Course Objectives

The students completing this course will be able to:
• Define and explain the general safety and risk concepts
• Explain the nuclear plant regulation and licensing key rules and judge their importance
• Interpret the principles of risk and reliability analysis and implement them for simple engineered systems
• Explain deterministic safety analysis of nuclear power plants and compare it to probabilistic safety analysis
• Interpret the critical events and lessons learnt of the major accidents and incidents for commercial nuclear power plants over the past thirty years
• Contrast the major probabilistic risk assessment studies of nuclear power plants
• Explain advanced simulation methods for risk assessment
• Predict the safety of complex engineered systems and choose appropriate risk management strategies

Test Schedule

EXAMDATE/TIME/LOCTest #1Wednesday, TBD*Test #2Wednesday, TBD*Final:Wednesday, November 18, 3:30 pm – 6:00 pm*

*Exams online or take-home

Grading

Classwork	3%
Midterm	20%
Homework	22%
Project	35%

Updated 7/7/2020