Meeting Regulatory Requirements for Fire Safety Assessments with the PBFANS Software System

Abstract

Fire safety assessments (FSA) for nuclear facilities require the completion of a code compliance review, a fire hazard assessment and, in the case of facilities with a reactor, a fire safe shutdown assessment. The regulator requires that the assessments reflect the plant configuration and demonstrate that the impact of fire on safety objectives has been considered. Completion of the FSAs requires a large quantity of information on the facility. This article presents how database type software can be used to store data summarizing the arrangement of fire hazards, safety systems and protection features. With this data, and spatial arrangements defined, assessments can be performed, evaluation results entered and reports generated to provide comprehensive documentation of the assessment results. Also, once an original assessment is performed the costs of maintaining and updating of assessments becomes a manageable and cost effective means for reporting regulatory compliance.