Analysis of Containment Structures of NPP’s

The reliability of containment structures is within the risk evaluation of nuclear power plants (NPP’s) of paramount interest. Consequently the development of credible methods to quantify the risk of failure has received considerable attention in the past (see e.g. [5.5–1, 5.5–2, 5.5–3]). Containment structures are exposed on one hand to internal hazards, such as loss of coolant accident, H₂ explosion, etc. and on the other hand to external hazards, such as aircraft impact, earthquake loading, etc.. In the following the reliability estimation of a particular containment structure under severe earthquake condition is shown.