Science and Technology of Nuclear Installations 
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 340164, 9 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/340164
Research Article

Bootstrap and Order Statistics for Quantifying Thermal-Hydraulic Code Uncertainties in the Estimation of Safety Margins

Enrico Zio and Francesco Di Maio

 Department of Nuclear Engineering, Polytechnic of Milan, Via Ponzio 34/3, Milano 20133, Italy
Received 30 April 2007; Revised 8 December 2007; Accepted 21 December 2007

Recommended by Cesare Frepoli

Abstract

In the present work, the uncertainties affecting the safety margins estimated from thermal-hydraulic code calculations are captured quantitatively by resorting to the order statistics and the bootstrap technique. The proposed framework of analysis is applied to the estimation of the safety margin, with its confidence interval, of the maximum fuel cladding temperature reached during a complete group distribution blockage scenario in a RBMK-1500 nuclear reactor.