Application of risk-informed design methods to select the PSACS ultimate heat sink

In the early phases of advanced system design, information is scarce. The technologies, components and processes to be used have not been specified adequately or are not well understood and uncertainties are very large. Yet, it is during these early phases that design teams and other stakeholders are required to make critical decisions to guide the development of the system. To aid in this decision making, a formal process is proposed based on the Analytic-Deliberative Decision-Making Process (ADP) that allows stakeholders to synthesize rationally their knowledge and experience and facilitate learning and sharing of best practices. The ADP identifies and prioritizes attributes relevant to a decision problem and supports the formulation of metrics to measure the performance of different design options. This paper reports on an application of the ADP to the selection of an ultimate heat sink for the Flexible Conversion Ratio (FCR) reactor's Passive Secondary Auxiliary Cooling System (PSACS). Two ultimate heat sink options are identified and evaluated, air and water.