Following the Fukushima disaster in Japan, Aterra employees were appointed to be Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to support flood hazard re-evaluations and assessments of flood protection measures and mitigation strategies at approximately 40% of the nuclear plants in the country. The flood hazard re-evaluations at nuclear facilities requires a comprehensive and sophisticated approach and use of state-of-the-practice techniques to provide a very high level of accuracy, while properly characterizing uncertainties. Most recently, Aterra has supported the nuclear industry by developing Probabilistic Flood Hazard Assessments at very low annual exceedance probabilities.
Joe Bellini became the fleet-wide Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Exelon Nuclear immediately following the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant accident and has continued to provide flood hazard technical support. He is also an active participant on the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) Fukushima Flooding Task Force (FFTF). Mr. Bellini was a lead author in the NEI 16-05 Flooding Impact Assessment guidance and providing technical support for other NEI FFTF guidance documents, including NEI 12-07 (Flooding Walkdowns), NEI 12-08 (Flood Hazard Reevaluations), and Local Intense Precipitation Warning Time” white paper. Mr. Bellini was also the technical lead for the development of technical report “Evaluation of Deterministic Approaches to Characterizing Flood Hazards” for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). In addition to Exelon Nuclear, we have provided flood hazard SME support to Xcel Energy, Duke Energy, First Energy, and AEP.
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Our involvement in the NEI FFTF and EPRI working groups provides a unique opportunity to remain current in the development and implementation of regulations associated with flood hazards, including Mitigating Strategies Assessments, Focused Evaluations, and Integrated Assessments. Coupled with our experience in all phases of the post-Fukushima related regulations and understanding of the state-of-the-art technology used to assess nuclear plant flood hazards, this involvement provides us with unique skills that benefit all of our clients.
The following is a list of specific post-Fukushima related services that we can provide to nuclear operators:
- Subject Matter Expert services
- Flooding walkdowns and inspections
- Flooding hazard reevaluations
- Mitigation Strategy Assessments
- Impact Assessments
- Flood protection and mitigation strategy planning and design
- Probabilistic Flood Hazard Assessments
- Design basis reconstitution
- Long-term strategic planning for flooding
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