Probabilistic Safety Assessment & Risk Assessment

People meeting around a board table with a colleague joining virtually via screen on the wall.

A large Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) team with decades of experience, supporting operational nuclear safety, licensing, and PSA applications.

Our Global Team

Canada

Marcy Sanderson VP, Strategic Growth and Innovation

Our Global Team

International

Shahrokh Zangeneh Chief Commercial Officer

Probabilistic Safety Assessment & Risk Assessment Overview

Probabilistic risk analysis & assessment chart

Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), also referred to as Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) is a systematic and comprehensive methodology used by the nuclear industry to evaluate risk. It estimates risk by using real numbers to determine what can go wrong, how likely it is, and what the consequences will be.

Often using fault and event tree analyses, PSA incorporates specialty analysis tools and techniques such as Human Reliability Analysis (HRA), a technique for modeling human error, and Common-Cause-Failure analysis (CCF) which evaluates the effect of inter and intra-system dependencies that may cause simultaneous failures and contribute to the overall risk.

PSAs are an integral part of all nuclear facility licensing processes as they help regulators and operators better understand the technology and the way it will be operated. It often leads to safety improvements.

Our team uses PSAs to support you with your licensing applications and we offer a comprehensive range of individual assessments.

Why Our Probabilistic Safety Assessment & Risk Assessment?

Extensive Operational Experience

Extensive experience with nuclear facility licensing and nuclear facility operations is fed into our PSAs to provide you with a valuable source of information that can be leveraged to support PSA applications, operational decision-making, design changes, and cost-benefit analyses.
Assured Results

With more than 40 PSA specialists and decades of experience, we are one of the most experienced PSA teams in the world. By leveraging this experience, we ensure that our assessments are complete, and accurate, and will help ensure you and your nuclear regulator make sound risk-informed decisions.
Reputation

Over the years we have earned our reputation as a trusted and credible PSA partner. The end result is, more constructive discussions, better collaborations, and mutually satisfied clients and regulators.
Broad Service Offering

Our PSA team often works with our other in-house specialists to ensure a complete understanding of how the PSAs will be used and to provide a holistic approach across a broad range of projects.

Our Probabilistic Safety Assessment & Risk Assessment Technical Abilities

Table of Contents

Team of PSA Experts

Our PSA team is the largest in Canada, providing risk assessment services to Canadian, US, and other international nuclear generating utilities since its inception over 30 years ago. This team was initially a part of the Nuclear Safety Analysis Division within Ontario Hydro, where the PSA staff supported station operations and developed detailed risk models for all the Nuclear Generating Stations (NGS) in Ontario.

Today, our team consists of 40 of the most experienced risk and reliability professionals in Canada. It has worked throughout the commercial nuclear industry on all reactor technologies – including PWRs, BWRs, CANDUs, VVERs, AGRs, and SMRs.

Nuclear Risk Informed Services

We also offer a full range of risk informed services to support nuclear facilities that includes but is not limited to:

Supporting Licensing Hearings
Preparing Regulatory Submissions
Preparing Risk Monitors and other Risk Management Tools
Developing new Methodologies
Supporting Design Changes
Assessing Unexpected Events
Preparing Databases and Analyzing data
Preparing Gap Analyses Against Best Practices and Regulatory Requirements
Providing Training

PSA Activities

PSA activities our team has successfully completed include:

Development and maintenance of station baseline PSAs
PSAs for external hazards such as fires, high winds and tornados, floods, and seismic events
Development and maintenance of reliability models for regulatory compliance
Implementation of Severe Accident Management Guidelines (SAMG)
Support for Emergency Preparedness for the Province
Methodology development (risk aggregation for multi-unit PSA; plant habitability and equipment survivability, implementation of FLEX/EME)
PSA Applications (risk monitors for online maintenance, outage planning, and testing optimization)
Risk-informed design assist analysis for a broad range of reactor technologies
PSA for non-reactor sources

Our Proven Experience

Quality Assurance & Technical Standards

10CFR50 Appendix B (2021): Quality Assurance Criteria for Nuclear Power Plants and Fuel Reprocessing Plants
CSA N286.7: Quality assurance of analytical, scientific and design computer programs
CSA N299.1: Quality Assurance Program Requirements for the Supply of Items and Services for nuclear power plants, Category 1
REGDOC 2.4.2 (2014): Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) for Nuclear Power Plants