Study On Evacuation Time Estimates For Nuclear Power Plant Site

Evacuation Time Estimates(ETE) are part of planning basis for each NuclearPower Plant(NPP) site and required by licensees to estimate the time needed toevacuate the public from the Emergency Planning Zone(EPZ) around each site. Asthere is little research done on ETE and will be more and more nuclear power plantsto be built in China, studies on ETE should be developed.According to the current laws and guidance of evacuation for nuclear powerplants of China and the ETE reports of NRC and other countries, and based on thesocial circumstance and specific conditions of nuclear power plant sites in China, thestudy of ETE is carried out in detail in this paper.The methodology proposed is suitable for China. Firstly analyze the EPZ and itsdata around certain site and then develop a series of scenarios based on differentdemand estimates, weather condition, evacuation times etc. Secondly for eachscenario, calculate the probability distribution of Trip Generation Time(TGT) andevacuation demand based on site data as a part of input for the simulation model tocalculate the Travel Time(TT).TT is always calculated through a computer transportation simulation model.OREMS macroscopic traffic simulation software recommended by NRC is used tocalculate TT and carried out for the sensitivity analysis of the results to find out thepotential bottleneck in the network. As OREMS was developed based on US situation,some parameters used should be modified according to Chinese national circumstancebefore using.Based on the methodology and procedure mentioned above, calculate the ETEfor an inland and a coastal site in China. All the data chosen are based on nationalcircumstance or reasonable assumptions. The results show that TGT is the maineffecting factor of the ETE. The way public preferred to evacuate is much differentcompared with those in foreign sites during the study of development of ETE, whichmay lead to different traffic problems. The outcome of this paper can help to better preplan emergency evacuation andguide potential evacuation event in future and finally some issues needed to be furtherdeveloped are proposed.