Standardized design of advanced nuclear reactors through seismic isolation

Seismic hazard poses a significant challenge to the standardized design of nuclear power plants across diverse sites. Seismic isolation has been recognized as a pathway to achieve this standardization owing to its capability for reducing the seismic demand and capital cost. This study seeks to develop a general approach for the standardized design of nuclear power plants through seismic isolation, across a wide range of seismic regions and reactor vendors. To standardize the seismic hazard, the response spectra for 7044 United States and Canadian sites are explored and divided into multiple representative site groups. The envelope response spectrum for each site group is utilized for the isolation system design and the reactor building design, and such a design envelope can be adopted wherever the local response spectrum is below the envelope response spectrum at all frequencies. A reactor building design envelope without major equipment information is developed for each site group, allowing different reactor venders/technologies to install their own components and equipment within a standardized framework. A case study is investigated to demonstrate the feasibility of the present approach to achieve standardization. It is found that a standardized reactor building design envelope developed for a specified site group is sufficient to be constructed at two local sites of the same group, and installing two different sets of major equipment does not need to change the reactor building design and the isolator design.