Emergency Evacuation Management for Nuclear Power Plant Accidents Under Multiple Uncertainties

Abstract

Nuclear power accidents are one of the most dangerous disasters posing a lethal threat to human health and have detrimental effects lasting for decades. Therefore, emergency evacuation is important to minimize injuries and prevent lethal consequences resulting from a nuclear power accident. An evacuation management system in response to a nuclear power plant accident, involves a number of processes with a variety of socio-economic and environmental implications. These processes may be influenced by a number of factors, such as availability of traffic vehicles employed, number of evacuees, destinations of evacuees, limitations of evacuation times, budgets for evacuation, shelter and hospital capacities, and environmental regulations of the areas involved. Extensive uncertainties exist in the evacuation process and the associated factors. Hence, innovative inexact optimization approaches may be proposed to account for various uncertainties existing in an evacuation planning system. In this dissertation, a series of inexact optimization approaches will be proposed to reflect compound uncertainties existing in emergency evacuation planning systems. In detail, (i) an interval-based evacuation management (IBEM) model will be developed in response to a nuclear-power plant accident; (ii) an inexact gradient-based fuzzy chance constrained programming (IGFCCP) method will be proposed to balance a decision maker’s optimistic and pessimistic preferences and applied to the planning of the evacuation scheme for the Qinshan Nuclear Power Site (QNPS); (iii) an inexact fuzzy stochastic chance constrained programming (IFSCCP) approach will be developed to address various uncertainties and optimize the planning of the evacuation scheme for the QNPS; (iv) an inexact mixed-integer credibility-constrained de Novo programming (IMICDNP) method will be developed to analyze the trade-offs between conflicting objectives under uncertainty. The major accomplishments of this research are summarized as follows: (i) A set of inexact optimization approaches are proposed to deal with uncertainties in emergency evacuation planning systems. The uncertainties, expressed in various forms such as interval, fuzzy, fuzz random variables, can be well reflected through the developed IBEM, IGFCCP, IFSCCP, IMCDP methods. Optimal decision alternatives for emergency evacuation planning are obtained through the proposed approached under various uncertain conditions. (ii) The applicability of the proposed approaches are demonstrated through a real-case study of emergency evacuation management at the Qinshan Nulcear Power Site (QNPS), which is the first nuclear power plant in China. Under consideration of various system complexities and uncertainties, potential.