Topical issues on performance categorization of structures, systems and components for natural phenomena hazards mitigation

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), under contract to the United States Department of Energy (DOE), has been providing assistance in the development of criteria, standards, and guidelines for designing and evaluating DOE facilities subjected to natural phenomena hazards (NPHs). The NPH design/evaluation guideline document, UCRL-15910 is one of the documents that resulted from this assistance. Even though UCRL-15910 is referred in the General Design Criteria DOE 6430.1A, it is not uniformly applied in the design/evaluation process of DOE facilities. To achieve uniform application of this document, and also to provide a comprehensive NPH mitigation program, an order, DOE 5480.NPH, has recently been developed that requires placing structures, systems, and components (SSCs) comprising DOE facilities into five performance categories (PC) based on importance, mission, cost, and safety considerations. DOE 5480.NPH refers to a standard, DOE-STD-1021-92 (under development) that will provide criteria and guidelines for the selection of SSC performance category. An interim version of this standard has been recently proposed for trial use. The details of the topical issues that were considered in developing this proposed standard, as well as the issues that should be considered before the standard is finalized, are discussed and presented in this report Facilities owned, operated or administered by DOE vary widely in mission, complexity, and hazard potential. NPH mitigation of these facilities involves an array of rules, policies, orders, and standards, which must be considered in the development of performance categorization criteria. The interrelationship among these documents, as these relate to SSC performance categorization, is discussed in Section 2.0 of this report