This course is designed for the individual who requires knowledge, background and a better understanding for the approaches and methodologies behind seismic risk assessment to address the anticipated NRC Generic Letter “Seismic Risk Evaluations for Operating Reactors” expected in late 2011.

Mr. Beck has been in the risk and reliability assessment field for 18 years. His educational background includes a M.S. in Instrumentation and Control Systems, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, and a B.A. in Chemistry, all from Idaho State University. A majority of his career was a Probabilistic Risk Assessment Engineer at the Idaho National Laboratory. Projects include a primary analyst for the SPAR (Standardized Plant Analysis Risk) model program, risk analyst for NGNP (Next Generation Nuclear Plant) licensing procedure, and safety and hazard analyst for chemical, radiological, military and space systems. He also served 15 years as an instructor for the NRC’s PRA Professional Development Program and was an instructor for PRA Technology and Regulatory Perspectives, PRA Basic for Regulatory Applications, SAPHIRE risk analysis software and External Events courses.

Mr. Swan has over 35 years of experience in the risk assessment of critical systems serving commercial, industrial and electric utility operations. His expertise includes the reliability of critical systems in disaster events, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, floods, fires and prolonged power outages. He was the primary investigator for a program sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), in conjunction with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), to quantify the earthquake vulnerability (seismic fragility) of equipment critical for nuclear power plant safety. Mr. Swan has performed numerous other studies estimating the seismic failure probability of critical components of nuclear utility systems and industrial operations. He has developed seismic risk assessments using equipment seismic fragilities, earthquake intensity and frequency data, seismic qualification information for equipment and interconnections, stress computations, compilations of shake table data, and the application of engineering judgment based on experience from past earthquakes. He obtained a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona, and both the M.S. and Professional Engineer degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Mr. Chung has over 30 years of experience in design engineering, including seismic, structural and dynamic impact analyses. He has served as the principal engineer at SAIC for a natural phenomena hazard analysis (seismic, wind, flood), and performed many structural and stress analyses of buildings and systems, including nuclear power and weapons facilities, for the U.S. NRC and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). He has also developed seismic capacity margins for non-reactor buildings, and performed structural walk-downs, reviews of seismic, tornado, and aircraft crash accident analyses, and provided predictions of the structural integrity for various DOE high-hazard facilities. He has developed nonlinear dynamic capacity-spectrum to find the ultimate structural collapse threshold capacity for buildings, including missile impacts on walls, planks, cages, and specific facility equipment. He has prepared equipment and structural qualification documentation for nuclear facility FSARs. He obtained a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Chung-Hsing University in Taiwan, and the M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Washington State University. He is a registered PE in Structural Engineering at the State of Idaho.