This publication describes the procedures for calculating the margins of nuclear power plants in relation to human induced external hazards. It focuses on plant and systems performance evaluations. A two level approach for margin assessment is provided. The first level consists of a deterministic procedure in which, for each scenario, the existence of at least one undamaged success path to comply with the fundamental safety function is investigated. This procedure can be subsequently extended to calculate probability measures such as conditional core damage probability and the conditional probability of spent fuel damage. In the most elaborated stage, probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) techniques are introduced, giving consideration to the probabilistic aspects of the hazards and of the capacity of structures, systems and components (fragility). Event tree and fault tree models are used to compute PSA metrics, such as core damage frequency, large early release frequency and frequency of spent fuel damage.
