https://doi.org/10.1051/epjn/2017025
Regular Article
Independent assessment for new nuclear reactor safety
1
Nuclear Research Group of San Piero a Grado (GRNSPG), University of Pisa (UNIPI),
Via Livornese 1291, San Piero a Grado,
56100
Pisa, Italy
2
Consultant,
Herbststrasse 9,
85386
Eching, Germany
3
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing,
Unska 3,
10000
Zagreb, Croatia
* e-mail: f.dauria@ing.unipi.it
Received:
8
June
2017
Accepted:
9
October
2017
Published online: 17 November 2017
A rigorous framework for safety assessment is established in all countries where nuclear technology is used for the production of electricity. On the one side, industry, i.e. reactor designers, vendors and utilities perform safety analysis and demonstrate consistency between results of safety analyses and requirements. On the other side, regulatory authorities perform independent assessment of safety and confirm the acceptability of safety of individual reactor units. The process of comparing results from analyses by reactor utilities and regulators is very complex. The process is also highly dependent upon mandatory approaches pursued for the analysis and from very many details which required the knowledge of sensitive proprietary data (e.g. spacer designs). Furthermore, all data available for the design, construction and operation of reactors produced by the nuclear industry are available to regulators. Two areas for improving the process of safety assessment for individual Nuclear Power Plant Units are identified: New details introduced by industry are not always and systematically requested by regulators for the independent assessment; New analytical techniques and capabilities are not necessarily used in the analyses by regulators (and by the industry). The established concept of independent assessment constitutes the way for improving the process of safety assessment. This is possible, or is largely facilitated, by the recent availability of the so-called Best Estimate Plus Uncertainty approach.
© F. D'Auria et al., published by EDP Sciences, 2017
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
