The safety concept for new reactors

The author presents the safety requirements to be met by new reactors. Although a binding answer on the innovative SWR 1000 boiling water reactor designed by Siemens could only be given after the new development had been thoroughly discussed by the German safety agencies, an evaluation by Professor Dr. Kessler, who is a member of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (RSK), of the safety concepts planned by Siemens shows that the SWR 1000 is going to meet these requirements. One of the much more stringent criteria in the new safety requirements is the absence of probabilistic, or rather improbabilistic, calculations. The assumption made against merely hypothetical accident scenarios if those accidents must be assumed to occur with a probability in excess of 10-6 years per reactor, is no longer accepted fur neu reactors in Germany. In concrete terms. this means that a new nuclear power plant will be licensed in Germany only if its design actually protects against ail possible accident scenarios in such a way that even in the worst case the consequence of a reactor disaster will not affect the vicinity, but remain limited to the plant proper.