Chapter 18 - Nuclear safety criteria

Abstract

This chapter aims at defining a set of general safety and radiation protection criteria for nuclear plants. The “trial and error” approach has been adopted for many other types of industrial undertakings and for other activities. The other activities include the fire protection of buildings and plants. The first collection of internationally accepted safety criteria is given in the “General design criteria for nuclear plants.” The General Design Criteria (GDC) are regulatory that are established by the central national institutions for protecting the population. The fundamental assumptions in the GDC have withstood the test of time and no substantial modifications are required. A series of regulatory standard includes more specific documents than the GDC or similar compilations. The regulatory guides can be described as an acceptable way to satisfy the various requirements of the GDC. The degree of technical detail is high. It goes down to the definition of numerical values of key parameters for the analytical demonstrations.