Thirty years of LWR safety research at Karlsruhe

Abstract

When nuclear power plants equipped with light water reactors (LWR) became commercialized, the German federal government from the mid-60s on increasingly supported initiatives in reactor safety research at national research centers, universities, and in industry. At the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center, this resulted in the establishment of the Nuclear Safety Project in early 1972 as the administrative focus of various research and development (R&D) activities in LWR safety to be further extended. In the seventies, the related R&D program concentrated on the quantification of safety margins in nuclear power plants, mainly derived from investigations into the loss-of-coolant accident (‘deterministic approach’). In the 80s, the program consisted of major contributions to safety analyses for incorporation into the German Risk Study which were based on hypothetical sequences of core meltdown accidents (‘probabilistic approach’). The program in the nineties was devoted to an advanced quality in safety as required for future nuclear power plants by the German Atomic Energy Act as amended in 1994. This new quality was based on complementary preventive and mitigative safety installations against accidental releases of radioactive materials. The paper concludes with a glimpse at the current situation of nuclear electricity generation in Germany and, in this connection, aspects of competence preservation in the field of nuclear safety.