Westinghouse AP1000 Plant, a Generation III+ Reactor

Abstract

In a first part, this paper describes the AP1000® pressurized water reactor (PWR) design and how the AP1000 plant fundamental objectives of safety, simplification and standardization were applied throughout the design of the AP1000 plant.The second part of this paper focuses on specific safety and licensing topics: the AP1000 plant robustness for extreme events that may lead to catastrophic loss of infrastructure (such as the event that occurred at Fukushima Dai-ichi in March 2011) and the AP1000 plant compliance with the safety objectives for new plants released by the Western European Nuclear Regulators’ Association (WENRA).