WENRA issues a report on Safety Objectives for new reactors for comments by stakeholders

According to a mandate given by WENRA members in March 2008, the WENRA Reactor Harmonization Working Group (RHWG) has performed a pilot study on the safety of new reactors, which is made publicly available for stakeholder’s comments.

The study addresses projects that are under way or planned in the short term, meaning that innovative designs such as Generation 4 concepts are not considered. As part of this study, high-level qualitative safety objectives are proposed for new reactors, on the basis of the IAEA Fundamental Safety Principles and of a review of the existing documentation. As a rule, RHWG did not introduce in this study elements that are not supported by the existing documentation.

The study also includes a limited test of possible further developments such as the identification of areas of safety improvement in meeting the proposed safety objectives, and an analysis of the applicability to new reactors of the reference levels developed by WENRA for existing ones. However, time and resources available have not made it possible to complete and validate these pilot exercises.

WENRA now invites stakeholders to send comments on this report, especially on the proposed safety objectives, before the end of June 2010. All comments will then be considered and the proposed safety objectives appropriately amended before WENRA endorses them.