Safety improvement supplementary aids to operating incident analysis

The main objective of the safety approach utilized for nuclear power plants consists in permanently maintaining the safety level initially targeted and adopted for commissioning purposes. Furthermore, development of knowhow has stimulated a motivation to improve this initial level by implementing modifications. Analysis of significant incidents occurring in power plants and inclusion of the results of this analysis are an essential step in fulfilling this objective. Many different additional approaches, processing data derived from various sources, can also contribute to safety improvement. Their specificity is to be found in their ability to anticipate incidents or accidents and minimize their consequences. We will tackle several of these approaches in this paper. Without wishing to group them together as families due to inevitable overlapping, we have selected those which are characterised by the following processes: - in-service safety reviews, - pre-commissioning tests, - monitoring of equipment aging, - probabilistic risk assessments, - approach to accident and post-accident situations, - waiver of technical operating specifications