The IAEA safety standards

During the development of the NUSS standards, wide consultation was carried out with all the Member States to obtain a consensus and the programme was supervised by a Senior Advisory Group consisting of senior safety experts from 13 countries. This group of senior regulators later became what is now known as the Nuclear Safety Standards Advisory Group (NUSSAG) and comprises of senior regulatory experts from 16 countries. The standards that were developed comprise of four types of documents: safety fundamentals; codes of practice; safety guides; and safety practices. The safety fundamentals set out the basic objectives, concepts and principles for nuclear safety in nuclear power plants. The codes of practice, are of a legislative nature, and establish the general objectives that must be fulfilled to ensure adequate nuclear power plant safety. They cover five areas: governmental organization; siting, design, operation and quality assurance. The safety guides, administrative in character, recommend procedures and acceptable technical solutions to implement the codes and guides by presenting further details gained from Member States, on the application and interpretation of individual concepts in the NUSS codes and guides. In total in the NUSS series there is currently one Fundamentals document, five Codes of Practice and fifty-six Safety Guides