Accident analysis and risk assessment

This chapter illustrates the study process used to analyze reactor accidents, emphasizes the quality of engineering judgment required and actually applied in the task, and gives an indication of further information needs. Topics considered include reactor systems and accident considerations, accident analysis tools and methodology, current developments and future trends. The role of conservatism in reactor design to envelop uncertainty bands is discussed. It is concluded that the success of the outlined conservative approaches is demonstrated by the performance record of commercial nuclear power reactors