REP2000 Program: role of the probabilistic safety assessment in the design of future European LWRs

Since Three Mile Island, where a living demonstration was provided that beyond design situations are not totally inconcievable and deserve to be further analysed, the interest for probabilistic approaches in parallel to the traditional deterministic design approach is unceasingly growing. The purpose of this paper is to describe and illustrate the role of probabilistic safety assessment in the design of future European reactors, as intended in the REP2000 Program conducted in EDF. (author)