Interim report of the special committee on safety goals for nuclear installations

The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan (NSC) established a Special Committee on Safety Goals on September 2000, aiming at deliberating safety goals for nuclear installations in Japan from wide-spread viewpoints. On December 2003, the Special Committee reported to NSC an Interim Report of the Special Committee on Safety Goals for Nuclear Installations in Japan. This document describes a summary of the outcomes accomplished by the Special Committee up to this time. At first, role of safety goals is described, and state of the art of the risk management policy in US, UK and Holland as well as the risk management policy in other industry fields in Japan are described. Then the content of the safety goals proposed by the Special Committee is explained. The safety goals are generally defined for all the utilization activities of atomic energy which contain a possibility of harmful radiological influences on the public and are made up of qualitative goals and quantitative goals aiming at indicating the risk level to be managed against accidents. Finally the present tasks for NSC, such as deliberation of performance objectives, applicability study of safety goals, etc., and the medium- and long-term tasks for NSC are summarized. (author)