Safety Assessment for Facilities and Activities. General Safety Requirements. Pt. 4

The Safety Fundamentals publication, Fundamental Safety Principles, establishes principles for ensuring the protection of workers, the public and the environment, now and in the future, from harmful effects of ionizing radiation. The objective of this Safety Requirements publication is to establish the generally applicable requirements to be fulfilled in safety assessment for facilities and activities, with special attention paid to defence in depth, quantitative analyses and the application of a graded approach to the ranges of facilities and of activities that are addressed. The publication also addresses the independent verification of the safety assessment that needs to be carried out by the originators and users of the safety assessment. This publication is intended to provide a consistent and coherent basis for safety assessment across all facilities and activities, which will facilitate the transfer of good practices between organizations conducting safety assessments and will assist in enhancing the confidence of all interested parties that an adequate level of safety has been achieved for facilities and activities. The requirements, which are derived from the Fundamental Safety Principles, relate to any human activity that may cause people to be exposed to radiation risks arising from facilities and activities, as follows: Facilities includes: (a) Nuclear power plants; (b) Other reactors (such as research reactors and critical assemblies); (c) Enrichment facilities and fuel fabrication facilities; (d) Conversion facilities used to generate UF6; (e) Storage and reprocessing plants for irradiated fuel; (f) Facilities for radioactive waste management where radioactive waste is treated, conditioned, stored or disposed of; (g) Any other places where radioactive materials are produced, processed, used, handled or stored; (h) Irradiation facilities for medical, industrial, research and other purposes, and any places where radiation generators are installed; (i) Facilities where the mining and processing of radioactive ores (such as ores of uranium and thorium) are carried out. 'Activities' includes: (a) production, use, import and export of radiation sources for industrial, research, medical and other purposes; (b) transport of radioactive material; (c) decommissioning and dismantling of facilities and the closure of repositories for radioactive waste; (d) close-out of facilities where the mining and processing of radioactive ore was carried out; (e) activities for radioactive waste management such as the discharge of effluents; (f) remediation of sites affected by residues from past activities. Safety assessment plays an important role throughout the lifetime of the facility or activity whenever decisions on safety issues are made by the designers, the constructors, the manufacturers, the operating organization or the regulatory body. Stages in the lifetime of a facility or activity where a safety assessment is carried out, updated and used by the designers, the operating organization and the regulatory body include: (a) site evaluation for the facility or activity; (b) development of the design; (c) construction of the facility or implementation of the activity; (d) commissioning of the facility or activity; (e) commencement of operation of the facility or conduct of the activity; (f) normal operation of the facility or normal conduct of the activity; (g) modification of the design or operation; (h) periodic safety reviews; (i) life extension of the facility beyond its original design life; (j) changes in ownership or management of the facility; (k) decommissioning and dismantling of a facility; (l) closure of a repository for the disposal of radioactive waste and the post-closure phase; (m) remediation of a site and release from regulatory control. The publication is structured as follows: An introduction is followed by Section 2 which provides the basis for requiring a safety assessment to be carried out, derived from the Fundamental Safety Principles. Section 3 describes the graded approach to implementation of the requirements for safety assessment for different facilities and activities. Section 4 establishes the overall requirements for a safety assessment and specific requirements that relate to the assessment of features relevant to safety. Section 4 also establishes the requirements to address defence in depth and safety margins, to perform safety analysis, to document the safety assessment and to carry out an independent verification. Section 5 establishes the requirements for the management, use and maintenance of the safety assessment