Safety objectives and safety principles for future PWRs

In 1992 the safety authorities of France and Germany decided to jointly develop a new safety approach for future PWRs. This safety approach, consisting of safety objectives, technical principles and requirements, has been developed for the design of future PWRs, to be built in the first decade of the 21. century. Despite the maturity of existing LWR concepts in France and Germany there was an incentive to develop a safety approach aiming at a further improvement of safety, driven by several arguments: - The number of nuclear power plants will continuously increase world-wide, despite this increase the potential for a major accident with serious off-site consequences must be reduced in the long term and on a global scale; - Progress in research and development can be and should be utilised to improve safety; - Present operating experience (more than 1 000 reactor years in France and Germany) and results from PSA for existing plants are an important source for further design improvements. The development of the joint safety approach can be grouped into 4 periods described in this paper and which are also interrelated with the design development steps of the industry. (authors)