Safety objectives for containment protection

The accident at Chernobyl (in spite of its plant-specific initiating event and activity release conditions) has brought the topic of severe accidents in LWRs into the political limelight, notably in Western Europe. This is having the effect that the large effort which has rightly gone into the prevention of such accidents in the past is now being extended to the area of severe accident mitigation. The aim of such mitigation, or 'accident management' as it is often called, is to implement a number of prepared measures which increase the operators' capability to favorably influence accident sequences. A key objective of such measures is to protect the integrity of the containment during and after severe accidents, in the short as well as long term