Development and maintenance of quality-assured nuclear-related codes

A general procedure for development and maintenance of quality-assured nuclear-related codes is described in this paper. The main objective here is to reinforce the main steps in developing from scratch or modifying existing codes. The codes in question are the ones used for transient analysis, criticality, and safety, among others. Failing in using such procedures can have strong negative consequences for the company that requested these calculations such as plant accidents, longer downtimes, decrement of profit margin, and endangerment of people's lives. For the company that made the erroneous calculations, high penalty fees are normally applied, besides a possible lost of market share since your company could be seen as non-reliable. (author)