An integrated safety goal concept

In early 1983, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission published a safety goal policy to set forth its views on what constitutes an acceptable level of safety for the operation of commercial nuclear power reactors in the United States (NUREG-0880). The safety goal was to be evaluated over a 2-year period. The evaluation period ended in April 1985. As expected, several controversial issues were identified during the evaluation. These primarily involved the extent to which NRC should require safety improvements that (1) would primarily reduce the overall frequency of severe core-damage/core-melt accidents (independent of the severity of offsite health risks) and (2) would serve to benefit the plant owners by averting the onsite economic costs of such accidents. To help resolve these issues, the NRC staff is considering an approach that would integrate the three principal safety goal decision elements (i.e., the core-melt frequency, public mortality risks and the benefit - cost algorithm). Use of this integrated approach in implementing the final policy on safety goals is now under active discussion. A commensurately higher monetary ceiling would be applied to those plants that exhibit because of either design or operation, a higher than normally expected level for the core-melt frequency. A monetary incentive would thus exist for plant owners to promote safety in plant design and operations. The principal conclusions reached during the safety goal policy evaluation, the integrated safety goal concept and the prospective implementation of a safety goal policy in the U.S. are described in detail in the paper. It is anticipated that the Commission will decide on these matters and the final safety goal policy statement during 1986. 11 figs