Erroneous developments from backfitting to changed safety and quality criteria (Grohnde nuclear power station)

Over the past ten years it has not been feasible to solve the problems of building a nuclear power plant on the basis of sound engineering and economic principles to generate electricity safely and reliably. In an environment characterized by hostility towards technology, all parties involved developed a mentality of self-protection, which almost put an end to the intention to transfer proven principles into new plants. Such unrealistic approaches as ''zero defects'' and ''zero risk'' were preferred to more practical procedures, the consequence being that such plants had to be backfitted a great many expensive solutions which did not always contribute significantly to greater overall safety. When they realized that the economic basis and the viability of nuclear power was jeopardized in this way, industry and also the experts and licensing authorities began to seriously reconsider their approaches. A number of tentative steps are meanwhile becoming apparent to avoid past exaggerations not required for safety reasons without abandoning the undoubtedly high quality standard. In particular, it will be necessary to do give up the practice of continuously backfitting plants to changes in the state of the art. On the basis of the safety standard attained, one is free now, to introduce new solutions only after extensive testing, in an orderly fashion and over longer time intervals. (orig.)