Safety reviews for nuclear power plants
As well as supervisory reviews, nuclear power plants are regularly subject to safety reviews in order to establish the latest safety and security standards. Here, the basic safety and security concept and interaction between various safety systems are reviewed with a view to ensuring compliance with the latest requirements. Up until the 2002 amendment to the German Atomic Energy Act (AtG), nuclear power plant operators generally performed safety reviews on a voluntary basis. Safety reviews comprise the following three aspects:
- Deterministic safety status analysis
- Probabilistic safety analysis and
- Deterministic security analysis.
In order to ensure uniform safety reviews, the Federation and states with a nuclear power plant developed documentation to be used as a basis for performing safety reviews. The result of this joint effort were the guides for the periodic safety review of nuclear power plants. The first of these is the "Basics of the periodic safety review", which is complemented by the guides describing the deterministic analyses in Deterministic safety analysis and the probabilistic analyses in "Probabilistic safety analysis" (PSA). Plant security is covered in "Deterministic security analysis" (DSA).
The safety reviews for research reactors are carried out in accordance with a defined, graded approach depending on their hazard potential. The research reactors are classified into three classes, for which different requirements are placed on the content and scope of the PSR of each class. Therefore for example a probabilistic safety analysis only needs to be carried out for high-flux neutron sources. The basis for preforming PSR for research reactors is the “Guideline for the performance of periodic safety reviews (PSRs) for research reactors” from July 15, 2024.