Fundamental safety principles for future reactors and the role of a technology demonstration program

Abstract of the technical paper presented at:
The International Conference on Future of HWR
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
October 2–5, 2011

Prepared by:
Alex Viktorov
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

The already established safety framework provides a solid foundation for the safe design and operation of future nuclear power plants. The hierarchy of principles, requirements, goals and expectations has been balanced and fine-tuned over the last decades and is seen as providing adequate guidance for both the existing technologies and those that may mature in the near future. The Canadian regulatory framework has been modernized to benefit from the international experience and recommendations. The paper will discuss how an expectation of a systematic technology demonstration program follows from more general safety principles. Such a program will provide necessary evidence to support the nuclear power plant design basis, and will be sustained by the combination of accumulated knowledge from operational experience, testing of equipment under representative conditions, as well as generation of new data from experiments and analyses. As any program, the technology demonstration program must possess certain qualities, such as completeness and comprehensiveness, and meet certain criteria, which all are elaborated in some detail in the paper.

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