VIEWS OF THE FRENCH NUCLEAR SAFETY AUTHORITY ON RISK INFORMED APPROACHES AND ON THE USE OF PROBABILISTIC SAFETY ASSESSMENT

摘要

Views of the french nuclear safety authority on risk informed approaches and on the use of probabilistic safety assessment. Probabilistic safety assessments (PSAs), which provide information on the level of risk, are one of the tools that can be used to make risk informed decisions, but not the only one. In France, there are many reasons why the PSAs of pressurized water reactors can be deemed to be satisfactory. They have been used quite extensively, mainly to improve safety and to aid in ranking safety problems by order of importance. However, the experience gathered in this field suggests that regulators as well as utilities should be aware of the limitations of PSAs. The French Nuclear Safety Authority encourages the use of PSAs as a tool for improving safety, but does not encourage their use for reducing regulatory requirements. Additionally, in the French context, setting regulatory acceptance criteria for PSA results does not appear to be appropriate. Consequently, the French Nuclear Safety Authority believes that the development of international guidance for the preparation of high quality PSAs that calls attention to their limitations would be useful. But the French Nuclear Safety Authority is not in favour of establishing recommendations for probabilistic safety criteria or for developing guidance on the purposes for which PSAs should be used.