5. PWR safety

The fundamental safety objective is to protect people and the environment from the harmful effects of ionizing radiation . It is therefore essential to confine radioactive materials within the facility. This is achieved by means of three independent and successive barriers: the cladding containing the nuclear fuel, the primary circuit and the reactor building enclosure. The demonstration of reactor safety relies in particular on the assessment of the performance of these three barriers. This demonstration must take into account not only all states of the reactor, from full-power operation to cold shutdown for recharging,...