Recent Development in Engineered or Inherent Safety

Abstract

The national development efforts for future PWR's in France and Germany are now being combined into the development of the "European Pressurized Water Reactor" (EPR) with the support of the French and German utilities, who intend to use this design by the end of this decade. The EPR is an evolutionary and innovative development based on the latest units in operation or under construction in France and Germany. The basic design target is to further reduce the probability of accidents in particular severe accidents leading to large releases of radioactivity. The defence-in-depth has been enlarged, providing mitigative features for low pressure core melt scenarios. The paper presents the organization and the time schedule foreseen for the future development work, summarizes the safety objectives and describes the technical solutions selected so far in cooperation between Nuclear Power International, Siemens and Framatome on the supplier side and EDF and member of German utilities as the first potential users of the new design.