| Summary: | The strategy adopted for national energy supply is one of the most important policy choice
for the US. Although it has been dismissed in the past decades, nuclear power today has key
assets when facing concerns on energy dependence and global warming. However, reactor
licensing regulations need to be changed to get all the advantages of the most promising
technologies.
After reviewing the well-known drawbacks of the current regulatory system, the ongoing
reforms from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are presented. We argue that full
benefice of modern risk analysis methods could not be obtained unless adopting a more
ambitious and risk-based regulatory framework.
A risk-based licensing framework is then presented, based on previous research from MIT.
Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) analyses are used to drive the design toward more
safety, and serve as a vehicle for a constructive discussion between designers and the NRC.
Mandatory multilevel safety goals are proposed to ensure that adequate safety and adequate
treatment of uncertainties are provided.
A case-study finally illustrates how this framework would operate. It is based on the Gas-cooled
Fast Reactor (GFR) project developed at MIT. We show how PRA provides guidance
for the design. Especially, PRA work makes designers consider otherwise overlooked
uncertainties and find proper solutions. In a second phase, a simulation of the review by the
regulator is conducted. Few new safety concerns are brought. The discussion shows that the
proposed risk-based framework has been effective. However, it also highlights that
improvements of PRA methodology and clarification over the treatment of key uncertainties
are needed.
|
|---|