Application related to safety analyses of the first Polish Nuclear Power Plant submitted

During the procedure of obtaining construction license for a nuclear power plant, its investor is obliged not only to present an analysis confirming safety of a nuclear facility but also to provide an independent verification of the conducted analysis. Based on PEJ’s application, the President of the National Atomic Energy Agency will assess proposed verification description (scope and details), considering both national and international requirements for nuclear safety.

Safety analyses verification is supposed to confirm that the designed nuclear safety solutions meet the most demanding standards. An obligation to conduct safety analyses by the investor before applying to the President of the National Atomic Energy Agency for the construction license for a nuclear facility and providing their independent verification by entities not involved in the development of a nuclear facility design result from art. 36d of the Atomic Law Act. The documentation developed in this process, i.e. the description and safety analyses results, will be attached to the application for the NPP construction license.

Thus, with the highest safety standards in mind, the company assumed that independent verification of safety analyses will cover two main aspects. The first one is verification of so-called deterministic safety analyses considering behaviour of the reactor in various, even the most improbable situations. The second are so-called probabilistic safety analyses, which enable defining strengths and weaknesses of a given installation, assessing probability of various events and considering their consequences. Comparing the results of the analyses with the standards of safety will allow demonstrating that the designed safety measures are at an appropriately high level.

According to an applicable government document, “Polish Nuclear Power Programme”, nuclear power plants to be constructed and handed over for operation will be of generation III+, which, for now, guarantees the highest safety.

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Safety analyses are a part of the nuclear facility safety assessment process, conducted systematically at the development stage and then during the nuclear facility operation. They are supposed to ensure that all nuclear safety requirements are fulfilled from the beginning until the end of a nuclear facility operation. In practice, safety analyses consist in creating computational models imitating a nuclear facility functioning under all possible conditions, including emergencies. Additionally, many calculations using verified and validated analytic tools are conducted. Analysis of the results obtained is then compared to the nuclear safety requirements.