The concept of inherent safety of generation V nuclear power plants

Abstract

Elimination of significant risks in nuclear power production is at the present stage a necessity and goal-setting that determines its development in the near future. Of particular importance is the problem of maximum credibility and convincingly substantiated stability of nuclear power plants against severe accidents. The lack of clear logic, transparency and guarantees in the reliability of the announced nuclear safety significantly hinders its development, unnecessarily overcomplicating expensive technical solutions, thereby weakening the competitiveness of nuclear power. The originally proposed Concept of Inherent Safety set the task of solving the above problems; however, its specific content has not been explicitly presented so far, which allows many competitors to use its terminology to promote projects that are not directly related to the ‘spirit and letter’ of Inherent Safety. This paper is intended to fill this gap. The authors also discuss the conditions for the generation and development of new self-protection means for innovative nuclear reactors as well as the phenomenological and technical aspects for their implementation based on the deterministic formalism.