IRSN Complementary Deterministic and Probabilistic Safety Assessment of EPR Flamanville

At Flamanville, the first generation III reactor in France (EPR) is under the final phase of construction. It is expected that, in the near future, the plant operator (EDF) will send to the Safety Authority the request for the commissioning of this new reactor. Taking into account the difficulties to assess a new evolutionary design in a rather short term, most of the safety related subjects are already under IRSN analysis, in the frame of so called “anticipated examination” of the commissioning request. This “anticipated examination”, which is now in progress, is performed by IRSN by using, both deterministic and probabilistic approaches in a complementary way. In this context, for the analysis of the systems design, IRSN developed a specific analysis guide which allows a comprehensive and systematic analysis of all aspects related to the role of the plats systems in achieving a high level of safety. The paper presents the IRSN approach, as well as the main insights, related to the analysis of the plant systems design as part of the overall plant safety level assessment.