NUCLEAR SAFETY, SECURITY AND SAFEGUARDS: FACETS OF ONE SAME CHALLENGE FOR THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR POWER

The foundation of this research activity derives from the scrutiny of the actual enforcement of nuclear safety, nuclear security and nuclear safeguards regimes. The approaches to these different aspects linked to the nuclear energy exploitation have not developed at the same pace and surely have not reached the same level of maturity. Nevertheless, these aspects are of special relevance in the current global nuclear energy context when considering the numerous countries that have and will have the legitimate ambition to start a nuclear energy production programme without any or scarce previous nuclear safety, security and safeguards cultures. The future development of nuclear energy exploitation will depend more and more on the convergence of decisions from governments, from the nuclear industry, from utilities, from private and institutional investors, as well as from the level of acceptance by the public opinion. A holistic approach should include technical considerations but cannot preclude from social, geopolitical and economic ones, especially in this historical period when the worldwide potential revival of nuclear energy may strongly be weakened by the recent Fukushima Daiichi accident. Furthermore, especially following the increased terroristic menace worldwide after the events from September 11th, the safety measures – having the objective of preventing/limiting the risks for the population and the environment – may become more and in new ways called to interact with the security implementation practices – having the objective of preventing the illicit access to nuclear installation and nuclear materials – as well as with proliferations related issues. Chapter 1 provides a general framing of some key challenges somehow related to the above mentioned aspects in next future, while chapter 2 resumes some considerations about the contribution of nuclear technologies to human welfare, briefly presenting also the nuclear 3S concept. Chapters 3 essentially describes the international nuclear framework concerning the three aspects, while chapter 4 offers a concise summary of main events affecting each one of the 3S facets. Chapters 5 and 6 conclude this state-of-the-art analysis by outlining important related international efforts and pertinent literature and finally drawing some conclusions on the level of synergy and on existing and emerging challenges. Chapter 7 focuses then the analysis on safety and security interactions in particular, and describes a simple methodology to enhance the mutual interaction among the usually different experts' communities dealing with such matters. For the purpose of demonstration, in chapter 8 the developed approach is applied to a case study and finally some conclusions on the overall work are briefly summarised in chapter 9.