Criteria for IEC Standards
Gary Johnson
Chairman SC45A
kg6un@mac.com
IEC Standards must be useable in all
SC45A Member States
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Argentina
Belgium
Canada
China
Czech Republic
Egypt
Finland
France
Italy
Japan
Korea
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Netherlands
Norway
Pakistan
Romania
Russia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Ukraine
UK
US
Framework Issues
Technical issues
To make standards useful in all of
these states standards must:
• Be technically acceptable to the Member States
• Be NPP technology neutral
– Or explicitly restricted to specific type of plant or
plants
• Fit the regulatory environment of all Member
States
• Use normative references that are accepted by all
Member States
• Use terminology that has been accepted by
Member States and that is consistently applied
across the set of standards.
IEC standards must be technically
acceptable to the Member States
• Technical agreement is reached through the
working groups.
• Technical agreement is formally endorsed by
the vote of National Committees
IEC standards should be plant
technology neutral*
• PWR
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Framatome PWR
CPR-1000
CNP-600
EPR
VVER-1000
VVER-440
Westinghouse PWR
Mitsubishi PWR
CNP-300
CE PWR
OPR-1000
APR-1400
AP-1000
Siemens PWR
KWU-PWR
B&W PWR
• BWR
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GE BWR
Toshiba BWR
Hitachi BWR
ABWR
Asea-Atom BWR
KWU BWR
• LMR
– BN-600
• I&C Technology
– “Analog”
– Computer-Based
– FPGA Based
Much variation
within these
categories
• Gas reactor
– AGR
• PHWR
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CANDU
Siemens PHWR
*or explicitly state the plant technologies to which they apply
Achieving technology neutral
standards
• Working groups typically include members
who are familiar with most of these designs
• Formal review by National Committees is
expected to consider how the standards apply
to the designs used in their country
• Scope of a standard may be limited to one or a
few technologies
IEC standards must fit the regulatory
environment of all member states
• There are many different regulatory environments, for
example:
– US
• Specific regulations and extensive guidance
– UK
• General regulations and high level review guidance
– France
• General regulations and TSO technical review
– Russia
• Specific regulations but no published review guidance
– Ukraine
• Regulations based upon Russian model, I&C requirements based
upon IAEA NS-G-1.3
We need a reference set of regulatory principles, but 1) the principles of a single
Regulator won’t work and 2) it is impossible to merge the requirements of all regulators
Only IAEA requirements documents
been endorsed by all member states
• For NPP I&C the most significant IAEA
requirements are
– SSR 2/1, Safety of Nuclear Power Plants: Design
– NS-R-3, Safety of Nuclear Power Plants: Operation
– GS-R-3, The Management System for Facilities and
Operations
• Management systems include the definition and
implementation of quality assurance activities
• NS-G-1.3 plays the role of IEEE 603
– Different scopes (important to safety vs safety)
Achieving consistency between IAEA and
Member State regulatory environment
• Ensuring consistency with Member State practices is the
job of three review groups
– Nuclear Safety Standards Committee (NUSSC)
• http://www-ns.iaea.org/committees/default.asp?s=5&l=37
– Committee on Safety Standards (CSS)
• Same as above
– IAEA Board of Governors
• http://www.iaea.org/About/Policy/Board/
• WENRA Safety Reference Levels are based upon the IAEA
Safety Requirements.
– WENRA is cited in the European Directive on Nuclear Safety and
Waste
• http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:172:0018:0022:EN:PDF
IEC standards use normative references that are
accepted by all Member States
• Three sets of standard document are accepted
by all member states
– IEC
– ISO
– IAEA
IEC standards use terminology that is
commonly understood by all Member States
• IAEA, IEC, and ISO have terminology that has
been accepted by all member states
– IAEA Safety Glossary
• http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1290_web.pdf
– SC45A Safety Glossary
• http://std.iec.ch/terms/terms.nsf/ByTC?OpenView&Count=-1&RestrictToCategory=45A
– IEC International Electrotechncal Vocabulary
• http://www.electropedia.org/IEC Glossary of Terms
– ISO Concept Database
• http://www.iso.org/obp/ui/
Achieving a consistent use of
terminology
• SC45A takes the IAEA Safety Glossary as the
authority for nuclear safety terms
– In exceptional cases SC45A may adapt the IAEA
definition, and recommend changes to IAEA
• Existing definitions in the SC45A glossary are
used to ensure consistency
• SC45A takes the IEV and the ISO concept
database as sources of terminology that are not
nuclear I&C specific
– Avoid new definitions where possible
• Draft standards are reviewed against this policy.