How safe are nuclear plants. How safe should they be

It has become customary to think about safety of nuclear plants in terms of risk as defined by the WASH-1400 study that some of the implications for the non-specialist escape our attention. Yet it is known that a rational program to understand safety, to identify unsafe events, and to use this kind of information or analysis to improve safety, requires us to use the methods of quantitative risk assessment. How this process can be made more understandable to a broader group of nontechnical people and how can a wider acceptance of the results of the process be developed have been questions under study and are addressed in this report. These are questions that have been struggled with for some time in the world of nuclear plant safety. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission examined them for several years as it moved toward developing a position on safety goals for nuclear plants, a requirement that had been assigned it by Congress. Opinion was sought from a broad spectrum of individuals, within the field of nuclear power and outside it, on the topic that was popularly called, ''How safe is safe enough.'' Views were solicited on the answer to the question and also on the way the answer should be framed when it was adopted. This report discusses the public policy and its implementation