Seismic safety of nuclear power plants in eastern Europe

This paper summarizes the work performed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in the areas of safety review and applied research in support of programmes for the assessment and enhancement of seismic safety in Eastern Europe and in particular, WWER type nuclear power plants during the past seven years. Three major topics are discussed; engineering safety review services in relation to external events, technical guidelines for the assessment and upgrading of WWER type nuclear power plants, and the Coordinated Research Programme on "Benchmark study for the seismic analysis and testing of WWER type nuclear power plants". These topics are summarized in a way to provide an overview of the past and present safety situation in selected WWER type plants which are all located in Eastern European countries. The main conclusion of this paper is that even though there is now a thorough understanding of the seismic safety issues in these operating nuclear power plants, the implementation of seismic upgrades to structures, systems and components are lagging behind, particularly for those cases in which re-evaluation indicated the necessity to strengthen the safety related structures or install new safety systems.