Safety of nuclear power plants

The safety of operating nuclear power plants of the CANDU type is described in this paper. The need for a systematic study on these types of heavy water reactors similar to the safety studies done on light water reactors is brought out in this paper. Some of the work done on station blackout, operational transients, small and large break loss of coolant accidents is reviewed. Recent nuclear power plant accidents, namely Three-Mile Island-2 and Chernobyl, seem to indicate that an understanding of man-machine interaction and human behaviour under stress is important for the safety aspects and more work needs to be done in these areas.