Assessment of the operational risks and hazards of the EPR when subject to aircraft crash

This is a brief review of a confidential Electricite de France (EdF) document that has been leaked to the public domain in France.The EdF document relates to the projected performance of the AREVA designed Generation III EPR reactor. The first of this reactor type is presently being built at Olkiluoto in Finland and construction of a second EPR is expected to commence shortly at the established nuclear power station site at Flamanville in France.In or about 2003 it seems that EdF prepared a statement to the Direction Générale de la Sûreté Nucléaire et de la Radioprotection in response to its request to demonstrate the safety of the EPR design against the deliberate crashing of a large civil aircraft onto the nuclear island. The resulting EdF document endeavours to prove the ability of the plant to withstand such attack and it claims to do so by comparing the footprint and time sequencing of the impact of a small military (fighter) aircraft to that of a large, fully fuelled commercial airliner.However, this leaked EdF document shows the claim to be flawed in a number of important respects.