Quantitative safety goals as a basis for decision making

Internationally, probabilistic safety analyses represent the state of the art in the licensing process for new industrial facilities, but increasingly also for evaluating the safety level of older industrial plants, e. g. as part of periodic safety reviews of nuclear power plants. Quantitative safety goals have not yet reached the same level of acceptance. However, this depends on the type of industry. Most of the countries consider those criteria as safety targets rather than as sharply defined boundary values. The Netherlands and the United Kingdom are exceptions, they require demonstration of compliance with legally binding safety goals in the licensing procedure.