Reduction of EPZ area for APR1400 and its public acceptance

Since ALWRs are anticipated to provide an enhanced margin of safety and newer nuclear power plants have a higher standard of severe accident safety performance than the existing plant designs, recent efforts aimed at simplifying the concept of EPZ for ALWR standard plant designs had been made by a group of utility companies through the EPRI in the U.S. In Korea, similar efforts have been made for the APR1400, which is a 1,400 MW-sized PWR of an advanced concept developed in Korea. This is possible due to a large enhancement in the performance of various accident mitigation features adopted in its design. The technical assessment shows that radius of the EPZ area of the APR1400 can be reduced to 700 in. However, even though the reduction in the EPZ area is well accepted through an extensive technical assessment process, it has been found that public acceptance appears to be a completely different matter. Therefore, this study performed a public poll to assess the degree of public acceptance to a reduction in the EPZ area and to identify the means of implementing the simplification of EPZ that would be most acceptable to the public. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.