The US general design criteria

The first collection of internationally accepted safety criteria is given in the General design criteria for nuclear plants (see Appendix 8). They consist of 52 criteria and were written at the beginning of the 1970s. They are still used today with some additions to keep them up to date. The GDC are regulatory criteria, that is they have been established by the central national institutions in order to protect the population. 

The fundamental assumptions in the GDC have withstood the test of time and it is surprising that no substantial modifications have been necessary. 

As it can be easily seen the criteria are of a general character, but they also define some specific important technical details, such as  

However, it is evident that the precise safety level of plants constructed according to general criteria like these cannot be unequivocally determined by them only. From the start of the 1970s, many plants have been constructed in the USA and elsewhere according to the GDC, yet their safety level is very different. 

It is understood that a series of regulatory standards, in order to be complete (that is such to sufficiently define the safety level of the plant), must include also more specific documents than the GDC or similar compilations. In the US case, the following principal NRC standards exist  

---