Guidelines for Fire Protection in Nuclear Power Plants

Consistent with the mission of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the purpose of the agency's fire protection program is to provide assurance, through a defense-in-depth philosophy, that licensees and their facilities satisfy the Commission's fire protection objectives, as follows:

• Prevent fires from starting.
• Rapidly detect, effectively control, and promptly extinguish those fires that do occur.
• Protect structures, systems, and components (SSCs) important to safety so that a fire that is not promptly extinguished by fire suppression activities will not prevent the safe shutdown of the facility.
• Design fire protection systems such that their failure or inadvertent operation does not adversely impact the ability of SSCs important to safety to perform their safety functions.

Toward that end, the NRC has developed the "Standard Review Plan [SRP] for the Review of Safety Analysis Reports for Nuclear Power Plants" (NUREG-0800), which includes the following guidance for use in reviewing licensee's fire protection programs: