Pursuant to its Statute, the IAEA has established a body of standards in the fields of radiation safety, radioactive materials transport safety, radioac­tive waste safety, and nuclear safety. The standards follow a common general pattern — fundamental principles and a set of mandatory requirements — as follows:

1. Safety Fundamentals, stating basic objectives, concepts and principles

2. Safety Requirements, stating basic requirements, which must be fulfilled in the case of particular activities or applications

3. Safety Guides, containing recommendations related to the fulfilment of the basic requirements stated in the Standards.

Safety Fundamentals and Safety Requirements require the approval of government delegates at the IAEA’s Board of Governors. Safety Guides are issued under the authority of the IAEA’s Director General. A separate series of documents, the Safety Reports, gives examples and detailed descriptions of methods that can be applied in implementing the Standards.

The Safety Fundamentals (IAEA, 2006b) is the policy document of the IAEA safety standards, stating the basic objectives, concepts and principles involved in ensuring protection and safety in the development and applica­tion of atomic energy for peaceful purposes. They thereby provide the rationale for such activities having to fulfil certain requirements but do not state what those requirements are or provide technical details and generally do not discuss the application of principles. The formulation of some of the international Fundamental Safety Principles is based on the radiation pro­tection principles. Currently there are 10 Fundamental Safety Principles, namely responsibility for safety; role of government; leadership and man­agement for safety; justification of facilities and activities; optimization of protection; limitation of risks to individuals; protection of present and future generations; prevention of accidents; emergency preparedness and response; and protective actions to reduce existing or unregulated radiation risks. Four of them were extracted from the radiation protection principles, and are formulated as follows: justification of facilities and activities (facili­ties and activities that give rise to radiation risks must yield an overall benefit); optimization of protection (protection must be optimized to provide the highest level of safety that can reasonably be achieved); limita­tion of risks to individuals (measures for controlling radiation risks must ensure that no individual bears an unacceptable risk of harm); and protec­tion of present and future generations (people and the environment, present and future, must be protected against radiation risks). The current Fundamentals are co-sponsored by six international organizations. They explain the fundamental basis for the approaches to protection and safety for those at senior levels in government and regulatory bodies, and for NPP operators, who may not be specialists in radiation protection and safety but who have decision-making responsibilities in such matters.

The Safety Requirements encompass the basic requirements that must be satisfied to ensure safety for particular activities or application areas. These requirements are governed by the basic objectives, concepts and principles presented in the Safety Fundamentals. The publications in this category do not present recommendations on, or explanations of, how to meet the requirements. The written style used in the Safety Requirements accords with that of regulatory documents since the requirements established may be adopted by Member States, at their own discretion, for use in national regulations. Regulatory requirements are expressed as ‘shall’ statements, are self-standing and do not cite standards of other organizations over which the IAEA has no control. They also are published in all official lan­guages of the IAEA.

The Safety Guides encompass recommendations, based on international experience, of measures to ensure the observance of the Safety Requirements. Recommendations in the Safety Guides are expressed as ‘should’ state­ments and are issued under the authority of the Director General. A large number of Safety Guides support the Safety Requirements.