With the dawn of Dresden and Yankee nuclear power plants around 1960, this nation saw nuclear energy as a major future contributor to power generation in the United States. As it became obvious that the power needs of the United States would continue to grow, and that there was some limit to fossil fuel supplies, nuclear power generation became a major consideration in power plans in the United States. Recent concerns, such as that with environmental contamination, reinforced this turn to nuclear power.

The major considerations associated with the part nuclear power plants would play in national power plans involved not only the feasibility and economic justification of nuclear application, but also, and principal­ly, the safety of nuclear reactor power plants.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. A typical nuclear power plant will be described in order to demonstrate that the various technologies in­volved in the design, construction, and operation of nuclear power plants are well known today and available to industry. We are not dealing with an unknown. Nuclear power plants can be and have been efficiently and safely built and operated. The design philosophy for safety will be de­scribed in detail to demonstrate that these nuclear power plants are being designed, built, and operated by a technically competent industry. The in­terests of the public are considered.