In Argentina, India, China, the Russian Federation, and the United States there is an established practice of design qualification and licensing for reactors incorporating passive safety systems. The design qualification includes performance of the separate effect tests, development and validation of the codes, and performance of the integral validation tests [9.3]. This practice is likely to be continued within the present decade. The regulatory trend is toward stricter requirements for such a qualification. For example, the regulatory authority in the Russian Federation (Rostekhnadzor) already requires the codes to be validated for beyond design basis conditions.

New developments, such as the RMPS [9.4] and the APSRA [9.5] methodologies, touched upon in Section 8.8.3, are unlikely to change the main conclusions from the established practice. Gradually evolving toward a maturity level acceptable to the regulators, they are expected to improve the quality of passive safety system design and streamline the current qualification practices in a more time­saving and cost effective way [9.6, 9.7].