NRC ISSUES FINAL RULE ON 

NEW REACTOR AIRCRAFT IMPACT ASSESSMENTS 

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a final rule that requires applicants 

for new power reactors to assess the ability of their reactor designs to avoid or mitigate the 

effects of a large commercial aircraft impact. 

“This is a common sense approach to address an issue raised by the tragic events of Sept. 

11, 2001,” said NRC Chairman Dale Klein, adding that some of the credit for resolving the issue 

is due to the efforts of the late Commissioner Edward McGaffigan. “Without the energy he 

devoted to this effort every day, up to the week he died, the Commission may never have been 

able to come to common ground on this very important issue. I am quite confident that this rule 

will be an important element in the regulatory framework for new reactor applications that will 

result in a margin of safety far beyond that required to achieve reasonable assurance of public 

health and safety.” 

 Nuclear power plants are designed under very stringent requirements to assure they can 

safely shut down following “design-basis events” such as large fires, floods, earthquakes and 

hurricanes, as well as improbable equipment malfunctions including pipe breaks. These 

requirements include having two redundant systems to accomplish each safety function. The rule 

treats large commercial aircraft crashes as Abeyond-design-basis events.@

Under the rule, any design feature or functional capability adopted solely to comply with 

the rule will meet high quality standards but is exempt from NRC design-basis regulations, such 

as regulations for redundancy. These design features and functional capabilities must address 

core cooling capability, containment integrity, spent fuel cooling capability, and spent fuel pool 

integrity following an aircraft impact. 

The NRC has already taken several steps to improve security at existing nuclear power 

plants, including adopting a rule in March 2007 that requires both existing and potential new 

reactors to defend against a more realistic threat. The agency also issued a February 2002 Order 

requiring all existing nuclear power plants to develop and adopt mitigative strategies to cope 

NRC NEWS

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 

Washington, D.C. 20555-0001 

E-mail: opa@nrc.gov 

Site: http://www.nrc.gov

No. 09-030 February 17, 2009
with large fires and explosions from any cause, including beyond-design-basis aircraft impacts. 

The NRC voted in December 2008 to codify these requirements in a separate rule for all existing 

and future nuclear power plants. 

The agency does not believe nuclear power plant operators should be required to prevent 

the impact of large commercial aircraft; that responsibility rests with the federal government. 

The NRC works closely with other federal agencies such as NORAD, the Federal Aviation 

Administration and the intelligence community to provide layered protection against such a 

threat. The agency expects these efforts would effectively preclude an aircraft attack from 

occurring. Should such an unlikely event take place at a new plant designed in accordance with 

the new rule, the NRC expects the plant would be better able to withstand such a crash than the 

same design without changes resulting from the rule. 

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