INTRODUCTION

Thanks to the major scientific discoveries of the twentieth century, a global nuclear energy market has been built around the use of fissile matter. A concern to restrict application of this energy to the civil sector and the need to control the consequences for human health, soon led the United States, followed by the international community, to regulate and control access to this market. Thus it was that, in 1957, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) came into being, with the aim of promoting peaceful use of nuclear energy and establishing nuclear safety standards. In a widely-recognized document1, the IAEA set out ten fundamental nuclear safety principles.