Publications Details
Deriving and applying generally applicable safety principles
The nuclear detonation safety of modern nuclear weapons depends on a coordinated safety theme incorporating three general safety principles: isolation, inoperability, and incompatibility. The success of this approach has encouraged them to study whether these and/or other principles might be useful in other applications. Not surprisingly, no additional first-principles (based on physical laws) have been identified. However, a more widely applicable definition and application of the principle-based approach has been developed, resulting in a selection of strategies that are basically subsets and varied combinations of the more general principles above. However, identification of principles to be relied on is only one step in providing a safe design. As one other important example, coordinating overall architecture and strategy is essential: the authors term this a safety theme.