Hydrogen Onboard Storage: An Insertion of the Probabilistic Approach Into Standards & Regulations?

The growing attention being paid by car manufacturers and the general public to hydrogen as a middle and long term energy carrier for automotive purpose is giving rise to lively discussions on the advantages and disadvantages of this technology – also with respect to safety. In this connection the focus is increasingly, and justifiably so, on the possibilities offered by a probabilistic approach to loads and component characteristics: a lower weight obliged with a higher safety level, basics for an open minded risk communication, the possibility of a provident risk management, the conservation of resources and a better and not misleading understanding of deterministic results. But in the case of adequate measures of standards or regulations completion there is a high potential of additional degrees of freedom for the designers obliged with a further increasing safety level. For this purpose what follows deals briefly with the terminological basis and the aspects of acceptance control, conservation of resources, misinterpretation of deterministic results and the application of regulations/standards.
This leads into the initial steps of standards improvement which can be taken with relatively simple means in the direction of comprehensively risk-oriented protection goal specifications. By this it’s not focused on to provide to much technical details. It’s focused on the context of different views on probabilistic risk assessment. As main result some aspects of the motivation and necessity for the currently running pre-normative research studies within the 6th frame-work program of the EU will be shown.