A View on Consistency of NRC Risk Policy

Abstract

The occurrence of the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident greatly accelerated the older, more conservative practice of imposing new safety requirements to such a massive rate of change in safety requirements that the safety of plant operations was threatened by the frantic pace of keeping up with constantly changing requirements. The TMI accident also accelerated development and use of probabilistic risk analysis (PRA), a comprehensive, more balanced basis for evaluating safety requirements. Four initiatives at the Nuclear Regulatory commission (NRC) define a consistent risk policy for the NRC. They are the development of a safety goal, the backfit policy, the Indian Point risk decision, and the Severe Accident Policy Statement.