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Education -->
Nuclear Facts
SAFETY
Nuclear power plant enforcement policy: A
sharpened safety focus
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The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and its amendments
charge the federal government with ensuring the safe operation of
the nation's nuclear power plants.
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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an
independent federal agency, is responsible for licensing and
monitoring nuclear power plants. The NRC has extensively revised
its regulatory oversight process to account for record performance
in industry safety, reliability and management and to adapt to the
electric industry's transition to a competitive market.
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The NRC's revised
enforcement policy incorporates safety insights, thereby focusing
nuclear power plants and the agency more clearly on items with a
direct impact on protecting public health and safety. This is the
same approach used in the agency's revised inspection and
assessment processes. Thus, the three components of regulatory
oversight are consistent with each other.
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The result of the NRC's comprehensive reform is a
more stable, predictable, safety-focused regulatory regime.
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New process reflects safety significance of
violations
In the past, the NRC's enforcement process focused attention
on regulatory compliance. In addition, escalated enforcement actions
were used to send regulatory messages. The NRC's approach was not
clear or consistent, resulting in different enforcement treatment of
similar violations across the four NRC regions.
Longstanding concerns by Congress; the industry and
other stakeholders prompted the NRC to consider simplifying the
enforcement process. The agency had two major goals: to eliminate
subjectivity from the enforcement process and sharpen its focus to
reflect the safety significance of violations.
The need for this reform was highlighted by the fact
that 94 percent of violations in 1997-1,427 of 1,519-had little or no
safety significance. The number of violations was not consistent with
the industry's actual performance. Indeed, the industry has shown a
steadily improving trend in performance since the mid-1980s. For
example, the average number of automatic shutdowns per plant declined
from 7.3 per year in 1980 to zero in 1998 and 1999. Nuclear power
plant output in the United States in 1999 was up 8 percent over the
previous year-about 50 billion kilowatt-hours-for a total of 728
billion kilowatt-hours. The capacity factors for all units set a U.S.
record of 86.8 percent, even with two of the 103 units shut down all
year. Capacity factor, a yardstick for plant performance, measures the
amount of electricity actually produced compared with the maximum
output available.
On May 1, 2000, the NRC issued its revised enforcement
policy. In addition to being better coordinated with the agency's
overall regulatory program, the revised policy also reflects a sharper
focus on safety. The revised enforcement process permits the NRC staff
to evaluate the significance of a violation in the same way staff
evaluates the results of plant inspections. Enforcement action is now
tied to the safety significance of the violation. When the NRC finds a
violation that is considered safety significant, the agency issues a
notice of violation that requires the nuclear plant to submit a formal
written response. Typically, a civil penalty will not be issued unless
the violation involves willfulness, actual consequences, or actions
that may have an impact on the NRC's ability to carry out its
oversight responsibility.
The NRC's new approach also recognizes that the lowest
level of violations-formerly called level IV violations-have little or
no safety significance. The NRC's treatment of these violations has
changed so that nuclear plants no longer are required to provide the
agency with a formal response to violations of little safety
significance. Nuclear plant operators will address these violations
through their corrective action programs, determining their priority
based on their relative safety significance. In contrast to previous
practice, the significance of each violation will be determined
without taking into account a nuclear plant's historical performance.
Since enforcement action is now based on objective criteria, the
results are far more likely to be consistent, predictable and
understandable to nuclear plant operators and the public. These
features should lead to increased public confidence.
Overarching goals
Enforcement reform complements the NRC's new nuclear plant inspection
and assessment processes, both of which use insights from
probabilistic safety studies to evaluate plant performance.
Shifting the focus of NRC enforcement activities to
risk insights redirects agency and industry resources to matters that
most directly protect public health and safety. Enforcement reform
permits the NRC to more effectively use its resources without creating
unnecessary regulatory burden that yields little or no safety benefit.
By simplifying the process for determining when enforcement action
will be taken, and making the bases for enforcement action more
predictable and understandable to nuclear plants and the public, the
agency will gain greater credibility as a strong regulator.
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