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Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Oversight of Nuclear Power Plant Safety Has Improved, but Refinements Are Needed

GAO-06-1029 Published: Sep 27, 2006. Publicly Released: Sep 27, 2006.
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Highlights

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is responsible for overseeing the nation's 103 commercial nuclear power plants to ensure they are operated safely. The safety of these plants has always been important, since an accident could release harmful radioactive material. NRC's oversight has become even more critical as the potential resurgence of nuclear power is considered. NRC implemented a new Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) in 2000 to address weaknesses in its oversight of nuclear plant safety. In this report, GAO reviewed (1) how NRC oversees nuclear power plants, (2) the results of the ROP over the past several years, and (3) the status of NRC's efforts to improve the ROP. To complete this work, GAO analyzed programwide information, inspection results covering 5 years of ROP operations, and detailed findings from a nonprobability sample of 11 plants.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Given its importance to improving NRC's ability to identify declining safety performance at nuclear power plants before significant safety problems develop, the NRC commissioners should aggressively monitor; evaluate; and, if needed, implement additional methods or processes to increase the effectiveness of its efforts under the ROP to assess safety culture at plant.
Closed – Implemented
NRC has taken several actions to implement this recommendation. First, NRC completed an 18-month initial implementation period for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of its actions to incorporate safety culture into the Reactor Oversight Process. Second, NRC extensively modified its inspection procedure (IP) 95003, "Supplemental Inspection for Repetitive Degraded Cornerstones, Multiple Degraded Cornerstones, Multiple Yellow Inputs, or One Red Input" by adding guidance to describe how NRC will (1) evaluate a licensee's safety culture assessment and (2) perform its own assessment of the licensee's safety culture. Third, in December 2008, NRC issued revised Inspection Manual Chapter (IMC) 0612, "Power Reactor Inspection Reports to address the audit group's insights. Fourth, in January 2009, NRC issued revised IMC 0305 that included several safety culture related changes, including guidance for NRC regional offices regarding the inspections that can be performed to gather insights on how a licensee is addressing its repetitive substantive cross-cutting issue. Finally, also in January 2009, NRC issued revised IP 95003 to provide guidance on how NRC will provide a graded safety culture assessment.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Given its importance to improving NRC's ability to identify declining safety performance at nuclear power plants before significant safety problems develop, the NRC commissioners should, in addition to periodically evaluating the effectiveness of its safety culture efforts, through its performance indicator program, develop specific indicators to measure important aspects of plants' safety culture. Trends in these performance indicators could be useful feedback to NRC on its safety culture activities. The indicators could also provide useful information to the public and other NRC stakeholders on the safety culture at plants.
Closed – Implemented
In March 2009, NRC issued revised Inspection Manual Chapter 0307 entitled "Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) Self-Assessment Program" to add a specific measure to determine the effectiveness of the safety culture initiative. NRC also added specific questions to its internal and external ROP self-assessment surveys to solicit feedback on the safety culture effort. After completion of the initial 18-month implementation period, NRC plans to add additional performance metrics to IMC 0307 in an effort to effectively monitor and trend licensee performance.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission In the absence of performance indicators or other performance metrics for plants' safety culture, the NRC commissioners should make publicly available, through the ROP Web site, consolidated and comprehensive data on the plants that have substantive cross-cutting issues open. These data would provide a more comprehensive picture of plant performance and provide insights into aspects of the plants' safety culture that otherwise are not readily available on the Web site.
Closed – Implemented
NRC has created a new Web page that provides consolidated and comprehensive data on the nuclear power plants with substantive, open cross-cutting issues. Based on NRC's 2006 mid-cycle reviews, the Web page identified eight nuclear power plants that had cross-cutting issues related to problem identification and resolution, human performance, and/or a safety-conscious work environment.

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Topics

Evaluation criteriaFederal regulationsInspectionNoncomplianceNuclear powerplant safetyNuclear powerplantsPerformance measuresRadiation safetyRisk assessmentSafety regulationSafety standardsPolicies and procedures