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IN RESPONSE, PLEASE
REFER TO: M070802B

August 31, 2007

The Commission was briefed by representatives of the nuclear power industry, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and the NRC staff on the contribution of probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) to safety and operations at nuclear power plants and on the status of PRA standards development and PRA quality.

The NRC external website should be revised to provide information on risk and probability in plain language that explains the value and use of PRA to the general public. At the next Commission briefing on risk-informed, performance-based regulation, public interest stakeholders should be invited to make presentations to the Commission.

The Commission supports the ASME and the American Nuclear Society (ANS) in their collaborative efforts to issue, by December 2007, a combined PRA standard that addresses internal events, external events, and internal fires, for staff endorsement in the revision to Regulatory Guide 1.200, "An Approach for Determining the Technical Adequacy of Probabilistic Risk Assessment Results for Risk-Informed Activities." The Commission understands that the completion of this combined PRA standard depends on the ANS providing its internal fire PRA standard. Given the pressing need for the internal fire PRA standard, the staff should proceed to endorse separately the ANS internal fire PRA standard before the combined PRA standard is issued, or inform the Commission of any other plans for addressing internal fires, if the expected schedule for the ASME/ANS combined PRA standard is delayed to the point that the December 2008 schedule for staff's issuance of Revision 2 of Regulatory Guide 1.200 could not be met.

The Commission will provide additional guidance on related issues in its Staff Requirements Memorandum (SRM) on SECY-07-0082 - Rulemaking to Make Risk-informed Changes to Loss-of-coolant Accident Technical Requirements; 10 CFR 50.46a, "Alternative Acceptance Criteria for Emergency Core Cooling Systems for Light-water Nuclear Power Reactors" and the SRM on SECY-07-0101 - Staff Recommendations Regarding a Risk-Informed and Performance-Based Revision to 10 CFR Part 50 (RIN 3150-AH81).

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Tuesday, September 04, 2007