Spotlight
The Risk-Informed and Performance-Based Plan (RPP)
The Risk-Informed and Performance-Based Plan (RPP) provides guidance and direction regarding the activities that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) undertakes to integrate risk information and performance measures into the agency’s regulations, regulatory guidance, and oversight processes.
This plan is organized along the major arenas, subarenas, and functional distinctions of the agency. The following provide information regarding the current activities in the agency’s three strategic business arenas:
Additionally, a Task Force for Assessment of Options for More Holistic Risk-Informed, Performance-Based Regulatory Approach has been commissioned. The Task Force’s goal is to develop a strategic vision and options for adopting a more comprehensive and holistic risk-informed, performance-based regulatory approach for reactors, materials, waste, fuel cycle, and transportation that would continue to ensure the safe and secure use of nuclear material. The options may range from a complement to or alternative to current regulatory framework.
The RPP differs significantly from its predecessors, which were known as the Risk-Informed Regulation Implementation Plan (RIRIP) and the PRA Implementation Plan. In addition to allowing for the inclusion of performance-based elements for the first time, the RPP also restructures the planning process by focusing on the agency’s three primary regulatory arenas of reactors safety, material safety, and waste management.
In so doing, the RPP focuses on both the up-front planning process and project completion. In the planning process, formalized objectives, bases, and goals for each arena help to determine which initiatives the NRC should continue, which initiatives the agency should discontinue, and which new initiatives the agency may need to implement. The process used to develop those objectives, bases, and goals incorporates Commission guidance and input from stakeholders. In addition, following the completion of a project, the RPP promotes the allocation of resources to enable the NRC staff to perform and document an effectiveness review to assess the success of the implementation with licensees.
Focused as it is along the major arenas, subarenas, and functional distinctions of the agency, the RPP presents the NRC’s activities in a holistic manner to explain and coordinate the agency’s projects. By contrast, the RIRIP and the PRA Implementation Plan delineated projects according to other important but somewhat higher-level performance goals, such as safety and efficiency. As a result, the RPP is more cohesive because it promotes a clearer understanding of how the NRC’s various activities contribute, both individually and collectively, to achieving the agency’s vision of a risk-informed regulatory framework.
See also the History of the NRC's Risk-Informed Regulatory Programs for more information on the PRA Implementation Plan, the RIRIP, and links to the periodic status reports for each of these initiatives.
To request additional information, Contact Us About Risk-Informed, Performance-Based Regulation.
