Technology-neutral Nuclear Power Plant Regulation: Implications of a Safety Goals- Driven Performance-based Regulation

This paper summarizes a study of the implications of a technology-neutral regulation for advanced nuclear power plant designs and proposes a predominately rationalist approach to future nuclear plant regulations. The current body of regulations has been developed and evolved over the past 50 years with consideration of the knowledge and incidents experienced from operation of the Light Water Reactors (LWRs). While the body of the U.S. nuclear regulations has many provisions independent of specific reactor technologies, it also contains many LWR-specific regulations. A respectable set of safety regulations now forms the basis for licensing the LWRs, as well as for certifying the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR), System 80 and AP-600 reactor designs. In reviewing or licensing other than LWR designs (e.g., Ft. St. Vrain, Clinch River Breeder Reactor), the NRC staff had to establish the applicability of its regulations to these designs. Often such reviews required case-by-case exemptions and/or additional requirements to address the unique features of these designs. This, however, is not an efficient and effective approach to reactor licensing and could result in undue delays and prohibitive costs in licensing future advanced reactor designs. Recently, with the renewed interest in future plant licensing, the NRC staff has been working with the vendors and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) toward certification of the AP-1000 reactor design, Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor (GT-MHR) which is a 600 Mwt High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR), Advanced CANDU Reactor (ACR-700) and soon DOE’s Generation IV reactors. To avoid “reinventing” the regulations every time a new technology arises some very important questions that need to be addressed have been asked in SECY-020139 [1]. Examples of these questions are: