Road to NRC's Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses

By the fall of 1987, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) expects to award a contract for a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC). The FFRDC will be entitled the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses and will provide long-term technical expertise to NRC in all major aspects of the high-level waste regulatory program. The center will also be one of only a few FFRDCs in the nation with a system engineering and integration role. The road to achieving this major milestone, however, has been a long and arduous one. Discussed in this paper are the background leading to the need for an FFRDC and some of the major challenges faced in developing the criteria and selecting the winner