United States. Annex 1.22 [National experiences on implementing safety improvements at existing nuclear power plants]

The mission of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), as presented in the agency's Strategic Plan (NUREG-1614, Volume 7) [81], is to license and regulate the Nation's civilian use of radioactive materials to provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection of public health and safety and to promote the common defence and security and to protect the environment. The NRC's strategic goals are to ensure the safe and secure use of radioactive materials. The agency achieves its safety goal by ensuring that licensee performance is at or above acceptable safety levels. The NRC's licensees are responsible for designing, constructing, and operating nuclear facilities safely, while the NRC is responsible for the regulatory oversight of the licensees. As of October 2018, 98 nuclear power plants (NPPs) were operating in the United States; these NPPs began operation as early as 1969 and as recently as 2015. This annex highlights NRC policy and practices, as well as industry experiences, on three topics: (1) safety goals for NPPs, which relates to Section 2 of this TECDOC on national regulatory frameworks and safety objectives; (2) processes for evaluating potential new requirements, which relates to Chapter 5 on integrated decision-making; and (3) examples of comprehensive evaluations of continued plant safety, which relates to Chapter 4 on assessment of the current design (with reference to some of the drivers noted in Chapter 3). Links are provided to detailed information for readers interested in more information beyond this short summary; additional information can be found in the U.S. National Report for the Convention on Nuclear Safety (NUREG-1650) and the NRC's public website.