[en] In 1985 an incident at Toledo Edison's Davis Besse plant caused the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to re-evaluate the technical information that the utilities had readily available to support the design of their plants. The Design Basis programs, currently on going in most U.S. utilities, have been the nuclear industry's response to the needs identified by this re-evaluation. In order to understand the Design Basis programs which have been implemented by the U.S. nuclear utilities, it is necessary to understand the problem as it was perceived by the nuclear industry (the utilities, the original NSSS designers and the regulators) after the Davis-Besse incident, the subsequent programs undertaken by the industry under the leadership of INPO and NUMARC, the NRC's actions, and the overall evolution of the industry's vision in relation to this problem. This paper presents the history of the design basis efforts from the first recognition of the problem by the NRC after the Davis-Besse incident, describes the actions taken by the NRC, INPO, NUMARC, the U.S. utilities and the NSSS designers, and brings the problem statement up-to-date in relation to the vision presently held by the U.S. nuclear industry. It then presents a technical discussion to develop a detailed definition of design basis information to support the problem statement. The information originally supplied by the NSSS designers during the plant design and construction is discussed as well as its relationship to the previously defined design basis information. This section of the paper concludes by defining the additional information needed by nuclear utilities to satisfy the requirements developed from the problem statement. Having developed a definition of the additional information (i.e., information not originally supplied during design and construction) required to solve the design basis problem as it is presently perceived by the U.S. nuclear industry, the paper then discusses design basis programs that GE has participated in and describes the different options and approaches that have been used by various utilities in their design basis programs. Some of these variations deal with the scope and depth of coverage of the information, while others are related to the process (how the work is done). Both of these topics can have a significant effect on the program cost. Some insight into these effects is provided. The final section of the paper presents a set of lessons learned and a recommendation for an optimum approach to a design basis information program. The lessons learned reflect the knowledge that GE has gained by participating in design basis programs with nineteen domestic and international BWR owner/operators. The optimum approach described in this paper is GE's attempt to define a set of information and a work process for a utility/GE NSSS Design Basis Information program that will maximize the cost effectiveness of the program for the utility. (author)