Most U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations and guidance documents were originally developed using a deterministic, traditional engineering approach. This approach served the NRC, industry, and the public well in ensuring the safety of commercial nuclear facilities, especially through the early years of the industry. Since the Three Mile Island accident, there has been a growing recognition that risk insights and performance-based implementation approaches can be used to improve the regulations, facility safety, and all aspects of decision-making. Thinking about risks, implementation strategies, and traditional deterministic factors together provides a fuller, more complete picture of safety. Enhancing the traditional engineering decisions using risk insights (often referred to as risk-informed decisionmaking (RIDM)) enables the staff and licensees to better focus attention on the more safety significant areas and use their resources more efficiently and effectively. However, making such a change to an integration of approaches faces a number of technical and cultural challenges. To implement change management successfully involves investment in infrastructure, capability, and resources to overcome the challenges.
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