Application of systems engineering techniques in NRC's high-level waste regulatory program

摘要

The Nuclear Regulatory COmmission (NRC) and its Rederally Funded Presearch and Ddvelopment Center, the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory analyses (CNWRA) are working to streamline the NRC's high-level radioactive waste (HLW) regulatory program through the application of systems engineering (SE) techniques. The tailored use of SE discussed in this paper has evolved from the reeognition that regulatory requirements often lack the precision of requirements usually associated with application of SE in defense and other hardware system dlevelopment programs. While there are regulatory performance objectives which are quite specific, demonstrating or evaluating compliance with them may be extremtely difficult, particularly when working with the levels of uncertainty which pervail in the earth sciences. The authors discuss the manner in which classical SE techniques and approaches have been tailored to support their use in the somewhat imprecise enviroment of the regulatory arena.