March 4, 2015 

 

MEMORANDUM TO: Mark A. Satorius 

 Executive Director for Operations 

FROM: Annette L. Vietti-Cook, Secretary /RA/ 

SUBJECT: STAFF REQUIREMENTS – SECY-14-0087 – QUALITATIVE 

CONSIDERATION OF FACTORS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF 

REGULATORY ANALYSES AND BACKFIT ANALYSES

The Commission has approved the staff’s plans for updating guidance regarding the use of 

qualitative factors to improve the clarity, transparency and consistency of the agency’s 

regulatory analyses and backfit analyses. This approval does not authorize an expansion of the 

consideration of qualitative factors in regulatory analyses and backfit analyses. The appropriate 

degree of weight of application of qualitative factors in regulatory decision making ultimately lies 

with the Commission. 

The focus of the update should be on capturing best practices for the consideration of 

qualitative factors. The updated guidance should provide a toolkit to the analysts to help them 

clarify their thinking with regard to how they considered qualitative factors. The guidance 

should support regulatory analyses that clearly present the analyst's consideration of qualitative 

factors in a transparent way that decisionmakers, stakeholders, and the public can understand. 

The updated guidance should not be overly complicated or prescriptive in such a way that would 

hinder decisionmaking. The revised guidance should adhere to the following high-level 

principles: 

a. The staff should continue to strive to improve its methods for quantitative analyses, 

including the treatment of uncertainties. 

b. The staff should use the best information available to develop realistic estimates of 

the cost of implementing proposed requirements. 

c. To ensure that qualitative factors are used in a judicious and disciplined manner, the 

revised guidance should continue to encourage quantifying costs to the extent 

possible and use qualitative factors to inform decision making, in limited cases, when 

quantitative analyses are not possible or practical (i.e., due to lack of methodologies 

or data). 

d. To improve transparency and decision making, any revised guidance should outline 

how the staff will articulate its rationale for the selection of qualitative factors and 

describe with specificity how these factors were used in the analysis, including the 

use of sensitivity analyses. 

The staff should continue to engage stakeholders and the Advisory Committee on Reactor 

Safeguards as the staff updates the guidance documents. At a minimum, this should include a 

public opportunity to comment on proposed revisions to guidance, but the staff should also 
consider holding public workshops and other mechanisms to ensure meaningful stakeholder 

input. The staff should provide a detailed plan and schedule for developing the draft revised 

guidance to the Commission for information. Any updated guidance resulting from the 

Commission's decision in this matter should be provided to the Commission in draft form for a 

period no shorter than 10 working days prior to its issuance by the staff. Lastly, the staff should 

resume using the term “consideration of qualitative factors” in lieu of the syntax presented in 

SECY-14-0087, i.e., “qualitative consideration of factors.” 

cc: Chairman Burns 

 Commissioner Svinicki 

 Commissioner Ostendorff 

 Commissioner Baran 

 OGC 

 CFO 

 OCA 

 OPA 

 Office Directors, Regions, ACRS, ASLBP (via E-Mail) 

 PDR