Document: NRC Regulatory Guide
Document ID: a5ee4c78-1135-4bb6-8d54-e974a3402f87
Document Type: regulatory_guide
Title: An Approach for Plant-Specific, Risk-Informed Decisionmaking: Graded Quality Assurance
Source: NRC Regulatory Guide Division 1
Source URL: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1221/ML12216A017.pdf
Revision Date: 2023-06
Chapter: 
Section ID: RG-1.176
CFR Part: 
CFR Title: 

Content:
g-term performance monitoring program required as part of GQA implementation. 5. The licensee should not make any changes in the application of QA controls and processes prior to the evaluation of the associated system or component to determine its safety significance as discussed in Regulatory Position 2 and before receiving approval of the proposed QA changes by the NRC, if required. The definition of the change should be completed by categorizing the SSCs identified above according to whether they are high or low safety significant. For those safety-related SSCs that are categorized as high safety significant, current QA practices would apply. For those non-safety-related SSCs that are high safety significant, some increase in QA controls may be warranted and should be implemented as appropriate. For those safety-related SSCs that are low safety significant, relaxation in QA controls should be considered. For non-safety-related SSCs that are low safety significant, licensees would continue to define their quality controls without NRC approval. 2. ELEMENT 2: ENGINEERING EVALUATION In Regulatory Guide I. 174 (Ref. 3), Element 2 is to perform the engineering evaluation to support decisions to change a plant's licensing basis. Changes in the application of QA controls do not lend themselves to a quantitative assessment because the relationship between QA programs and equipment performance (and, hence, risk contribution) has not been explicitly established. Furthermore, only a small fraction of components that are candidates for application of GQA controls are modeled in PRAs. This small percentage arises from PRA's emphasis on 1.176-6 the control and mitigation of severe accidents; the exclusion of equipment, such as recombiners, useful only for control of design basis accidents; the exclusion of most instrumentation and reactor protection system equipment from the models; the exclusion of emergency preparedness and plant monitoring equipment from the models; the