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:
rtance, and their accept- ability must be pivotal in the determination of the overall program's acceptability and effectiveness. The licensee should develop criteria for monitoring the reliability and availability of (i) safety-related, low safety-significant and (2) non-safety-related, high safety-significant SSCs based upon risk insights developed during the safety-significance categoriza- tion process. The level of monitoring (e.g., SSC, train, system) should provide the capability to determine whether and when the reliability and availability of safety-related, low safety-significant and non-safety-related, high safety-significant SSCs deteriorates to unacceptably low levels and should include trending aspects intended to identify deteriorating performance. As QA programs address a broad spectrum of plant activities, the monitoring process should address monitoring of both plant hardware (SSCs) and the effectiveness of the process and the organization. 3.3.1 Operational Feedback Process The GQA program should include a feedback process (which is generally performed by licensees irrespective of GQA) to evaluate plant and industry operational experience and the potential need to revise SSC safety-significance categorizations or QA controls. Sources of information that should be used to provide input to this feedback process include: 1.176-17 Operating Experience: Sources of operating experience data include licensee performance indicators, NRC generic communications, Insti- tute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) design reliability data, Systematic Assessment of Lic- ensee Performance (SALP) reports, licensee event reports (LERs), NRC inspection reports, equip- ment maintenance histories, plant performance reviews, reliability and unavailability data, equipment performance or condition trending data, and quality assurance assessments. The industry-wide data should be evaluated for consistency with PRA assumptions,