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:
liability 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, system unavailabilities, and other plant-specific data. Plant Modifications and SSC Replacements: Plant modifications, as well as SSC replacements and parts thereof, might affect the safety- significance determination or selection of QA controls for low safety-significant SSCs. Accord- ingly, the GQA program should include provisions to periodically review plant modifications with respect to their potential impact on safety- significance determinations. Alternatively, the design change process may include provisions to verify that changes do not affect SSC safety significance or associated QA controls. Reliability and Availability Monitoring: The licensee should develop a living PRA or define performance thresholds based on ensuring, to the extent possible, that the equipment performance assumptions used in the PRA and upon which most of the safety categorization is based remain valid. The staff expects that licensees will integrate, or at least coordinate, their monitoring for risk- informed changes with existing programs for monitoring equipment performance and other operating experience on their site and throughout the industry. In particular, monitoring that is performed as part of the Maintenance Rule implementation can be used when the monitoring performed under the Maintenance Rule is sufficient for the SSCs affected by GQA. As GQA requires monitoring of SSCs not included in the Maintenance Rule, or requires a greater resolution of monitoring than the Maintenance Rule (component vs. train- or plant-level monitoring), it may be advantageous for a licensee to adjust the Maintenance Rule monitoring program rather than to develop additional monitoring programs for GQA purposes. Section 2.3, "Element 3: Define Implementation and Monitoring Program," of Regulatory