Document: NRC Regulatory Guide
Document ID: a5cfec96-8785-464b-ada8-dc4424b90606
Document Type: regulatory_guide
Title: Quality Assurance for Radiological Monitoring Programs
Source: NRC Regulatory Guide Division 4
Source URL: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0630/ML063060429.pdf
Revision Date: 2023-06
Chapter: 
Section ID: RG-4.15
CFR Part: 
CFR Title: 

Content:
dustry standards and an interagency manual have been developed that provide guidance for ensuring the quality of environmental measurements and radioanalytical laboratories. Three of these — MARLAP, ANSI/ASQC E4-1994, and ANSI N42.23-2003 — are identified above. Revoking Regulatory Guide 4.15 and relying on other programmatic QA guidance and industry standards does offer advantages because the approach would rely on industry-developed consensus standards that offer current and updated guidance on specific pertinent topics. However, these standards do not address all aspects of a QA program for effluent and environmental sampling and monitoring. Allowing licensees to develop a QA program from these standards could lead to incomplete and inconsistent products that do not meet NRC expectations. Ensuring that these independently developed QA programs are adequate also would entail considerable oversight effort on the part of the Commission as well as increased transaction costs to the licensees. 3.3 Alternative 3: Update Regulatory Guide 4.15 To Reflect Current Information and Practices Updating Regulatory Guide 4.15 to reflect more recent regulations, standards, and scientific concepts and practices would ensure that licensees and the general public have consistent, concise, and complete reference to the NRC’s positions on environmental monitoring QA. An updated document would ensure that the NRC’s guidance is consistent with agency regulations and with previously published practices and procedures (such as MARLAP) and would avoid requiring industry to choose among inconsistent recommendations and positions. The costs of updating the guide are nominal because all the information is available and published; no further research is anticipated. DG-4010, Page 20 4. Conclusion Based on this regulatory analysis, the NRC staff recommends issuing Revision 2 to Regulatory Guide 4.15, which will update technical and programmatic guidance to be consistent with industry-