Mainstreaming Risk-Informed, Performance-Based Approaches for SMRs

The principles pertaining to risk-informed, performance-based (RIPB) concepts to analyze and implement safety strategies for nuclear technology have not received the investment in effort needed to fully obtain their benefits. The initiative by the USNRC to apply them in the safety review of SMRs presents industry and standards developing organizations opportunities that were previously unavailable. Tools and methods are publicly available for the benefit of all stakeholders to enable applications of these concepts. Given the economic benefits that may be available from application of RIPB approaches standards developing organizations such as the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and ASME can fulfill the role of enablers by getting volunteer experts in formally established consensus bodies to propose measures that can be reviewed subsequently from a regulatory standpoint. The ANS set up the RP3C as a committee to facilitate the transitioning of existing and proposed new standards to an RIPB framework. Recognizing the limitations of the existing framework in which deterministic and prescriptive approaches were the mainstay, ANS will engage innovative thinking to address issues that have been obstacles to RIPB approaches in the past. This paper offers information about the current and projected work of RP3C.