Year
1990
Abstract
In October, 1987, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued revised regulations requiring power reactor and certain fuel cycle licensees to report safeguards events by submitting copies of their safeguards event logs quarterly. These revisions clarified existing requirements, provided for more uniform event reporting, and made possible improved data for analyzing generic safeguards trends and patterns. Since the revisions became effective, the NRC staff has developed an analysis program to assist in early identification of emerging safeguards issues and in focusing limited licensing and inspection resources on site-specific or generic concerns. Preliminary analyses have been performed to attempt to discover associations between the numbers of events reported and various facility design and operational characteristics that normally might be expected to influence these numbers. To date, strong correlations have not been found in the available data where one might expect to find them. This suggests a number of possible explanations: the possibility that other factors, such as good safeguards practices or varying environmental conditions, may dominate the influences of the specified site design and operational characteristics; or inconsistencies in reporting practices from facility to facility may mask associations that may become more apparent when current efforts to improve reporting consistency have had a greater effect.