A study on safety significance determination process of nuclear power plants

Safety significance determination process (SDP), being applied by USNRC, is one of regulatory approaches which can improve the regulatory effectiveness and efficiency by utilizing the risk information to any regulatory inspections and issue resolution. The decision-making criteria and some risk thresholds for the determination of significance might be, therefore, essential elements in actual SDP implementation. This study is willing to identify the rationale and background for the determination of significance based on NRC's experiences, and to check the feasibility of the implementation to Korean nuclear power plants. The details of study are focused on establishing step-by-step processes, identifying the current issues, and assessing major considerations for the application to domestic plants. In addition, two examples are practically analyzed, after consulting the database on actual regulatory inspections and incidents.