Application of systems engineering techniques in NRC`s high-level waste regulatory program

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and its Federally Funded Research and Development Center, the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses (CNWRA) are working to streamline the NRC`s high-level radioactive waste (HLW) regulatory program through the application of systems engineering (SE) techniques. The tailored use of SE discussed in this paper has evolved from the recognition that regulatory requirements often lack the precision of requirements usually associated with application of SE in defense and other hardware system development programs. While there are regulatory performance objectives which are quite specific, demonstrating or evaluating compliance with them may be extremely difficult, particularly when working with the levels of uncertainty which prevail in the earth sciences. The manner in which classical SE techniques and approaches have been tailored to support their use in the somewhat imprecise environment of the regulatory arena is discussed.