The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) is updating a key part of its nuclear safety case guidance to make it clearer and easier to understand and use.
This is in response to the government's Nuclear Regulatory Review following the independent taskforce commissioned by the Prime Minister, which called for a fundamental reset of safety case development to eliminate duplication and embed simplicity.
ONR's Technical Assessment Guides (TAGs) are detailed documents which provide practical guidance to inspectors about how to assess the safety and security of nuclear activities and in helping dutyholders - the organisations responsible for nuclear sites and operations - understand what is expected of them.
TAGs are at the heart of how nuclear regulation is applied day-to-day by clearly explaining our regulatory expectations and providing guidance to our inspectors.
A safety case is written and owned by a dutyholder to demonstrate how it achieves and maintains nuclear safety.
One specific and key Technical Assessment Guide – Safety Cases (TAG-001) – has now been written to replace the previous TAG-050 and TAG-051 guidance to remove unnecessary complexity, duplication and detail so that our inspectors can focus more clearly on delivering more proportionate, risk-informed and fit-for-purpose regulation.
This update is a key step in ongoing work at ONR to support our dutyholders in returning their safety cases to their original purpose: practical, operational documents that dutyholders actively use to underpin safe operations, rather than documents produced primarily to satisfy regulatory process.
For dutyholders, it should help to support their efforts to simplifying safety case production, maintenance and implementation, supporting the UK's ambition to deliver new nuclear capacity more quickly and cost-effectively, without compromising the strength of safety standards.
Colin Tait, ONR's Deputy Director - Capability and Standards, said:
Colin Tait, ONR's Deputy Director - Capability and Standards, said: "Our updated safety case guidance is a part of our effort to bring the reset firmly into practice.
"By embedding clarity, proportionality and usability into its core frameworks, it supports better regulation, stronger safety cases, and more effective delivery of our new strategic approach.
"Above all, our updated guidance aims to support our dutyholders in restoring their safety cases to their original purpose – a practical tool used by dutyholders to manage risk and underpin safe delivery."
Updates to ONR's Safety Assessment Principles are planned for later in the year, further embedding the safety case reset into the core regulatory framework and this new TAG-001 has been developed in conjunction with that ongoing work.
Read the new TAG-001 on the ONR website.