Quality Assurance Systems Requirements for Nuclear Power Plants

In the past two years, there has been a significant increase in the demand for services in quality and reliability assurance for the nuclear power industry. Most of this demand has stemmed from the quality assurance systems requirements that are being imposed by the AEC for construction permits and licenses for operation of these plants and the resultant imposition of similar quality system requirements on sub-contractors and suppliers. There is, however, significant effort being expended by industry to have industrially approved documents used instead of the AEC documents. The result is confusion and uncertainty. There are currently at least five documents in use for quality system requirements. These are: Mil - Q - 9858 A AEC - 10 CFR 50, Appendix B ASME - Section III, Article NA 4000 ANSI - N - 45.2 AEC - RDTF2-2T These docunents have many things in common and also some differences. The purpose of this paper is to review the roles of the aforementioned documents and report their salient points-both similarities and differences. The question of developing a single quality system that will economically satisfy any one or all five of these documents is dealt with and a plan for effectively accomplishing this, whether the company has five or five thousand employees, is explained.