The U.S. nuclear power industry has consistently improved performance over the past 20 years. This performance manifests itself in many dimensions, including worker safety, public safety and plant reliability.
There are many factors influencing this improvement including the cultivation of a strong safety and reliability culture by utilities, a strong independent nuclear regulator in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an independent industry excellence organization in the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators (INPO), and the NRC’s adoption of a risk-informed safety focus. Over the past 20 years, improving plant performance has been coupled with the enhanced safety focus provided by a risk-informed approach that focuses resources on the most safety significant issues. Today, the U.S. nuclear industry is performing at the highest levels of safety and reliability in the world.
NEI has collected all the relevant individual and aggregate performance indicators available from public sources, including NRC and INPO, spanning the past several decades. The purpose of this report is to illuminate the performance improvements achieved and demonstrate the connection between this improved performance and safety.