On March 22, 1975, a fire was experienced at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant near Decatur, Alabama. The Special Review Group was established by the Executive Director for Operations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) soon after the fire to identify the lessons learned from this event and to make recommendations for the future in the light of these lessons. Unless further developments indicate a need to reconvene the Review Group, its task is considered complete with the publication of this report.

On March 22, 1975, a fire at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant caused a shutdown of Units 1 and 2. The facility subsequent to the shutdown was found to have incurred substantial damage to power, control, and instrumentation wiring. All three units are presently in the shutdown condition with the fuel removed from the vessels for Units 1 and 2; the Unit 3 reactor is still under construction with operation for that unit scheduled for early 1976.

This paper provides a brief description of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and its regulatory process for the current nuclear fuel cycle for light water power reactors (LWRs). It focuses on the regulatory framework for the licensing of facilities in the fuel cycle. The first part of the paper provides an overview of the NRC and its regulatory program including a description of its organization, function, authority, and responsibilities.

Burnup credit (BUC) is a concept applied in the criticality safety analysis of spent nuclear fuel
in which credit or partial credit is taken for the reduced reactivity worth of the fuel due to both fissile
depletion and the buildup of actinides and fission products that act as net neutron absorbers.
Typically, a two-step process is applied in BUC analysis: first, depletion calculations are performed
to estimate the isotopic content of spent fuel based on its burnup history; second, three-dimensional