The regulatory staff is assigned the auditor’s role by the safety standards authority. They review design features, operating procedures, and training to determine the acceptability of the plant for initial and continued opera­tion. They have no role in design or operation. Furthermore, they cannot take any such role without compromising their position as impartial auditor. The auditor’s role involves a great deal of questioning of the operating company and designer/builder on details of design and operation. This role is never a popular one, particularly when approval to proceed with some action is held up, apparently to satisfy curiosity. There is, no doubt, some unnecessary holdup caused by lack of understanding or by personal factors. One the whole, the process is useful to the operating company because this is the only external and independent (not to say hostile) review of propos­als. Internal reviews are valuable but sometimes miss important issues due also to lack of understanding or to personal factors.

One of the most valuable early decisions of the Canadian AECB was to assign staff at each station site. These people get to know a particular plant as well as the operating company supervisory staff, and often much better than the designer/builder or central office staff. They are therefore able to make reasoned judgments of the quality of safety-related aspects of plant operation on a regular basis. Knowing both the equipment and the people, they are better able than are central office staff to evaluate special situa­tions that arise in the field. Central office staff are useful as technical backup, but the site staff must carry the main regulatory responsibility. The operating company has an obligation to report matters of safety interest to the regulatory staff on a regular basis as well as to report any unusual occurrences.