What effect do Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) changes have on the examinations?
The NMTCB does not expect examinees to be familiar with regulations that are no longer in effect. Examinations will only contain questions on the most current NRC regulations. When NRC regulations change, as happened in October 2002, the entire examination is reviewed to identify all items that include any reference to an NRC regulation. These items are further reviewed to determine if the NRC changes affect them, then they are modified, if necessary, to reflect the new regulation. Why does it seem that some questions are “out-of-date”? The Board regularly scans the operational pool of questions from which each examination is created and removes items that are no longer current. One thing that may cause the perception that out-of-date questions are still on the examinations is that some radiation safety techniques that are no longer regulated by the NRC are still considered best practice, e.g., the use of dose calibrators. Covering such practices is an important part of the examination
