ML20053D700
| ML20053D700 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 05/24/1982 |
| From: | Kerr G NRC OFFICE OF STATE PROGRAMS (OSP) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8206070227 | |
| Download: ML20053D700 (6) | |
Text
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PaTt Remarks by G. Wayne Kerr, Director Office of State Programs e
b U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission O
Washington, D.C. 20555 g
p b
y before the h
b,.
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. gT Fourteenth Annual National Conference gj on Radiation Control 4y Portland, Maine g, '
May 24, 1982 p:3 It is e pleasure to again be able to address you on some of NRC's activities.
Inasmuch as the program lists the topic as " Agency Coninents," I take a great deal of latitude in what I will say.
In past years I have typically covered a laundry list of a dozen or fifteen items which I considered pertinent.
I will do some of that today, but want to devote part of my remarks to the subjects of preventive regulatory programs, quality assurance in regulatory programs and regionalization.
As you know, over the past few years we have developed model legislation for fees, civil penalties, funding, etc.
With the support of the Conference and individual states, a total revised model State Radiation Control Act was submitted through OMB to the Council of State Governments for consideration in the 1982 issue of their Suggested State Legislation.
It will be considered at a CSG meeting in July. We believe that inclusion of this model legislation in the CSG's suggested legislation will help you in obtaining changes when it is considered by your legislatures.
The major area of state legislative bill drafting activity in the last year has surrounded the development of low-level waste compacts in response to the Low-Level Waste Policy Act of 1980. Most states are actively involved in compact discussions with at least one, and as many as three compact groups. We expect that the legislative sessions in 1983 will see a major effort to adopt compacts in all regions of the country, and that by mid-1983 most of these compacts will have been submitted to Congress. You will be hearing more on this subject on Thursday.
On January 6,1982, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission published 'in the Federal Register as final, certain amendments to 10 CFR Parts 71 and 73, which will require advance notification to Governors or their designees concerning transportation of certain shipments of nuclear waste. We will soon be publishing in the Federal Register the list'of designated persons to be notified of shipments. We intend to update this list annually and publish ~it in the Federal Register on or about June 30 each year.
8206070227 820524 PDR STPRG ESGGEN PDR
The NRC has determined that information gathered by State inspectors at the low level waste burial sites can be used by the NRC in enforement actions against NRC licensees.
The concept does not require er essive effort or extensive program changes by either State or NRC, and the overall effect should be advantageous to both parties.
We completed a Nemorandum of Agreement with Washington in January on this subject and recently completed one with South Carolina.
A re-examination of the Agreement State program is now being undertaken by the National Governors' Association under an NRC contract. A task force composed of the NGA Nuclear Power Subcomittee and other State representatives are carrying out the study.
In addition to the subcomittee members, Tom Gerusky, Dante Ionata, Dr. Beriistein and Chuck Tedford are task force members. As a first step, a survey of the States will serve as a basis for a report on State attitudes towards the Agreement State program that will be part of the final NGA report.
NGA will also conduct management case studies of about four Agreement States.
NGA will select States so that there is a cross-section of State programs with respect to size, complexity of programs, and experience.
An advisory group to the task force will also be formed, composed of representatives from nuclear medicine organizations, the academic comunity, various segments of industry, the National Conference of State Legislatures, public interest groups, and private citizens.
The advisory group will meet at least twice to offer comments on NGA recomendations, first with the task force and second at one of two public meetings.
The public meetings will provide opportunity for public participation in the study. The NGA's final report and recomendations are currently scheduled for December 1982.
We have had some expressions of interest by States in both full agreements and limited agreements for waste disposal. We received a letter from the Governor of Utah expressing a desire to become an Agreement State and we are working with the program director in preparing a proposal.
We also received expressions of interest from Iowa, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Minnesota. We have discussed the matter of limited agreements for waste disposal with the Advisory Comittee to the Massachusetts Department of Health and members of the Minnesota legislature. It is possible that interest in limited agreements for waste disposal could intensify as State compacts are formed and host States, which are non-Agreement States, are identified.
With respect to amended agreements with States to regulate mill tailings, four States pursued such agreements.
Amended agreements have been completed with Washington, Texas and Colorado.
We have provided New Mexico with comments on their draft proposal and they are now finalizing it.
On December 4,1981, the NRC published in the Federal Register our revised guidelines for evaluation of Agreement States programs.
In a letter to the States on December 24, we stated that in approving the guidelines, the Commission directed us to pursue the development of more specific objective measures of Agreement State performance and requested an outline of these objective performance indicators by February 1.
We have provided additional time for the Conference to provide comments which are now expected by June 15.
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On October 3,1980 the NRC published in the Federal Register its final rules concerning the management and disposition of uranium mill tailings.
The regulations were intended to implement the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978.
Congressional action in late 1981 provided that States would have until September 30, 1982 to enter into amended agreements and prohibited NRC from spending any money to implement or enforce its 1980 mill tailings regulations.
We have entered into amended agreements with Washington, Texas and Colorado and New Mexico is preparing a proposal for an amended agreement. Also, the NRC cannot exercise any regulatory authority for uranium mill and mill tailings licensing in any State that has acted to exercise such authority under State law.
Our interpretation of this amendment with respect to Agreement States is that the NRC has regulatory authority over mill tailings in any State which did not act to exercise such authority under State law prior to November 8,1981, the deadline set by the Mill Tailings Act.
This is an important point to note for those Agreement States where uranium exploration is taking place. Thus far the States of Arizona, California and Nebraska have informed us that they do not wish to regulate uranium milling and mill tailings.
Significant financial regulatory and personnel resources are needed to regulate such an activity. The o utcome of other Congressional initiatives which would modify portions of UMTRCA and affect Agreement State programs are uncertain at this time.
On September 22, 1981 we sent to all Agreement States a preliminary draft of changes to Part 20. As you are aware, the Commission is involved in a total rewrite of Part 20, the main purpose of which is to incorporate many of the concepts of ICRP 26 and 30. The conference appointed Al Hazle and Maury Neuweg to work with the NRC task force and they met on April 26 to discuss the State comments on the first draft.
The task force has met with industry groups on an informal basis to obtain preliminary input from the regulated comunity.
It is the task force's goal to have an updated draft available by ear'" summer based on the coments they have received so far. As we have told the Agreement States, the revised Part 20 will te a fundamental matter of compatibility so we encourage the States to give serious thought to the review of this next draft.
I would now like to turn to the three subjects I mentioned earlier.
For those who like to do " hands on" health physics work there may not be much excitement in a routine regulatory program.
I consider the routine of standards setting, licensing and registration, routine inspections and environmental surveillance as preventive in nature.
The " hands on" health physicist probably enjoys the professional challenge of utilizing his or her technical knowledge in performing a detailed investigation of an overexposure or responding to an accident like TMI.
Yet, one measure of a successful regulatory program is when such incidents do not occur.
Most of us like to be able to plan our activities, be it for a day, a week or a year.
That is, we like to know with some certainty that we
will have the necessary time, staff and resources to carry out a good preventive regulatory program.
In reality, however, most of us spend a good deal of time in the reactive mode. When in the reactive mode, our schedule is dictated by external events rather than our well planned day. When external events begin to pressure the regulator he or she looks for ways to cope and the areas that will suffer are likely to be the preventive programs - cut back on environmental monitoring, quit issuing standards and guidance, stretch out the inspection schedule, and maybe quit issuing licenses, however unlikely that may be.
I suggest that preventive programs cannot be long delayed, however, since an effective preventive program will minimize the need to spend substantial time responding to external events.
In days long past, we usually thought of quality assurance in terms of mass production of industrial items - are thousands of bolts within tolerance, etc.
In more recent years, emphasis is being placed on broader aspects of QA.
In the space program we learned of zero-defect programs and if zero is unachievable, you provide backup systems.
The NRC is placing c great deal of emphasis on QA for the nuclear industry because of the critical nature of individual components when integrated into the entire power plant.
Among other things, we are interested in the performance of twenty-six Agreement States - the quality of their individual regulatory programs.
We are interested in overall perfonnance as indicated by an assessment of the individual parts of the program.
Regulators should periodically ask themselves, when do they know that their own performance is of "high quality"? Within our office we have established a procedure for assuring the professional staff dealing with Agreement States periodically spend some time reviewing NRC license cases and periodically accompanying NRC inspectors and participating in inspections. Their supervisors are charged with accompanying them periodically to assess their performance.
The National Governors' Association study is an external review of the Agreement State program. All of these are QA programs of a different nature.
At the October 1981 meeting of All Agreement States, Don Nussbaumer discussed a program for self-audit by the States which we planned to implement on a pilot basis.
This proposal did not get an overwhelming acceptance by the Agreement States.
However, two States are participating and two others have expressed interest.
Part of our rationale for this program was that the Agreement States are well aware of the elements of our reviews and could focus an internal review on these matters. A most important part of the proposal was that upper level State management would make a commitment to the audit, would review the results, and would take appropriate action on the recommendations developed from the audit.
It seems to me that State management would prefer to find their own problems, if any, rather than wait for NRC to find them. Although the self audit program we proposed was directed to Agreement States, the principles apply to all States and I suggest you consider using it if you have not already done so.
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1
- S-I briefly touched on regionalization of State related activities in my remarks last year.
During this year these efforts have accelerated in several areas of NRC programs.
First, in October 1981, Chai rman Palladino announced the transfer of the administrative direction of the regional offices from the Office of Inspection and Enforcement to the Executive Director for Operations. The regions were given a broader role in dealing with agency-wide matters.
In addition to inspection and enforcement functions, the regions have become responsible for State relations activities, certain materials licensing, and selected reactor licensing activities. Appropriate administrative and legal support is also being transferred to the regions.
Although this sounds like a change of fairly recent vintage, it is not all that new for State related activities.
We first placed State Liaison Officers in two Regions in 1978 and in the others in 1980.
State Agreements officials were placed in Regions II and IV in i981 and are currently being placed in Regions I and V.
I would note in passing that many State radiation control programs have been regionalized to varying degrees for some time.
Particularly, such is the case in California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
Thus, some of you have first-hand experience with this type of program.
I want to try to alleviate any untoward concerns you may have as related to these efforts.
We informed all of the States earlier this year of the expanded role of the Regions in the State Agreements program.
- Thus, the Regions are your principal points of contact but you are also free to contact our office.
The Regional offices will carry out the program in accordance with policies and procedures established by the Office of State Programs and will be evaluated and appraised by the Office of State Programs.
I believe those things currently underway within NRC are essentially consistent with the views expressed by the Conference Executive Board in its June 1980 meeting with the Commission.
The Board's feelings were stated then as not overly concerned with the regionalization concept as long as a good central headquarters control of those activities is maintained.
Further, the Board did not feel the State Agreements function should organizationally be placed in a more confined area of responsibility.
We believe that these efforts will enhance our effectiveness in dealing with the Stater,.
I am confident that the Regional Administrators are sensitive to your interests, needs, and concerns and are committed to an effective and cooperative program which treats you as fellow regulators with common goals.
If you have questions or pmblems, bring them to their attention.
In addition, you are always welcome to raise any issue with me or my staff when you feel it necessary or appropriate to do so.
t N