ML20134F699
| ML20134F699 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 10/24/1996 |
| From: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| DSI-G-3-00001, DSI-G-3-1, NUDOCS 9611070145 | |
| Download: ML20134F699 (115) | |
Text
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3 Official Transcript cf Prsceedings 3'[
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4
Title:
Stakeholders Public Meetings Building Public Trust and Confidence 2L .jaj l Docket Number: (not applicable) # '<
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Location: Washington, D.C. #jb c
s a Date: Thursday, October 24,1996 Work Order No.: NRC-890 Pages 1-115
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- DISCLAIMER PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S STAKEHOLDERS PUBLIC MEETINGS OCTOBER 24, 1996 The contents of this transcript of the proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee of the Stakeholders Conference on October 24, 1996, as reported herein, is a record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
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This transcript has not been reviewed, corrected l i
3 and edited and it may contain inaccuracies.
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4 NEAL R. GROSS count REponmRS AND TRANSCRBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, NW (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20006 (202) 234-4433 a
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1 UNITED. STATES OF AMERICA 2 +++++
3 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4 +++++
l 5 STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT AND REBASELINING 6 STAKEHOLDERS PUBLIC MEETINGS 7 +++++
8 BUILDING PUBLIC TRUST & CONFIDENCE SESSION 9 +++++
10 THURSDAY, 11 OCTOBER 24, 1996 12 +++++
13 WASHINGTON, D.C.
14 The Building Public Trust and Confidence 15 Session was held in the Lincoln Ballroom of the Washington 16 Hilton and Towers at 1919 Connecticut Avenue, Northwest, 17 at 8:00 a.m., Chip Cameron, Special Liaison, Office of 18 General Counsel, NRC, presiding.
1 19 PRESENT i
20 CHIP CAMERON 21 DOUG BROOKMAN 22 JOHN W. CRAIG l
l 23 JAMES L. MILHOAN 24 JESSE L. FUNCHES l 25 JAMES JOHNSON NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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< 2 1 PRESENT: (Continued) 2 LAWRENCE J. CHANDLER 3 EDWARD L. JORDAN i
4 STUART D. RUBIN j 5 FRANK MIRAGLIA 6 KEN ALKEMA 7 JOHN CARTER 8 JUDITH JOHNSRVD 9 KATIE SWEENEY 10 TOM CRITES 11 DENNIS BECHTEL 12 JANE FLEMING 13 JIM RICCIO I
14 ROY BROWN CLAYTON HINNANT 15 f 16 RICHARD RATLIFF' 17 DALE YEILDING 18 19 J 20 l 21 22 23 24 i 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 INDEX 2 AGENDA ITEM PAGE 3 Opening Remarks by Mr. Cameron 4 4 Strategic Assessment and Baselining 10 5 The Role of the Industry 64 6 Regulatory Excellence 96 7
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9 10 11 l
12 13 14 15 16 17 i I
18 19 20 21 l
22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 (8:17 a.m.)
3 MR. CAMERON: We're going to get started now, 4 everybody. Good morning and welcome to all of you to the 5 first Stakeholders meeting on the Nuclear Regulatory 6 Commission's strategic assessment process. My name is 7 Chip Cameron. I'm the special counsel for public liaison 8 iil the Office of General Counsel at the NRC. And I and my 9 colleague, Doug Brookman, from Brookman, King Associates, 10 are going to be serving as your facilitators this morning 11 and for the rest of the meeting.
12 Before we get into the substantive parts of 13 our program, I'd just like to go over a few ground rules 14 and give you an idea of what the agenda is going to be 15 like for the next two days.
9 16 We really have a unique opportunity over the 17 next few days to discuss some fundamental issues related 18 to the NRC's mission with each other and to listen and 19 learn from one another. And as much as possible, I'd like 20 to encourage interaction between all of you, including the 21 NRC staff, on these issues. We're, of course, interested 22 in the positions that you may have on the various issues 23 that we're looking at, including the Commission's 24 preliminary choice of options on these issues.
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1 as a constructive exchange of information and ideas among 2 all of us. And Doug and I are going to try to assist all 3 of you in achieving that objective of constructive -
4 interaction. But it really depends on all of you on how 5 successful we are in reaching that goal. And we encourage 6 discussion, not only between you, the audience, and the 7 NRC, but among all of you. And the NRC staff is here to 8 l'isten to your ideas, to your comments, and to provide 1 9 those ideas to the Commission for the Commission's use in ,
1 10 their final decision making on these strategic issues. j 11 I wanted to suggest a few guidelines for us, 12 for use during the meetings. After the NRC presentations I 13 on a particular issue, we're going to turn to you for 14 comment on that issue that's been discussed. If you want i 15 to speak, raise your hand. We'll recognize you. please 16' go up to a microphone. We also have these hand held mikes 17 and Doug and I will be going through the audience with 18 them, also, to try to help you out. State your name so 19 that the transcriber can get that for the record, and if 20 relevant, your affiliation, what organization you l 21 represent. j 22 There are also, I believe, if anybody does not 23 want to speak but does have a question, we will -- just 24 write a question and we'll also take questions through 25 that route. We would ask you to be courteous of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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i 1 person apaaking and only have one person speaking at a I 2 time.
3 We're focusing as much as possible on the four 4 questions that the Commission specifically requested 5 comment on. And we have those over there on a flip chart 6 for everybody. Basically, what, if any, important !
7 considerations may have been omitted from the issues l
t 8 paper? How accurate are the NRC's assumptions and I j 9 projections for internal and external factors that are !
l 10 discussed int eh papers? Do the Commission's preliminary 11 views associated with each issue paper respond to the 12 current environment and challenges? And, last, the 13 Commission is seeking comments on specific quesyions t
14 identified in the preliminary Commission view section of 1
15 each Commission paper. l l
- 16 We would ask you to try to be constructive. l 17 Rather than just critique a particular option, we would 18 challenge you to try to come up with a solution to the 19 particular defect that you see in the issues paper. We 20 don't have unlimited time. I'm not going to set a 21- specific time limit on individual comments. But obviously 22 we may have to limit comments and I may have to ask you to 23 sum up your comments so that we can give other people an 24 opportunity to talk this morning.
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1 equitably share the air' time over the next two days among 2 the various stakeholder interests that are represented 3 here today. We have a lot of people from the industry.
4 We have some people from state governments. We have some 5 people representing citizen groups and environmental 6 groups. I want to give everybody a chance to at least 7 talk once, possibly more, during these sessions. We don't 8 h' ave an overwhelming crowd so that I think we can allow 9 people to talk and to say what they want. But I may go 10 back to particular stakeholder interest, representatives 11 from those interests that are under represented so that we 12 can give them an adequate and equitable share of the 13 discussion time over the next two days. And I thank all 14 of you for your consideration in advance on this.
15 In terms of the agenda, I just wanted to just 16 go over that briefly so that you can get an idea of what 17 we're going to be talking about when. The opening session 18 this morning is going to be on the strategic assessment 19 process itself. And, we're going to talk about all phases 20 of the strategic assessment process, including the 21 preparation of the strategic plan.
22 After that opening session, we're, depending 23 on what time we get done, we are going to take a break 24 some time this morning and it may that it will be 25 appropriate to do that after the opening session. .We'll NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS I 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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-8 1 seo how wa're going with that. But, the first set of i i
2 substantive issues that we're going to be discussing this J l
3 morning, it's on your agenda from 9:15 to 11:30, is in the 4 strategic arena of building public trust and confidence.
1 5 And we're going to be talking about three direction
{
l 6 setting issues in that session.
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l 7 After that, we're going to break for lunch.
1 8 And this afternoon we're going to have two concurrent 9 sessions. One is going to address the safe use and 10- handling of nuclear materials and you'll'see the issues 11 papers that we're going to be discussing in that session.
12 The second concurrent session is going to address two 1
13 different topics. One are international issues and the 1
!1 14 second is research issues. So, those will be concurrent 15 sessions.
16 Tomorrow, we're going to get started a 8:00 l
17 o' clock. The morning's session is going to focus on j 18 nuclear reactors. And after lunch we're going to be 19 running, again, two concurrent sessions. One that looks 20 at nuclear waste and the second concurrent session is 21 going to be on managing NRC finances which will look at 22 fees and related issues. ;
i 23 Now, I just have a few housekeeping 24 announcements for you. There is a message board outside 25 across from the registration desk. There is a number of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 ways to -- besides participating in this macting, there j 2 are a number of ways to give comments to the Commission on 3 the issues papers. Obviously, you can use -- you can 4 submit them electronically and in hard copy. But, we also I 5 in the Georgetown West room we have a video camera if l
6 you'd like to get yourself on film. I think we have a 7 special contingent that are going to be reviewing all the 8 video messages. But, there are also comment forms in the ]
9 back of the program that you got this morning where you 10 can write comments down. And there are boxes in the back 11 of this meeting room and all the meeting rooms where you 12 can put those comment forms in. If you need copies of the 13 strategic issues papers, they are also in the Georgetown 14 West room which I believe is two rooms down. ,
I 15 In terms of the presentations for each of the 16 sessions, the view graphs for those sessions will be in 17 the back of the room for that particular session.
18 And, with that, I guess I would just ask if 19 there are any questions or comments on the guidelines, the 20 agenda, any of the housekeeping items, before we go into a 21 description of the strategic assessment process?
22 Good. Well, we look forward to an interesting 23 two days. And again, we encourage you to be interactive 24 over the next two days.
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. n 10 1 I strategic assas= ment process. And we have a panel. Our l l
2 first speaker is going to be Jim Milhoan, Deputy Executive !
3 Director for Operations and also co-chair with Dr. Jim i
4 Johnson of the Strategic Assessment Steering Committee.
5 We'll next go after Jim is done to John Craig 6 who is going to discuss phase II of the strategic 7 assessment process. John is the manager for phase II of I
8 the strategic assessment process. l l
9 And, the last panelist this morning is Jesse 1 10 Funches who is Deputy Director of our controller's office l 11 and he's going to talk about preparation of the strategic 1
12 plan, l
13 So, with that, I will turn it over to Jim 14 Milhoan.
15 MR. MILHOAN: Thank you, Chip.
16 This morning I will attempt to discuss an 17 overview of the process that we've done in the strategic 18 assessment and rebaselining process. And I will also turn 19 it over to John Craig to discuss a little bit more the 20 phase II efforts and the stakeholder process. And, as 21 Chip said, Jesse will then discuss the strategic plan and 22 phase III, and activities in phase IV. But I will give 23 you a brief overview of the process that we followed to 24 date.
25 I think you recognize the environment in which NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- c 11 1 the NRC conducto its activities is rapidly changing is a 2 result of many influences. These include resource I 3 constraints, changes in the industry that the NRC 4 regulates, and the potential for a new and revised mission 5 requirements. Also, in order to accomplish regulatory 6 effectiveness, the agency must continually reassess 7 changing technology, accumulated safety experience, and 8 improve assessment techniques for both the reactor and the 9 materials program. Only by being prepared for the 10 challenges of a changing environment will the agency i
11 continue to keep its health and safety mission in sharp 12 focus.
13 With these challenges in mind, Chairman 14 Jackson established the strategic assessment and l
15 rebaselining initiative. To oversee this activity, the i 16 strategic assessment and rebaselining committee of senior 17 managers of the agency was formed. That steering 18 committee is made up of senior agency managers from the 19 program offices in the agency. As Chip said, Jim, myself, 20 and Jim Johnson from the Chairman's office were co-chairs 21 of the steering committee. Also on the steering 22 committee, and many steering committee members are here 23 today, were Karen Cyr, the general counsel, and Larry 24 Chandler assisted. Larry Chandler's assistant general 25 counsel in the General Counsel's office. Jesse Funches, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 the deputy controller on the committea. Ed Helman from 2 admin, a senior manager in admin. Ed Jordan, director of ,
3 AEOD. Malcolm Knapp, Deputy Director of NMSS. Mo Levin, 4 Deputy Director of Information and Resources management 5 office. Jim McDermott, Deputy of the Office of Personnel. ,
6 Frank Miraglia, Deputy Director of NRR, now Acting i
7 Director of NRR. Luis Reyes, Deputy Regional ;
8 Administration in Region III represented the regions on 9 this effort. Jack Silber from the Chairman's office was ,
10 also on it. Themis Speia, Deputy Director of the Office 11 of Research was on the steering committee. And we also i 12 were assisted by a support staff. And I might be remiss, i
13 also, Jim Shea from the Office of International Programs ,
i 14 was also on the support staff but also took a greater role l 15 and was a sponsor for the international programs paper. '
16 And you'll hear from Jim later in the day for his efforts.
17 But, we were assisted by that. We also had a 18 contractor, Public Strategies Group, to assist us in our )
l 19 efforts. In addition to that, we had a large -- we had j I
20 considerable number of staff members who, in the phase II <
21 effort, acted as writers of the issue papers we will 22 discuss throughout the day. And some of those writers are 23 also available.
24 (Slide change.)
1 25 I'll provide an overview of the four phases of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- o 13 1 the project that wm had. We had a four phase project and i
2 I'll briefly discuss the four phases of the project and 3 those will go into a little greater detail in this 4 morning's session.
5 The first phase of the strategic assessment, 6 which was an assessment process, began in August of 1995.
7 The steering committee began with a bottom up approach for 8 assessing where the agency is today with an examination of 9 current NRC functions and activities. The steering 10 committee requested the staff to provide at the lowest ,
f 11 organization level each activity being presently performed 12 by the NRC as well as its basis. In other words, a i
13 statute, a regulation, Commission guidance, what is the 14 basis for the activity being conducted. And also, the 15 offices were requested to describe the primary internal 16 and external factors that are expected to affect the 17 agency's performance of these activities in the future.
18 The staff assessment included approximately 19 4,500 activities which the steering committee reviewed to 20 thoroughly understand what the agency is doing, why the 21 agency is doing it, and what factors must need to be 22 considered in providing options or change. The steering 23 committee organized the activities by major functions in 24 lines of business. This was done to consolidate similar 25 activities and to render our assessment organizational 1y NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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a w 14 1 nautral.
2 Based on this information, the steering 3 committee applied a top down strategic thinking to define 4 issues where resolution will influence the future 5 direction of the agency. After identifying the strategic 6 issues, the steering committee considered them in an 7 integrated fashion. First, the individual strategic 8 issues were arranged in logical groupings of related 9 issues. The groups were then examined to determine if a 10 predominant issue existed within each group.
11 The predominant issues are referred to as 12 directional setting issues because their resolution, tuken 13 together, would establish the NRC's strategic direction 14 for the future. Resolution of the DSI's will provide ~the 15 strategy for the agency to meet its strategic vision and ,
16 goals. DSIs were developed into decision papers which are 17 referred to as issue papers and this was the phase I 18 process that we followed.
19 In phase II, which built on phase I, issue 20 papers were developed and the issue papers are intended to 21 provide broad direction -- to obtain broad direction from 22 the Commission. The issue papers described the background 23 of the issue, the internal and external factors the 24 Commission may wish to be aware of when considering 25 options for resolution of the issue. The issue papers NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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.. n 15 1 also provide the Commission with policy cptions related to 2 the issue.
3 It should be noted that Chairman Jackson 4 encouraged the steering committee to develop innovative l 5 options that are not constrained by existing practices or 6 organization structure. Additionally, in some issue i
7 papers certain options could be considered to be l
1 8 extraordinary.
9 While the Commission is unlikely to select 10 these options, these options have been retained in the 11 issue papers to illustrate for the stakeholders the 12 breadth of options that were considered. Additionally, in 13 the preparation of the issue papers, the Commission 14 requested in developing a rich set of options that the 15 role of the steering committee was to do that. The
?
16 steering committee was not requested to provide a 17 preferred option to the Commission for its consideration.
18 Rather, our job was to develop a set of options for the ,
l 19 Commission to select its preliminary views from. So, 20 those are the Commission's preliminary views and not a set
- 21. of steering committee recommendations.
22 Feedback from NRC's various stakeholders 23 uontinue to be an important aspect of evaluating our 24 regulatory program. The primary goals in acquiring 25 stakeholder comments are to obtain views for Commission NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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1 consideration in reaching final decisions on the issue l J
2 papers and to determine whether the agency has omitted any e I 3 important consideration or issues.
i 4 And then, that leads us, really, into phase 5 III. In phase III, the strategic plan will be developed 6 from the agency's mission statement, strategic vision, 7 general goals, and the Commission's decisions on the issue 1 8 papers. The development of the strategic plan will be 9 guided by the requirements contained in the Government 10 Performance and Results Act of 1993. The strategic plan 11 will be the agency's tool for setting priorities in i i
12 allocating resources consistent with the vision and goals 13 of the agency. Then we lead into phase IV.
14 Phase IV is the implementation phase and will j 15 begin as soon as the Commission makes its final decisions 16 on the issue papers. The implementation phase includes 17 implementing the Commission's decisions based on the issue 18 papers, generating Commission papers to resolve related 19 strategic issues, and complying with the Commission 20 guidance based on the strategic plan.
21 The implementation phase will also include 22 development.of a frame work that allows for updating of 23 the strategic plan and for integrating the strategic plan 24 into the budget process, performance monitoring, and 25 recording processes, and the process for develop of future NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 1 Commission decisions.
At this time, I'd like John Craig to discuss 2
3 further the phase II process that we're now in.
4 John.
5 MR. CRAIG: Good morning and welcome to the 6 first external stakeholder meeting.
7 Jim has talked a little bit about phase II and l l
8 I'll try and give you some more insight into just what t .
9 happened in phase II.
10 There are two, in my mind, milestones for 11 Phase II. The first one was a completion of the issue 12 papers so that the Commission could define its preliminary 13 views. The second milestone is to conduct a series of 14 interactions with internal and external stakeholders to 15 get stakeholder comments and responses on the issue 16 papers, the preliminary views, the factors tha.t are i
17 contained in those issue papers. And we hope to get your l l
18 comments and views on each one of those over the next two 19 days.
20 As Jim said, phase II started with a large 21 number of staff members working on issue papers. We broke 22 out into think tanks which were brainstorming sessions to 23 talk about various options for each one of the issue 24 papers. And some of the options that are in the issue 25 papers you may think are a little extraordinary but we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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18 l 1 tried to stimulate discussion of options that were out of 2
the box and outside the norm of the considerations that we 3 would use to choose an option. So, we tried to eliminate 4 the choosing of an option and separate that, and try to 5 define a spectrum of optio's. n And by doing that, then we 6 got a lot of good discussion about various factors 7 associated with implementing different options.
8 So, as you see, some of the issue papers, it's ,
9 not intended to be the only options in an issue paper, 10 rather, to define a broad set of options and a number of 11 the Commission's views in fact reflect choosing bits and 12 pieces of different options and things in the middle.
13 We started with the direction setting issues 14 from Phase I, conducted the think tanks, defined options
, 15 for each one of the issue papers, and then broke out off 16 into groups to write the various issue papers. There are 17 16. There were initially 24. As the Commission reviewed 18 the 24 issue papers, they made a determination that some 19 of them could be combined with others. Some of the issue 20 papers related to issues that are more appropriately 1 21 addressed after the decisions are made concerning the l
22 first 16. And the next two slides I'll run through the '
23 various issue papers, the 16.
24 The strategic planning and !rame work document i 25 grouped the issue papers in strategic arenas. And that's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 1 1 a little bit of an artificial grouping.
i Some of the iscus i 2 papers, risk-informed performance-based regulation, 3 clearly cuts across all office activities. There are 4 others -- issue papers that cut across different offices.
l I
5 So, there's not a clean, neat right or wrong way to break 6 the issue papers up. But by grouping them in strategic l l
- 7 arenas, it helped think about them in the same context.
8 And that's the grouping we've used for the external d
9 stakeholder conferences. ;
j 10 The third other key document associated with 11 strategic assessment documents is a stakeholder 12 involvement process paper. And quite simply, that's the 13 paper that tells people how to give us comments and how to i
i- )
14 get copies of the various issue papers. We've made an l l
4 15 extensive effort to make these documents available to both 1
16 the public and the staff. They're available on the 17 Internet. They're available on FedWorld. They're in i 18 public document rooms. We had a lot of requests for them
- 19 and we can tell by looking at the number of times the
- 20 papers have been accessed on the Internet that they're 'l I
21 receiving large numbers of people looking at them. And 22 they're all available.
23 And as Chip said, the issue papers, and the 24 other two documents, are available two rooms down.
25 This is -- Phase II represents a unique i
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20 j l
1 process for the NRC, from my perspective. It's the firct i 2 time, I think, the Commission has gone out and solicited l 3 comments from the public and the staff before it's made l l
4 final decisions. I mean, we have the rulemaking process l 5 that most of you are familiar with and that's well l I
6 defined. But, to seek comments to this extent during the l 1
7 process is somewhat unique and it's an opportunity for all 8 stakeholders to comment on the preliminary views.
l 9 Following the assembly of the -- and review of 10 stakeholder comments, the Commission will make final 11 decisions on the issue papers. And as Jim Milhoan said, ;
12 those are going to be used in the development of the i l
13 strategic plan. So, by holding the meetings with !
14 stakeholders, by providing access to the documents and i 15 soliciting comments, we're really getting the stakeholders i
16 to help us as we prepare our strategic plan.
17 (Slide change.)
18 The next two slides list the titles to for i
19 each one of the 16 DSIs that we're going to discuss overt 20 the next two days. I'm not going to read them all to you.
21 I'm sure you're familiar with them. The one point that I 22 want to make is that the ones that were combined with l 23 other DSIs, there were a couple that were combined into 24 12, Risk-informed, performance-based. That we had some 25 DSIs on staffing and organization. Those DSIs will be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS l 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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21 1 addressed after the strategic plan is developed.
2 (Slide change.)
3 We've already completed a series of meetings 4 with the NRC staff, both in Washington and in each one of 5 the regional offices, and had some rather interesting 6 discussions. And one of the responses that we got was a 7 little bit of surprise that the staff was being asked 8
their individual comments on these kinds of issues at this 9 point in the process. And as.I said, that uniqueness, I 10 think, represents really a recognition -- not the 11 uniqueness but the questions represent the realization, 12 the recognition, that this is a different process. We're 13 trying to interact and communicate with our stakeholders 14 in a very different way.
15 We have three more external meetings planned.
16 Two more, I'm sorry. This one, today and tomorrow, one at 17 Colorado Springs next week, and the first week in November 18 we're going to be in Chicago with the same agenda and with 19 the same basic discussion.
20 I'll spend just a couple of minutes talking 21 about the review of comments. The comment period closes 22 November the 15th. We're going to collate and review all 23 the comments that we've gotten. These meetings are going 24 to be transcribed. Chip mentioned the comment forms.
25 We're getting comments via the Internet and E-mail. All i
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.. <a 22 1 of the comm2nts are going to be reviewed. They're going 2 to be assembled in something we're calling a stakeholder 3 interaction report. There will be a brief analysis of the 4 comments. We'll try and identify those we think the 5 Commission should pay particular attention to as it makes l l
6 final decisions, and, provide the Commission with copies i
7 of all the comments. The transcripts and hard copies from 8 the electronic comments that we've gotten and copies of 9 the comment forms that are filled out. !
10 The interaction report will be available to 11 everybody, internal and external stakeholders. We intend 12 to put it up on the Internet and it will be available in 13 the public document room, l
14 So, that's a brief overview of where we are in 15 Phase II. The next significant milestone in the strategic 16 assessment rebaselining initiative will be ' the c'.evelopment 17 of the strategic plan. And Jesse Funches will talk about 18 that for a minute.
19 MR. FUNCHES: One of the key outputs of the 20 strategic assessment and rebaselining will be an NRC 21 strategic plan. As Jim and John have been talking about 22 earlier, the Phase I and Phase II efforts will provide the 23 foundation for that plan. Another important input to the 24 plan will be the comments that we receive from the 25 stakeholders meetings such as the one we're having today NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 4
1 and the written comments. So, those commsnts will be an l 2 important component of the Commission package for 3 decision.
, 4 We see the strategic plan as a document that 5
sets the direction for the NRC for the next five to ten i
6 years. We expect that document to be relatively short, on 7 the order of 30 to 40 pages. It would include fir, thing 8 i's a mission which basically explains the purpose of the '
2 9 NRC provision, that explains where we want to be in the t
10 future, a set of principles, goals and objectives, and 3
11 strategies that we expect to develop along the lines of 12 the arenas that have been mentioned earlier. In
- 13 developing those strategies, the Commission's preliminary 4
14 views and final views, and the issue papers plus the
, 15 comments, are going to be an important component of that.
a 16 As Jim mentioned earlier, we are also required 17 to meet the requirements of the Government Performance and 18 Results Act. In summary, what that act requires is that i
19 we do have a strategic plan for the purpose that I 20 mentioned earlier. -We also are required to have a 21 performance plan that would be integrated with'the budget 22 which would have performance goals on an annual basis and 4
23 performance measures to go with those goals. And lastly, 1
- 24 we would be required to have a performance report.
a 25 The strategic plan is we are -- we expect to l
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24 1 have completed in time to drive this year, fiscal year 2 1999's budget and performance plan. And both the 3 strategic plan along with the budget and performance plan 4 will be submitted to OMB and Congress in September of next 5 year. 1 l
6 We don't see the strategic plan as being 7 static. We will have a process in place that we will 8 p'eriodically update the strategic plan, looking at the 9 external environment, internal environment, to see how 10 those environments are changing and adjusting our 1
11 strategies to be consistent with those. We do expect the l 12 strategic plan will be a public document. And, as always, 13 input comes in from the public on that document, we will 14 be considering those in the update.
15 The last part of the Phase IV of the strategic 16 assessment and rebaselining, as Jim mentioned, is the 17 implementation. We do know one known output -- one known 18 requirement will be a budget and the performance plan that )
19 I mentioned earlier. Other implementation, activities, 20 and action will be determine as decisions are being made 21 on the strategic plan and the issue papers.
22 (Slide change.)
23 And I think this may help, also, as we look at 24 the issue papers and decision. What we see the strategic
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4 25 1 to guide our program and resource decisions on all levels t 2 of the agency. It would not specify what those programs
, 3 are, or activities we would perform, or the resource
- 4 levels that we would have. But, it will guide our J
5 decisions on those aspects. l 6 It would delineate our important goals and 7 objectives for the agency. It would be agency-wide goals.
8 ot individual organization unit goals but those goals I q
d 9 that we will be striving to achieve as an agency. -And as l i
10 I mentioned earlier, it will be a living document j 1
11 periodically updated based on changes in the environment j 12 and other factors that might come to light. Or whether if 13 a strategy is not working the way we would like it to j
14 work, we obviously would adjust those strategies.
i
, 15 It is not a budget nor is it a detailed
.I j 16 tactical plan, nor will you see or we expect to list the 17 agency activities. Or will it explicitly cover all agency i
18 activities. But it will provide a frame-work for making 19 decisions about all agency activities.
! 1 20 With that, that's all I have. I turn it back i 3 I
- 21. over to Chip.
22 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Jesse.
23 Before we turn to all of you out there, there f 24 is just a, I guess, a couple of things that I would i j 25 highlight for you.
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26 1 As John mentioned, the comment period closes q
2 November 15th. WE do have two more stakeholder meetings. !
s 3 One in Colorado Springs and one in Chicago, and if you i 4 need information on that, we have information.
5 On that, the meeting, this meeting, the other 6 stakeholder meetings, will be transcribed and the 7 transcripts from these meetings will, I believe, be ,
8 available on the Internet as part of the stakeholder 9 interaction report. So, it will all be there for you.
10 And, finally, I guess that one other item that i
11 should be mention is that the Commission has been assisted 12 in the stakeholder -- or, in the strategic assessment 13 process by the Public Strategies Group out of Minnesota. I 14 And Steve Struthers is here from PSG today.
1 15 And I guess that we'll go to you for any L
16 questions or comments that you might have on the process l
{
17 itself.
18 Does anybody have a question or a commen't-on 19 the process?
20 Yes? Go ahead. That's great.
1 21- MR. ALKEMA: Yes. 'On the process --
22 MR. CAMERON: And could you give your name and 23 affiliation, please, sir? Thank you.
24 MR. ALKEMA: Yes. My name's Ken Alkema. I'm 25 with Envirocare of Utah.
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H e'
. 27 l 1 And the question I had is, many of the optione 1
2 that are contained within a lot of the issue papers talk i 3 about options that cannot currently be implemented by the l
- 4 Commission. They require significant statutory changes. l 5 And I wondered how -- I got the impression as you talked 6 this morning that many of the things normally in a process
, 7 before the Commission takes action, this wouldn't J
j 8 necessarily have to occur. But it seems like on those 9 kinds of issues the Commission really isn't the body 10 that's going to be making those decisions. It's going to 11 be someoce else. And I wondered how those particular j 12 options were going to be considered and moved forward?
13 MR1 CAMERON: That's a good question.
14 Jim, would you like to handle that?
i i 15 MR. MILHOAN: First of all, yes, I think I'd 4.
16 like to, Chris.
i 17 First of all, with respect to that, if the a
i 18 Commission -- these are broad direction setting issues.
19 If the Commission were to select other than what it had in 20 its preliminary views and options in which legislation was 21 required, obviously we would prepare proposed legislation 22 which would go forward.
23 If we have -- and that would go through, 24 obviously, a legislative process of its own which is a 25 normal course of action and that would be noted.
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28
.1 For other parts of the views, if they were 2 selecting views and which required changes to the 3 regulation itself, obviously those regulation changes a
4 would go through a review and comment period and changes 5 to our own regulations. So, there would be other public 6 involvement in our normal regulation review and 7 development process. So, in the implementation details, 8 obviously there would be opportunity for other public 9 involvement. Right now we're dealing with very broad i
10 directional setting issues which implementation details 11 would have to follow.
I 12 MR. ALKEMA: Thank you. Appreciate it.
l I 13 MR. CAMERON: Anybody else with a question or 14 a comment about the process? I think it was important 15 that Jim underlined the fact that some of these options, 16 if they do require changes to the Commission's 17 regulations, then -- or the development of a policy 18 statement, that the ordinary, and in some cases the 19 additional, public participation processes would be 20 followed for those policies or rules.
21 That's great. Everybody understands the 22 strategic assessment process. So let's - .why don't we 23 get -- since we are on time, why don't we get our next 24 panel up here to begin a discussion on the first set of 25 substantive issues in the first arena. And I believe it's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND *RANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 1 going to be Larry, Larry Chandler, Ed Jordan.
2 And we are getting the papers for everybody so 3 that we'll give you a couple of minutes here so that those 4 will be available for you while the presentations are 5 being made.
6 MR. MILHOAN: I think, Chip -- what Chip said 7 was we're placing slides -- For each session, we will have 8 slides. Our presenters will be operating off slides and 9 we're making those slides available prior to each session 10 in the back of the room so that you can obtain copies of 11 the slides and follow the slides through the presentation.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We're going to get 13 started again. We will take a break after the first paper i 14 in this session which is going to be presented by Larry l 15 Chandler of the Office of General Counsel. It's paper 16 #14, Public Communications Initiatives. What I would plan 17 to do during this discussion this morning is to have the 18 NRC presentation of the issue paper, and then we will have I
19 discussion on that issue paper. Then we'll go to the next 20 issue paper and have discussion and then to the last issue 21 paper and have discussion. But we will be taking a break i 22 after Larry's presentation. There is coffee available.
l 23 Doctor Johnsrud will be glad to hear that. Right? So
, 24 let's turn it over to Larry for a presentation on 25 Direction Setting Issue #14.
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30 1 MR. CHANDLER: Thank you, Chip. It is perhaps 2 just a bit of irony. My subject is going to be public
- 3 communication. I'm just several days past a bout of l
4 laryngitis, so if I fade, please bear with me and 5 certainly my laryngitis will kick in if I don't like any a
6 of the comments I hear.
I 7 Some of the comments that we've received 8 suggest that even the language we've used in the papers, 9 the issue' papers that we've written have been excessively 10 bureaucratic. I think somebody even suggested that we've 11 adhered too rigidly to the adage that in mining for gold 12 one has to sift through three tons of muck and mire before
, 13 one gets that one ounce of gold. But public L .
1 14 communications is an area in which the agency has been
! )
15 working for many years to improve its abilities to inform i 16 and correspond with the public, and I mean the public in a
, 17 very, very large sense.
18 The DSI's name should be indicative of the way 19 in which we're approaching the issue. The DSI 14 suggests l 20 What approach should the NRC take to optimize its l
l 21 communication with the public and, in fact, is a subsumed 22 issue which deals with increasing the level of knowledge l
23 of the public. It recognizes, I think, in the statement ;
24 of the issues the fact that the agency has a long history I i.
25 of effort to communicate and inform the public, but at ,
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. ~ l 31 1 this stage we need to focus our efforts, perhaps better 2 integrate our efforts, perhaps better focus on the most 3 efficient and most economic ways in which we can 4 correspond and communicate with the public so that the 5 public, again in its very broadest sense, understands what 6 we're about and we can appreciate better what the views 7 and perspectives of the public are.
l 8 The business of nuclear regulation is, after 9 all, the public's business. It must be transacted I
10 publicly, it must be transacted openly if we're to have 11 any credibility at all with the public and, again, public l l
12 in the very, very broadest sense. Our actions and the 1
13 bases for our actions must be available. They must be 14 understood, they must be articulated as clearly as 15 possible.
16 Historically, the Commission itself has 17 conducted its meetings in the open. Even before the 18 Sunshine Act, Commission meetings were frequently if not 19 routinely open to the public. Licensing and enforcement 20 proceedings, formal adjudicatory proceedings, have been 21 open to the public and the public at those proceedings has 22 had the opportunity to participate as well as simply to 23 come, attend, and observe.
24 We maintain public local document rooms near 25 facilities, particularly in connection with the reactor NEld. R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. s 32 I sites, so that the public has access to relevant documents 2 and information. We maintain a public document room
- 3 downtown, a central public document room in Washington, 4 D.C. We have maintained an Office of Public Affairs to
- 5 assure that the public is kept informed, that the media, 6 all types of media, are kept informed. We've increased 7 the abilities and the range of options for communicating through the Office of Public Affairs as technology has 8
9 advanced.
j 10 Activities are maintained through the Office
- l 11 of Public Affairs with schools that we have programs, l 12 cooperative arrangements with schools through which 1
13 employees go out and speak to students. We have consumer 14 groups that we interact with and local civic associations 15 before whom many NRC employees speak, both in headquarters 16 and on a regional level.
17 There's an Office of Congressional Affairs.
18 The Office of Congressional Affairs maintains liaison with 19 Congress, both in connection with congressional oversight 20 activities and congressional legislative activities. The i 21 agency has long had a process. It's known as the 2.206 22 process perhaps. But it's one by which any member of the 4
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33 1 or formalized process in which the views are considered, 2 assessed, and in 2.206 a formal decision is issued by the 3 director of the relevant program office. It's a published 4 decision. That process, as many of you know, has recently 5 been enhanced to make it more meaningful hopefully to both 6 the staff and the individual making the request as well as 7 the public at large. There's more interaction provided 8 for.
9 In addition, of course, to these formal types 10 of actions, the agency regularly and very frequently 11 corresponds with members of the public who simply write 12 in, correspond, and raise questions. And, of course, 13 we've maintained an allegation management system for any 14 number of years, very recently_ establishing a position of I 15 Agency Allegation Advisor to coordinate all of the 16 agency's allegation review processes. Sure, it receives 17 appropriate attention.
18 As I started to indicate, some of the steps 19 that I've just described are required by law. There's no 20 question the Sunshine Act requires that public meetings be
- 21. conducted or that most meetings be conducted in the 22 public, open to the public. The Atomic Energy Act and the 23 Administrative Procedure Act have their own requirements 24 for public disclosure and public access to information.
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34 1 Act requires that agencies publish certain information in 2 The Federal Register and make available to the public fcr 3 inspection and copying agency records through the Privacy 4 Act. It's legislation such as the Federal Advisory 5 Committee Act which also requires that certain meetings be 6 open.
7 And, of course, there's been recent 8 l'egislation such as the Paperwork Reduction Act of '95 and 9 the Information Technology Management Reform Act of '96.
10 That's the legislation that requires the establishment of 11 a Chief Information Officer at the NRC which clearly will 12 affect the way in which the agency communicates with the 13 public, the way in which information is made available to 14 the public access to it. You have OMB Circular A-130, a 15 recent administration directive which also has bearing on 16 public access to coinmunication.
17 And, in addition to those things, those which 18 are required by law, the agency itself has gone beyond 19 those steps. Historically, it has and it continues to do 20 so. It maintains, for example, public liaison and
- 21. outreach efforts. Chip Cameron here has been responsible 22 for many of those outreach efforts. The 2.206 process is 23 one that's really not mandated by law. There's now a 24 regulation that codifies it, but it was a step that the 25
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35 1 provide this avenue.
2 Earlier this year, the Commission, in response I 3 really to some administration interest in I think it was 4 the '93 time frame, the Commission in January of '96 5 issued a report of public responsiveness. As many of you 1
6 know, in 1993 the administration, I think through Vice 7 President Gore, had sort of challenged agencies to look
, 8 i'nto the way in which they respond to the public. The l 4
9 Commission did an assessment of its activities as a 10 document which is NUREG/BR-0199 issued January '96 l 1
11 entitled Responsiveness to the Public and it outlines many
- 12 of the steps the Commission takes, is taking, and will 13 take to improve its interactions with the public.
1 14 The Commission publishes many public brochures 15 so that the public is informed of what is available and 16 how they can access information. There's a Citizen's 4 17 Guide to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Information.
18 In April of 1996, the Director of the Office of Public 19 Affairs published a brochure on public involvement in the 20 regulatory process which are available to the public, 21 explain the processes and options and opportunities
! 22 available for public interaction.
1 23 And while we've done a great deal historically 24 and will continue to do so in response to experiences 25 we've had, there are some things that have suggested and I
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36 1 caused the Steering Commit! tee to look further into how we 2 can, as I said at the outset, optimize what we're doing.
3 What we're doing today tends to be diffused throughout the 4 agency and perhaps it requires some better integration.
5 We've seen increased use of Internet and e-mail. It 6 certainly raises new opportunities not previously tapped 7 or tapped as far as they perhaps could be.
8 I mentioned some of the earlier legislative 9 and administration initiatives. OMB Circular A-130, for i
a 10 example, requires that certain steps be'taken to optimize 11 access and consider efficiencies and effectiveness of ,
t t
l l 12 communications with the public. The Information l i
i 13 Technology Management Reform Act and the creation of the 14 CIO, Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. We've had recent 15 experiences. Again, Chip Cameron was involved in the 16 enhanced participatory rulemaking. We've used a process 17 called RULENET, an electronic medium for conducting a
. l 18 rulemaking process in connection with fire protection !
l i
19 requirements. There's been increased use of citizen !
20 boards and groups in connection with site decommissioning
, 21. activities.
22 At the same time, we also are keenly aware of 23 some of our less successful moments such as, for example, 24 the efforts in below regulatory concern in the early 1990 25 time frame. Not really a landmark of success for the 4
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e a 37 1 Commission. )
l 2 The Steering Committee suggested a number of 3 options. First, we suggested that an approach would be 4 simply to continue the direction we were headed in. i 5 That's not stagnation. That doesn't mean things would 6 come to a halt. Progress certainly would be made. There 7 would be innovative steps taken to enhance the processes 8 that were being used to communicate with the public. All 9 legally mandated measures would continue to be taken.
10 Improvements would be made. But it would be a much more 11 evolutionary process. It would be reactive, which is the 12 way in which, as a practical matter, the Commission has 13 responded to these areas.
14 We added to that as a sort of a variation, we 15 tended to call it Option IA, which was to continue with 16 the existing approach but be more attentive to issues such 17 as effectiveness and erficiency in the way in which we 18 conduct our communication activities. We considered as 19 yet another option ways to better anticipate what 20 interests and concerns the public may have. More of a 21 direct early involvement with the public so that we're ,
22 better able to respond and anticipate the concerns that 23 may be out there, anticipate the areas of interest and 24 information needs, and provide for them at the front end 25 of the process.
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38 1 It would also encourage the use of less formal 2 types of procedures. It would encourage the use of other 3 than adversarial procedures for dispute resolution.
4 Informal dispute resolution procedures, for example.
5 Increased public outreach, increased public liaison 6 efforts. And finally, as a third option, we considered 7 whether greater priority should be placed on what I would 8 r'efer to as educational steps. Affirmative action to go 9
, out and actually educate the public. Inform them of what
- 10 we're all about, how we go about doing business. We have 1
11 seen that.on a very large scale the public may not fully l
12 understand what we are about. Our historic approach has l
13 been to respond to questions. Wait for them to come in. '
14 Under Option 3, we'd be more aggressively pursuing the 15 public to inform them of how we go about doing our 16 business. l 17 If I could have the next slide. The 18 Commission then in its preliminary views as a general 19 proposition supported the approach that I sort of 20 described as our second option, namely to give greater 21 priority to the early identification af public concerns.
22 I think it's very notable and very significant in this 23 context that the Commission was very adamant in insisting 24 that the term public be given its very widest definition.
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39 1 licensecs, states, media, the Congress, the executive 2 branch, and the international community.
3 In addition, the Commission also as a 4 preliminary view directed that we take account of the 5 effectiveness and economies associated with our 6 communication programs. As I mentioned earlier, they 7 tended to be diffused throughout the agency. They're not 8 p'articularly well-integrated. Perhaps that will change 9 with the advent of the Chief Information Officer, but 10 certainly it's something that will be receiving greater l 11 consideration if this is the direction the Commission I l
l 12 tends to head under this direction setting issue. '
13 We also will be giving greater consideration 14 to the economies and efficiencies associated with the 15 methodologies, the media that we use to communicate. As I 16 mentioned, we're using e-mail more frequently. We're 17 using Internet more frequently. Bulletin boards, RULENET.
18 Those types of processes may or may not be the most 19 effective way of corresponding and communicating with the 20 public, either in reaction and response to the public or 21 proactively in advance to inform and involve the public.
22 But what we perhaps need to be doing is better thinking 23 how we can best on each matter communicate with the public 24 to make.the use of our very limited resources more 25 efficient and effective.
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. . _ - .. - . . .- ~ . -. . -_.
s 40 Chip, with that, I will turn it back to you.
1 2 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Larry. Let's go out 1
3 to you in the audience for comments on this particular j 4 issue of increasing public communication. Larry covered a 5 lot of ground, presented a lot of ideas. Does anybody 6 have a comment, question on public communication at this 7 point?
8 MR. CARTER: My name is John Carter and I'm 9 with the law firm Carter and Hernman. I was just l
, 10 wondering what was done in the Phase I process to include j 11 stakeholder comments or if there was any scoping done with 1 12 stakeholders to help identify the process or issues that i
13 have been essentially proscribed now?
14 MR. CHANDLER: The Phase I process did not 15 include stakeholder involvement except for in which we i
16 might broadly refer to as internal stakeholders in the 17 following sense. I think it was described earlier by John i 18 Craig and Jim Milhoan. The Phase I process started with 19 an accumulation of the activities that were performed 1
20 within the agency and to accomplish that we solicited the 21, input literally of all employees within the NRC to 22 determine what functions were being performed and why they 23 were being performed, the bases, either the legal bases 24 derived from the statute regulation or Commission 25 directive or whatever. After those were compiled, we
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41 1 developed lines of business and functional areas from 2 those. But again, this was an internal process under the 3 auspices of the Steering Committee with the support of the 4 NRC staff.
5 MR. CARTER: It just seems that perhaps the 1
6 entire process is perhaps proscribed by the NRC itself due 7 to the fact that stakeholder involvement was not included 8 ih that Phase I process of issue identification, process 9 identification, and the fact that there currently wasn't 10 any scoping done with stakeholders.
11 MR. CARTER: That's in fact one of the issues 12 that we're asking for comment on. The question is, have '
13 we omitted issues. That's exactly what we're asking for 14 input. In the Phase I, bear in mind, as I say, in terms 15 of identifying the activities, it was thought best to go 16 to the NRC staff, they being the ones that were actually 17 performing the activity. What then flowed was the process 18 of developing issues. We try to be as broad and creative 19 in response to the gentleman who had asked the question 20 earlier about legislative types of options. We try to be 21 creative and not limit it to those which were necessarily 22 implementable under our existing authority but more 23 broadly whether there were desirable ways of approaching i
, 24 it, even if it meant seeking legislation.
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4 -
42 1 process now, we are actively encouraging everyone to 2 contribute to the process by suggesting areas. We try to 3 be inclusive but now we'd like to know are there things 4 that we have missed.
l 5 MR. CAMERON: And I think that perhaps the l
6 point of the question for people to think about is what 7 can the NRC do in terms of the strategic 8 dssessment/ strategic planning process in the future to 1
9 increase stakeholder involvement and perhaps if we have 1 l
)
10 some time before we break this morning, we may come back l l
11 to you and to other people for suggestions along those l
12 lines. i 13 I guess the other thing I would just clarify 1
14 is that when we talk about stakeholders, we're talking 15 about all of the subgroups that make up the public. The 16 emphasis here is on public interaction. The general !
17 public, but also citizen groups, industry, government, l
18 tribal interests, whatever.
19 Judy, we're going to give you a chance to i
20 think for just a couple more minutes and go over to this
- 21. side.
22 MR. RATLIFF: Richard Ratliff representing the 23 Organization of Agreement States. As you know, there are 24 29 agreement states with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 25 and the Organization of Agreement States represents these NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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43 1 29 staten and their collective views. In reviewing DSI !
2 14, we can not totally concur with the views of Option 2.
i 3
- We feel the best approach would be a combination of Option 4 2 and 3. Option 2 is directed towards helping NRC make 5 informed decisions that are accepted by the public whereas !
6 Option 3 increases efforts to inform the general public l l 7 and the media about NRC.
i By combining both, there is flexibility to 8
4 9 identify and address public concerns, offer diverse public '
(
10 outreach activities in publications the general public and ;
11 the media need to know and offer the facilitated meetings,
- 12 electronic conferences and video conferences necessary to 13 provide information that licensees and agreement states 14 demand and tbtt the public and the media are interested 4
15 in. The content of any information disseminated by NRC '
16 should be beneficial to all parties.
17 Combining Option 2 and 3 to anticipate, !
18 involve, and conduct general public outreach, NRC will j 19 have an interactive approach that helps participants 20 understand each other's views and helps NRC progress 21 towards informed decisions and at the same time will 22 provide information to the public that helps them
, 23 understand the regulatory process, NRC's decisions and, in 24 fact, basic radiation in general. I 4
25 Thank you.
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44 1 MR. CHANDLER: Thank you. That's very 2 helpful. We had given some thought to that. We recognize 3 in certain respects the attractiveness of some of what 4 you're suggesting. It was balanced in some respects by 5 some of the thoughts that we are in fact achieving, 6 hopefully achieving some of that through increased 7 outreach efforts under the existing process, even 8 e'nhancing that a bit under the second option, as well. I 9 appreciate that view. Thank you.
10 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Doctor Johnsrud.
11 MS. JOHNSRUD: Judith Johnsrud from 12 Pennsylvania. There are two or three comments that I 13 think are related, Larry. The 2.206 process is available, 14 but the word I get from environmental groups around the 15 country and citizen organizations is that it just don't l
16 work. I hear a very strong desire for a legal capability l l
17 to citizen suits comparable with the provisions that apply 18 to EPA, and I certainly would encourage that a lot of -- )
I 19 although it may seem that this increases the adversarial i 20 relationship, I think in fact that availability to make
- 21. use of the courts of law would greatly enhance a sense of 22 potential for effective involvement on the part of the 23 public. One 2.206 after another gets denied, and the 24 attitude of the citizen groups is well, it may be there 25 but it's useless. '
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. - l 45 i 1 The accond point relates to both the delight 2 that the Commission has gone cyber for us and that 3 documents are appearing on the Internet, but I would like 4 to caution that by so doing I anticipate and I think I'm 5 beginning to see a decline in opportunity for the 6 availability of hard copy for those who may not be hooked 7 into the Net, the shortening of turnaround response time 8 b'ecause of the great speed with which communication can 9 take place electronically.
10 Third and perhaps this is most troubling of 11 all, that we've had a lot of trouble with environmental 12 justice questions. The President has certainly tried to 13 improve that situat3on, but it is a very real one. I I 1
t 2
l- 14 sometimes meet with people at potential sites or existing ]
I 15 sites who very frankly have a lot of trouble reading the 16 English language, not to mention the fact that they can't i
17 afford several thousand dollars worth of PCs. This 18 becomes a significant factor, and I think that it is, at i
19 least in part, correctable. But in moving toward more 20 expedient means of communication, I urge the Commission 21 not to lose sight of those who are old fashioned enough to r
- 22 use slow mail and maybe even write by hand.
23 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Judy.
24 Larry, did you want to comment on any of that?
25 MR. CHANDLER: Just a quick observation. The NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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< 46 1 2.206 process that's now cort of regularized in one of the 2 NRC's internal manag3 ment directives -- I think it's 8.11-3 - is fairly recently revised. A number of years back it !
4 was recognized that it was certainly a high level of 5 frustration on the part of the public in filing 2.206s and 6 a perception, either 'alid or not depending on your 7 perspective, of whether they were just routinely denied r
. i 8 out of hand. The process now hopefully becomes a bit more 9 user friendly. It requires greater interaction between 10 the staff and the individual who writes in under 2.206 and z- 11 makes the request on a periodic basis so that at least if 12 the staff is unable to come to resolution in a very prompt .
13 way, the individual is kept informed of progress on the a
14 issue and knows what's happening.
., 15 There are occasions in which informal hearings 16 can be conducted and the word hearing I use sort of 17 loosely and emphasize the informal aspect of it. We're 18 hopeful the process will work in that sense jurt from a s
19 procedural standpoint in better assuring.the public that 20 their views are being considered.
- 21. We're also trying to do something -- and 22 again, we might see it differently. When we review 23 2.206s, we're trying to better characterize what, in fact, s
24 the staff has done and so now you'll find, I think, more 25 decisions which indicate that the requests have been NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- i 47 )
1 granted, at least in part. What wa're simply doing in 2 those cases is recognizing that the staff has effectively 3 accomplished what the individual has requested although it 4 hasn't gone the full nine yards necessarily and agreed 5 with the initiation of a formal enforcement action. For 6 example, it's very often that requests come in saying the 7 licensee has to analyze X, Y and Z and you ought to shut 8 down the operation. )
I 9 Well, in fact, in order to respond to it, the 10 staff will request information or the licensee itself may ;
11 in response because they are public documents, may l l
12 undertake the very analyses that have been requested and l l
13 certainly to that extent it's fair to say that he request l 14 has been granted although the ultimate relief may be 15 denied. So the decisions are trying to be, I think, more 16 forthright -- you may see it differently -- more 17 forthright in the way in which they approach the subject.
18 I agree on some of the other subjects. It's a 19 very difficult balance to strike, Judy, in dealing with 20 the electronic media, and we recognize that there are !
21 limitations on people's availability. There are people 22 who just don't like technology, whether they can afford it J 23 or not, and would just as soon receive a hard copy and not 24 get bleary eyed. It's certainly better than reading 25 microfiche. It's prettier than reading microfiche, but it l NEAL R. GROSS court REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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48 1 can be as offensive to people, too, and wa do need to 2 strike a balance.
3 MR. CAMERON: Let's focus a little bit on 4 Judy's suggestion on the citizen suit. Larry, clarify 5 this if you need to, but I take it that that would be one i
6 of those suggestions that would fall into that group of 7 suggestions that are in the issues paper that would l 8 require some type of legislation --
l 9 MR. CHANDLER: Yes.
l 10 MR. CAMERON: -- to implement. There's also l
11 discussion of the citizen suit provision in Directed 12 Strategic Issues Paper No. 2 on that issue. But how about .
13 anybody else out there. Anybody like to comment on the 14 citizen suit suggestion that Judy made? Okay. Well, 15 let's go on to other people. Do we have other comments on '
I
- 16 public communication? Yes.
l 17 MS. SWEENEY: Katie Sweeney, National Mining.
18 I was just curious how the public was made aware of these l
19 issue papers. Was the October 7th notice in The Federal 20 Register the first Federal Register announcement that I 21 these papers were available?
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. This is a question that i
23 seems related to the first question that we had about i
24 public involvement in the strategic assessment process.
4 25 John Craig.
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49 1 MR. CRAIG: Thara have baan a series of l
2 announcements in The Federal Register. Mid-September was 3 the first one. We've also had a number of press releases 4 go out concerning meeting the availability of the i 1
5 documents. We've had direct mailings with various groups. ;
1 6 MS. SWEENEY: Do you have the date of the 1
1 7 September Federal Register notice because I must have j 1
8 niissed that one. I went back and looked yesterday. It 9 was the 16th?
10 MR. CRAIG: I want to say 15-16, right in that 11 time frame.
12 MR. CHANDLER: It's around the 16th, John.
13 MS. SWEENEY: Okay.
14 MR. CAMERON: Did we get a specific answer to 15 that? For the record, The Federal Register notice was?
16 MR. CRAIG: I believe the first one was the 4 17 16th.
18 MR. CAMERON: Of September.
19 MR. CRAIG: Yes.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
21 MS. SWEENEY: Thanks.
22 MR. CAMERON: Yes.
23 MR. KRITZ: Tom Kritz, Lawrence Livermore 24 International Lab. At the conclusion of this process, 25 will there be a public comment document that records the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoOE ISt.AND AVE N.W.
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< s 50 1 comm:nto mcde and ths resolution of those comments?
2 MR. CAMERON: Yes. I'll let John Craig answer 3 that. I believe_that there will be. Perhaps this is also 4 a good time to hear from anybody who has any suggestions 5 about how public involvement in the strategic 6 assessment / strategic planning process from this point out ,
7 might be enhanced. John. !
8 MR. CRAIG: As I mentioned earlier, we're
)
9 going to compile a document we refer to as a Stakeholder )
l 10 Interaction Report. Right now, it looks to us like it's i
11 going to be two documents, one which will be a summary ;
i i
12 organized by direction setting issue paper, and the other l
l 13 document or the other volume will be a compilation of the l l i 14 transcripts from the meetings. We'll have hard copies 15 from all the public comments that we've gotten via the j .
16 Internet, internal NRC people give them to us j 17 electronically, as well as copies of the forms that we're l
18 going to collect at all the public meetings. So all of 19 the comments will be available.
20 The other part of your question addressed ;
i 21 resolution of the comments, and as you may know, when we l
i l 22 issue comments for rulemaking, we have a rather exhaustive 23 effort that goes through to address comments, each one.
24 We don't envision doing that for these comments for two 25 reasons. One, we're going to try and give the comments to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 rho 0E ISLAND AVE., N W.
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l 51 1 the Commission so they can make final decisions and wa're 2 going to highlight those which bear directly on the 3 decision as opposed to those which may be related to 4 implementation details. The staff as they develop after 5 the Commission makes a final decision, as they begin to 6 implement it, then those comments will be available to the j 7 staff to consider during implementation. But in order to l
8 prepare the strategic plan in early '97, we just don't l
9 have time to go through and respond to each one of the 10 comments individually the way we've done as part of the i 11 rulemaking process.
12 MR. KRITZ: Thank you.
13 MR. CAMERON: Any other comments on further 14 public involvement in the strategic assessment process or I 15 public communications generally?
16 MR. BECHTEL: My name is Dennis Bechtel. I'm 17 with Clark County, Nevada. This was mentioned that public 18 notification was through The Federal Register. I think if 19 you really want public involvement, I think you're going 20 to have to go beyond that. Not much of the public really 21 reads The Federal Register. I'm working on the Yucca 22 Mountain program right now and I found out about this 23 meeting by accident. I just happened to be back here. I I 24 don't know how many folks here are actually representing 25 the public, but I think you're going to have to be a i
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52
, 1 little more innovative if you want public involvement.
2 Newspaper advertisements or things like that may work.
3 That's the comment I had.
4 MR. CAMERON: That'c a helpful comment. I, 5 for one, of course, read The Federal Register every day 6 with my coffee. The Commission has used a variety of i
, 7 notification methods, and perhaps you're right. There 8 could have been others. But I think NMSS newsletter and 9 other office newsletters I think provided notice to I i
- 10 licensees and many folks who are on the mailing list of 11 the availability of this. It's been on Internet, as well.
12 I guess you had to come to the NRC home page to find that 13 out, but I think it is noticed there.
14 'MR. CRAIG: I wanted to add to the response to I
15 the question and clarify an earlier answer because I've 16 got the correct answer. The first Federal Register notice
. 17 was in October. The September 16th was the first press 18 release that was issued. So we have issued a series of i
19 press releases about the strategic assessment initiative ]
20 as well as the availability of documents and the public f 21 meetings. About a week before-each one of these meetings, 22 we'll have additional press releases. In addition to 23 that, as I've indicated, we sent out mailings to over 24 2,000 individuals and groups, a number of public interest j 25 groups, state groups, industry groups, and we've noticed i NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCR18ERS 1323 rho 0E ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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l . e 53 1 in their newsletters that they have a discussion of ths
! 2 strategic assessment rebaselining initiative, the public 3 meetings, what we're doing and so there's a real shadow l
4 effect. ,
i l 5 But you're right. As we try to figure out 6 ways or identify ways to contact the public as a whole, 7 that presents some real difficulties as the lady mentioned 8 a' minute ago. A lot of people aren't up on the Net and, !
9 unlike Larry, I don't read The Federal Register every day 10 with my coffee. So it is hard to get the word out, but 11 working the regional offices and our public affairs 12 officers, I think, as we mentioned earlier, this is sort 13 of the unique opportunity. We've made a very concerted j i
l 14 effort to try and get the word out. But I agree it's an l
f 15 area we can work on.
l l
16 MR. CAMERON: This is related to another issue 17 that was at the heart of the issue paper, I think, at the 18 terms of the unevenness of implementation of public 19 communications strategies throughout the Commission. One 20 of the options talked about, I believe, institutional L 21 changes that could perhaps correct that. I wondered, l
22 Danny, if you have any comments or suggestions about
! 23 institutional mechanisms that the NRC might use to 24 increase public communication or to make sure that it's 25 more uniform throughout the agency. Go ahead.
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54 l
1 MR. CARTER: John Carter again. I've had a l l
2 lot of dealings with the Department of Energy and I think j 3 over the course of the last three or four years through 4 their clean-up program primarily and the office of 5 Environmental Management they've done a lot of work in {
6 this field of stakeholder communication and stakeholder 7 involvement and they've developed under Tom Grumley the 8 Ehvironmental Management Advisory Board which is a l 9 stakeholder committee made up of environmentalists, 10 members of the public, state representatives and others 11 who sit, as he used to call it, as his board of directors 12 to advise him on public involvement and stakeholder 13 issues.
14 I'm not aware of the NRC having anything like 15 that, but that is one kind of institutional mechanism that 16 the NRC, if it's serious about meaningful stakeholder 17 involvement at an early stage of the participatory l
l 18 process, they might be interested in looking at.
l 19 And then just a follow-up. I asked the j 20 question earlier about stakeholder involvement in the 21 early stages and now I'll simply make a comment that I do 22 think the NRC should have involved the public in a more 23 meaningful way and earlier on in the process and a lot of 24 these questions, I think, that you're hearing now you may 25 not have heard about. Well, we only heard about this a i NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS !
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. s 55 1 few waaks ago. If the public had been involved in somm 2 scoping, as is done under NEPA in the development of EISs 3 or some type of public outreach process that we're looking 4 at strategic planning, we'd like your input, we'd like 5 your involvement in developing a process and helping to j
6 identify the issues. I think there would have been more i l
7 of a participatory sense among those kind of on the 8 o'utside of the NRC. Thank you.
9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you for that suggestion.
10 We do have several advisory committees that focus on 1
11 relatively discreet issues within the agency but nothing l
~
i 12 such as the advisory board that you suggested, and I'd '
] 13 like to hear other people's comments about the 14 feasibility, the efficacy of such an advisory board.
15 Judy, to you have a comment on that? :
16 MS. JOHNSRUD: Okay. Let me tell you, Chip.
17 A number of environmentalists that I work with said they 18 really didn't want to be here because it's called a l l
19 stakeholder meeting and that takes us to your mention, l t 20 Larry, of the increasing use of reg. neg. approaches.
1 21 There is a deep concern among the public that these 22 processes that bring a few of us who either have the time l 1
23 or are paid to be here really serve to close out the i
24 public, and we're seeing it across the board. We're 1 25 seeing it at the state level.
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. < l 56 i As for the advisory groups, they really are 2 kind of an extension of the same thing. They can be good.
'3 They can be very useful, but if they're just kind of held i 4 closely rather than really having a broad public 5 involvement and representation. I 6 'There's another point. I drove down on my own )
7 dollars and whatever, and it's costly. People don't have 8 the time and they don't have the money. It doesn't mean 9 they don't want to participate, and I think that this is 10 an area where the Commission, along with other federal l 11 agencies, maybe should ask Mr. Gore if he is around next 12 year to work a little on how really to get more segments 13 of the public very much more involved.
14 Moreover, I will say this. I kind of j 15 overheard a comment from someone from another agency 16 saying, Oh, we got our little advisory group together and i
17 now we're going to be able to use that site and bring all 18 sorts of unpleasant things to it. If that's really what 19 that particular agency is doing, it will very quickly 20 destroy ~even more the credibility of your agency.
21 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Judy, and I hope that 22 whatever the results of the election are that Mr. Gore 23' will still be around next year, .at'least his family 24 probably hopes that at'any rate. But I think your point 25 is well taken that the use of advisory groups, the use of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND 1RANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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e s 57 1 workshops with invited participants, that they do have to 2 be truly representative of all the interests involved and 3 they also have to be public.
4 Do we have some follow-up on these issues from 5 anybody? Yes, Jane.
6 MS. FLEMING: I'm Jane Fleming. For some of i
7f the people here, they know I have enjoyed the full I 8 , spectrum of public participation in one way or another, no i 1
9 matter what. Many of my experiences in being a member, 10 pure member of the public and speaking to what Judy said 11 about expense, I will guarantee you this is the most 12 expensive hobby I ever could have thought of. But as a 13 pure member of the public, I have enjoyed the full 14 spectrum of this. Many of my experiences with the NRC 1
I 15 have been extremely causative, many have been extremely 16 negative and everything in between.
17 One of the experiences that Larry, you had i
18 mentioned, speaking to the 2.206 process. I have used 19 that process a few times. I have complaints with it. I
]
20 also have positive remarks about it. What Larry brought 21 forth is the fact that when using the process, even though {
22 almost-always there is a denial at the end of the process, 23 through the actual use of the process, the public can 24 bring forth issues, have a far more formal and in-depth 25 look at those issues and be assured of the fact that okay, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. s 58 1 I'm not going to get a yes at the end of the process but 2 at least there will be improvement along the way. It's 3 usually that subtle goal I am after. )
4 But within the process in my most recent use l I
l 5 of the process, I think -- and this is maybe my ego i 6 speaking-- I think it was one of my earlier 2.206 and the 7 relationship I had developed with Jim Partlow that helped 1
8 b* ring about the independent review or the reviewer, a lead 9 reviewer. Independent is where I'm leading to. I think 1
10 within the 2.206 process, what I have found is the major l 1
11 flaw is when people bring forth an issue, they're asking l 12 the NRC to go back and review that issue. I think it is l l
13 absolutely instrumental and necessary that the NRC assign I l
14 an independent reviewer. Asking the man who is the lead !
15 man in the NRC's original look or oversight of the issue, 1
1 16 then making that same person the lead to review his own l 17 work is almost asking for the impossible. A man is not 18 going to go back, review his own work, and say, Gee, I did 19 a bad job. He's not going to go to his superiors and say, 20 Hey, I didn't do my job right. It's a very unfair l
- 21. position for that man or woman, and it's also very unfair 22 to the petitioner in the issue. It needs an independent 23 review.
1 l
24 One other issue I'd like to raise on the 2.206 25 process and it's actually how I use the process which l
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t l
59 1 isn't quite right. The major 2.206s I have presented htvs-2 actually been requests to NRC to go back and review their 3 procedures. I am not out looking for shut it down. I'm 4 really not looking to affect a license unless the NRC's 5 own review of their own work realizes something was 6 missing and they should affect a license. There isn't 7 anything within the NRC that really aroused me to go in 8 and say, Look, NRC, I've reviewed this work you've done 9 and I think you failed in your own process or you made 10 mistakes in your own process. There isn't anything that I 11 can say, Gee, I want to bring this to the attention of the 12 NRC. It will receive an independent review from XYZ 13' section. They will look at how the NRC participated in 14 its own process, whether it's the licensing process, 15 whether it's review of a task force, whether it's a review 16 of emergency planning. I think these are issues that have 17 to step into a whole new world. How does the NRC review 18 themselves in the processes they have been going through?
19 MR. CAMERON: And I think that's probably 20 related to an issue that is discussed in the paper on 21, regulatory excellence which is going to be the third paper 22 this morning, so I think that --
23 MS. FLEMING: It does touch on it.
24 MR. CAMERON: -- we should revisit that there 25 also. Larry, do you have any comments on Jane's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N.W.
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60 1 suggestions?
2 MR. CHANDLER: Although Jane and I have not 3 met, in the past I've had the pleasure of looking at a 4 number of her documents over the years. t 5 MS. JOHNSRUD: Lucky man. I 6 MR. CHANDLER: And I know from what she speaks 7 in terms of her requests for independent reviews of the 8 w'ay in which the agency has done business in the area of 9 emergency planning. We're faced with some realities.
10 That is, we have a finite staff and a finite level of i 1
11 expertise within the agency that can be brought to bear on j 12 questions. The 2.206 process is really not geared to 13 that. It is geared rather to seeking enforcement action 3 14 regarding a particular licensee, but I think at the same 15 time any request that we do receive for sort of an 1
~
16 introspective look at the way in which we've done our 17 piece of the thing, whatever the thing may be, any 18 correspondence and questions raised are responded to and 19 they're taken very, very seriously. They do receive a 20 great deal of attention. !
21 We may have to agree at some point to disagree 22 on issues. I'm not suggesting you on that but just as a 23 general proposition. But we do look and take very 24 seriously the suggestions from any member of the public 4
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61 1 generic review has been flawsd. Certainly if people have 2 suggestions for improvemente, they are received and 3 responded to and appreciated. If you've got something of 4 a more formal level, say in the nature of a suggestion for 5 rulemaking, I think you're aware of the rulemaking process
(-
6 which is available to the members of the public also by 7 which change can be affected in the way in which we do 8 btisiness. We do get requests.
9 One person who comes to mind and I've met this 10 person just once, Susan Hyatt. I don't know that I'd 11 recognize her today, but she's with a citizen's group in 12 Ohio and she's very active and she's used the rulemaking i
13 process and other processes on any number of occasions to i
14 seek change in the way in which we do business. It is i 1
! 15 used by citizens, by citizen groups, as well as by l l
16 licensees and the Commission itself to have things 17 changed.
. 18 MS. FLEMING: If I could just make one last 4
19 statement. As you were talking, it brought it to mind.
20 Judy mentioned this, too. I have found oftentimes, and 21 this is almost getting into that forbidden word, 22 personalities and what not, but as soon as you went into a 23 2.206 process, you do enter into and there's almost a get 4
24 your hair up stand off guard. It's adversarial no matter 25 how friendly you try to make it. It becomes adversarial, 4
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62 1 and that's a real problem. That's a problem that dosa 2 exist within the culture of the NRC that I hope we see 3 sliding away from a little, but it does exist and it 4 exists on the public side, too. I'm not putting all the 5 blame there. The public is equally as adversarial in many 6 positions.
7 MR. CHANDLER: I appreciate, I respect your !
8 pbint of view on that, and I hope it changes, at least to j 9 that extent.
10 MR. CAMERON: We have to wrap up here shortly, ,
l 11 but we've heard some constructive suggestions on a number 12 of issues. Going back to 2,206, there are people in the I 13 room who are interested in the 2.206 process, either from 14 the perspective of filing a petition or from an individual ;
1 15 licensee perspective of having their particular facility 16 or whatever be the subject of a 2.206 petition. Does 17 anybody from-whatever perspective have any comments on 18 Jane's proposal for an independent review and is it clear 19 what that issue is all about? Jim.
20 MR. RICCIO: Hi. My name is Jim Riccio. I'm 21 with Public Citizen. I participated in the 2.206 review 22 years ago. It was at that point in time when Mr. Partlow 23 said basically that there was a problem with basically 24 having to go back to the people who had the expertise, and 25 we recognize that as a problem. The only thing is if you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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63 1 don't allow for independent review, as Jana says, you're 2 going to get people who automatically become defensive.
3 There's also the problem of there are times in l 4 the very recent past where we've had problems with .
l 5 basically the agency not doing its job, and there is no !
6 mechanism other than going to the Inspector General, who l
7 is basically flooded at this point, to get those issues 8 a'ddressed. I think there's a definite need for some 1
9 avenue where the public can access the agency as well as 1 10 having an opportunity to comment on something that might 11 be going on within the industry.
12 MR. CAMERON: I think there's a hint of 13 institutional mechanism of some type of an institutional 14 change there. I don't know. An ombudsman, a public 15 advocate or something like that that seems to be tied into l l
16 these suggestions. '
17 Any further comments on this whole issue?
18 okay. Well, thank you for being concise and also for 19 being constructive. Let's take a break and be back here 20 at 10:15 and we're going to have Ed Jordan talking to us 21 about the next issue.
22 (Off the record for a 23 minute break at 10:04 23 a.m.)
24 MR. CAMERON: Okay, if we could just, 25 everybody could take their seats, we're going to get l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 rho 0E ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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64 1 started on the next paper.
2 (Pause.)
3 Okay, before we turn to Ed Jordan, who is 4 going to talk about the paper on the role of the industry, 5 I would just mention one thing to think about. I don't 6 know if we have time to discuss this later on or tomorrow, 7 but in terms of the public, the communications paper, 8 tl'iere was an option that had a heavy emphasis on public 9 education which is sort of an interesting subject. We 10 really didn't get a chance to get into that too much.
11 Richard Ratliff from the Organization of Agreement States ;
12 talked a little bit about combining options 2 and 3, but 13 just think about the public education issue when you're 14 thinking about your comments. And secondly, I would ask l l
15 Jim Milhoan to straighten out some serious Commission
, 16 personnel matters for us. l l
17 (Laughter.)
18 MR. MILHOAN: Thank you very much, Chip. I l
19 did note that I got some comments during the break about l l
20 my notification that Luis Reyes has on his geographical 21 move to Region III and it was the first time that he had l
22 heard that so --
I .
23 (Laughter.)
l i
24 So I would like to correct the record. Luis 25 will still be DRA in Region II and that he has not had a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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65 1 1 geographical move because of this meeting yet.
2 (Laughter.)
2 i
1
- 3 But I did want to correct that standpoint for .
4 the place where Luis is at the present time.
, i 5 MR. CHANDLER: Chip, before you resume, if I 6 could add one comment to the observation you just made in 7 soliciting further comment, particularly on the 8 educational-aspect.
9 What are the thoughts that people would focus
- 10 on.in going to comment from that perspective? What are '
11 the thoughts that the steering committee gave in its i
12 consideration? Was the aspect of whether getting too i 13 involved in educational process had some perhaps negative 14 connotations in terms of the Agency's role as a regulatory 1
, 15 agency as distinct or as opposed to an agency which had
\
16 some promotional kind of role, trying to draw lines l;
17 between informing and educating the public about that i 18 which we as regulators do versus coming across as someone 19 who is advocating the view that nuclear energy or the'use ;
I '
20 of nuclear materials is a good thing? In other words, the 21 need to maintain a neutrality in the process and 22 objectivity at arm's length in our prospective 23 responsibilities. That was one of the thoughts that was I
24- factored in and you might want to consider it as well.
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66 \
1 think, is the essence of the issue there. So thank you l 2 for providing that clarification. Maybe we will have a 3 chance to discuss this issue later, but let's go to Ed i 4 Jordan for the paper on the role of the industry.
5 Ed is the Director of our Office of AEOD and 6 I'm going to perhaps let him explain what that is.
7- (Laughter.)
8 MR. JORDAN: It's difficult even for me 9 sometimes. It's the Office for Analysis and Evaluation of 10 Operational Data. It was generally at Three Mile Island
{
11 Outgrowth Office that is to do an independent assessment !
12 of operating experience and convey that experience both to f 1
13 the industry and to the public and to the NRC to try to {
l 14 cause or be assured that lessons of experience didn't get l
15 missed. .
16 This strategic assessment has been a very !
17 interesting experience. We've gone through a lot of 1 18 material and we've had extensive interactions within l
19 ourselves and I think it is really about time to have 20 interactions with industry and the public.
I
- 21. The DSI that I'll talk about, 13, is the 22 briefing of it is informing its regulatory 23 responsibilities, what consideration should NRC give to 24 industry activities and it's obvious that that particular 25 direction setting issue cuts across all of the regulatory l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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67 ,
1 activities the. Agency has with respect to' materials, fuel 2 facilities, reactors and of course,-affects the public 3 since if there is.a shift in the role between the NRC and 1
-4 the regulated, then the public needs to understand that.
]
5 And I would say first of all, there has been a shift.
6 It's been a continual change that's evolved over time, I 1
'7 think in a very interesting way, but it's evolved in that ;
8 manner absent an overall or explicit policy by the NRC.
9 It has been one of opportunity, one in which where the 10 industry has made a proposal and the NRC has embraced it 11 within the statutory limits, then it has occurred. Where 12 there has been an interaction with the NRC and the 13 industry over a particular problem and there has been 14 evolved additional effort on the part of the industry, 15 that has been the outcome.
- I 16 That balance and interface is different across 17 each of the licensed activities that the NRC deals with 18 and it's also different within programs. So the 19 opportunity here is there something that the NRC should do 20 in a more overt fashion or a more structured and organized 21 way to make that role clear, more consistent.
22 There's some external factors that are also l
l 23 involved in this and I would give a brief summary and then 24 I'll talk about each one of them. Certainly the NRC
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68 '
l 1 budget. Our FTE ceiling limit is coming down each year. )
2 So resources are constrained as they are in industry.
3 Industry is also tightening its belt and faces efforts to 4 make things more efficient. The NRC also has that 5 pressure.
6 We have a desire to move towards performance-I 7 based risk-informed regulations and so how does one do l
8 t' hat in the context of the ratio of regulatory activities 9 by the NRC versus the industry?
10 I think inherent in that is the issue of if 11 one shifts that ratio, if one changes the interactions and 12 interface that we have, how do we both insure the public 13 health and safety and maintain the public trust? There !
i 14 would be a problem if NRC suddenly ceased to exist and the l 1
15 industry self-regulated. Clearly, there would be a I
16 problem in the area of the public trust. And so I think-17 we have to look at each of those aspects.
18 In the slide that we're looking.at now, there 19 is a concern, of course, about features that legislation 20 clearly ~ requires and I'll give an example. The licensing
- 21. activities is something that the legislation requires. It 22 would require a change in legislation to transfer that i 23 responsibility and in large measure to the licensed 24 organizations. There is a potential conflict of interests 25 on the part of industry in doing self-oversight. These NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS !
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. s 69 1 are conflicts that are both real and in some cases 2 perceived conflicts that we all have to be conscious of.
3 There is certainly an issue of assuring the public access 4 to information if the industry had a larger role in 5 regulating itself, a necessary feature of that larger role 6 is the continued access to the information associated with 7 that activity to the public.
l 8 There have been substantial improvements in i L >
9 the safety performance of the power reactor segment of the 10 regulated industry and these are seen through the l 11 performance indicators, the frequency of arrival of f
l 12 transients, the safety system actuations, the personnel 13 exposure per plant and so on. So those are clear, i
14 demonstrable improvements, reductions in risk and those '
15 are I would say measurable. We have greater difficulty 16 measuring trends in some of-the other. licensed and 17 regulated activities, but certainly improvement.and 1
18 performance is a basis for considering a reduction in the j 1
19 level of regulation.
I 20 The effects of economic -- and then looking 21 further forward, the effects of economic competition on 22 decisions, of licensee decisions, there is the concern 23 that economic pressure would cause licensed activities to 24 be less conservative and therefore one would worry about j 25 transferring further responsibility based on those ;
I i
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. - i 70 1 aspects. Next slide.
2 .Certainly-the regulated industry has concerns 3 over the impact of regulatory activities, increased 4 regulation in the area of course affects economics and 5 with respect to that activity and a stable process is one 6 that is one of the principles of good regulation. Codes 7 and standards development, now we're -- the speakers here
- l 8 are to identify the options and when we develop these l l
9 papers the options were not to have a bias or a prejudice 1 10 associated with them and I'll have to show my prejudice a 11 little bit with regards to this codes or standards 12 ' development. This is an area that I personally believe is 13 worthy of consideration and the Commission, in fact, of 14 their preliminary decision agrees. This is an investment
- 15 that the industry makes and the sense is that there may be l
l 16 a need for increased investment or certainly maintaining l
17 this-investment since if one goes to a less prescriptive 18 regulatory framework, risk-informed performance-based then i l
- 19. the existence of industry and current well-maintained 20 industry guides, codes and standards is a real backbone 1
- 21. for such a transition.
22 The declining resources of the NRC challenge 23 our ability to implement a. revised framework so one, in 24 order to make a change, you have to invest and then reap -!
1 ~
25 the rewards subsequent so in making a big effort in this d
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. s 1 71 ;
i i direction, wa recognize that it would be a cost the NRC, 2 it would also be a cost to the industry to reap the 3 benefits in the later years.
4 Next page, please. There were five options 5 that were proposed in the paper and the options were )
1 6 perhaps oversimplified but the first was simply continue 1
7 the current program which is an evolutionary program; as ;
J 8 opportunities arise, if the regulator sees that the I 9 industry identifir-s that we would respond and negotiate 10 and work out appropriate interface.
11 Th. .. ext option was to more aggressively on 12 the part of the NRC cause an expansion of the role of i
13 industry. The third was increase the accreditation and i l
14 certification. The fourth is increase the interaction j l
15 with industry and professional groups and this is on the !
16 codes and standards that I mentioned and then the last was 17 a designated industry representative and you can leave 18 that slide up and I'll talk about each one a little bit.
19 The first, to continue the current level of 20 effort, it would ba unfair to say that that effort is not 21 considerable. It is. The operator licensing examination
, 22 program for reactors has certainly evolved and there has l
l 23 been a significant transfer and a benefit both to the 24 regg'ator and the regulated in that area.
25 Standard technical specifications for power l
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. e 72 1 reactors is an area that both the regulator and regulated 2 are interactive and having a more consistent set of 1
3 technical specifications for plants that have a basis that i
e is ascribed with less emphasis on the value in the tech 5 spec and more emphasis on the basis so that neither the 6 NRC nor the regulated have to make so many changes to the 7 technical specifications in time. It's been a beneficial 8 effort.
9 The ability for the industry for power 10 reactors to make minor changes in quality assurance 11 emergency planning and security planning without 12 submitting to the NRC is a mutual benefit. We have had 13 substantial, I think, success with self-assessments by 14 utilities and the NRC then reviewing the self-assessment 15 that was conducted as opposed to doing a separate NRC
]
)
16 review with large resources. I would identify
]
17 considerations for credit by the NRC for the American 18 Society for Nondestructive testing for certifying !
l 19 radiographers and in consideration for the rule change 20 that would provide for increased credit there.
21 The issues associated with that option are l
22 that the NRC costs would slowly, continually decrease, 23 that the licenses workload associated with self-regulation i 24 would slowly, gradually increase as would the reliance on 25 industry and the offect on the credibility to the public NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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i 73 1 is generally unchanged, legislation would not be required i
2 and licensee performance is not expected to be directly 3 affected.
4 The second option is the aggressive or 5 expansion of the industry's role in inspection and t
- 6 performance monitoring and there it would be a cost that 7 would initially increase. There would be an investment up 8 f'ront and it would cause an investment on the part of the 9 industry and there is a question of the credibility of the 10 NRC to the public, whether there would be a decline in 11 that one would anticipate there may be.
I 12 There may be instances where legislative 13 action be required for such actions. The third option was 14 increase the accreditation of licensee activities and this i 15 is qualified industry groups, professional societies that )
16 would provide thir accreditation process and the cost and 17 the issues are much the same as'the previous option.
1 18 The fourth option is the cooperation of i
19 industry groups and this would be the aggressive 20 regulation by the NRC, development of codes and standards i 21 and guidance and NRC endorsement. This would be costly up 22 front for the NRC to make this promulgation occur and then 4 23 a subsequent decease in costs. The industry workload 24 would increase and would be expected to be higher with of 25 course the lesser impact from the regulations themselves NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. s 74 1 for the regulated, by the regulated.
2 I do not expect legislation to be required and 3 I would expect that performance would improve. This is, I l
4 think, one of the attractive features of that particular i
5 option. !
1 6 The last option is a designated industry l 7 representative and this is a representative or 8 r'epresentatives of industry that would be authorized by 9 the NRC to conduct NRC-like functions and this would be j 10 oversight functions for complex or specialized activities.
q And this would once again be somewhat expensive up front 11 12 for the NRC, but then a decrease and there may be an ,
13 effect on the NRC's credibility. There would be 14 legislation required in some areas perhaps, but there may
- 15 be benefits in actual performance, based on a greater buy- ,
16 in by the regulated organizations.
17 Could I have the next slide, please? The l 18 preliminary views of the Commission were, I would say it's 19 sort of a combination of option 1 and option 2. Option 1 20 was to continue doing what we were doing. This says apply 21 Option 1 but move this as expeditiously as possible within l
22 budget constraints. So it's One Plus is maybe the way to 23 put it.
l 24 The Commission proposed that the staff would i 25 develop -- evaluate on a case-by-case basis initiatives I
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75 1 that are offered by the industry and it further indicated 2 that we should develop guidance in criteria for evaluating 3 those proposals so that there would be a more consistent 4 basis for the staff acceptance. And the other option --
5 next slide, please -- would be to increase our emphasis 6 and focus on interacting with industry, professional 7 societies and technical institutes to develop new codes 8 a'nd standards. And of course I have to smile, because I 9 really like that one.
10 There at the initial activities should focus 11 on the standards development in PRA and medical use area.
12 So that was direction in the preliminary decision that the ;
13 Commission would give to the staff.
14 And it also went on to suggest that the staff 15 should identify areas where there are needs for new code 16 standards and guides and to provide recommendations for i 17 areas of emphasis. So that's the summary, the overview of 18 this direction-setting issue and I'd like to open it up .
l 19 for questions and comments from this assembled group.
20 MR. CAMERON: Does he have one more?
21 MR. JORDAN: All right, put up the last slide.
22 (Laughter.) .
I 23 MR. CAMERON: He thought he could get away 24 with it.
25 (Laughter.)
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e ,a l 76 1 MR. JORDAN: It's a good try. The Commission 2 did advise the staff that although they didn't at this 3 point adopt the designated industry representative in 4 their preliminary decisions, that they were still 5 interested, that they felt that there may be some 6 potential use for this area and so it would be -- the -
7 staff would be urged to examine it and come back to the 8 Commission at some later date. So it was -- there may be 9 some comments on whether you feel that the designated 10 representative approach has benefits.
11 MR. CAMERON: Just for clarification, 12 particularly because it's something that you're very 13 supportive of, it is in the issues paper and I think most #
14 people }now how this works, but could you just briefly ;
15 give a description of how the consensus standards process
'l 16 works, how that relates to NRC rule making? I think that l 17 might be useful information for the further discussion of 18 this. l 19 MR. JORDAN: The NRC and industry and 20 particularly in the power reactor area, have enjoyed over 21 the years, I think, a very useful productive interaction 22 on codes and standards and I would give the ASME Section I
23 11 and Section 3 as being a marvelous example where very 1 24 well written strongly sul.,prtive code by a professional i 25 society and across the industry is then the basis for the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. 1 NRC not to write more prescriptive rules and provide 2 requirements of its own. We endorse through regulatory
! 3 guides and through rules those codes and standards. There 4 is a range of I'll say guidance documents, codes and l 5 standards that some of them are obligatory, some parts of 6 codes are obligatory and are therefore requirements and 7 some parts are merely guidance tc. good practices and the 8 NRC has found those to be especially uaeful. The idea 9 that those evolve with time, that as experience is i
$ 10 obtained and inspection with regards to section 11 of i 11 components systems and piping, that what we learn is then l
1 12 fed back into a code revision that is periodically <
13 updated. That's a very healthy scheme. It's a perfect 1
14 way to work. The U.S. has had leadership over the years 15 in the' code process. If you look internationally, the
- 1 16 U.S. is losing that leadership thtt some of our foreign 17 friends are, in fact, promulgating on codes and standards j 18 for wider areas than the U.S. presently applies them, so
, 19 that's part of my personal view of why this is a very 1
l 20 interesting area.
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. Thank you, Ed.
4 22 Do we have some comme:.t.,, questions on regulatory 23 excellence and keep in mind these focus questions, 24 accuracy of assumptions, anything important that was
! ~
25 omitted from the report or from the issues paper that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND 1RANSCRIBERS
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1 might influence what strategic direction the Commission
)
2 might move towards?
3 Yes. Richard, we have one over here, so just 4 hold on one second. Go ahead.
5 MR. CRITES: Tom Crites, Gaithersburg. I'm 6 familiar with the standards process that has been used by 7 NRC drawing upon the industry, but I believe there's a 8 potential for conflict of interest as industry 1
9 participates so closely in writing standards that are 10 incorporated into rules and I'm curious that you don't 11 mention greater reliance on the national laboratories for 12 assistance in this area.
13 MR. JORDAN: Okay, we certainly believe that 14 the national labs through direct contracts with the NRC 15 andtechnicalsupportprovideadvicetothefuu: technical 16 staff on the various technical issues and the national lab 17 process f'or supporting codes and standards. The National 18 Institute of Testing is clearly a part of it so I did 19 understate that. Good point.
20 MR. CAMERON: Do you have a further suggestion l
21 on how the national labs might be involved in this other 22 than the role that Ed just described? )
l i
23 MR. CRITES: Not specifica: ly. There was an i 24 illusion in the legislation that divided up the AEC into 25 NRC and eventually DOE of continued reliance by both NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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lj 79 1 agencies or the national laboratories of the resource. I 2 see at the Department of Energy very heavily relying on 3 them because they are their primary contractors, but I 4 don't see quite that same involvement from NRC.
5 I'm curious. It looks like a continuation 4
6 here of not valuing those.
7 MR. CAMERON: And that's an accurate 8 c'haracterization of the legislation. An illusion, is that 9 what you called it?
10 (Laughter.)
I 11 Okay, Richard?
12 MR. RATLIFF: Richard Ratliff, representing
^
13 the Organization of Agreement States. Of all the options, 14 we favor option 4. We feel that this is the best approach j 15 for involving industry and maintaining credibility still l
16 with the public. Several states have successfully 17 implemented programs to get active participation in the 18 professional groups and the public in rule making i
19 activities. Meeting and interacting on a regular basis l 20 with professional societics and groups such as the health
- 21. physicists and medical physicists and others, including 22 public and people that we regulate to get their input and 23 resolve specific-regulatory issues have been very 24 successful. Several states actually put on regulatory 25 conferences where they invite the general public, all the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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80 1 people they regulate to come and tell them if they're 2 doing bad, how can they improve it? If they're doing 3 good, how can they make it even better? So I think that 4 interaction on a local level where you involve people 5 really is beneficial.
6 We think in some cases expanded self-7 assessments, maybe coupled with longer inspection 8 ihtervals. In fact, sometimes what we've done in areas 9 like gauging, devices where states usually have shorter 10 intervals and even in four years or five years it's still 11 a desirable interval of actually NRC process is sending 12 our self-assessment forms for the people who remember they 13 do have the devices and they do check them before they
- 1. 4 have a five year inspection. We think these types of 15 areas will work. We really, however, feel that it would 16 difficult to have industry groups self-policing themselves 17 without significant changes in the present regulatory 18 structure and culture.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Richard. I 20 assume that by Option 4 you' re talking about increased 21 interaction with industry and professional groups?
22 MR..RATLIFF: Correct.
23 MR. CAMERON: And when you say self-policing, 24 are you referring to that concept broadly or are you 25 referring to the designated representative concept NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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s 81 1 specifically?
2 MR-. RATLIFF: I think it's a combination of 3 both, Chip,-because we really feel that there are certain 4 areas that if you don't have. regulatory oversight you'll 5 have problems and will bring us out even more in DSI 2 6 with DOE and things we feel that need to be done there.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Do we have !
8 s'ome further comments?
9 Roy?
10 MR. BROWN: Roy Brown. I'm Chairman of the 11 Council on Radionuclides and Radiopharmaceuticals, CORAR.
i 12 CORAR would like to see a combination of these options.
13 We feel there's some benefit in 2, 3 and 4, with option 2 14 expanding the role of industry. We feel there's a great l 15 deal of expertise now out in the industry and that can be 1
16 taken advantage of by the NRC. i 17 Option 3, we also feel has some applicability :
18 here. We would like to see the accreditation programs 19 expanded. Right now the accreditation program that most 20 affects our industry is the NVLAP program on dosimetry.
21 We feel that's been very, very effective and that's been a 22 program set up outside of NRC. We feel that dosimetry 23 results now are much, much better than before in NVLAP 24 before dosimetry was put into place.
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s ,
82 1 feel the industry can offer some support in developing 2 standards and guidance and codes.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Roy. One, I 4 ' guess one thing I'd like to put on the floor for 5 clarification is Ed described the Commission's option as 6 sort of a One Plus. In other words, to be prepared for 7 expanding the role of industry on : case by case basis and 8 I' guess for the benefit of all of us, could Ed or I think 9' Richard did give some examples, Roy, anybody talk about 10 what types of case by case examples might there be where 11 the industry would be more involved and keying on 12 something else you said at the beginning of your 13 presentation, Ed, about making sure that the public isn't s
14 sort of lost in the shuffle on these. What types of 15 changes might we have to make to insure that the public 16 was involved in these types of efforts?
17 MR. JORDAN: Well, certainly maintaining the 18 public credibility is one of the criteria for considering 19 each of the options. And it would take, I think, overt 20 action to make sure that the public was apprised of a 21 transition that we're incurring and that there would be 22 clear opportunity for comment.
23 In the larger steps that we've taken in the l
24 policy with regards to our reactor operator 1
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.. i 83 1 certifications that was a fairly extensive process and did i
- 2 have a great deal of interaction, public comment and I believe that that might be the model that one would follow 3
4 in the larger activity transitions so that it's aired
'1 5 there, policy statements, commission meetings, notices and
] .
6 so I would expect to follow that same sort of a process to 7 communicate widely so that you didn't take a step that was 4
8 objectionable to the public, that it, in fact, was a t
9 logical step in each case and that's been a benefit in the 10 evolutionary process, that these things are happening 1
11 fairly slowly. There would be a risk in accelerating it, 12 that the regulator and the industry might move too fast 13 and might run off on a tangent, so it would take a very 2 14 measured approach. I i
15 MR. CAMERON: So there is a model though that
~
l i 16 we have used in the past on this. l 17 Frank Miraglia?
18 MR. MIRAGLIA: Thanks. I'11 answer to just l
The comments that there was interest in 19 about anything.
l 20 2, 3, 4, and 5. I think it's important to note and if you !
l 21 read the issue paper and add " alluded to it" is that the
, 22 current program has elements of each of those in it right i
23 now and the key operative word in those other options are 24 expand and increase. In other words, do more and be more 25 aggressive and so the current program, I think, Larry NEAL R. GROSS COURT R;" PORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. e i 84 1 indicated earlier that -- I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call 2 attention to it. We have a personal relationship and he !
3 tries to be technical and I try to be legal and that 4 doesn't always work. .
5 But the point that I wanted to make is there 6 are elements of each of those in all of the options and 7 the key words are the verbs " expand" and " increase" 8 b*ecause we do -- there is a role for industry through 9 consensus standards that we have used for a long period of l 10 time and we're encoura: .g that.
11 One of the concerns that Ed raises is because 12 of the economic and dwindling resources that that's a base 13 that needs to be maintained and we need to currently and 14 assess and improve those kinds of models and roles and 15 certainly accreditation, certification is used and all of 16 those elements are within the context of the first option 17 as well.
18 Thank you.
19 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Frank. I think that was 20 a useful clarification for understanding the differences 21 between these options also.
22 Do we have some other comment, some other 23 examples of how-the industry role might be expanded? I 24 think, Roy, you talked about the dosimetry areas. Is 25 there anybody else who would like to offer some possible NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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e r 85 1 examples?
2 Go ahead, Roy.
3 MR. BROWN: Chip, I just wanted to point out, 4 there are some things the industry is doing now, the NRC 5 may not even be aware of in the radiopharmaceutical
}
6 industry, for example, we're doing a cross calibration 7 program where we have NIST develop standards, counting j 8 s'tandards, calibration standards and we have a round robin 9 calibration that goes from one manufacturer to another.
10 The NRC has nothing to do with that. The industry has 11 been doing that for years and years and it may be 12 interesting for NRC to know those sorts of things are 13 going on in the area of self-policing or self-regulation. I 14 Also, another example may be in the 15 radiopharmaceutical industry and the medica 1 industry, ,
16 sharing of best practices of companies getting together 17 and say well how do you handle this program, how do you 18 handle waste in this area and there's quite a bit of 1
19 sharing of best practices that's already going on in the 20 industry now. I just wanted to point those things out. ,
21 MR. CAMERON: Good and I hope that your 22 organization and others to the extent that you can, if you 23 can identify those in your comments, those would be 24 helpful to the NRC.
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, - r 86 l
1 particularly where you see that there is an action that 2 the NRC is taking or review process that is overly on that I
3 3 industry activity so that we can see those redundancies. I 4 MR. CAMERON: Okay, maybe to move to an option 5 that perhaps wasn't considered, but something that was )
6 referenced in the paper was the idea of a nuclear safety 7 board and I wondered if anybody has any comments on that .
- l 8 concept? Is it clear to everybody what a nuclear -- what i
- 9 the nuclear safety board concept is? And who would like 10 to explain it?
11 (Laughter.) !
12 No one. )
13 MR. JORDAN: I can explain it, but I don't ;
i 14 want to. I 15 (Laughter.)
16 MR. CAMERON: Do you want to repeat that for 17 the record to make sure they got that in?
18 MR. JORDAN: I think it's on the record. No, 1
19 a nuclear safety board concept as Congress has envisioned l 20 it would be an independent assessment by a segment of NRC !
4 1
21 and I would call it sort of a technical IG type review of 22 serious incidents and the question of whether the NRC 23 itself is sufficiently independent to conduct such 24 investigations and the reason that I said I didn't want to 25 talk about it is that's one of my responsibilities in the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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. ,o j 87 1 Office of Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data, is ,
2 to conduct those investigations of technically significant 3 incidents, whether it's a radiation exposure incident or a 4 reactor transient complications and so the NRC conducts e 5 about one for one and a half or so years, one of those 6 very intensive investigations and the last one that was 7 conducted was a radionuclide uptake that occurred at the 8 M'IT medical facilities. And so those are the -- the 9 outcome of those, of course, then identify lessons both 10 for the industry and the NRC and they're both intensive in 11 terms of NRC effort, independent with respect to the 12 program office and the regional office that are related to l
13 it and of course, they are aimed at feeding back both to 1
14 particular-licensee and the public and the industry those 15 lessons.
16 MR. CAMERON: So I guess it's not directly 17 related to one of the options here, is it?
18 MR. JORDAN: No, but I would add one thing 19 that we have made one joint review with the industry in 20 the investigation which was aimed at extracting lessons 21 from Hurricane Andrew impact on Turkey Point facility and 22 that was a particularly constructive effort in nuclear 23 power operations was the NRC's partner in that effort. It 24 did result in a substantial feedback of very positive 25 lessons for utilities that are -- that have potential NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W, (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005 3701 (202) 2344433
- s. .*
88
)
1 hurricane impacts and each year there are a number of j
1 2 hurricanes that approach the coastal regions and many, 4 3 many protective measures are taken by those utilities in
- 4 advance of the storm. Large lessons were learned and that l 5 was a joint, in a very cooperative effort.
' j
, 6 MR. CAMERON: Good. Thank you. Other !
3 I 7 comments on the role of industry?
l 8
Judy?
l 9 MS. JOHNSRUD: I may have fallen asleep in the 1 10 process of reading that DSI, but I don't recall much --
I 11 MR. CAMERON: Is the author of that paper 12 here?
13 (Laugher.)
14 MR. CHANDLER: It was Stu.
15 MS. JOHNSRUD: But I don't recall much 16 discussion of the potential impacts on industry self-l 17 regulation which is sort of the thrust of much of this of I 18 the changes in ownership and function of the electric 19 utility industry. It is obviously undergoing enormous 20 alteration and I think that the NRC had better be very 1
21 careful about incorporating in whatever decisions it makes l
22 the capability of the industry itself to provide any 23 realm, any further additional realm of self-regulation and 24 self-monitoring. I would see this as particularly 25 important as I feel the NRC is moving much more toward use ,
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89 1 of guidance, nonenforceable or minimally enforced guidance 2 as opposed to specific standards.
3 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. That may fall into 4 this category of focus question 1, a consideration that 5 perhaps we didn't consider in this area. Is three anybody 6 from the industry or the NRC staff that would like to 7 discuss whether there is a direct connection between 8 ihdustry deregulation and this whole reliance, increased 9 reliance on industry?
10 MR. JORDAN: Well, I would certainly reply
-11 that it was the intention to include that as one of the 12 factors and it is a contrary factor that is with the l
13 industry. deregulation and the emphasis on economics of the 14 utilities, whether it is appropriate and practical to 15 cause a greater role on the part of industry and it is 16 that conflict of interest issue and resources. So right, I
17 there is a clear balance and the intended -- it wasn't 18 abundantly clear. It's Stu's fault and I'll try to 19 straighten it out.
20 (Laughter.)
21 No, I'm picking on Stu because he's a nice 22 target.
23 (Laughter.)
24 MR. CAMERON: Does Stu also work for you?
25 MR. RUBIN: On the -- this is Stu Rubin.
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1 s ,.
90 1 Addressing the terminology of self-regulation, I think 2 it's important to understand the model we're really 3 looking at where we consider options 1 and 2. Both 4 options really involve going from a situation where the i'
5 NRC has a full scope activity whether it be an inspection 6 area such as team inspections involving a particular area 7 such as service water and system inspections.
l j 8 MR. CAMERON: Can you speak more directly into I
9 the microphone, Stu?
10 MR. RUBIN: Yes, whether it be performance I 11 evaluation in the area of performance indicators. There 12 again the NRC has its full scope program in place to 13 determine performance indicators industry-wide. In the )
j 14 area of licensing, operating licensing specifically, we j 15 have had in place and still have in place a full scope i
16 process. '
j 17 What we're really speaking to here is one i
18 where in a very deliberate and reviewing the licensee's 19 capabilities turning oveJ to licensees much of what we 20 would do, however, we would continue to retain oversight i
- 21. of licensee's implementation of those activities. We 22 would continue to provide an audit and review in an on-4 23 going sense. For example, in the area of team 24 inspections, that is one under the current program which 25 has already been implemented wherein the NRC was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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i 91 1 conducting inspections say in the area of service water or
- 2 safety system functional inspections. Industry requested I
l 3 an opportunity to conduct those themselves and so the NRC l
4 went through a very careful review of each licensee's 5 capability to implement that kind of an inspection at the 4
6 level of rigor and follow-up that would be expected of the 7 NRC.to conduct that inspection. And so we've established :
- j. 8 ciiteria, if you will, taking a look at the scope of,the i 9 licensee's plans for implementing such an activity, taking
,i -
1 10 a look at the qualifications of the people who will be 11 implementing that plan, insuring that we would be 12 reviewing ad approving those plans. Also, to insure that 13 there were staff in place to cbserve licensees' conduct l 14 and implementation of those plans. Furthermore, under !
15 that mode, the NRC would still go back and do a spot check 16 and audit of areas that the licensee evaluated and areas 17 not evaluated to determine if, in fact, the licensee had 18 done a credible job and si identified the issues and 19 their significance appropriately. In any event, if in 20 fact, we concluded they had not, we would then go in with -;
21 our full scope effort as a follow-on. And so we're not 22 really talking about turning over our responsibilities or 23 activities to the industry. We're talking about allowing 24 the industry to implement our activities subject to our 25 oversight at the front end, in-process and at the back NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS ;
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92
- 1 end. The net benefit is that the licensees do take on ;
2 more ownership for the process, take on more ownership for 3 the findings and implementing corrective actions and it !
- 4 does provide an opportunity for NRC to reduce the resource !
5 requirements for our limitation. !
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Stu. That was 7 a good foundation for all of thia.
l 8 Larry, did you have one comment?
9 MR. CHANDLER: Just a couple of observations l 10 in response to Judy Johnsrud's comment. We recognize that i
11 if you look at the way in which these issues have been 12 grouped into arenas, you will see, for example, the 1 13 relationship of this particular DSI and others, but a 14 number of others, among them, for example, being the one :
15 that deals with the way in which operating reactors, _
l 16 reactor oversight would be continued, I think it's DSI 11.
17 Also relates very closely to the issue of the role of 18 industry and how things could be dealt with down the road.
19 Underlying a lot of this were some very 1
20 significant legal concerns and obviously in terms of what 21 the Agency can relinquish to industry to do appropriately 22 and what the Agency's role is and must be under the law l 23 and that which can be relegated to industry activities.
24 So those are factors that really need to be considered as i
25 you go through this. You're absolutely right. '
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93 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Larry. We have 2 to move on to regulatory excellence in a moment, but I 3 just want to make sure that we give all of you a chance to 4 discuss, if you would like this idea of a designated 5 industry representative. The Commission did, I guess, 6 allude to this in their preliminary options so it's not 7 something that should go on undiscussed or uncommented on, 8 sb to speak.
9 Does anybody have anything pro or con or 10 questions to say about the designated representative 11 concept?
12 MR. BROOKMAN: Chip, while they're thinking 13 about that, I think maybe Jane had a brief follow-on 14 comment.
l 15 MS. FLEMING: Yeah, Larry, you alluded to 16 something that has concerned me for a while, the role of i 17 industry and it's perhaps a perception, but maybe you can 18 clarify it. But when the NRC in a supposed public 19 activity such as licensing uses and refers to and depends 20 on industry documents such as INPO documents that are not 21 released to the public, there's a perception there that 22 the licensing process which is to be an open and public 23 process is suddenly not fully open or public because there 24 are documents that the public does not have access to.
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1 of if we go to increased industry reliance or whatever we i
2 want to call it, what does that mean in terms of public 3 information?
4 MR. CHANDLER: Well, it's actually a 5 combination of two things. First of all, our ability to 6 rely on information which is not publicly available is 7 very, very limited. Obviously, the basis for the Agency's 8 decisions must be spread on the public record, must be t 9 available to the public. There are certain limitations lo that are recognized, certain information which can be l 11 withheld from public disclosure, commercial proprietary I
12 kinds of information, pre-decisional information, security 13 type of information, privacy type of information.
14 To the extent that is involved, certain J 15 information need not be publicly available, ,but nonpublic 16 versions of it must be there and the publicly available 1.
, 17 information generally is sufficient to support the 18 decision itself.
19 Decisions typically do not rely, for example, 20 on INPO licensing decisions, typically do not rely on INPO 21- evaluations. It may not be a matter of public record.
22 Although there have been instances in which INPO documents 23 have bene referred to in the licensing context, had a few 24 limited instances in which they have, I believe, they have i
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. , I 95 1 on generally speaking, relied on as part of the licensing 2 process.
3 MR. CAMERON: Jane, is that your -- one of 4 your points in terms of a strategic point of view is if 5 the Commission moves in these directions that they're 6 going to have to make sure that the information is 7 publicly available? Do you want to just clarify that for 8 the record?
9 MS. FLEMING: Well, basically when you try to 10 sum that up you did sort of clarify it, but the '
11 information, when the NRC which is supposedly a public 3
12 process, any information they're using must be, and with i
13 the expanded role of industry, with any aspects of these, !
I 14 you're getting more and more into that very questionable l l
15 territory, in some of the recent licensing activities,
)
16 which has been one, there was a dependence upon INPO 17 documents. Now whether or not the overview of those 18 documents did become apparently clear to the public, the 1
19 public really can't tell that, because they don't have 20 access to the documents and this, I see where we're moving 21 toward more and more use of expansion of the industry's 22 role here. I see more and more chance of at least a 23 perception of conflict, if not the actual conflict.
24 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much.
25 MR. JORDAN: It is a very good comment. It is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. 1 96 1 one of those key factors that we showed in one of the 2 slides that the idea of assuring public access to industry 3 safety information is something that must continue under 4 any shifting role arrangements, so I think it will be 5 incumbent on the NRC in deciding to make a shift that the 6 data that supports a finding would be publicly available.
7- MR. CAMERON: Okay, anybody on designated 8 fepresentative? Is there any interest on that topic?
l l
9 MR. JORDAN: Nice try. !
1 10 MR. CAMERON: All right, okay. Let's now go l l
11 to Stu Rubin who wrote the last paper and possibly this l 1
12 paper, I guess. And Ed is going to do the presentation 13 and this is on regulatory excellence.
14 MR. JORDAN: Stu was the author of the papers 15 and did a superlative job, I think, capturing our 16 concepts. The concepts did come out through the steering 17 committee reviews and this DSI is one that's unique among 18 the set.because this is totally internally directed. We 19 need your view as stakeholders, but it is entirely 20 internally directed. So it's stated quite clearly on the 21 first slide, how can NRC enhance regulatory excellence 22 through maintenance of regulatory standards, rules and 23 requirements? And that's a little too restrictive in 24 terms of the overall view.
25 I should tell you how this particular NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoOE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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97
, 1 direce!.ve setting issue came about. The steering l
2 committee in conducting its reviews and trying to extract
- 3 issues out of the documents that have been created j 4 believed initially that the idea of the staff's 5 performance that excellence among the staff was really imbued in each of the options or in some of the options 6
7 associated with the various issue papers and that one 8 could see from the range of options that there was an 9 intent on the part of the staff or on the part of the 10 steering committee to cause excellence to occur in the 11 regulatory performance of our duties. ;
12 Well, despite that, if you read the words, l
13 there was an awful lot of pressure associated with the l 14 options and direction setting issues with regards to 1
1 15 efficiency on reducing the regulatory burden or for 16 instance, in reducing the regulatory oversight as we just ,
l a
17 talked about in the previous paper and if you really !
l ;
i !
. 18 looked at the words, there wasn't very much about i
19 excellence among the things that the NRC does and so based 20 on this further review and there have been instances
- 21 recently, inutances of breakdowns of NRC performance 22 internally, identified the need for separate and a unique
- 23 internally focused direction-setting issue.
24 The bases are that the current external and
?
25 internal forces are directed towards reducing regulatory i
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a 98 1 burden in industry, reducing NRC costs, improving 2 efficiency, developing performance based risk informed 3 regulations or regulatory scheme which summed up may 4 inadvertently adversely affect the NRC safety culture and 5 so that's, I guess, the most succinct way I could put it 6 and then the question is should the NRC management and 7 staff actively seek regulatory excellence.
8 We need to define regulatory excellence, 9 regulatory excellence for the purposes of this discussion 10 is defined as a dedication to safety, a commitment to the 11 principles of good regulation and the pursuit of superior 12 staff performance. And then I have to differentiate it 13 that the NRC pursuit of regulatory excellence for the NRC 14 staff is, in fact, differentiated from the perception by 15 industry that the NRC applies a rising standard of 16 excellence to licensed safety performance. This is really 17 for-each of the things that the NRC staff does that we're 18 seeking to do those in an exemplary way. And so it is 19 not, should not be construed as a quest for excellence in 20 itself from the licensed and regulated industry.
21 I think we can argue, we can say that many 22 improvements have been made and are -- they continue to be 23 made within the NRC based on internal and external lessons 24 by NRC initiatives. This proposal is for a highly 25 proactive campaign that is unique to the NRC to seek NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE IStAND AVE., N.W.
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- a. e* 1 99 l 1 imprv.umsnt'in all NRC activities.
2 I have the key -- you have the key factor
]
i 3 slide up. I've walked over those factors, but I'd like to l 4 reiterate some of these issues.
5 And the first one is clearly -- hit on the !
6 ideas of improving the effectiveness of the regulatory .
7 framework. That is a clear goal in this-direction setting -!
i 8 i'ssues. !
1 !
9 I have covered the second one. The third one i I
11 is that recent initiatives and certain strategic 11 assessmer.t rebaselining may inadvertently create the i i
12 attitude among staff that regulatory efficiency is a l 13 priority objective as an alternative to the fundamental i
14 commitment to regulatory excellence and effectiveness. j i
15 I don't.think I can emphasize that feature too J l
16 much.
17 The next slide. Certainly the idea of the-18 changes that improve the efficiency of regulation for the 19 NRC and the efficiency of compliance for licensees have 20 been of interest and certainly licensees have not 21 emphasized changes specifically focused on enhancing 22 regulatory effectiveness.
23 And the last one on this slide is a declining 24 agency budget and the adverse effects it has of resources 25 being available for effectiveness for activities.
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100 1 Next slide. Once again, in reiterating the )
J credibility of the NRC as an effective regulator has J
2 4
This would be a measure to restore 3 declined recently.
l .
4 that credibility to the public and to the regulated I 5 industry and to ourselves.
6 Could I have the options slide? This paper is !
l 7 certainly one in which there was no option to do less. In 8 s6me cases, the papers identify what we could do less, we 9 could do more, we could do the same. This starts with we 10 could continue the current approach. We could initiate a 11 more proactive approach and I think you can see where I i
)
12 come out and where the Commission comes out as well in j i
13 terms of picking options. I'll explain a little more 14 Option 1 and it is fair to say that there are substantive 15 processes that are occurring, the program performance l !
- 16 self-assessments. There are assessments of each of our l
17 activities by the program offices. Luis Reyes will attest 18 to the evaluations that the regions got, the programs that i 19 they're responsible for both reactors and materials and 20 emergency preparedness.
21 The NRC is, we feel, a learning organization.
22 WE respond to the Office of Inspector General audits, to 23 do research activities, but in this case there's a '
24 question of whether that's enough, whether we need a more 25 overt a.c direct effort.
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101 1 Currently, assessments both find and then l
2- result in fixes to specific framework weaknesses and we !
3 would expect under Option 1 to continue to be responsive i
4 to those externally identified weaknesses.
5 The issues associated with Option 1 are that !
4 l
1 6 the current level resources that we spend in responding to ,
7 internal lessons and external lessons would continue so
, 8 there would be not a change in those resources. The ratio .
1 i
f 1 9 of proactive to reactive improvements would remain the 10 same and there is a concern that the regulatory efficiency :
i 11 initiatives would erode the staff safety vigilance and so 12 I think that's the principe.1 reasoning that the committee ;
i 13 felt that a legulatory effectiveness initiative was an q
)
\
14 appropriate one to consider very strongly.
15 Of course, under continuing the current 16 option, the NRC credibility as an effective regulator 17 would be continuing at roughly the same level.
18 With regards to initiating a more proactive 19 approach to improvement, there would be a number of 20 measures and I would explain that some of it is process 21 ar.d the paper proposes to establish a senior management 22 review group that would periodically review the process, 23 the internal processes for improving regulatory 24 effectiveness, for seeking excellence and that would be 25 certainly a key step to cause senior managers in the NEAL R. GROSS ,
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s .
102 1 Agency to be a part of a review group and to carry back to 2 their respective organizations those principles and 3 measures and the cause and implementation program to occur 4 from the ground roots. l I
5 The key issues regarding a more proactive 1 6 approach to improvement, it would require a substantial l 7 application of resources and management attention at the 8 f'ront end. Once Jain, you have to invest in order to '
l 9 benefit. That investment would be expected to cause l 10 awareness of the improvement activities, to increase the 11 pace of programmatic improvements internally and we 12 believe that it would improve the Agency's credibility as j l
13 an effective regulator. )
14 Go to the next slide, please. The 15 Commission's preliminary views were that the staff should 16 develop and implement strategies designed to improve its 17 internal performance and so they proposed to adopt the 18 Option 2 approach to take a more proactive approach to i
19 improvement and they extended it by saying it should be !
20 broadly' applied to all NRC activities. It supported the 21 NRC's mission that the staff should identify goals and 22 milestones and provide a message to engage the work force 4
23 at the grassroots level. And the Commission direction was 24 to go across all of the regulatory and support areas with 25 programs so it would be starting the program in a very NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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103 1 broad fashion. The paper that you've read proposed to 2 initiate a program and to begin small and grow it. This 3 would be purely a decision by the Cott. mission would be to 4 begin a program that's broadly applied to all of the 1
5 activities in the Agency and to put a lot of resources in 6 and expect a lot of benefits out.
7 So that's the summary of this particular 8 p' aper. I would reiterate that it is an internal paper and 9 we're very interested in your views and your perceptions 10 based on what you read and what you've heard.
11 MR. CAMERON: Is there one mere slide? You've 12 got them all.
13 (Laugher.)
14 I don't think that anybody would argus with 15 the fact that regulatory excellence is an important 16 objective. The question is is what's the best way to do 17 that and I guess the proposal from the steering committee 18 was a senior management review group and I would turn to 19 all of you for comments on the regulatory excellence 20 objective, but also on how the NRC might best get to that 21 particular objective and Jim, you made a comment before 22 that was sort of -- that tied into this and would you mind 23 just restating your comment for us that you made in 24 relationship to 2.206 and some other mechanism other than
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104 1 you would want to add on this otherwise add on this inaua.
i 2 MR. RICCIO: Jim Riccio. I do think it needs 1 1
j 3 to be an avenue that's opened up where -- whereby the 4 public has some access to what is going on with your 5 decision making. I think this is the first step, 6 obviously.
7 Obviously, this industry and more recently,
- i. I 8 this Agency, have had major problems in the public 9 perception. I don't think that's going to be enhanced by 10 necessarily turning all these policies back over to the I l
11 industry. One thing that comes to mind basically is that j 1
l 12 basically the deregulation that is occurring with tech. 1 13 specs. You're wiping out 40 percent of the limiting i
l 14 conditions of operation and you're talking about enhancing 15 regulatory -- what was it again, excellence.
16 It seems to be lip service on the one side and 17 while, in fact, you're actually deregulating on the other 18 and I agree with the Chairman, this Agency should be an 19 enforcement agency. It shouldn't be operating by 20 exemption and unfortunately what I see occurring is fewer 21 regulation rather than nonenforcement and I'm not sure 22 that that's going to get you any greater stature in the 23 public's eye. And while that's not primarily your 24 concern, your concern is safety, I find it hard to 25 understand how reducing 40 percent eliminating conditions NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. .. __l 105 l 4
1 for operation enhances regulatory excellence or safety for
- 2 that matter. There actually have been some comments from 1 i
1 s 3 inside your own Agency regarding the change in the tech. l i
4 specs where they said basically that the Agency, the l 1
5 Agency basically an entire program for the industry, but '
there was as cursory IG investigation which amounted to 1
6 !
7 one page, basically, of a review, saying.we asked the NRC 8 and they said no, there wasn't any conflict of interest.
9 I think you have a major problem on your hands with public 10 perception and your quest for enhancing excellence.
)
l 11 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Jim. We'11 12 also make sure when we do go through the comments on all 1 1
13 of these issues as there may be comments given relative to l 14 one issue that may be also applicable or perhaps more I 15 applicable to another issue, so we'll make sure that 16 there's no disconnects of that type and all of these 17 comments get considered where they're relevant.
l 18 Anybody else on regulatory excellence, !
l 19 particularly on mechanisms that the NRC might use to 20 achieve that goal?
21 Richard?
l 22 MR. RATLIFF: Yes, again representing the !
i i
23 Organization of Agreement States, looking at this paper, 24 we concur with the Commission's initial views, that is i
25 that the proactive approach to regulatory framework is !
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(202) 234 4 433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234 4 433
106 1 desirable, but it should not be limited to all those areas 2 that were discussed there.
3 We : eel that the approach that should be used 4 is in reviewing regulations is eliminating or changing i
3 5 those that are too restrictive, exempting sources that 6 pose no significant health to the general public and I
f 7 concentrating efforts on radioactive materials with higher 8 risk. And this is in our written comments, and what we've 1
l 9 discussed in this, especially not taking regulatory
)
10 excellence going forward, but looking back at things that 11 have happened when the agreement states are really akin to 12 is the general license program where multicurie cesium-137 13 sources are general licensed and there's no almost no 14 regulatory oversight and they get into the public domain 15 through bankruptcies of plants or they're being painted 16 over and ended-up at the smelters, steel smelters and 17 scrapyards.
18 We feel that to have real regulatory 19 excellence, you need to go back and look at areas that may 20 need change and not be afraid to do that, to go back when 21- you're rebaselining really go back to that base and see 22 what areas could we improve, what other areas that may be 23 no risk at all and go forward.
24 We feel that there's been a real good process 25 with the IMPEP, the Integrated Materials Performance NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 23 4 433 WASHINGTON D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 23M433
1 107 1 Evaluation Program whereby the NRC reviews its regional 2 offices and the agreement states. We feel that this -
3 process has been beneficial not only to the states but to 4 the NRC by using agreement states people as part of the 5 review so that NRC does get an outside view and -- but we 6 still feel that many of the NRC staff, especially, at 7 headquarters really don't understand the agreement state 1
8 p'rocess, the fact that the 29 states have had their
]
9 Governors say that they have sufficient programs and in 10 doing so the NRC has an agreement with them where they 11 have not done like EPA does, delegated authority, but NRC 12 has relinquished their-authority to the state and the 13 states fully realize that NRC has a function where they 14 have to look and make sure that the states perform, but 15 that we're regulatory partners, that we really need to 16 work together and therefore go ahead to make the whole 17 process better nationwide.
18 Thank you.
19 MR. CAMERON: Richard, just a follow-up 20 question for you in terms of the NRC going back and 21 looking for areas, regulatory areas that could be 22 improved, you mentioned the general license. Do you think 23 this proposed senior management review team would be a 1
24 mechanism that could be used for that? And I guess I l 25 would ask the NRC also is that, was that something that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N W.
(202) 236 4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 23W
= s :
108 would be within the scope of the senior management review 1
a 2 team?
I
) 3 Richard, you first.
4 MR. RATLIFF: Well, I think not. I think 5 what's working well is working groups where you have l 6 several state program people, as well as NRC people, 7 working together jointly there where you have people who 8 dre actually out in the field, out in the rest of the i 9 world, west of the Mississippi, as well, sometimes. And .
3 1
- 10 actually looking at areas and able to bring their i
11 collective knowledge together to make the process better, I I 12 rather than trying to do it at a senior level where they 13 may have never seen a gauge or seen these problems or 4 .
- 14 actually have responded in the morning to a smelter that's i i
l 15 just melted a 3auge. I think the working group is a much j l
l 16 better process in our estimation. j i
17 MR. CAMERON: So that perhaps the senior 18 management review group would be taking a look at this 19 from a higher or broader level. Is that what you, what we 20 intended it?
21 MR. JORDAN: Yes, clearly the object is to get 22 to the grass roots that the individual staffers in the 23 Agency have a clear understanding that they're management 24 and they are committed to excellence in whatever 25 activities they're associated with.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRl8ERS 1323 RHODE ISUWD AVE., N.W.
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109 l 1 And it's a culture within the Agency that l l
2 evolved. The idea of the senior management group would be 3 to begin the process by understanding it the same way, by 4 identifying areas within the various programs that need 5 the earliest attention and by identifying things that are 1
6 working well and I would agree with you. I would identify 7 the in-depth process as a process that's working very 8 well. And so we can learn as much from things that work 9 well as we can from things that are working well and you 10 can see the contrast and put your resources on upgrading 11 the activities and providing better procedures, better 12 training and causing the Agency to have a greater sense of i 13 purpose in its activities. So that's what we expected to 14 perform for us and it becomes a measure that it will not 15 work if it's a series of slogans and a hokey campaign that 16 a few people subscribe to. It can only work if it, in 17 fact, is something that the entire Agency subscribes to 18 and understands and supports in every activity. So we 19 have a steering committee where we're very strongly aware 20 of how difficult it is to start a campaign to cause it to 21 continue and to cause it to not to become trivialized.
22 And so that's really, I think, the challenge we have and 23 by picking things that are not working well and 24 identifying things that are, I think it's a very good 25 approach.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
l (202) 2M33 WASHWGTON, D.C. 20005 3701 (202) 2M33 i
O .*
110 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Ed. Other 2 comments?
3 Yes sir?
4 MR. INNETT: I'm Scott Innett. There's been a 5 theme that perhaps focusing on efficiency as well as 6 excellence simultaneously may be mutually exclusive. I 7 don't think that is the case at all. I think a more 8 efficient organization focused on the safety mission can 9 achieve much better safety and regulatory results than a 10 less efficient organization focused on the same vision. So i
11 I think you can achieve within the NRC both increased !
12 efficiency and a much better focus on safety and therefore i' 23 get better results. So I think you should keep that in 14 mind as you consider undertaking some of the known 15 efficiency efforts that you have under way, but also to 16 strive for excellence in regulatory process.
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. Par, f.ollow ups 18 to this concept of regulatory efficiency and regulatory 19 effectiveness?
20 Yes, in the back?
21 MR. YIELDING: Yes. My name is Dale Yielding.
22 I'm a member or a representative of the National Treasury 23 Employees Union and also a nonmanagement staff member of 24 the NRC. I just wanted to identify that the comment on 25 the people processes function with a goal of excellence, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS l 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVE., N.W. I (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON. D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433
.1
111 j 1 that the National Performance Review about two years ago 2 made a recommendation to empower the employees and we, as 3 members of the National Treasury Employees Union just want e
4 to make it ever present that we are available to work with 1
5 management to develop a more efficient organization that l l 6 is more empowered by the employee to maybe streamline the i J
7 NRC and actually perform its mission in a more effective 8 dnd excellent manner.
1.
9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Dale. Any i )
t l
- 10 comment on that?
j 11 MR. JORDAN: No, I appreciate the overture. I 12 think it's an appropriate one because as we say, it has to 13 be a grassroots movement and it will have to involve the 14 entire NRC staff and the union that represents the staff.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Ed. Further 16 comments?
1 17 Judy? l 18 MS. JOHNSRUD: I'm not sure this is quite on 19 target, but I think it fits with excellence of regulation 20 and I really commend a move in that direction by the 21 Commission. But if I understand correctly, the use of 22 guidance relieves the Agency of following the regulations 23 under the Administrative Procedures Act and this, in turn, 24 would tie, if I'm correct here, would tie back to public 25 notification opportunity for public comment and a vartaty NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON. O C. 20005 3701 (202) 234 4433
- . .. i 112 l 1 of other procedures that are covered by the APA. So to 2 the extent that the Commission appears to be moving in
. 3 performance-based and risk-based regulation, away from -
(
4 4 regulatory rule making under the APA, it seems to me there 5 may be a rather serious contradiction with respect to 6 being able to achieve excellence without having the full 7 public input and review of changes in regulations that are 8 b'eing made.
i 1
l 9 MR. CHANDLER: If I could try to address that 1 10 for a second, Judy.
11 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. This is Larry 12 Chandler, l 13 g MR. CHANDLER: I'm sorry. I'm not sorry I'm 14 Larry Chandler at all, but --
15 (Laughter.)
16 MR. CAMERON: I've been waiting for you to 17 apologize to all of us for that.
18 MR. CHANDLER: Let me try this again. A 19 couple of comments. In a sense, we need to look at the 20 hierarchy of revisions and the use of that word for a 21 second, rather than requirements or guidance, but 22 provisions that the NRC has in the context of all of its 23 different regulatory activity, both reactor side and 24 material side. Yes, those provisions which are reflected 25 in regulations are binding, have a legal stature that's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234 4433
113 1 somcwhat higher than those as reflected in guidance i
2 documents. That's true.
3 But in going into a more performance-based ,
4 1
4 risk-informed environment, we still would be going through 5 an APA-recognized rule making process to assure that we i
6 have, in fact, established in that performance-based and i 7 risk-informed rule an appropriate level and measurable i
8 l'evel of safety such that compliance can be measured and '
9 identified and known and so that what you can 10 appropriately do then is allow for perhaps a broader 11 spectrum of measures which achieve that same level of what
{
i 12 's i found to be appropriate in terms of assuring health and i 13 safety in both a materials and reactor side.
, 14 You can certainly have a very prescriptive set 15 of requirements that are set in regulations and you can 16 certainly achieve that and demonstrate how those are !
- 17 satisfied in a certain way. At the same time you can 4
18 probably achieve or likely achieve an appropriate level of 19 safety through less prescriptive measures and appropriate
- 20 guidance documents and it's always a case again of i 21 assuring that you've achieved the right balance when you !
22 go about doing it. And that then becomes part of the rule 23 making process as you get into that developing that 24 performance-based, risk-informed rule and it's also worth 25 noting, I think, that when the staff goes through NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCR18ERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 2344433
- s 114 1
preparing guidance documents, generally speaking, today is 2 probably more the rule than the exception, those guidance '
3 documents are published in draft form for comment as well, 4 so there are opportunities for input on both sides of 5 that.
6 MR. CAMERON: I guess a couple of other 7 perspectives on this might be the correct mix of 8 rbgulations and guidance might be an issue that the senior 9 management review team would look at in terms of the 10 regulatory excellence issue, but I think a bottom line 11 point that Judy was perhaps making and Judy, correct me if 12 I'm wrong on this, is just as the NTEU would be an 13 important player, obviously in the search for regulatory 14 excellence is that the public should.also be involved in 15 that process.
16 MS. JOHNSRUD: That's right.
17 MR. CAMERON: Jim.
18 MR. RICCIO: One thing, I just wanted to point 19 out that as you shift from this prescriptive based 20' regulation to performance based regulation, you're going 21 to encounter basically an illusion problem where it looks 22 like you're deregulating.
23 MR. CHANDLER: Absolutely.
24 MR. RICCIO: And it's not just the public 25 that's saying this. It's the Illinois Department of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005 3701 (202) 234-4433
o s 115 1 Nuclear Safety submitted comments to the NRC when you 2 first began this program, saying that it would result in a 3 decrease in the safety and a decrease in the safety 4 culture of the Agency that had taken a long time to 5 establish and so it's not just the public that holds this 6 perspective, it's people within your own industry and I 7 think that's important to bring out.
8 MR. CAMERON: Just a clarification for the 9 record, when you said when we began this program, you're 10 talking about not the strategic assessment process.
i 11 MR. RICCIO: The shift in prescriptive to l, 12 performance based.
I 13 MR. CAMERON: Okay, the reference as to the 14 shift from prescriptive to performance base. I l
15 MR. RICCIO: That perspective was recognized '
16 and extensively discussed among the steering committee as 17 these issues were developed. Absolutely.
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay, do we have some further i
19 comments on the regulatory excellence issue?
20 Okay, let's be back here at 1:00.
21 (whereupon, at 11:57 a.m., the meeting was 22 recessed, to reconvene at 1:00 p.m., Thursday, October 24, 23 1996.)
24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 2000!L3701 (2C2) 2344433
CERTIFICATE This is to certify that'the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear '
Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
, Name of Proceeding: STAKEHOLDERS PUBLIC MEETINGS BUILDING PUBLIC TRUST AND CONFIDENCE Docket Number: N/A l
Place of Proceeding: WASHING' TON, D.C.
were held as herein appears, and that this is the original l
1 transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear )
Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
j n in 'Of! NdAnr' M BETT RINER' I Official Reporter i Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.
l NEAL R. GROSS CoUM REPoMSW AND TRANSCNSERB 1323 RHODE STAND AVENUE. NW (202) 234 4433 WA8MNGTON. D.C. 20006 (202) 2344433
==.
5 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
,e Strategic Assessment and
' ^;
Rebaselining Initiative
- s, i
.. .n i ' '
Overview and Status Briefing
< Stakeholders Meeting Washington, D.C.
/ October 24-25,1996 I _._______ _____ _____________________________ ____________ _ _ . _ . _ _ . _ . _ _ _
s Program Agenda l
TilURSDAY .
8:00-9:00am Opening Remarks 9:15-11:30 am
> ? ,'
alig. ,
STRATEGIC ARENA: Building Public
[-:, , , ; Trust and Confidence
. .._.s; .
DSI-14 DSI-13 DSI-23 I:00-4:30pm 1:00-2:30pm STRATEGIC ARENA: Assuring the STRATEGIC ARENA: Providing Safe Use and Handling of Nuclear Research Expertise Mate. ials DSI-22
- DSI-2 l DSI-4 2
- 45-4:30pm l DSI-7 STRATEGIC ARENA: Supporting NRC Domestic Mission and National
~
Objectives in the International Area DSI-20 t
l Program Agenda [
l FRIDAY l
8:IM)-11:30am STRATEGIC ARENA: Assuring Safe -
Operation of Nuclear Reactors i -
DSI-10
, 9 g,. . ,
,P'
. , f;' .
f DSI-Il
, ij DS t-12 DSI-24 1:00-4:30pm 1:00-2:30pm STRATEGIC ARENA: Assuring Safe STRATEGIC ARENA: Managing NRC Manugement of Nuclear Waste Finances DSI-5 DSI-21 DSI-6 DSI-9 1 4:30-5:00pm Closing / Wrap-Up
1 s
l Strategic Assessment and Rebaselining -
- Introduction i n 1.-
~"
Purpose of Strategic Assessment
- !c3 Organization
.. .v ;
2'ie'E + Steering Committee ;
z
+ Support Group
+ Contractor: Public Strategies Group, Inc.
i
/
k( .
u i s
Strategic Assessment and Rebaselining
~
- Overview of Strategic Assessment and Rebaselining Phases j.33 1
s3
- Phase I - Strategic Assessment
+ Review of Activities
+ Strategic Issues
+ Direction Setting Issues (DSIs)
- Phase II - Rebaselining and Development of Decision Papers l + Issue Papers (DSIs)
+ Stakeholder Involvement k <
a i
Strategic Assess,nent and Rebaselining -
- Phase III - Strategic Plan
+ Commission Decisions on DSIs MW $ =
I + Strategic Plan
- Phase IV - Implementation and Budget
+ Performance Plan /FY 1999 Budget
+Outyear Plan FY 1999+
+Other Implementation Activities l
V
a s
Phase II
~
- Key Documents-
- Issue Papers (16)
'J.
.. - Strategic Planning Framework Document
- ,,j.
N - Stakeholder Involvement Process Paper
- Stakeholder Comments Are Important
- Preliminary Commission Views l - Comments will be Utilized as part of Making l Final Decisions on Issue Papers ,
- Issue Papers and Commission Decisions will be Utilized to Develop the NRC's Strategic Plan l
h
i.
Issue Paper Sum. mary l
DSI TITLE '
- 3
.L[G,4 ..
- DSI 2 Oversight of the Department of Energy m.:
DSI 4 NRC's Relationship with Agreement States p:;g
- DSI 5 Low-Level Wasie \
- DSI 6 High- Level Waste and Spent Fuel
- DSI 7 Materials / Medical Oversight
- DSI 9 Decommissioning - Non Reactor Facilities l
- DSI 10 Reactor Licensing for Future Applicants i
- DSI l i Operating Reactor Program Oversight
s Issue Paper Summary DSI TITLE
- DSI 12 Risk-Informed, Performanced-Based 7,;
~
Regulation l .: L l .i &
- DSI 13 Role of Industry
{ ci
- DSI 14 Public Communications Initiatives l
- DSI 20 International Activities t
- DSI21 Fees
- DSI 22 Research '
1
- DSI 23 Enhancing Regulatory Excellence i
- DSI 24 Power Reactor Decommissioning h* ,
- e StakeholderMeetings
- Internal Stakeholder Meetings
. . -S - Series of Meetin.as with NRC Staff
, y -
- External Stakeholder Meetings Meetings Scheduled To Discuss Issue Papers
+ October 24-25 Washington, DC--Washington Hilton
+ October 31-November 1 Colorado Springs Sheraton
+ November 7-8 Chicago, Il--Ramada O' Hare
a
'i Review of Comments
=
- Written / Electronic Comment Period Closes November 15,1996 Es ryg
- Sponsors / Lead Writers Collate and Review All
.. Comments (Stakeholders Conferences, Written,
} and Electronic)
- Stakeholder Interactions Report
- Brief Analysis of Comments By Individual Issue Paper
- Identify Substantive Comments That Have Direct Bearing on Commission's Preliminary Views i
- All Comments will be Provided to Commission in Stakeholder Interactions Report on December 6,1996 -
Report will be Available to All Internal and External k Stakeholders (Internet and PDR)
O Strategic Plan Development }
(Phase HI) .
- Phases I and II provide foundation for
... .. Strategic Plan.
9
- Strategic Plan
- Sets direction for Agency
- Meets requirements of Government Performance and Results Act
- Periodic Updates will be Made i
- Implementation (Phase IV)
- Budget and performance plan p - Other actions
NRC's Strategic Plan 1
- What Is It?
- Brief document to guide program and resource i
9 decisions at all levels L; - Delineates our important goals and objectives
?1 ) - Provides strategies for achieving our important goals
- Living document subject to periodic change
- What It Is Not?
- A budget
- A detail tactical operating plan l p - An exhaustive listing of Agency work
n
'i External Stakeholder Meetings
- Conference Format Efv. - n
- Plenary Session ,
Wm si + Summarize Strategic Assessment and Rebaselining
- e. . .
? Initiative ;
i
+ Describe Stakeholder Involvement Process i
+ Conference Objectives
- Issue Paper Discussions by Strategic Arenas
- PSG Involvement in Planning and Conducting Conferences & Meetings
/ - Meetings Transcribed k .__ _ __ _
~'
Expectationfor Comments
- What Is Being Requested From Stakeholders 9 - Soliciting Stakeholder's Views and Comments
- on:
+ Important Considerations That May Have Been Omitted
+ NRC's Assumptions and Projections For Internal and
...., n;L. External Factors
- p. -
rr n' l 1! + Commission's Preliminary Views
! + Specific Questions on Individual Issue Papers Per SRM Direction l
- Comments May Be Provided 3y Mail, or
! Electronically--All Comments Docketed by l [ SECY p - Comment Period Closes November 15,1996 i ,
re i i
s I t
Direction Setting Issue No.14 Public Communication
,.; su ,, ,
e' Initiatives October 24-25,1996 ;
Sponsor: Karen D. Cyr, OGC Writer: Roger K. Davis, OGC h
~
l .
DSI14 -
- What Approach Should NRC Take to
~
l 2
.r
..1.,y .
Optimize Its Communication with the
'L Public?
I l
- y
Key Factors _
- XRC has a strong program of public y communications
- Factors suggesting new opportunities
- New XRC Initiatives involving public in enhanced rulemaking, revised 2.206 process, and eriforcement conferences.
o Key Factor 1 - a strongprogram ofpublic communications
- NRC policy favors public disclosure of
% information & broad public involvement l i- 14;
- PDRs, LPDRs, Internet, Federal Register, NRC Regulations, FOIA, Public Affairs, l Congressional Affairs and OGC's public l l liaison function l
e Key Factor 2 - Developments suggesting new opportunities l 3
- Legislation and Executive Orders promoting new technologies
^ g
- Decommissioning and major rulemakings
- l suggest need for more public involvement
- New challenges facing industry such as deregulation & competition may present new regulatory challenges l
-l Key Factor 3 - NRC innovations and initiatives on which to build
.j-
- Enhanced participatory rulemaking
.. ,[ .
- Rulenet e"
- Open enforcement conferences
- NRC Citizen's Guide
/
Options _
- Continue Existing Approach
.i'
- Focus on Maximizing Effectiveness and J ,e. Economy
- t. uu
'
- Place a Priority on Early Identification of Public Concerns and Methods for Public Interaction
- Place a Priority on Expanding General Public Outreach i
Commission's Preliminary Views p
- Priority on early identification of public
.j concerns and methods for public interaction
- The term "public" to be interpreted in broadest sense
- Bilateral formal & informal communications covered !
I g ;J - The role of technology should be carefully examined
- Planning & coordination for public involvement should have a central focus
- Implementation is responsibility of program offices t
& e
o
! Commission's Preliminary Views (cont)
.
- Maximize Effectiveness and Economy
. - NRC should have a consistent methodology and
- bd ,
coordinated planning c:.c F 30s - Focus on examination of the highest cost activities 3 .
- Perform better assessments of proposed .
improvements ,
/ . .
i
w t
J Direction Setting Issue No.13 l
f~. .-.c . :
?...fa... Role ofIndustry y October 24-25,1996 Sponsor: Edward L. Jordan, AEOD Writer: Stuart D. Rubin, AEOD
n DSI13 i t
- In Performing Its Regulatory Y Responsibilities, What Consideration ~
Should NRC Give to Industry Activities?
j p4 '
/.
&C
Key Factors
- Activities specifically ordered by legislation g cannot be delegated
- Potential conflict-of-interest in industry
^
. "self-oversight" activities
~
. i. ~$
- Assuring public access to industry safety information i
- Improved reactor performance; nonreactor trends less clear
- Effects of economic competition on licensee p safety decisions
I Key Factors i
- Licensees concerns over impact of ;
y_
regulatory activities
.
- Codes and standards development require l 1 - S.
. ~
4 l industry participation
- Declining resources challenge development and implementation activities for new safety framework
- i 1
~
i Options . ,
- Continue the Current Program 1
- Ei. .
- Expand the Role ofIndustry
"~ "
l
- Increase Accreditation and Certification of .
Licensee Activities
- Increase Interaction With Industry and Professional Groups 4
- Use a " Designated Industry Representative"
-l Commission's Preliininary Views i
- NRC should move as expeditiously as possible, within budget constraints, to ;
~~
evaluate on a case-by-case basis, initiatives g: ' e proposing further NRC reliance on industry activities as an alternative for NRC' i
regulatory activities
'i Commission's Preliminary Views
- NRC should increase its focus and emphasis
~
on mteracting with both industry groups and professional societies and technical
.e institutes to develop new codes, standards,
'" '4 and guides needed to support efficient,
. effective, and consistent performance of industry activities important to safety
- Initial activities should focus on standards development in probabilistic risk assessment and the medical use area h ,
?1 Cominission's Preliminary Views l
- Although not a preferred option at this time, 3; the use of a designated industry
'"I representative may have some potential use
- ,s g for large broad scope materials licensees 1 where NRC oversight through inspection is ,
not frequent i
f i
+ ,
= '
Direction Setting Issue No. 23 Enhancing Regulatory W^ Excellence October 24225,1996 l
Sponsor: Edward L. Jordan, AEOD Writer: Stuart D. Rubin, AEOD
' >l r!
t DSI23 -
t
!
- How Can NRC Enhance Regulatory
. s
- Excellence Through Maintenance of l
. , s, Regulatory Stanc ards, Rules, and
- 1 Requirements?
5 '
i
tt Key Factors
~
- NRC has endeavored to improve the effectiveness of its regulatory framework l gg through routine reviews and periodic internal 3, '
e self-assessments
. dj :xil
- NRC has been responsive to external lessons aimed at improving its regulatory framework
- Recent initiatives may inadvertently create an attitude among the staff that regulatory efficiency is a priority objective as an alternative to the fundamental commitment to regulatory
[ excellence and effectiveness in implementing l p NRC's health and safety mission
'i H
Key Factors i .
- Changes that improve the efficiency of l L;., regulation for the NRC and the efficiency of compliance for licensees have been of
,.1 . particular interest to licensees; licensees have
- "S ii not emphasized changes specifically focused .
on enhancing regulatory effectiveness
- A declining agency budget could result in fewer resources being available for improving the effectiveness of the infrastructure of NRC's
[ regulatory framework h
t c
Key Factors -
i r
i
- Recent events have revealed lapses in the 4 agency's oversight activities; as a result of these occurrences, the credibility of the NRC as an effective regulator appears to have
. 'a i . - .
69 *., J'"4 declined. .
4 i
/
y
8 Options t
l i
i
- Continue Current APPI' ach i' vu'^
- Initiate a More Pi'oactive Approach to ,
,53*
5 '
~ ql mprovernent I i
l i
I i
l
e Commission's Preliminary Views
- NR.C should develop and implement strategies designed to improve its own l N
.g; internal performance and proactively pursue
- .2 . .
'm ,i making its people and processes function
! with a goal of excellence l
- A more proactive approach to improvement l should be broadly applied to all NRC activities in support of N RC's mission
/
V
- - - - - - - - - - -_ _ _ - _ __ _ _ _ - - _ _ --- a