ML21225A683
| ML21225A683 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 03/09/2021 |
| From: | Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, NRC/OCM |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NRC-1420 | |
| Download: ML21225A683 (43) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Commissioner Baran Plenary Session Docket Number: N/A Location: Video Teleconference Date: March 9, 2021 Work Order No.: NRC-1420 Pages 1-41 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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33RD REGULATORY INFORMATION CONFERENCE (RIC)
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COMMISSIONER BARAN PLENARY SESSION
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TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2021
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The RIC session convened via Video Teleconference, at 10:00 a.m. EST, Andrea Vail, Acting Office Director, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR), presiding.
PRESENT:
JEFF BARAN, NRC Commissioner ANDREA VEIL, Acting Office Director, NRR RAYMOND FURSTENAU, Office Director, Office of Research NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S (10:00 a.m.)
MS. VEIL: With that, I'm going to begin my introductions for our first speaker today, which is Commissioner Jeff Baran. The Honorable Jeff Baran was nominated by President Obama and was sworn in as a Commissioner on October 14, 2014. He is currently serving a term ending on June 30, 2023.
During his tenure on the Commission, Commissioner Baran's priorities have included maintaining a strong focus on safety and security, improving oversight of power reactors and term decommissioning, boosting the openness and transparency of agency decision-making, promoting diversity and inclusion at the agency and preparing to review and oversee the safety of new technologies.
In fact, he will be moderating the artificial intelligence technical session during the day.
Commissioner Baran has visited dozens of NRC licensed facilities. He also traveled to Fukushima Daiichi for a firsthand look at conditions and activities at the site.
Before serving on the Commission, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 Commissioner Baran worked for the U.S. House of Representatives for over 11 years. Originally from the Chicago area, Commissioner Baran earned a bachelor's degree and master's degree in political science from Ohio University. He holds a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Commissioner Baran, we're looking forward to hearing your remarks.
COMMISSIONER BARAN: Thanks, Andrea.
Good morning, it's great to be with you all at another RIC. It would be nice, of course, to see you all in person, but this virtual conference is still a great opportunity to share what's happening at the agency and hear from interested stakeholders.
An unfortunate casualty of a virtual plenary, however, is humor. At the 2019 RIC to meet your unending demands for humor in RIC speeches, I turned to NUREG-0544, NRC's legendary collection of abbreviations.
I had planned to continue our journey through NRC's universe of abbreviations in 2020. Alas, that RIC was cancelled due to the pandemic. Rather than getting back to the abbreviations in 2021, I have grudgingly opted to hold off until next year.
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4 Let's face it, it's just not the same if we can't hear the groans and the chuckles. So, that will be something for us to look forward to, with bated breath I'm sure, in 2022.
For now, I want to focus on three pressing challenges affecting NRC, and really, the world. They are the fight against climate change, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pursuit of environmental justice.
Policymakers and the public are increasingly focused on the climate crisis and on dramatically reducing carbon emissions. President Biden has made it a priority to put the United States on a path to eliminate carbon emissions in the electric sector by 2035 and achieve a net-zero economy by 2050.
Many states and utilities have adopted similar targets. The urgency and scale of the climate challenge have led to the public debate about the available emission reduction technologies and the role of nuclear power.
Obviously, NRC is not charged with setting broad energy policy. We don't get involved in decisions about the electricity market design, carbon pricing, or electricity generation portfolios.
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5 Our focus is on ensuring the safety and security of whatever amount of nuclear power's used.
But I think it's clear that meeting these ambitious climate goals will involve nuclear power.
I see NRC's nexus to climate change in two main areas, the operating fleet and new reactors. For the long-term operation of existing nuclear power-plants, NRC's role is to provide strong safety and security standards and rigorous independent oversight.
In recent years, there has been a counterproductive emphasis on reducing inspections, cutting costs, and creating ever more restrictive backfit constraints on agency action. We need a course correction. We need to refocus on safety and the basic value of oversight.
Instead of pursuing reductions in the frequency or number of comprehensive engineering inspections, problem identification and resolution inspection, and force-on-force physical security inspections, we need to pursue changes that will improve NRC oversight, not weaken it.
The reactor oversight process has never been static and I don't think it should be. But the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 ROP has generally been an effective safety framework.
When we consider changes, NRC needs to be careful that we don't damage a program that has been working well or make changes that result in unintended consequences.
This program affects every operating reactor in the country and our number-one priority must be the safety and security impact of our decisions.
So, how should we evaluate potential changes to safety standards or inspections? It's important to continue to take advantage of risk insights and our regulatory decision-making. And if we're going to make a particular change, there should be a solid safety case on the change based on operating experience, inspection experience, and the judgment of our inspectors and experts.
We should not adjust safety standards or oversight based mainly on cost considerations without a strong safety case. Safety is NRC's core responsibility. Shifting resources from lower-risk items to higher-risk items can improve oversight, but that assumes there is a shift in resources and not an overall cut.
It's also important to remember that oversight positively impacts performance.
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7 Improvements in plant or fleet performance don't occur in a vacuum. NRC standards and inspections contribute significantly to those improvements.
That's one reason why a period of good performance doesn't justify weakening safety standards or cutting inspections. This might be easier to see if we step out of the nuclear context for a minute.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there has been a general downward trend in traffic fatalities over the past 40 years. But that isn't a reason to stop requiring seatbelts or airbags or infant car seats. The opposite is true. Those requirements are a big part of the reason for that positive safety trend. And just because there wasn't a major E. Coli or salmonella outbreak in a given year doesn't mean USDA stops inspecting food.
Those inspections are vital, even if you've been having a good year. Of course, there's room for innovation, for risk-informing, for real efficiencies in the ROP. We don't need to settle for the status quo.
If we keep our focus on safety, we can make the right kind of changes. Instead of reducing the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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8 frequency of comprehensive engineering inspections, the annual engineering inspections should focus on different and often uninspected safety-significant areas each year.
This would give the NRC staff the flexibility to shift the engineering inspection focus to areas of emerging need as the nuclear power-plant fleet ages and adopts new technologies.
Rather than reducing the frequency of problem identification and resolution inspections, we should find ways to make this important inspection more effective at spotting corrective action program weaknesses and better are able to promptly detect any adverse trends in a plant's safety culture.
We should also take a fresh look at the cross-cutting issues program. The purpose of the program is to determine whether a nuclear power-plant has an issue with human performance, Safety Conscious Work Environment, or problem identification and resolution that affects all aspects of operating the plant.
These focus areas are all vital to the safe operations of a nuclear power-plant. But the threshold for identifying a cross-cutting theme at a plant is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 currently very high.
For example, it could take 20 overall human performance findings at a plant during a one-year period to trigger any action under the program. As a result, the thresholds have rarely been met, even at plants that later had major performance problems. The idea behind the cross-cutting issues program is good but we need to make it more effective.
NRC needs to be open to and ready for new technologies that could improve safety, whether it's digital instrumentation and control, accident-tolerant fuel, sensors or advanced manufacturing techniques.
We need to establish a reliable and predictable regulatory framework for reviewing these technologies while ensuring that they are adopted safely without introducing any unacceptable risk.
That's also true for the increased use of artificial intelligence and data analytics. There are a number of potential applications of these technologies in the nuclear sector that could increase both safety and efficiency. I'll be sharing a technical session Thursday morning at 10:30 a.m. on this topic and hope you'll join us for an engaging and informative discussion.
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10 NRC also needs to focus on the impacts of climate change on nuclear power-plants. The recent blackout in Texas and other parts of the country highlight how the changing climate can create vulnerabilities in electric generation assets and the grid. Once-in-a-century extreme weather events are now occurring with disturbing regularity. In the case of Texas, extreme cold challenged generation assets and one of the four reactors in the state had to shut down for a period of time because the cold temperatures disrupted the feedwater system.
But scientists tell us that extreme temperatures are not the only hazard exacerbated by climate change. Flooding, hurricanes, and snow and ice loads are expected to pose greater challenges to nuclear power-plants and the grid in the future than they have in the past.
NRC has launched a key initiative to keep up with the latest science of natural hazards. The staff has established a more routine, proactive, and systematic program for identifying and evaluating new information related to natural hazards.
The agency is now collecting, aggregating, and assessing new scientific information about a range NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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11 of natural hazards on an ongoing basis.
The staff is expanding its knowledge base for several types of natural hazards through active and ongoing technical engagement of other federal agencies, academia, industry, international counterparts, professional societies, and consensus standards organization.
When the staff obtains new information about a natural hazard, they assess its potential significance in the context of the accumulated hazard information rather than in isolation.
The ultimate goal is to determine of the new information could have a potentially significant effect on plant safety. This is important work, our regulatory processes need to account for the changing frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events caused by climate change.
In my view, preparing nuclear power-plants for the impact of climate change also will require the Commission to revisit the post-Fukushima mitigation of beyond design basis events regulation.
The rule that was finalized in early 2019 did not require the FLEX equipment at nuclear power-plants to be reasonably protected from the up NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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12 to date flooding and earthquake hazards. Licensees and the NRC staff spent years using the latest science to determine the present day flooding and earthquake hazard.
Unfortunately, the current regulations allow a nuclear power-plant FLEX strategy to disregard these re-evaluated hazards and be prepared for only the old, outdated hazards. With a change in climate, flooding risks are not static.
It makes no sense to allow licensees to rely on obsolete flood hazard estimates, most of which were calculated decades ago. That is the opposite of what we should be doing to prepare for the alternate climate of the future.
I think there's broad agreement that the FLEX equipment is the single biggest post-Fukushima safety improvement at nuclear power-plants. But the equipment doesn't do anyone any good if it doesn't work when called upon, and that means protecting the equipment from entirely predictable natural hazards.
To adequately protect the public, the NRC must ensure that the FLEX equipment has the resilience to survive the real earthquake and flooding hazards facing nuclear power-plants.
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13 NRC also needs to make sure that the plants are ready and able to use the equipment if they need to. That means adequate communications and staffing.
It also means exercises and drills.
The current regulation does not require any of these common-sense and non-controversial measures. As we take stock of the work we have all done to improve nuclear safety in the ten years since the Fukushima accident, it is time to address these gaps in our current regulations.
The other main climate-related role for the NRC is the licensing and oversight of new reactors.
Here our main goal is to establish the right regulatory framework for the review and safe operation of new technologies such as advanced reactors.
NRC's current power reactor regulations were written for light-water reactors, which make up the entire existing fleet. It makes sense to update those requirements to address different technologies.
Creating a regulatory framework for non-light-water reactors will enable the agency to perform effective and efficient licensing reviews and oversight, while providing regulatory certainty for potential Applicants and vendors.
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14 New reactor designs have the potential to be safer than existing designs. Here's the challenge.
In our regulations we need to strike a reasonable balance between taking into account the value of new safety attributes and maintaining a prudent degree of defense in-depth.
Some elements of NRC's existing regulations for large light-water reactors will not be appropriate for non-light-water reactors. Other requirements reflect enduring defense in-depth principles that should apply to advanced reactors, such as the need for appropriate emergency planning and siting.
To protect the public from low-probability, high-consequence events, these key defense in-depth elements should continue to play an important role even for designs that the NRC staff determines are safer than current designs.
This is especially true for new technologies without operating experience. Multiple independent layers of protection against potential radiological exposure are necessary because we do not have perfect knowledge of new reactor technologies and their unique accident scenarios. Unlike light-water NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 reactors, new advanced reactor designs do not have decades of operating experience. In many cases, the new designs have never been built or operated before.
It's reasonable to expect the agency and licensees will have much to learn about the issues, risks, and accident sequences particular to each new design. With the current fleet of light-water reactors, we learned over time that some accident scenarios were more important than initially predicted.
Large break and loss of coolant accidents were possibly the most severe potential design basis accidents until small break and loss of coolant accidents occurred at Three Mile Island.
As operating experience continued to accumulate, it also became apparent that on site and off site electric power was less reliable than expected and the station blackout scenario was found to be an important contributor to the overall risk of nuclear power-plant accidents.
A key lesson of this decade-long learning curve is that we should not drop independent layers of defense for novel technologies simply because we are convinced today that a new design will be safer than existing light-water reactor design. We need to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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16 strike the right balance.
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic is another major priority for the agency. This challenge is obviously no unique to NRC or our licensees. It is hard to overstate the impact the virus has had on nearly all aspects of our everyday lives in every sector of the economy.
To continue our work, the agency has largely been operating virtually with almost all the Headquarters and regional staff teleworking.
Fortunately, we've had the IT in place to carry on effectively.
The staff has spent a considerable amount of time reviewing exemption requests from licensees and thinking through which requirement should temporarily not apply during the public health emergency.
The toughest balance for NRC to strike has been on inspections. We want to keep agency inspectors and licensee staff healthy while conducting the vital oversight activities the American public expects from us.
For the first few months of the pandemic, NRC was conducting very few in-person safety and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 security inspections. At most nuclear power-plants, our resident inspectors were on site far less than usual.
And there were almost no regional team inspections happening. I appreciate that the staff has focused on getting the resident inspectors back on site and are generally getting back to in-person safety inspections.
The staff set a goal of meeting the minimum samples for the reactor oversight process baseline inspections in 2020. With very few exceptions, that goal was met.
For 2021, the staff is aiming to get back to normal inspection samples. I think that's the right target and I know the NRC staff will do everything it can to meet this objective while protecting our inspectors and those with whom they interact.
Due to the unique risks of conducting full force-on-force inspections at nuclear power-plants during the pandemic, the agency relied on limited scope, physical security exercises for several months.
As conditions have improved we're restarting force-on-force inspections. For now, we're conducting just one triannual exercise at each plant.
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18 I look forward to returning to the normal complement of two force-on-force exercises per plant as soon as practical.
Based on my conversations with NRC inspectors and managers, there seems to be a renewed recognition of the value of in-person safety and security inspections, whether it's the ability to walk down safety-related equipment, talk informally with plant employees, observe operations firsthand, or the intangible but very real effect of having inspectors with an NRC hard hat visible around the plant.
Technologies that allow inspectors to monitor plant conditions remotely are a valuable tool but are not a substitute for in-person inspection.
NRC must also pursue environmental justice with determination and an openness to the voices of disadvantaged communities that have not always had a seat at the table.
During the last ten months, the discussion of race in this country has changed dramatically.
George Floyd's death, after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, launched protest and crucial discussions about racial inequality.
The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 and so many other black men, women, and children as a result of violence fueled by racial injustice have shone a spotlight on the pressing need for racial equity.
We cannot hope to achieve racial equity without environmental justice. NRC must meet the moment, we must be ambitious, we cannot settle for doing things the way they have always been done. We need to ask tough questions about our programs and procedures to understand if they are serving disadvantaged communities or instead creating barriers for them to overcome.
The reality is that in NRC's licensing decisions, environmental justice is basically only addressed in one section of the environmental impact statement.
That minimal treatment doesn't inspire confidence that environmental justice factors are having a meaningful impact on the agency's ultimate decision. We need to ask ourselves whether and how that should change.
Our adjudicatory procedures have been called strict by design. Is that just another way of saying that the agency has made it very hard for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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20 interested stakeholders, including disadvantaged communities, to have their concerns addressed in a hearing?
Has the agency created a set of rules that effectively erects barriers and excludes the voices of communities that lack the resources and the legal or technical expertise to surmount a series of complex, procedural hurdles, or the process governing petitions seeking agency enforcement action?
Is that system really set up to advance equity and make it straightforward for disadvantaged communities to raise concerns and trigger agency action?
If we're committed to viewing our historic practices through the lens of environmental justice, these are just some of the questions we should be asking about the way the agency has traditionally operated.
Our first task should be to figure out what a systematic review of the agency's programs and policies should look like. Our goal should be to achieve significant, tangible results in the areas of equity and environmental justice.
Climate change, COVID-19, environmental justice, we have a lot of work ahead of us but I'm NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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21 confident that NRC will do its part to tackle these challenges. We can't do the work alone, though. We need your ideas, creativity, and energy. Hopefully, we will soon be able to interact in person at meetings, site visits, and future RICs.
In the meantime, I look forward to more opportunities to engage virtually. I also invite you to follow me on Twitter. My username is @jeffbarannrc, and with that shameless plug, we have time for your questions.
Thank you.
MS. VEIL: Thank you so much, Commissioner, and if you don't mind, I'd like to start with a logistical question that came up. And I can actually answer it so I'll be quick.
It says will the recorded versions of the sessions be available indefinitely?
And post-RIC the website will contain the information until May, June timeframe and then under past RIC information for about three years, the presentations, transcripts, et cetera should be in Adams indefinitely.
The presentation transcript will be indefinite but the past RIC information is three years.
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22 So, hopefully that makes it. So, I just wanted to get that out of the way because we've gotten that question a couple of times.
So, the first question is for you Commissioner is, is there a risk that focusing on increasing nuclear safety oversight might increase cost and delay projects enough to make nuclear energy uncompetitive with more dangerous energy sources?
COMMISSIONER BARAN: This is a great question. I'm glad we brought this up. And so what I'm talking about here is not increasing oversight, I'm talking about maintaining a strong level of oversight at plants. And we've had proposals at recent years to reduce the level of oversight. I don't think that's a good idea.
True efficiencies, focusing on risk, those are important things to do but we've seen a number of recommendations in recent years to reduce inspections really focused on those kinds of cost considerations being raised here.
And NRC needs to be focused on safety and security. Of course we're going to consider the cost and benefits of the actions we take. But I don't think we should be making decisions about reducing oversight NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 levels to try to make plants more profitable. That's not our role and that's not what the agency should be doing.
The profitability of plants should not be a reason we weaken oversight or perform fewer inspections at a plant. I think that's the wrong direction. But, of course, we have so many ways at the agency of taking into account the effects of our actions and we want to balance those things and we want to be thoughtful. But we're not an economic regulator, we're a safety and security regulator.
MS. VEIL: Thank you, Commissioner.
Next question, can you address the licensee responsibility to resolve a cost-cutting issue trend before the agency is required to take action under the cross-cutting issue program, which does not put more emphasis on the importance of a good corrective action program and allow oversight and monitoring by the NRC?
COMMISSIONER BARAN: This is an important issue I think for us to focus on, or at least one of them. Because as I mentioned in my remarks, I don't see the reactor oversight program as static.
We're going to want to make changes, we're going to want to assess the programs we have and think NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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24 through are they working well and as well as they could be working?
Cross-cutting issues, the staff started taking a look at those programs and as I mentioned, I think the idea is very good. Right now, it's very, very hard to trigger.
Now, it is important for licensees to have effective corrective action programs. That's one of the things that can be a focus area under the cross-cutting issues program.
Incidentally, it's also an important issue for PINR inspections, problem identification and resolution inspections. That's one of the key things that an extremely important inspection looks at. And in recent years, there have been talks of reducing the frequency of those inspections. I don't think that's a good idea.
The person who asked the question is right, a licensee's corrective action program is really vital to the safe operations of a plant. We want to make sure those are working the way they should and of course, a lot of depends on that and that's a big part of how a licensee has the opportunity to find issues and resolve them without the need for additional NRC action.
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25 But if we're going back to the cross-cutting issues program for a moment, if, for example, we see a number of instances indicating that a corrective action program isn't working the way it should, when is it appropriate for the agency to get more involved and increase oversight?
Right now we've set the bar very, very high to the point that program is really just not kicking in. We need to strike the right balance there and I know the staff is looking at that, we want to think that through.
We don't want it to be such a low threshold that it's being triggered all the time unnecessarily.
We want to find the right level. I think it's pretty clear the staff looks at it. The level we have now is just too high and rarely, rarely triggers and there's no point in having a really good program there if it's not going to trigger when you want it to.
So, we need to just make some thoughtful adjustments there and I'm very interested and I know the agency will be in hearing the thoughts of all stakeholders about what is the right balance to strike there? How can we make that a more effective program than it's been?
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26 MS. VEIL: Thank you, Commissioner. The next question is I agree with intensifying inspections to keep us safe. In 2020 utility data reportability events have dropped off significantly. Do you believe this is improved utility behavior or the lack of properly using the corrective action process?
COMMISSIONER BARAN: I don't know the answer to that question. I know the staff looks at those kinds of trends and tries to figure out what's going on there.
I'll mention a related trend which, I admit, has worried me a bit in recent years, which is the really dramatic drop in inspection findings. We've seen that really for the last four or five years.
And I don't have the numbers right in front of me but it's been a steep, steep decline in inspection finding, much greater than you expect than from just a small number of plants shutting down.
And there are a lot of things that could be contributing to that. One of them could be improved performance. What am I concerned about potentially?
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27 should be perhaps agreed in finding, that it gets cited if it should be.
So, we want to make sure we're sending the right message to staff. ROP, because of the significant termination process of the color coding and everything, there's a strong risk element to it that's there. But we don't want a focus on risk to have an adverse effect or an unintended consequence of not identifying green findings that should properly be identified.
They may individually be very low safety significance but it's important to be aware of them, first of all, just to resolve those individual findings.
We want to be aware of them because there could potentially be more generic issues.
We could have an issue at a plant if we're not making everyone aware of it through the finding.
Are we making sure or doing the analysis we need to do to make sure we don't have a more generic issue that could be applicable to other plants?
And this is true I think for white findings but I think it's true even for green because it can be an indicator of trends at a plant. And so even if you have a number of individually low NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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28 safety-significant items, if they're all happening at a plant or maybe in a particular program area, it may be something for the agency to be looking at. It can be a little bit of an early warning of potentially a downward trend in performance at a plant.
So, those are important findings and when we see the numbers drop so precipitously, I think it's really incumbent upon the agency to get our arms around that and figure out what's driving that.
I think the consensus of the staff of the last few years has been, well, it's hard to really figure it out because there are a number of contributing factors probably.
And I think it's certainly true, it's not one thing that's causing the numbers to come down so steeply over the last few years. But it's really a remarkable trend and as a regulator, a safety regulator, my view is we need to continue to be looking closely at that and determine as best we can what is driving that.
And if there is anything that's driving it that shouldn't be, green findings for example not being cited or inspectors getting the sense that it's going to be such a hassle, for lack of a better word, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 to get something cited that they don't want to pursue it, we need to be aware of that and make those corrections if they're needed.
MS. VEIL: Thank you. The next question is can you explain your comments on FLEX?
NRC has completed its assessment of the new flooding hazards in the back of the plant and FLEX cannot perform its function. So, please explain why you believe FLEX is not adequately protected against up-to-date flooding hazards.
COMMISSIONER BARAN: Thanks.
Post-Fukushima, there really were two separate agency actions going on. One is the rulemaking I discussed in my remark and that was really a performance-based standard.
It did not say you must have FLEX equipment at sites, but the way in which licensees meet this standard is with their FLEX equipment.
And from the very beginning, the Commission's view was that it was necessary for adequate protection post Fukushima to ensure that FLEX equipment and the FLEX strategy were sufficient to protect against the new re-evaluated flooding and earthquake hazards.
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30 U-turn at the very end of that rulemaking and dropped that requirement and that element of the rule, which had always been a core element of the rule, and basically said remember those out of date flood and earthquake hazards, you just have to have FLEX strategies that deal with that.
Well, it did not make sense at the time, it does not make sense today and if you're thinking about it through the lens of climate change, it makes even less sense when it comes to flooding because those aren't even going to be static hazards.
Now, separately, the agency had sent out letters requesting information and this was the re-evaluated hazards for earthquake and flooding and that led to the possibility that the agency will take action at a specific plant, site-specific, to require modifications potentially for the new earthquake or flooding hazards.
That's an important program and there have been some things required at different plants on both the flooding and the earthquake side. But it was never intended to be a replacement for having a regulation that said effectively you have to have the FLEX equipment and that it has to be protected, reasonably NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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31 protected, from the real flooding and earthquake risks at a plant.
It's just frankly silly to have a regulation that doesn't require that. Having a regulation that says you don't need to be focused on the currently understood risk I think really misses an important safety opportunity.
MS. VEIL: Thank you, Commissioner. Next question, due to their size and cost, full-scale testing was not considered possible for most existing reactors.
Can more extensive physical testing of advanced, usually much smaller reactors help us to more quickly gain the experience level that we gradually accumulated with extra-large light-water reactors?
COMMISSIONER BARAN: Great question. I think it can and I think we're seeing -- a lot of this is still proprietary but we have various vendors out there looking at different advanced reactor designs of all different types.
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32 be submitted to the agency.
So, yes, I do think we'll see more of that and it harkens back a little bit to decades past or at the beginning of light-water reactor technology in the country. So, I think the vendors will make, Applicants will make their own decisions about how they want to proceed on a lot of these things.
And that's both true whether or not they're going to use the test reactor but also just are they going to use Part 50? Are they going to use Part 52?
Are they going to go right to a combined license?
Are they going to do a design certification? There are a lot of options from a regulatory point of view and from a data gathering point of view that they have and I do think we're going to see more of that, though.
I think there's definitely a lot of conversation about test reactors and I would be surprised if we didn't see some of that.
MS. VEIL: The next few questions are about environmental justice. So, the first one is thanks for sharing your insights today, Commissioner Baran.
Can you say more about how environmental justice intersects with issues of spent nuclear fuel storage and disposition? What procedural innovations NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 could help in this regard?
COMMISSIONER BARAN: If we're serious about environmental justice, and we should be, we need to be, it should be a priority for the agency. We're going to have to take a really systematic look I think at the different areas of the agency's work. We're going to have look at spent fuel but we're going to be look at other areas.
It may be reactors, it may be materials, it may be fuel cycle facilities, it may be waste facilities, low-level waste facilities, that kind of thing, uranium recovery. We have a lot of different types of licensing at the agency.
We're going to need to think about those issues, environmental justice issues, in all those contexts. And we're going to have think about the various procedures and processes we have in place.
So, part of that is really just the licensing process and how it makes decisions. I think it involves how we do NEPA. Right now, NEPA is the main way in which we look at environmental justice, really, the only way we look at it.
We have confined it to NEPA, that was a decision made a while back about 15 years ago. A lot's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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34 changed in 15 years, I think it makes sense to take a look at that question.
We have a policy statement actually on environmental justice from 2004 I believe. For those of you who haven't looked at it, take a look at it.
It has not aged well, this is not a document that has aged well.
Looking at it today, it needs a lot of work, I think it's a document that needs to be revisited.
There's substantive questions about how we should do the review and what the constraints are.
There's also just, for lack of a better word, tonal issues about how important the issue is to us and to the nation, and do we want to have a policy statement out there that really is quite negative and focused on constraining the review as much as possible.
Or do we want to start thinking broadly about what are the changes we should be thinking about making? Are we having unintended impacts on disadvantaged communities with some of our processes and procedures? It's hard to answer individual questions like this until we do that kind of review.
I think it's an important thing for the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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35 staff to do, for the agency to do, and I think it's going to be just critical that we get a lot of stakeholder input on that, including maybe from some of the stakeholders we don't normally hear from.
We're going to want to hear from a broad range of stakeholders and I think across the country there are local and environmental justice organizations that aren't always focused on our issues. They have other things sometimes they're focused on. But I think we have a lot to learn in this area, I think we have a lot of perspective that we don't normally hear, that we're going to want to hear as we think this through.
I think it should be and is, really, very significant and challenging. I think we've got to get out of our comfort zone a little bit. We've done things a certain way, a decision was made a couple decades ago to really focus it all through NEPA. We should take a look at that. Is that the right way to go?
Do we want to think about it in other areas?
I'm not coming at it thinking I have all the answers about how this should all end up of what it should look like. I want to hear from folks, I want to do a good thorough review and a really open-minded NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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36 review about what we're doing, how well it's working, who is it working well for and who is it not working well for?
And so there's a lot of work to be done there so I think those are those kinds of questions we should be asking as part of that review.
MS. VEIL: Thank you. Now, the second question on environmental justice. Nuclear energy generates electricity without the particulate matter emissions from fossil fuels or the impacts from the excessive mining to provide the materials used in wind and solar. It also does not require the same transmission model development to connect renewable sources to rural centers.
Do you recognize the clean air environmental justice benefits associated with nuclear energy as part of your efforts to increase environmental justice awareness?
COMMISSIONER BARAN: Sure. In terms of the air quality issues, that's exactly right. Now, to go back to my remarks a little bit, which is we're not the agency that decides the resource mix and things of that sort.
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37 types of generation, but it's absolutely the case that our environmental reviews, for example, need to take into account what are the attributes of -- let's say we're talking about a nuclear power-plant or a nuclear reactor, what are the attributes of the reactor versus a potential alternative?
So, yes, if you're talking about certain alternatives, there are significant air quality benefits from a nuclear power-plant.
But it's easy because we focus so much in our conversations and really even in my speech, so much on the reactor side. We do have to think a little bit more broadly, though, right?
There are a lot of other types of licenses that we have out there and they may raise different issues. And so we've seen a lot of tribal issues come up in the uranium recovery context, for example.
I know whenever we have a waste facility it brings up a lot of issues and so we don't want to be narrowly focused I think on just reactors and what the issues are there.
And even though it's our job to make sure reactors are really super safe, there are still some risks associated with that and we do have to think about NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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38 those risks from an environmental justice point of view, and what communities are bearing those risks and how does that look? Are they disproportionately affecting disadvantaged communities?
MS. VEIL: Okay, our next question -- we probably have time for maybe two more -- you stated that new generation nuclear technology should have additional levels of oversight until the operating history is established and supports reducing that oversight.
Should that same philosophy be applied to the existing fleet with literally thousands of years of operating experience and reduction in oversight?
COMMISSIONER BARAN: I think the point I was making on advanced reactors and new reactors is this. The expectation I think people have is that designs coming in are going to be safer than the existing fleet.
That may well be true, it would be terrific if that's true, that would be a great development.
But then that poses a tough question for the agency which we're all obviously going to be grappling with in the rulemaking for advanced reactors that will be going on for the next few years, but also in individual NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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39 applications.
And the question is if you have a technology that's much safer, what requirements do you need and what requirements don't you need? And the point I'm making is really a modest one, which is even if it's a very safe reactor or we think based on the current knowledge, often times, in the absence of significant operating experience with a very safe reactor, we still need to focus on defense in-depth.
And part of that is incorporated into the core licensing decisions, for example, the methodology that came out of the licensing modernization project include issues of defense in-depth.
So, it's not that that's ignored but we're going to have ask questions about how do we strike the right balance on emergency planning, for example, on siting restrictions that existed? And how much of that should remain or go away in certain contexts with a particular reactor?
And I definitely see the benefits and the argument for potentially scaling some of that and having a more graded approach. So, if you're thinking about emergency planning for large light-water reactors, we've had ten-mile emergency planning zones.
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40 That's true for every plant in the country. For certain types of new reactors, advanced reactors, are we going to need a ten-mile emergency planning zone?
I think there's a strong argument that we may not.
The question is, do we go all the way to site boundary where there's no dedicated offsite radiological emergency planning, no role for FEMA?
That's the other extreme, right? And so I think for something like emergency planning and we're going to have to think this through. Because I think we're going to have certain scenarios where maybe if you have the right risk profile, site boundary would work. But I think for a lot of facilities, particularly thinking about larger advanced reactor facilities or multi-modular or small modular reactors, we may want something in between site boundary and ten miles.
And I think this is something I was interested in hearing comment on for the rulemaking that's going on right now on emergency planning. For example, is two miles the right answer? If you have a smaller EPZ.
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41 to the all hazards planning which is not dedicated or focused on radiological and you still keep the FEMA role.
So, is that potentially a better balance to strike for citing restrictions? We have citing restrictions right now, both in regulation and then guidance related to it.
How much do we want to alter that potentially for an advanced reactor? I don't come at it with a firm answer as to what that looks like but I think we have to really ask ourselves for a new technology that might have no operating experience.
Is the agency's position really that there should be no emergency planning off site in that it could be located immediately adjacent to a large metropolitan area. I have real doubts about whether that would really be the right answer.
I don't know that strikes the right balance. There are tough issues there to think through.
MS. VEIL: I want to thank you, Commissioner, for your thoughtful comments and your candor. We're out of time for questions but thank you so much for your remarks and all the answers you provided NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 to your questions.
And with that, we will close our session.
Thank you very much.
(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 10:45 a.m.)
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