ML21225A690
| ML21225A690 | |
| Person / Time | |
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| Issue date: | 03/08/2021 |
| From: | NRC/EDO |
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| References | |
| NRC-1420 | |
| Download: ML21225A690 (58) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
33rd Regulatory Information Conference Technical Session - M1 Docket Number:
(n/a)
Location:
teleconference Date:
Monday, March 8, 2021 Work Order No.:
NRC-1420 Pages 1-56 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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33RD REGULATORY INFORMATION CONFERENCE (RIC)
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TECHNICAL SESSION - M1 HOW FAR WE'VE COME: NRC'S TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY
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- MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2021
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The RIC session convened via Video Teleconference, at 10:45 a.m. EST, Catherine Haney, Assistant for Operations, Office of the Executive Director for Operations, presiding.
PRESENT:
CATHERINE HANEY, Assistant for Operations, Office of the Executive Director for Operations, OEDO/NRC DAVID NELSON, Chief Information Officer, OCIO/NRC FADI DIYA, Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer, Ameren Missouri DAVID LOCHBAUM, C-10 Advisory Board Member and Gender
+ Radiation Impact Project Board Member JONATHAN GREIVES, Chief Reactor Projects Branch #4, Division of Reactor Projects, RI/NRC
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S Opening Remarks (Cathy Haney)......................4 NRC's Digital Transformation (David Nelson)....... 9 Innovation and Risk Insights (Fadi Diya)..........18 Public Access to NRC Data (David Lochbaum)........23 NRC's Transformation Journey (Jonathan Grieves)...26 Question and Answer Session.......................38
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 10:46 a.m.
MS. HANEY: Hello. I'm Cathy Haney, the Assistant for Operations at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Thank you for joining us for today's technical session, "How Far We've Come: NRC's Transformation Journey."
We are transforming to realize our vision of becoming a modern risk-informed regulator that will be in the best position to continue meeting our important safety and security mission well into the future. Transformation will help us keep pace with the highly dynamic interconnected environment in which we operate and to be prepared to regulate an industry that is innovative and has new technologies.
Transforming also provides us an opportunity to reevaluate the way we conduct business to streamline processes and procedures and maximize efficiencies to better serve the American public.
We've hit many milestones along our journey, from starting with the Future Assessment Project to now realizing internal and external successes of our transformation efforts. In October 2018, we began a futures assessment effort to ensure that we continue to effectively meet our mission in
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 a dynamic and evolving future.
The report described four hypothetical future scenarios in which we might operate in the years 2030 and beyond. Having a better idea of potential future scenarios allows us to make better short-term and long-term adjustments, to be increasingly efficient in our work, and to make better decisions. As part of implementing the insight from the Futures Assessment, we sought to engage our entire staff in a strategic conversation about how we could best plan and prepare for the future. The conversation was intended to build internal engagement and tap the collective wisdom of staff to help shape our transformation strategy.
The NRC Futures Jam was held on June 18th to the 20th, 2019. Over the course of three days, 73 percent of the staff engaged in the event by signing on to the virtual Jam platform at least once. Using real-time analytics, active facilitation, and subsequent data analysis, themes arose that became the foundation for our transformation strategy.
We used the insights from the Futures Assessment and Futures Jam to identify four focus areas for achieving our transformation vision of becoming a
modern risk-informed regulator.
They are
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 innovating, using technology, being riskSMART, and focusing on our people. To date, we have realized several tangible successes in our transformation journey across all focus areas.
For example, the NRC has a best-in-class innovation platform that has already collected over 400 innovation success stories and tapped the wisdom of our agency in five crowdsourcing challenges with more to come.
In terms of using technology, the transformational work we accomplished in 2019 and in early 2020 prior to the public health emergency helped the NRC workforce to seamlessly transition to full-time telework. This was in part due to the efforts we undertook to modernize and strengthen our IT infrastructure by transitioning our entire workforce to laptops and adopting cloud-based software.
In the focus area of being riskSMART, we developed and implemented a framework to facilitate focused discussion and consideration of risk across all sectors of our agency, including the technical, legal, and corporate areas.
Finally, we are focusing on our people by concentrating on building a 21st century workforce.
We're doing this by restructuring and modernizing our
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 hiring program and rethinking how we develop and retain current employees. Our transformation activities included enhancing our hiring program, broadening our outreach and recruitment efforts, and creating hands-on learning opportunities, such as apprenticeships in targeted mission areas. We have implemented online platforms to support career planning and provide access to a wide range of developmental resources and training tools.
These are only a few of our many transformational efforts occurring across the agency.
But let it suffice to say we're making progress in realizing our vision of becoming a modern risk-informed regulator just one decision at a time.
In this technical session, I'm joined by a dynamic group of speakers who will share their perspectives on our transformation journey. First, you'll hear from Dave Nelson. Mr. Nelson is the agency's Chief Information Officer, and he'll discuss digital transformation.
Next is Fadi Diya. Mr. Diya is the Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer at Ameren.
Mr. Diya will provide perspectives on how Ameren is using innovation, data and risk insights to improve nuclear power plant operations.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Following Mr. Diya is Dave Lochbaum. Mr.
Lochbaum retired from the Union of Concerned Scientists, where he served as a Director for the Nuclear Safety Project. Mr. Lochbaum is currently a C-10 Advisory Board member and serves as a board member for the Gender and Radiation Impact Project. Mr.
Lochbaum will provide perspectives on access to NRC data.
Our final speaker is Jonathan Grieves.
Mr. Grieves currently serves as the Deputy Director for the Transformation Team at the NRC. Mr. Grieves will provide information on the successes and benefits of our transformation journey.
After our speakers, I'll open it up for some questions, and we'll also have our speakers answer some questions. Thank you very much, and I'll turn to Mr. Nelson now.
MR. NELSON: I am thrilled to be here in this session to talk about the transformation and innovation at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and share some stories about both our agency-wide transformation journey and the supporting digital transformation efforts led by my office.
We have directly supported and participated in every phase of the agency
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 transformation. As a partner to our mission offices, we consistently share our perspectives, which help inform our collective strategy and prioritize transformation efforts. Over the past years, we have introduced new technology stacks to support collaboration, communication, and data and tools to provide new insights to support decision-making.
One example of our direct support of the agency's transformation was the implementation of a secure media platform to host an agency-wide jam and engage the workforce in a real-time conversation about the future and the most important challenges for the agency.
The NRC's digital transformation began several years before the ongoing agency-wide transformation. This was fortuitous because it allowed my office to support a broad range of transformation efforts based on our prior experience and earlier progress. The digital transformation was driven by external sectors, which will be familiar to many of you.
We were realizing significant budget pressures as we tried to buy down technical debt and modernize the NRC's legacy infrastructure and applications. A digital world had emerged that was
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 leveraging technology to rapidly improve efficiencies, productivity, and process improvement, and new laws, guidance, and even the President's management agenda focused specifically on IT modernization, data accountability and transparency, and people, the workforce of the future.
Along with these external factors, we were experiencing a new level of demand from our internal customers, the visionary
- leaders, and engaged employees, who realized the central role of information technology and how that would play a part in NRC's future. These factors inspired my office to develop a vision statement to guide our efforts as we work diligently to address the demands before us.
In our vision, we committed to being a valued business partner, not just a corporate IT service delivery organization. Our digital transformation strategy was focused on three areas: transforming service delivery, modernizing the NRC infrastructure and platforms, and leveraging technology to improve business processes and data-driven insights and decision-making.
In the first area of transforming service delivery, we recognized that vendor management and relationships were a critical area of focus. To gain
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the most efficiency from resources in a multi-vendor environment, we discovered that it's important to establish a collaborative culture with our vendors and focus on shared success and service delivery outcomes.
We met with the executives of our new partners and established clear expectations for how we would like to operate, and we introduced forums that allow transparent dialogue regarding goals and collaborative problem-solving to address challenges.
We also challenged ourselves to design delivery and deliver services with customer experience in mind. We introduced new service-delivery models and concepts, such as human-centered design, journey mapping, and other agile development techniques to focus on the full service delivery experience and improve the quality and speed to market of service and products.
In our next stage of modernizing IT and enabling platforms, we developed a cloud-smart strategy and began leveraging the proven advantage of cloud infrastructure.
Some of our most critical applications migrated in this early phase to the cloud, such as high-performance computing, to take advantage of the ability to rapidly scale and support the complex modeling and risk analysis required to support our
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 important regulatory safety and security mission.
We migrated our expensive-to-maintain on-premise email services to the cloud and added collaboration services, which redesigned and enhanced our aging legacy network infrastructure to support these new services. The NRC's aging and end user equipment was replaced with standardized modern laptops and images, while we introduced secure Wi-Fi throughout our facilities to support collaboration and mobility.
These modernization efforts served us well in the last year as the agency took the necessary precautionary measures to protect its entire workforce during the COVID-19 public health emergency. At this point, all NRC staff were equipped with laptops, cloud-based email, storage, and virtual meeting capabilities.
In the weeks leading up to the transition, or transitioning the workforce to the maximum telework, IT staff distributed equipment to hundreds of NRC staff and contractors, providing remote work tool demonstrations and hands-on training, and organized an agency-wide telework practice day. We used this day to test the system and the bandwidth capacity, while users were able to practice using remote access to work.
Bandwidth and monitoring was also increased as we moved
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 toward full-time telework status. These proactive approaches allowed the NRC to immediately transition into a fully remote work environment without disrupting its mission.
The NRC provides oversight of commercial nuclear power plants in the United States through periodic inspection. NRC inspectors must perform detailed field inspections in an industrial environment while accessing reference materials and recording inspection details. Replacing physical binders and drawings with instant access to a library of data through mobile tablets and tool sets improves the pace of the inspection process and the speed of emergency response.
To accomplish this, we established work groups to gain critical insights from our inspectors and to explore new ways to leverage mobility platforms to support their important on-site safety and security work at these large industrial-scale facilities.
In our third stage of digital transformation, we've been leveraging technology and data to improve the way we work by identifying opportunities to work smarter and realized added efficiencies through the implementation of information technology solutions.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 A
robust set of powerful business intelligence tools and a data warehouse architecture and strategy were introduced to support analytics across the agency and to provide new data insights and support decision-making. The agency's paper-based concurrence process was also assessed, and we launched an initiative to automate workflow, bringing us the benefits of efficiency, consistency, and transparency as these work products were developed and approved.
Electronic access to information is vital to the support of the agency's evaluation, analysis, and decision-making. Between 1975 and 1999, the agency had accumulated decades of licensing, inspection, enforcement, and oversight records that were stored in microfiche, making them very difficult to access.
The NRC has improved access to these documents by using advanced computer visioning and artificial intelligence software. This initiative reduced the time for agency stakeholders to retrieve information and vastly improved the readability of the image quality of the historical documents.
The volume of accessible data to inform analysis and decision-making continues to grow and transform the way we work, and millions of pages have been added to our publicly accessible website.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 We are also making strides in learning how to best support the increasing demand for new tools, such as artificial intelligence. We are exploring how machine learning and natural language processing may be leveraged to gain even better insights into the work we do.
Throughout the execution of digital transformation, we recognized the importance of promoting a culture of change for the staff to leverage technology and improve our ability to achieve the mission. The tools we used to promote technology adoption were also built with customer experience in mind.
I believe our agency and the digital transformation are already extremely successful, and we are now in a better position not only to adapt but to thrive in this dynamic environment. While recognizing the successes we experience in modernizing our IT infrastructure, it's clear there's more work to be done.
As we move forward, it will become increasingly challenging to identify and implement strategic investments as we strive to balance budgetary constraints and the desire to modernize technology in support of the agency's larger transformation efforts.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 As a result, we are focusing on ways to enhance our strategic planning efforts to develop an IT portfolio based on an informed and integrated decision-making process. To achieve this, we will need a greater awareness and understanding of how IT can improve the agency's ability to meet the mission, a stronger collective understanding of our planned projects, programs across the portfolio, a process that requires early collaboration and input for decisions that would impact the IT budget.
To accomplish this, we are developing an agency-wide IT strategic roadmap to facilitate executive collaboration in identifying and prioritizing the IT investments most important to our mission. The purpose of the IT strategic roadmap is to identify the most effective path to achieving the agency's business objectives through the use of technology.
This is an agency-wide strategic plan, not an IT product. The IT strategic roadmap effort is fully supported by the Commission and senior leaders across the agency. All offices are actively participating and providing input as we develop the IT strategic roadmap. The collaborative nature of this effort is critical to ensuring we capture how our current business
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 processes are implemented and where opportunities exist.
Once completed, the IT strategic roadmap will drive shared commitment to the scope, timing, and funding for the delivery of capabilities required to achieve the future state, visibility into complex interdependencies between capabilities being delivered by multiple individual organizations, an early warning for impacts for new, modified, and removed capabilities and systems, and agreement on how progress will be made, measured, and observed.
As the NRC moves toward the final leg of the agency's transformation journey, we will continue to enhance our agility by working to realize NRC's ideal culture, one that fosters the open sharing and discussion of different approaches and views and nurtures the spirit of innovation and creativity. I believe our agency's commitment to the transformation on both the agency and digital levels will prepare the NRC to meet our mission now and well into the future.
I look forward to your questions on the panel afterwards, and thank you again for this opportunity to share some of our stories.
MR. DIYA: Good morning. I'm Fadi Diya, the Chief Nuclear Officer for Ameren. A few years ago,
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 we formed an Ameren Innovation Team along with an Innovation Hub. Callaway, our nuclear plant, took on a number of innovation initiatives. Today, I'll be talking about two of those initiatives. The first one is related to the use of wireless remote sensors.
That's vibration sensors as well as thermal performance monitoring sensors. And the second one is related to the use of virtual reality to conduct training.
Remote monitoring with wireless sensors is important in improving predictive maintenance of plant equipment. And so we started with installing vibration sensors on large motors for important equipment, such as condensate pumps and heater drain pumps. As a result, we improved continuous monitoring of our equipment, improved safety of our coworkers by not having them climb on scaffolding to take daily or weekly or monthly readings, and found equipment issues in a proactive way.
Two examples of finding those equipment issues in a proactive way -- the first one was on the iso-phase bus duct cooling fan motor. We had increased vibrations on that, and then circulating water pump, we also had increased vibrations on that. So we took those early indications and corrected those equipment conditions. So we were able to proactively correct
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the equipment conditions and prevented unwanted equipment failure. Also saved us the cost associated with failed equipment.
In addition to the vibration sensors, we also installed thermal performance monitoring sensors.
And that allowed us to take thermal losses data every ten minutes instead of every month and improved our coworkers' safety, again, by not having them take the data manually in the plant. And overall, this resulted in ensuring peak thermal performance of Callaway and, in the process, helped us better serve our customers.
Here on the left, you will see a gradual increase in vibrations with our circulating water pump.
We took the pump out of service and corrected the condition, and we avoided unwanted equipment failure and associated cost. That's on the left. On the right, you'll see a sudden increase in vibrations on the iso-phase cooling fan motor, and we found a cracked weld on the mounting plate and corrected it. Again, just like with the circulating water pump, we avoided unwanted equipment failure and associated cost.
Those are a couple examples where we were able to proactively find equipment issues and correct them in a timely way. And there's more pictures.
Here, you'll see on the left -- you'll see pictures
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 of the wireless vibration sensors. In the middle, you'll see a picture of the pressure transducers with remote wireless sensors. And then, on the right, you'll see pictures of the thermocouples and resistance temperature detectors with wireless sensors.
And I'd like to note that the connectors that were used for the remote wireless sensors were made in our instrumentation and controls shop actually using our 3D printer. That's another technology we're using to help us in maintaining our plant.
Now we'll move on to the virtual reality training. And as I mentioned earlier, we use virtual reality to conduct training. The first example I will share is that we use this training for our worker protection assurance. And so our worker protection assurance, in other words training for our supplemental personnel, resulted in no tagging errors during our 2019 refueling outage. And we conducted a 50-minute training model instead of the typical four-hour classroom.
The second example of using virtual reality for training is in the area of hazard recognition training, safety training. And our hazard recognition training for all of our Ameren coworkers, as well as supplemental personnel, resulted in significant
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 improvements in our safety performance in our 2020 refueling outage. And since we did it in 2020, we did this during the COVID pandemic. And by having this virtual reality training, we were able to avoid getting large numbers of our coworkers in the same room, and then it helped us manage the COVID pandemic in a better way.
Here, you'll see a couple of pictures from the virtual reality training, as well as some of the results and the benefits we've seen from this virtual reality training. On the left, you'll see that we had zero tagging errors in our 2019 refueling outage. And on the right, you'll see that we had zero recordable injuries in our 2020 refueling outage, and a significant improvement in performance.
Overall, I'd like to sum it up by saying that the proper use of innovative technologies helps with improving our equipment performance, our plant performance, helps us improve our safety performance for our coworkers, and helps us reduce cost all at the same time. And that really overall helps us with making sure we operate Callaway safely and reliably for the long term and to benefit our customers overall. Thank you.
MR. LOCHBAUM: Thanks. I appreciate this
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 opportunity to provide a public perspective on the NRC's efforts to provide appropriate access to nuclear safety data, particularly since commendable progress has been made, but more progress remains before this journey is completed.
Years ago, the NRC's Public Document Room allowed you to view agency records stored on microfiche.
Today, members of the public were not allowed to speak at most public meetings and seldom could view the materials being discussed at the meetings until weeks afterward. Today, the NRC conducts three categories of public meetings. The public can ask questions or express viewpoints in varying degrees in all three meeting types.
Back then, the NRC often did not issue a notice about a public meeting until after the meeting was held, and notices issued before meetings often contained vague descriptions of their purposes, such as, quote, to discuss items of mutual interest, end quote. Today, the NRC posts notices of upcoming meetings on its web page. The notices contain links to records about issues to be discussed during the meetings. And many meetings, even before COVID, enabled members of the public to participate remotely via teleconferences.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Back then, it cost you to attend the NRC's Regulatory Information Conference and its Reactor Water Safety Meetings. Today, the annual Reactor Water Safety Meeting is merged into the Reactor -- Regulatory Information Conference with no registration fee whatsoever. So considerable progress has indeed been made on the NRC's transformation journey for data access.
But the journey is far from over. The public cannot trust the NRC to properly conduct new meetings and make agency records publicly available in a timely manner enough of the time. More than three years after 9/11, the NRC used this national tragedy as an excuse to improperly withhold agency records from the public. By improperly keeping these records from the public, the NRC made a mockery out of the Administrative Procedure Act by denying the public meaningful participation in licensing actions.
Improper coziness to industry has worn very thin. Even if accused of being too cozy with the public, the NRC would not be convicted. Nine months before flooding melted three reactors at Fukushima, the NRC required upgraded flood protection for the three reactors at Oconee in South Carolina but it did so in a document hidden from the public. The secret
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 confirmatory action letter was wrenched from the NRC's clutches by a persistent reporter using federal law.
When the NRC conducted its annual public meeting near Oconee about five weeks after Fukushima's flooding, it did not mention steps underway to better protect against flooding hazard at Oconee. There's no legitimate excuse for the NRC's silence on this subject at that time.
More recently, the NRC secretly met at its headquarters with several of its industry buddies in a non-public, two-day workshop about subsequent license renewal. And the materials discussed during this secret workshop were not placed in ADAMS, where they might have been seen by the public, but were instead hidden in the cloud and shared only with the chosen ones.
Beyond Nuclear's attorney submitted a FOIA request for the records. More than 5,000 pages and two years later, the NRC still has not released all the materials from this meeting. The month following the secret workshop, I was invited to share views about subsequent license renewal with the NRC Commissioners.
I wish I'd have been privy to the information discussed at the secret workshop to inform my comments that day.
Almost every other external stakeholder
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 at the Commission briefing had participated in the secret workshop the previous month or had another member of their organization attend in their stead, but not me or anyone else from UCS or the public was invited to the secret workshop. The NRC must stop treating the public as tokens invited to participate only when necessary to provide the illusion of openness and transparency. It's a shameful sham that the NRC must stop.
The NRC touts its principles of good regulation far more often than it actually follows them.
The NRC's openness principle is simply a joke that was never funny. The public has no reason to trust the public to conduct public meetings properly and to make appropriate information publicly available in a fair and timely manner.
The situation is dire but not hopeless.
The strides the NRC has taken along its transformation journey demonstrate that the agency can achieve tangible gains. The NRC needs to pick up the pace along its transformation journey and stop backtracking and detouring into cul-de-sacs. Thank you.
MR. GREIVES: Good morning. Today I plan to share with you a high-level overview of activities that we've completed as part of our transformation
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 journey and share with you how some of these activities have come to life on the deck plates, hopefully helping to connect the dots to our goal of becoming a modern risk-informed regulator.
As Cathy mentioned, our transformation journey currently includes eight different initiatives spread across our four focus areas: Focus on Our People, Innovate, Use Technology, and Be RiskSMART. Three initiatives fall under the area of Focus on Our People.
The purpose of the Culture Initiative is aligning our behaviors with our transformation vision.
We need to create an environment that is open to sharing ideas and perspectives. Under this initiative, we are focused on making the necessary cultural shifts central to our ability to realize our shared vision. The entire agency is involved in this initiative, beginning first by providing feedback through a first-of-its-kind culture survey.
With those and other survey results in hand, the initiative team developed a culture improvement strategy that includes agency-wide efforts that will enable sustainable change over time. The team is working with the offices and regions as they develop their own improvement plans that include additional areas for improvement based on data specific
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 to their office or region.
The Career Enhancement Initiative provided an interactive guide of the agency's human capital tools that will help NRC employees inform and support their own career paths. Over 340 staff have accessed the tool to date to use direct links to policies and resources such as OPM résumé-writing classes and other guidance that explains the why and how behind many of our human capital programs.
The Employee Journey Initiative, our most recent, is a follow-on to Career Enhancement and is focused on clarifying career paths based on future workload needs to drive employee retention, engagement, and development. Their interactive tool was just released to the agency in January. In the future, the Employee Journey site will be made available on the NRC's public website, highlighting our agency as the employer of choice.
Of course, in addition to these activities, which were driven by our initiative teams, numerous accomplishments have been made across the offices and in the regions that support this area of focusing on our people. One success I'd like to mention is in the area of knowledge management.
Historically, each region had conducted
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 weekly knowledge transfer sessions to share information with inspectors on a variety of topics. An inspector in Region I questioned why these sessions were done independent from the other regions and instead suggested that we could share information more broadly by conducting cross-regional sessions.
He entered the idea into the innovation platform, and in short order, a team was formed using the Open Opportunities platform through USAJOBS, and the idea became reality. For the last 12 months, these weekly sessions have been attended by hundreds of NRC staff and recorded so that the knowledge can be captured and shared with the next generation of inspectors.
Other benefits of this innovative solution include improved cross-regional consistency and resource savings, all while improving training quality.
Two initiatives fall under the area of Innovate. The Signposts and Markers Initiative team focused its efforts following up on the work done under the Futures Assessment Report and identified a variety of markers denoting external factors that will have the greatest effect on the agency's future and developed a dashboard to measure and track those indicators to support strategic decision-making. These sign posts and markers have informed our FY22 budget and strategic
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 workforce planning activities and are accessible to agency leaders to inform any decision that would benefit from a
better understanding of our external environment.
For example, information included in the dashboard helped inform Region I's decision on determining the lease length for their next office building by helping them to better understand when a future decision point could occur.
As described by Cathy previously, the Innovate NRC 2.0 Initiative designed and implemented a best-in-class program to help create a culture that supports an innovative mindset. I appreciated Mr.
Lochbaum acknowledging progress we've made in the area of openness over the years because one of the over 400 successes captured on the platform I'd like to highlight was a regional idea to improve the effectiveness of our public outreach for stakeholders in the vicinity of operating plants. Each year, the NRC holds public meetings for each of the nuclear power plants in the country to discuss the NRC's assessment of plant performance for the previous year.
For many of the plants in Region I, for example, the NRC conducted an open house style meeting to allow for an open dialogue with members of the public.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Due to the location of several of the plants in remote areas and frequent good performance, extremely low turnout didn't result in effective engagement with the public. In order to improve in this area, members of the team explored a means of doing these meetings virtually, including grouping the sites into a single meeting so that more information could be provided to stakeholders.
As a result of the team's efforts, more effective engagement of the public and state and local officials was experienced by providing a more thorough exchange of information and an alternative to traveling to a remote site. When the idea was being developed, the number-one priority was to improve the effectiveness of our public outreach. We asked ourselves, how can we engage more people and make our meetings more accessible?
Feedback from our first run of this style meeting was very positive, and we have since expanded the use across the regions. Sharing this success through the IdeaScale platform allowed others to benefit from the learnings of the team. In fact, this year, assessment meetings for every plant in the country were conducted virtually. While this was necessitated largely due to the pandemic, the sharing of the success
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 through the innovation platform allowed for collaboration across regions to ensure we continue to provide the important public outreach despite restrictions necessitated by COVID. Of course, these meetings were only a handful of more than the 500 virtual public meetings that the agency has conducted since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the Technology focus area, we have one initiative but many related activities occurring across the agency. We have made great improvements using available technology productivity tools to enhance collaboration among employees and transitioned from desktop computers to laptops. These efforts allowed us to quickly transition to working remotely during COVID-19.
Shortly after transitioning to remote working in response to the pandemic, over 2,700 daily users remotely connected to our network. With a range of 30 to 54,000 daily instant messages between staff and up to 850 daily conference meetings through the use of our system. We also shared over 1,500 files on any given day using SharePoint and OneDrive to collaborate.
Of course, at a regional level, we were also looking for ways to work smarter in the field.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 As an example, inspectors in the regions challenged management to find a better IT solution to help them accomplish their inspection work. I can tell you from personal experience that it's not uncommon to go into an inspection team room or resident inspector office and see reams of papers spread across the desk or table being reviewed as part of an inspection. While the picture here was taken in the 1970s, it could just as easily have been from the past few years.
In response to the challenge posed by our inspectors, we focused on equipping them with modern tools to allow for better collaboration with other inspectors at the site or in the regions or headquarters. This has enhanced our activities in a number of ways, including more prompt support in the field, being better prepared for emerging events, and allowing inspectors to more efficiently conduct their business.
Previously, if an inspector had a field observation and needed information from a licensee's drawing or procedure, they would need to go back to the resident office to access the information and then likely go back into the field to continue to inspect.
If they needed support from a regional subject matter expert, they could have taken a picture with the
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 traditional digital camera, go back to the resident office to download the picture and email it to the regional or headquarters staff member to get the support that they needed.
Instead, with the two-in-one devices you see here, the inspector can make a field observation, access licensee documents real-time, and even engage with a regional subject-matter expert in the field via Teams. In a matter of minutes, they would have resolved the concern or had a better informed question or observation to pose to the licensee. While this dead time might not seem like much, it certainly adds up across the thousands of inspection hours conducted by our inspectors throughout the year.
For the Risk focus area, we have two initiatives. The Process Simplification Initiative is focused on making the day-to-day work of the agency more efficient by enhancing guidance and instructions for job-related tasks, streamlining workflows, and encouraging the use of modern information technology capabilities. To date, improvements have been identified and implemented in the document development and concurrence processes, and communications and new procedures have been issued to address these process improvements.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 For example, the staff is using the newly developed and implemented process for the emerging medical technology rulemaking. With this new process, the staff has been able to reach early alignment when developing the document.
The Be riskSMART Initiative team developed a framework that gives staff confidence in accepting well-managed risks in our decision-making without compromising the NRC's mission and is applicable in all areas of the NRC, including the areas of corporate, technical, and legal support. We have been able to use this framework during COVID-19 to ensure the safety and well-being of our employees and the licensees and on-site staff as well.
The ROP is the NRC's primary means of ensuring that commercial nuclear power plants are operated safely, securely, and in accordance with applicable regulations. It has been and remains a risk-informed process. For example, our inspectors routinely use risk insights when identifying inspection samples.
The program is also designed to ensure our resources are focused on areas of increased risk significance, and when issues are identified through the course of our inspection, it is such that more
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 resources are spent reviewing and resolving those of increased risk significance.
In short, reactor risk is understood and integral to the program. What becomes more difficult is involving other risks such as personnel safety, reputational
- risk, or legal risk in our decision-making. Recognizing the importance of protecting the health and safety of our inspectors and site personnel, thereby protecting our critical infrastructure and supporting the nation's efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19, resident inspectors at each of our sites transitioned to a telework status in March of last year.
However, because resident inspectors have a unique and vital role for regulatory oversight on the front lines of these plants, they continued periodically visiting the site at a minimum of every three days, performing various plant status walk-downs and inspections, and in particular ensured they were on site during periods of heightened risk.
In a cooperative way, management for our licensees provided our inspectors access to the various networks and computer applications, just as if they were in their normal offices, such that we maintained an ability to independently review plant status by
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 remotely viewing various plant parameters. While a typical day for the resident inspectors starts out with a physical walk-down of the plant control room, while we were working remotely, we were in many cases able to remotely observe key plant parameters, independently verifying that the plant continued to be operated safely.
Notwithstanding our enhanced remote capabilities, resident inspectors were on site periodically, and in particular during periods of increased activities. For example, plants across the country shut down for planned refueling outages in the spring and fall, and our resident inspectors observed various outage activities, focusing on those of higher safety significance, such as start-up and shutdown of the reactor and reduced coolant system inventory. As the pandemic progressed, we partnered with our program offices to develop dashboards which allow managers to make data based decisions for when to increase on site inspector presence or resume team inspections.
I highlight these activities because I think it truly reveals the agility of our staff, and the Be RiskSMART framework allowed and encouraged us to spot the opportunities and challenges associated with the various decisions we needed to make, manage
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 those that we could, act on the information to make our inspection decisions, realize the result of those decisions, and then reflecting on those results to teach others by developing and sharing lessons learned.
As I mentioned earlier, we are on a transformation journey, one that started a couple years ago but will continue into the years to come. The few dots that I've tried to connect for you today are just a small assortment of the accomplishments, both large and small, that staff across the agency have made.
I would encourage you to stop by our Transformation Digital Exhibit and hear directly from some of our staff members on many more successes in these focus areas. More importantly than any of those individual successes, the commitment of our staff across the agency to look for ways to innovate, focus on our people, adopt technology, and be riskSMART is demonstrative of our continued commitment to becoming a modern risk-informed regulator.
While we know we have accomplished much already, there is more work that we will continue to do to realize our vision. Thank you for your time.
MS. HANEY: Well, welcome, everyone, to the question and answer portion of our session this morning. I hope you enjoyed all the very informative
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 presentations we've had so far. We've been getting a lot of questions in, and we'll try to get to as many of those as we can over the next -- I think it would be about 27 minutes.
I would just like to comment first that we did receive some questions about challenges starting out with tech support, and we have a chat in the bottom right-hand corner that's listed as Tech Support. So I would try that first. And if I get more information during the session, I'll certainly relay it on to you.
So let's start with the first question, and I'm going to direct this to all of the participants here, I -- oh, not the participants, but out to the panelists. And we'll be starting with Dave Nelson first.
So the question is, transformation, modernization, and innovation are words that have been used by many different organizations over the last few years. In some instances, these words have been touted as buzzwords. Why are we hearing these words more frequently now than in previous years? Are they more important?
So, Dave Nelson, why don't you start? Then we'll just go down in the order that we have. So Dave?
MR.
NELSON:
Thank
- you, Cathy.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Appreciate that. I think I was guilty of using all three of those words in my remarks earlier. I think they are important words, and they all have slightly different meanings. Innovation is the thinking about new ideas and bringing out new ways to do things.
Modernization is more about, in my realm of work --
do their work, the technology, that type of work.
Transformation is totally different, as I see it.
Transformation is changing the agency itself and the way that we approach things and how we go about our work and making sure that we keep our mission clearly in front of us, but thinking of new ways to do things.
So I see them all as different, and I think they are important. What other teams are using or organizations are using those words for, I'm sure they can have some differences. But for NRC, I think they're really important concepts that we're all living and having to do each of them.
So thank you for that opportunity.
MS. HANEY: All right. Fadi, would you like to try and take that big question on?
MR. DIYA: Absolutely. Absolutely. And to me, all three words are very meaningful and mean a lot, and also, we use them quite a bit. And we have them now more than before for a number of reasons.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 I'll just talk about a couple of those reasons.
One is, as we look into agile ability, you
- know, innovative technologies, modernization, transformation, all have tools that have become more available nowadays, and there's something new just about every day. So it's available, which is great.
We can take advantage of it.
The other reason for it is opportunity to improve the quality of our business and also to improve the quality of our lives. I mean, we think about all of these -- innovation, transformation, modernization perspective.
And then the third reason is a necessity.
In this day and age, with everything that's going on, including the COVID pandemic, it's become more necessary to be able to adopt all these tools and all these transformations, and just keep things going in a different way.
And as we go into the future, we'll have the new normal, which just becomes more different, very meaningful, and very important to our quality of life and quality of business.
MS. HANEY: Thank you. Dave Lochbaum?
MR. LOCHBAUM: I really don't have anything to add. I try not to use too many syllables.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MS. HANEY: All right. Thanks, Dave.
Jon, how about you?
MR. GREIVES: Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Cathy. I mean, I think from -- you know, I would echo a lot of the stuff that Dave Nelson said from an NRC perspective. When we set off on the transformation journey, it was really about making a sustainable platform for change. I think, from a reasonable perspective, our inspection staff, our staff within the regions, are really good at looking for new ways to do things.
Continuous improvement is really integral to a lot of the programs that we implement. So it is vital, but really, it's kind of unleashing the power of the collective of everyone to -- and challenging and empowering them to look for new ways, different ways, better ways to execute their mission, to do their jobs, to really challenge and look for ways in which you can consider risk in your decision-making, to take measured risks in how you would make changes.
So I think transformation in and of itself isn't, and innovation in and of itself isn't, something new. We've generally over the years empowering the staff, empowering everyone, to be committed to the vision. And then, in large part, getting folks to buy
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 in on the vision of becoming a modern risk-informed regulator kind of gives us the direction that we want to change and gives people the creative latitude to suggest changes, and then a platform from which they can make those changes come to reality in a quicker fashion.
MS. HANEY: Okay, Jon. Thanks very much.
All right. Our next question, I think we'll start with our external panelists first. So, Dave Lochbaum, I'll start with you.
So the question -- and it really, in a way, relates back to our earlier question. But what do you think is most important for the NRC to focus on to be successful in transformation?
MR. LOCHBAUM: Well, I think there's two components to that. I think the first is -- and both Dave Nelson and Jon spoke to it. It's metrics to ensure that you achieve the outcome you're seeking as you go through transformation or some of these changes.
I think coupled with that is a necessity to look for unintended consequences. You may have a great move in direction A, but that causes a shortage in some other area that causes consequences that may offset the gains in the first initiative. So making sure that you achieve the outcome you're seeking and
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 with no unintended consequences or minimal unintended consequences is the key to success.
MS. HANEY: Thanks, Dave. Very helpful.
Fadi?
MR. DIYA: Yeah, I agree. And I would add that -- base the transformation on the facts. You know, look at the facts that are in front of us, whether it's performance of the different plants, the performance of the industry, the performance of the NRC, and the facts behind all of it, as well as metrics. And let those facts and metrics lead you to doing the right thing from a transformation perspective.
MS. HANEY: Great. Jon?
MR. GREIVES: I agree with both of that, that understanding the information behind the changes we're going to make is important. I listened to some of the Chairman's remarks. He talked about how diversity and inclusion are really fundamental to being a good regulator.
And so I'll take that in a little bit different direction to say that we certainly face a lot of challenges in the dynamic environment we're in.
I consider myself a pretty good problem solver. I feel like when I'm faced with a challenge, I can come up with some pretty good solutions. But the solutions
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 that I could come up with pale in comparison to the solutions that we could come up with if we unleash or harness the abilities of 2,700-plus staff members across the agency.
So,
- really, having a
platform to crowdsource our solutions allows us to get some of that information to consider a variety of perspectives across the agency. Folks, rather than coming up with a solution in our one little silo or tunnel, we can really consider/gather a wide range of data so -- and consider that when we're creating a solution.
So I think, really, unleashing the power of all of our staff through a number of the activities we're doing is really an important focus.
MS. HANEY: Thanks, Jon.
And Dave Nelson?
MR.
NELSON:
Okay.
Thank you.
Understanding where we've gone and sort of projecting where we'd like to go, I think it's important, as I mentioned before, to really keep our mission in mind, the critical safety and security parts of our mission.
But then where I would go from there is I think communication and our workforce are probably the most important parts to being successful in our transformation.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 As Jon mentioned, diversity of ideas is important, but just communication so that we're all truly on the same page, looking at the same goals, and understanding what it is we're trying to do. So I really think the people and the communication that goes with that are really what's going to make us successful.
MS. HANEY: All right. Thanks, Dave.
And I'm not going to let you off the hook because I'm going to start the next question right off to you, and then I'll give Jon the opportunity to weigh in if he would like, and then our external panelists if they would want to, because this question, I think, is a little bit more directed towards NRC, as well as the next question.
So it's a very simple one. What's your definition of modern? Since the term came into NRC's vernacular several years ago, modern has never been defined and is inherently subjective. It seems that the NRC has largely interpreted modern as using new technology to perform its mission, but it does not seem to be uniformly applied in terms of how it regulates, such as having a modern view of nucleation.
But then I'm going to let Jon finish it off in talking about the nuclear risks.
MR. NELSON: Yeah. Thanks again.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Yeah, I think modernization I did use in my presentation and in my first response. It's really an important element of a digital transformation and really looking at your platforms and making sure that you're doing things wisely from a
technology perspective.
But I think modern and the way it's used across our agency is much broader than that. I think it came into -- the questioner accurately picked up on our use of that term several years ago because it became part of our conversation when we started to look at what was going on around us in our environment, in the energy environment, in government, and really looking for those keys.
Jon mentioned earlier the work that we did in the area of identifying milestones and markers for us to kind of get an idea of where our environments are going. So I think modern is understanding what is happening in our modern environment and understanding how we as a regulator have to work within that environment.
MS. HANEY: Thanks, Dave. And, Jon, would you like to take that more towards the view of having a modern view of nuclear risks?
MR. GREIVES: Yeah, I can. So our view
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 or our understanding of risk to power plants or materials users has certainly evolved over the years.
We've looked differently at it.
I think when you talk about the Be RiskSMART
-- if I want to talk specifically about risk, the Be RiskSMART framework really provides -- one thing that it really provides well for us is a common framework, a common terminology from which we can communicate risks. And that can include a variety of risks, experience through different engagements with stakeholders.
So -- but then being able to then communicate that with our counterparts using a common framework is really important so that we can -- that can be translated into what we go do in the field through inspection, through oversight and licensing and rulemaking, whatever it may be.
So I think that was really -- and then, to touch on something that Dave said and something I mentioned in a previous answer, the point of transformation was to provide a sustainable platform for change. Recognizing what specific tool or what specific risk understanding is right now, that that will evolve over time. So we have to be agile enough to be able to continue to change to match what our
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 environment presents to us, and whether that's in the different ways we need to provide oversight to an operating reactor plant that may look very different for future new technologies than they are today, our agility is really key. And that stems out of building this kind of sustainable platform for change.
MS. HANEY: Good. Thanks, Jon.
Fadi or Dave, would you like to comment?
MR. LOCHBAUM: This is Dave. I'll just briefly comment on modern nuclear risks. The public only has access to probabilistic risk assessments from the early '90s, the individual plan examination in IEEE.
After 9/11, the NRC does not allow the public to look at those risk documents.
Risk information has evolved, but the public is still stuck in the 20th century looking at that. So there's a disconnect between risk-informed regulation and the amount of the information on risk that the public can access.
So that's a challenge. I'm not saying put all the cards on the table, but at least some of the cards probably need to be on the table for this to be considered modern with the public's participation.
MR. DIYA: Cathy, nothing else there from my end.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MS. HANEY: Okay. Great. Thank you.
All right. Dave, I was going to go to Jon next, but I'm going to continue -- this is Dave Lochbaum.
But I think I'm going to go ahead and jump over a question that I had for Jon and just continue where I think you were headed.
So -- the public?
MR. LOCHBAUM: Yes. One example that comes to mind was a few years ago. I was working as an expert witness for Diane Curran, who was a lawyer representing a client down in Florida in the Turkey Point relicensing case. The issue, the contention, that Diane was working on dealt with steam generators.
I needed access to the Updated Final Safety Analysis Report to help Diane put that issue in context.
The NRC denied us access to the UFSAR information until after that proceeding was done. The Updated Final Safety Analysis -- provided. By denying us access to that information, they basically made the whole proceeding a mockery. There's no way to participate in a legal proceeding when you have no information.
So there's got to be some way to allow the public to gain insight -- if you're having a dialogue between the NRC and the industry, and the public's looking at blank pieces of paper, that ain't going to
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 work. So we need to stop trying that. We need to find some happy ground that allows the right information to be withheld, but the right information that the public has access to actually is in the public's hands.
MS. HANEY: Okay, Dave. Dave, thank you for that. Any other interest and commenting on that one?
(No response.)
MS. HANEY: All right. So, Jon, I'm going to head back to you for a second. And the specific question for you would be, since all transformation requires a culture shift, how are you shifting the culture around utilizing risk insights and focusing on the most risk-significant issues?
MR. GREIVES: So I think I'll build off of the question that I -- or how I started answering.
I mean, one, we have to have a good understanding of what the risk-significant issues are. A lot of that comes from our evolving understanding of operating experience, of how these plants are designed and operated.
Let me use a specific example, even, from the pandemic. When we transitioned to -- our inspection staff to largely working remotely, what didn't stop is our understanding and appreciation that
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 we still needed to be on site, and in particular during risk significant -- we're there to independently observe was a key aspect.
So I think -- from a culture-shift standpoint, I think there was probably some bit of a shift in recognizing, if I stick with that example, of being remotely -- and kind of doing some of our initial plant status remotely, that required a bit of a culture shift. Where do we get information? How do we get information? How do we communicate with the staff? But then still recognizing how important it is to be there on site and making sure that our inspectors were there when they needed to be.
So I think a lot of it involves understanding what your culture is and then identifying where you want to see shifts or where you want to see improvements. But from a risk standpoint, I think it's just our inspectors have a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience and can really leverage that to identify when they needed to be on site and things of that nature.
So if I just use that kind of example, that would kind of sum it up for me, I think.
MS. HANEY: All right. Thank you, Jon.
All right. Fadi, I'm coming your way.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 What roles do new nuclear engineering graduates and young engineers play in Ameren's innovation journey?
And what nuclear engineering graduate programs does Ameren collaborate with most closely?
MR. DIYA: Yeah. Thank you, Cathy. I'll start with the role. The nuclear engineering graduates and young engineers definitely play a huge role in our/Ameren's innovation journey. And I would add that the best innovation comes from really having -- going back to diversity, having a number of different perspectives in the room and making sure that we build on each other's ideas.
And the best innovation that I've seen comes from a team effort, whether it's engineers or operators or maintenance technicians or trainers. The more diversity you have in the room, the better innovation we have. And so that would -- I would advocate for, is a team effort with basically a diversity in perspective in the room to get the best innovation effort.
As far as nuclear engineering programs that we collaborate with, we're in Missouri, so we collaborate with the University of Missouri System in Missouri the most, but also, we're open to other graduate programs that are out there. And we have our
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 coworkers, really, from all over the country and some from around the world, which is amazing.
Thank you for the question.
MS. HANEY: Thank you.
Jon, would you want to comment on what NRC
-- like really that same question pertinent to NRC, please?
MR. GREIVES: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would want to highlight one activity that just started for the NRC last year, and that's our NRAN, or Nuclear Regulator Apprenticeship Network Program. It really was an innovative way of being able to bring new staff, young engineers, on board and get them to experience everything that the NRC has to offer.
Bringing in new staff into the NRC is really vital. If you look at demographics, which are similar to what a lot of the industry is experiencing, we would expect a number of retirements over the next few years.
So really cultivating the crop, so to speak, to use an analogy, of our next generation is really good.
The NRAN program allows our new staff to do apprenticeships in a variety of different offices.
That rounds out their experience. We had a number of NRANs in Region I just this past fall be able to get some experience being resident inspectors or
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 reactor inspectors, but then they can go to headquarters and learn about licensing, about research, so that ultimately when they identify the career path within the NRC that is most beneficial or most in line with their career goals, they really have a better understanding of everything the NRC has to offer and everything the NRC does to meet its mission.
So that was really a very good, innovative solution of how we would develop the next generation, and we'll continue to apply effort in that area.
MS. HANEY: Thank you, Jon.
All right. Fadi, this one is coming back your way. Do you see any regulatory impediments to regulatory technology transformation?
MR. DIYA: I do not. And the basis for this response is that, clearly, we will base the nuclear reactor technology transformation -- we will base it on the sound technical facts, sound technical basis.
We'll make sure it's safe. And as long as we continue to work in that arena of using sound technical facts, making sure it's safe, making sure that it's sustainable, and the collaboration and communication
-- reactor technology transformation for our future to really be able to serve society and ensure better quality of life.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MS. HANEY: Thank you. All right. Dave Nelson, question for you. How has NRC maintained its digital infrastructure, given the increase in internet bandwidth used at the agency and across the U.S.? Are there any lessons learned from other federal agencies or commercial organizations?
MR. NELSON: Well, Cathy, we've continued to evolve our network over the past year. We had pretty strong controls as far as how to access our network to make sure that it was safe and secure. But we did have to -- we had to increase our bandwidth. We had to increase our oversight and monitoring of that bandwidth to really know what was going on so that we could predict and react to any kinds of -- and actually engineer additional solutions to balance those network resources that we have.
In fact, we've even established some redundancy in that network that allows us to throw it back and forth between our regions and our headquarters on different paths, much like the telephone companies do. So it's important -- it's become more important than ever with all of the telework that we're working under to make sure that it's there to support us when we need it and how we want to use it.
I think many of the federal agencies are
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 learning these same lessons. We participate in the CIO Council with the other federal agencies. We talk with industry quite a bit and talk about the resilience for similar types of problems. So, yes, we've learned from them, and I think we're doing quite well as an agency ourselves with a very reliable, resilient network in place.
MS. HANEY: Thank you, Dave, for that answer to that question. And earlier I said we had
-- I think it was about 28, 29 minutes left for questions. I think the time has gone very fast for me. I'm not sure about the panelists who have been answering the questions.
But I want to bring our session to a close.
What I found particularly interesting was just that this aspect of transformation and the importance of being innovative just goes across all of the lines throughout all of our stakeholders, and I think we're all committed to making progress in this particular area.
I'd like to give my thanks to Doris, who started -- who opened this session for us, and she had a team working with her on getting us all ready for this. So very much my thanks and appreciation to all the work that she's put in behind the scenes.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 So I hope everyone that has been able to participate in this session has learned a little bit more about NRC's transformation journey and a little bit about industry's transformation journey. And while we've achieved tangible successes, we're always going to continue our efforts to innovate and modernize our program and processes to better serve the American people.
If you have questions, please contact us at the email address that you should be seeing on the screen. And thank you again for joining us, and if you do want to learn more about our transformation journey, please visit the digital exhibit, "The Future Is Now: An Interactive Timeline."
And please enjoy the rest of the week.
And again, thank you very much for joining us today.
Have a great day.
(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 12:02 p.m.)
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433