ML21225A718
| ML21225A718 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 03/10/2021 |
| From: | Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NRC-1420 | |
| Download: ML21225A718 (53) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
33rd Regulatory Information Conference Technical Session - W17 Docket Number: (n/a)
Location: teleconference Date: Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Work Order No.: NRC-1420 Pages 1-50 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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TECHNICAL SESSION - W17 EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTERS EVALUATION AND RESPONSE TO NUCLEAR-RELATED ACCIDENTS
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 2021
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The RIC session convened via Video Teleconference, at 10:45 a.m. EST, Raymond Furstenau, Director, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, presiding.
PRESENT:
CLAY JOHNSON, Deputy Director for Division of Preparedness and Response and the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response KEN EVANS, REAC Unit Supervisor, Illinois Emergency Management Agency JOHN FORD, Deputy Director, FEMA National Integration NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 Center JOHN LILLIENDAHL, Senior Emergency Response Coordinator for NRC's Region 1 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 P R O C E E D I N G S 10:45 a.m.
MR. JOHNSON: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening from wherever you're watching this, and I hope you're going to really enjoy our presentation on Emergency Operations Centers-Evaluation and Response to Nuclear-Related Accidents.
My name is Clay Johnson. I'm Deputy Director for Division of Preparedness and Response and the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response.
Next slide.
So just a quick overview. We're looking at the NRC's transformation to be a modern, risk-informed regulator. And we wanted to take this opportunity for our distinguished panelists to talk about their organization's unique roles and response, and how they interact and support efforts to protect the health and safety of the public during all hazard and radiological nuclear events. Next slide.
So today we will have presentations from Ken Evans. He is the REAC Unit Supervisor for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, followed by John Lilliendahl, a colleague of mine. He's the Senior NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 Emergency Response Coordinator for NRC's Region 1.
Following will be John Ford, who is the Deputy Director for the National Integration Center for FEMA or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Then Mr. Florian Baciu, who is the acting Head of the Incident Emergency Center for the International Atomic Energy Agency. Next slide. So we are going to start out with Mr. Evans.
MR. EVANS: Thank you very much, Clay, for the introduction and for the invitation to speak today on the Illinois Emergency Operations Center. I will be covering the State Emergency Operations Center briefly as well as the Radiological Emergency Assessment Center for which I am responsible. So next slide, please.
And in Illinois, like other states, most disasters, including floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, et cetera, are handled under the all-hazard plan; however, Illinois, because of the fact that we do have more nuclear plants, six sites, than any other state and the unique regulator aspects of emergency preparedness, we actually have a separate plan for radiological accidents. Next slide, please.
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5 Accidents. It is a supplement to the Illinois Emergency Operations Plan, and Illinois also maintains a site-specific plan for each of the six stations.
So, next slide, please.
And I realize in this organizational chart you may not be able to see all of the information on it, but the point I wanted to make is that while we are much like other states in having the various state, local, federal partners is part of the response to a radiological emergency, we have a unique center in REAC, Radiological Emergency Assessment Center, that provides technical information and advice to the State Emergency Operations Center. So, next slide, please.
Here is a picture of our Radiological Emergency Assessment Center, and only thing I want to point out here is a little bit about the structure of the room. One of the things that's unique in the State of Illinois, we actually on the left-hand side of the picture, if you will, have a REAC, a reactor component, that handles analysis of reactor information that we'll talk about here shortly. On the right-hand side of the picture is our Health Physics or Environmental Assessment-Dose Assessment Group. Next slide, please.
And here is, again, I apologize if you can't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 read all of the blocks here, but really only three positions that I want to talk about at this time. One, we have a REAC Manager that is responsible for the room.
And we have a Reactor Specialist on the left-hand side of the chart. And on the right-hand side of the chart, we have a Health Physics Specialist. These three positions are on-call positions, so they're available to respond to radiological emergency 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day/7 days a week. There's always someone on-call. So, next slide.
And the next slide here, How Do We Get Notified? Well, like other states, the utility has a regulatory requirement to notify our agency within 15 minutes, and that notification will go through our 24 hour/7 day a week Operations Center. Now they, in turn, will notify the REAC Manager on-call, who will notify other staff as warranted.
And the local counties, or the risk counties that are affected by the station, would also be notified concurrently. Next slide, please.
In this slide, you will see a basic layout for the Exelon, who is the utility responsible for the six stations in the State of Illinois. And, as you can see here, not only are they responsible for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 notifying the state and local officials, but they are also responsible, again, for regulatory requirements of notifying the NRC for the EMS system. Next slide, please.
So what we have here is a, what we call a Nuclear Accident Reporting System form that is transmitted electronically to our agency. And following transmission of this form, the utility will follow-up with a phone call confirming receipt of the form, and then our agency will, in turn, initiate a state NARS form that would go out to the affected counties. Next slide, please.
You will note in the next slide we have a picture of the actual NARS form, and again, realizing that you're certainly not going to be able to read probably all of the fine print here, but the NARS form contains the pertinent information about which of the six stations in Illinois would be affected by the event, what the emergency classification level would be, and what the emergency action level would be, and the time, date, person making the notification, and most importantly, in the middle of the form, any protective action recommendations that might be required for the public. Next slide, please.
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8 Now, as I mentioned earlier, the REAC Manager is the first person to get a phone call. And when the REAC Manager receives the phone call, why he will notify possibly the Reactor Specialist or the Health Physics Specialist before REAC would be fully staffed to discuss any recommendations that these individuals might have about staffing REAC. But at a minimum, REAC would be staffed for a site area emergency or a general emergency and possibly for an alert depending on the complexity or other things that would be happening in conjunction with that order.
Next slide, please.
So one of the things in REAC that we are primarily responsible for is making protective action recommendations. So to make those protective action recommendations, we have three information systems/data systems: Reactor Data Link, sometimes abbreviated as RDL; Gaseous Effluent Monitoring System abbreviated as GEMS; and finally, Gamma Detection Network evaluated as GDN, sometimes the Gamma Detection Network also some of you may know this under the term Remote Monitoring System. So in the next slide, please.
I have an example of an RDL screen, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 for those of you that are responsible for the NRC's Emergency Response Data System, ERDS, this screen probably looks very similar, and that was designed on purpose. The difference between what we get in the ERDS system is we get probably around ten times as many variables, over a thousand reactor variables, and these variables, unlike ERDS, are transmitted live from the licensee 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day/7 days a week, so this is a life stream of the data that you would be seeing. Next slide, please.
In the next slide, look at our GDN System and at our Gaseous Effluent Monitoring System. So looking at this diagram or slide here, on the left, we have our GDN System, which consists of 16 pressurized time chambers that measure down to environmental levels of radiation. And on the right-hand side of the diagram or the chart, here is a picture, is the meta-information from the site meteorological tower.
And then finally down at the bottom is our Gaseous Effluent Monitoring System. And this is a system we're very proud of because it monitors not only the noble gas effluent, which is most of you know is a requirement for the licensee, but we also, in addition, have real-time capability to monitor NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 particulates and iodines, and that requires, if it needs to be if a sample needs to be taken, the Health Physics Specialist, even from a remote capability, can request that a sample be taken in the stack.
Now in this last year, with the limitations we had with COVID and restrictions on social distancing and everything, I think you can see where our instrumentation comes in very handy in the fact that anybody with a computer can obtain and manipulate this information. Next slide, please.
Here is a picture of one of our GEMS buildings at the stations showing, you can see the liquid nitrogen dewar in the background there that is necessary for operation of this system. Next slide, please.
Here is a picture of one of our remote monitors or part of our gamma detection network. You will note the solar panel. All of our monitors are now powered by solar power. Next slide, please.
And in the next slide here, why we talk a little bit about what I call the human element, and equipment is pricey, but I can't tell you how important it is to have a person at each station. In Illinois, our program allows for Resident Inspector to be at each NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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11 nuclear station, and upon declaration of an emergency event, they would report to the licensee's technical support center. We would also dispatch one of our other representatives to the station's emergency operation facility. The utility, like Exelon, would dispatch one of their representatives or liaisons to our Radiological Emergency Assessment Center, and we feel that we have dedicated communications between the TSC, the EOF, and REAC, and this allows us to make timely protective action recommendations, which is very useful. And the next slide, please.
I mentioned about the REAC facility and the State EOC. The State EOC maintains overall command and control of the event. The REAC facility provides technical input from the SEOC. They are both located in the same facility, but to facilitate communications, we have a Division of Nuclear Safety Liaison that is the main bridge between REAC and the SEOC. And the SEOC team member is also responsible for keeping other liaisons in the affected counties at unified area command responsible. Next slide, please.
Finally, as I like to say, when I do my training for individuals in REAC, our primary product and mission is to protect public health and safety, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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12 and for that charge, we are responsible for issuing protective action recommendations to the SEOC. And the SEOC, in turn, takes that technical recommendation and issues a protective action recommendation for the counties.
And since Illinois is a home rule state, we are responsible for issuing, the county is responsible for actually issuing the protective action decision.
So, in summary, I want to point out that this is a very timely session being in the month of March. Tomorrow, as we observe the tenth anniversary of Fukushima, also thinking back in March to 1975 the Browns Ferry Fire, of course, in 1979, March 28th, we had the Three-Mile accident. And because of the significance of that accident, Illinois, we basically made the decision to have a robust plan to ensure the public's safety.
And we maintain to do that a specialized monitoring systems as well as our resident inspector program, and over the years we have continued to provide training and upgrade our monitoring system to ensure that the citizens of the State of Illinois are protected in the event of any radiological emergency. Next NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 slide, please.
With that, I would like to point out that I think it's been pointed out in this conference that you can submit your questions at any time. So I know at the conclusion of this session we will have time for questions. Next slide, please.
There is my contact information if you would like to contact me individually. And, again, I want to thank Clay and the NRC for inviting me to participate today. Thank you.
MR. JOHNSON: Thank you very much, Mr.
Evans. That was a great presentation. And now I would like to introduce Mr. Jon Lilliendahl, who is going to be talking about the NRC's Incident Response Program.
MR. LILLIENDAHL: Thank you. My name is Jon Lilliendahl. I'm one of the emergency response coordinators. I'm in Region 1, and we have emergency response coordinators and headquarters in each of the regions. I'm going to talk about three areas today.
The first is a high-level review of our program and our processes and then looking at changes that we've made to our programs over the last couple of years, and then finally some adjustments that we've made in light of COVID-19. Next slide.
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14 So our mission has three areas. The first is oversight and independent assessment of the licensee, particularly with respect to their mitigating actions and protective action recommendations. We also, with our response coordination, that includes coordinating with the states, and local, and tribal governments, as well as federal agencies and international partners trying to make sure that we keep them in the loop of what's happening, and particularly supporting the states with the work that they're doing providing public safety.
And then, finally we have public information, which is just making sure the public is aware of the NRC's action in response to the event.
And so we do primarily respond for licensee events.
We also do respond to broad events like 9/11, and then we did participate in Fukushima as requested. So, if a federal agency requests our support, we'll activate for that too. Next slide, please.
So our process for our normal day-to-day events or routine type things, we have at least two resident inspectors at every nuclear site. And they live in the area, and then they work full-time at each site, so we cover the sites that way.
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15 We also have various reactor and materials inspectors at each of the regions. They go out and review all the licensees on a routine basis and reactively. If there are more than your everyday type of events, if there is an accident emergency or an event, those get reported to the headquarters operations officers who are available 24/7. And the licensee will first, as Ken talked about, he'll first notify the states, but then within an hour, they'll also notify us.
Once we've received the notification of the event, we'll make an internal management decision whether or not to activate our program. If we don't activate our program, those same processes I talked about with the resident inspectors and other various inspectors will follow-up on the event.
But if the event is significant enough, we will activate our Incident Response Program, and at that point, we'll maintain continuous oversight of the event, and we do that through communicating with the licensee directly or with our resident inspectors at site.
We also have the Emergency Response Data System, as Ken was talking, similar to the RDL system, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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16 provides real-time, critical parameters from the plant computer to us so that we can do our assessment.
And then, again, we continue to maintain our communications with the state, local, tribal, international, and federal agencies, and provide information to the public through our public information officer. Next slide, please.
So while the core of our program, our mission hasn't changed, we have instituted some pretty significant changes in this last year that was a result of a couple year review of our program looking at our exercises, actual events, and our lessons learned through various after action reports.
We found that we had areas that we can improve in. A lot of those came back to ICS-type concepts. Our program did extremely well during exercises in small events, but we had concerns about scaling up to a larger event being able to be flexible and being more inherently coordinated.
So we started off going right back to the mission, our missions of the response program, looking at the function support that came from that and then making sure that our procedures, which we all completely rewrote, all our procedures directly affect or directly NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 point to a function which supports the mission.
And then we also incorporated, as I mentioned, a lot of ICS concepts that we weren't strongly incorporating in the past, making sure that we have things like management by objective, chain command, duty of command.
So these concepts allow us to be more flexible and allow us to respond to various types of events for a full range of scale. And the one thing that we had done in the past is that we change our structure as an event changed and became more significant. Now with the ICS, the structure remains the same; it just grows as is needed.
Our internal communications processes, we improved those with a standardized situational report type process. In the past, we had done a lot of that, but it wasn't formalized as well as it is now.
And then with external coordination, again, in the past, we would sometimes change the role or the person that was communicating with external stakeholders, in this case in the future, it would always be through the same position, same person, so that was streamlined there. Next slide, please.
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18 everything, is internal for us. As I said, our missions remain the same, and we are just making these changes so that we will be more efficient for response for ourselves. Some things that may be seen on the outside, I'll hit on some of those. But most importantly, there are no changes to the licensee event reporting. That's all controlled by the regulations, and nothing's been changed with that. Again, this is just for our response processes for ourselves.
So the terminology did update if you were familiar with our response modes. Unfortunately, we've gotten away from them or just activated or not activated, which clarifies things and simplifies things.
Our organization and functions, there have been some title changes inside our organization. For the most part, those have just internal impacts to us.
We did try to be sensitive to the fact that we are not the actual first responders. So, in a lot of cases, we use the ICS concept but made some changes to the terminology to make sure that we're not causing any confusion with our actual first responders.
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19 responders. In the past, it was kind of all or nothing.
Anyone who has been involved with our hurricane responses knows that, in fact, we have more of a measured response where we send staff as needed prior to events, and now our new program reflects that.
So we don't necessarily send as many people. It will all be dependent on the event itself, and whether or not we're able to gather the information we need. So we still have the flexibility of sending all the same people that we did in the past but, if we're able to more efficiently do the response remotely, we'll just continue doing it remotely. We'll always have the residents on-site and have an appropriate number of people there.
And the last thing here is just looking to the future. We're hoping to broaden our exercises and participate in the different, more broad variety of exercises. We are going to continue to participate in the licensee exercises, but in the future, we may use dress rehearsals rather than evaluate the exercises, or potentially some tabletop exercises to look at aspects of the program that don't get evaluated or don't exercised as well during the plume and just your pathway exercises. And, once again, to emphasize, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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20 this is not a change to any of the EP requirements.
The exercises are required for the FEMA and EP, the FEMA and NRC EP exercises are not being impacted by this. We're looking for some learning experiences outside of those. Next slide, please.
Just some pictures of a couple of our response centers, Region 1 at headquarters, here we do have response centers in each of the regions and then one at headquarters that allows us to respond to a variety of events. If you can see on the top left one, that was during an exercise last fall, so we had our COVID precautions in place. We removed chairs, spread out workstations to provide for social distancing, and it worked out well. Next slide.
So I hit the overall program and talked about the changes that we made, and then here's just a few things that we did in response to COVID-19 for our response. We fortuitously were transitioning the NRC to using a lot more with Teams prior to COVID-19, so we've been able to capitalize on Teams, SharePoint, and other tools like that to be able to improve our communications virtually. We also made sure to push out some of our technical tools like ERDS and RASCAL that were previously just in the incident response NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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21 centers to make sure that the responders had access to their tools on their work laptops from home.
And then went through several tabletops and exercises to assess these different tools and then put some of these best practices into procedures for us.
And the last thing we have there is just that we are also in the process of gathering more information from these exercises and events to put these recommendations in for the future to be able to use some of these benefits of distributed response not just for COVID-19, which has the obvious benefits, but also in the future that gives us a lot more flexibility.
If someone is able to respond but needs to do it remotely, then we'll have these capabilities institutionalized. Next slide.
And there is my contact information.
Certainly feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions or comments. Thank you.
MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Mr. Lilliendahl.
That was a great update on the NRC's programs. And now we'll hear from Mr. John Ford from FEMA.
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22 to your conference and to talk about the National Incident Management System. And one of the newest additions to the NIMS, surprisingly to probably some of you, the Emergency Operations Center component of guidance was not put into the latest version of NIMS until 2017. So before 2017, there really was not a lot of guidance out there for state, and local, and tribal territories, even federal agencies to follow when it comes to establishing an emergency operation center. So we'll go on to the next slide, please, Slide 2.
So NIMS provides consistent common nationwide approach shared vocabulary to enable the whole community to work together and to manage all threats and hazards. It's true whether the incident is small and at local level or a complex disaster involving coordinated national response, NIMS applies to all incidents regardless of size, location, threat, or complexity. And, again, the third edition and this was the first time we cited guidance for EOCs. Next slide, please.
So what was important about adding EOCs as a part of NIMS in 2017 was not only that nothing existed before that was, we wanted to try to get, you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 know, our job at the National Emergency Center is to provide guidance to state and locals, so there is some consistency in standardization, and when I say standardization, I mean probably with a small "s",
standardization across emergency management communities.
So they not only have the guidance, but they also have the flexibility to build what they need to build for their jurisdiction and for their jurisdictions to work and operate within a component in their region and with other mutual aid partners.
So one of the things we do at the NIC, and I like to think we can do it well, is we engage state, local, tribal, territory jurisdictions that help us define these requirements to find and help us write this guidance. We don't just write it in a vacuum up in DC, we go to the stakeholders to help us put pen to paper, and we vet that quite a bit quite rigorously through the stakeholder community to make sure we're getting the right stuff out to the end-users, so they'll actually use the guidance that we produce.
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24 go beyond that. We needed to go further, so that's when we started developing in 2018 the EOC toolkit.
And so that's what I'm excited to consult to you today about the various products that we've developed supporting the NIMS document and EOC piece itself.
So the EOC toolkit taking that feedback starting in 2018, we got more guidance out of there.
We got EOC-related templates. We got EOC forms, Quick Reference Guides, and the toolkit takes an all-hazards approach. So any hazard can be applied to this toolkit that we set up, and it can be adjusted per the jurisdiction's needs when they're using these products.
So next slide, Slide 4.
So this is an overview of some of the current toolkits products that we've released. Some of these are not quite ready for release yet, and I'll highlight those, but they're coming soon.
The first is a Quick Reference Guide. That is coming out in the next month. It hasn't been publicly released yet. We have released it for a public comment at national engagements, so some of you might've seen it. We've got EOC skillsets exercises on how to create BTBs, position task books, EOC senior leader toolkits, EOC operations briefing template, financial NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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25 tool reference guide, EOC references, and resources, and then we've got some information about preventing and managing stress and coping with stress and compassion fatigue for responders.
Slide 5, we'll start, I want to go into the Quick Reference Guide. So the Quick Reference Guide really is going to be a foundational flagship document for EOC. It's going to build on work done to develop skillsets, the EOC skillsets to align to the National Qualification System and the former Comprehensive Preparedness Guide, the CPG 601. And with that stakeholder feedback, we developed this Guide.
It's a comprehensive annex needed to provide widely applicable reference for establishing, assessing, managing, and exercising EOCs. It's intended for jurisdictions to pull directly from content examples and reference links to meet varying and evolving EOCs.
So the Guide is useful for if you already have an existing EOC, which a lot of jurisdictions have, maybe you can pull some stuff out of it to enhance your EOC, or a lot of jurisdictions out there are still trying to develop and establish their EOCs. Regardless of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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26 the size, they can use this.
So this is a start-up for EOCs, tool supporting reevaluation of EOCs, kind of one-stop-shop for that guidance. Let's go on to Slide 6. And let's go on to Slide 7.
So in response to what EOC needs expressed by stakeholders, again, we're constantly listening to our stakeholders, what was needed in this this Quick Reference Guide. So some of the feedback we got was crowdsourcing and emergency management, which is what they needed guidance with.
Hazard prediction modeling and monitoring capability, we put some information in the Guide for that. Automated emergency management systems, some notification status reports, inhalation statistics, how do you do analysis, and then qualifications and certification systems again. How does this align to the National Qualification System, and I'll talk a little bit about that when we get to the skillsets.
Let's go on to Slide 8.
So EOC Skillsets. So some of you may be aware that also in 2017, we released the National Qualification System. This is FEMA's guidance to state and local, tribal territories that helps them. You NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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27 know, if you look at the definition of NIMS, personnel is a component of that definition within NIMS.
And so this, the National Qualification System, provides state and local, tribal territories as jurisdictions have a standardized baseline of what positions should look like that they've established in their jurisdiction.
And not only does that give the emergency managers and the leadership out in the emergency management community a little bit more confidence in what capability they have exist in personnel that is probably number one.
Number two is, it helps facilitate mutual aid a little bit better when it comes to personnel and those requests and what's needed for personnel. So when you're getting, when you need an OPS section chief, you're getting some kind of foundational baseline with an OPS section chief. And that's what NQS provides.
It provides that baseline, that minimum requirements for the positions and jurisdictions are encouraged if they want to build out those positions more within NQS those tasks in the position task books, they certainly have that flexibility within the system to do that.
One of the shortfalls we had was EOCs.
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28 How do you define EOCs? Some jurisdictions may choose to define an ICS model with their EOC and Incident Command System, and that's certainly fine. They can take these skillsets and build out a position of PTBs specific for EOCs that not necessarily would fit into the ICS world. So, again, this is just us listening to stakeholders that will provide them with the flexibility they need for their jurisdiction to establish a qualification system for EOCs.
Slide 9. So another tool that we have in the EOC toolkit is the senior leader toolkit. It helps leaders and emergency manager officials understand their incident and responsibilities. As a former county emergency manager, again, constantly having to educate those elected officials, senior officials on authorities' roles and responsibilities, this is one of those guides that helps provide that to that emergency manager, so that they're not having to create, you know, create things on their own all the time.
So that's what we hope to accomplish with this piece of the toolkit.
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29 feedback, but this is emergency operations briefing template. Again, guidance that can be changed specific to your jurisdiction's needs, but again, the idea is something to pull off the shelf for an emergency manager to use as they see fit. Shift briefings, you know, so this can allow for progress toward objectives, specific actions, challenges, mitigation, and documents, responsible parties, more important hand-off. The template is customizable and supports ICS.
Again, a lot of jurisdictions may already be doing an ICS model and command system, and if they're already using the Planning P, that would certainly suffice and to this, but some may not. So this is a template for them to use for that.
Slide 11 is Financial Tools. And I can tell you, this is probably number one. Well, one or two, probably top three of information feedback we got back from stakeholders is, you know, the documentation and tracking of financial acquisition of procurement reimbursement and those expenses, not only personnel but also equipment.
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30 with financial guidance. The resource list in this section provides detailed information on EOC-related financial questions, checklist tips and reminders, and it provides many of the financial resources available from FEMA or state and local governments, business, individuals. So, again, just trying to provide state and locals the information or resource they can use that's standardized to track those financial day-to-day financial impact to the incident so their records are in order.
And then last is the EOC references and resources tool. This document provides EOC leaders with staff a set of best practices for onsite and virtual settings, checklist references, links, and essential guidance related to EOCs. I know in the past year we've seen a lot of more virtual EOC operations, and we certainly were already incorporating that into the guidance before we had this, obviously, the last year of COVID and pandemic.
And so this highlighted EOC resources the core component includes the facility survivability, security, sustainability, and operability, and flexibility within these references and resources.
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31 not released yet, but it is in the coming soon status.
So the next slide is questions, and get to my last slide, I probably forgot to say next to the person moving slides, so I apologize for that. But I think the format is questions at the end, and this is my contact information. If you don't think I answered your questions, we'll get to them in detail, please feel free to reach out and contact me directly, and I'll be happy to provide the clarity.
MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Mr. Ford. That was some great resources that we can all take advantage of, so now we'll hear from Mr. Florian Baciu from the IAEA.
MR. BACIU: Thank you, very much for inviting us and for allowing to present a bit from our experience here at the International Atomic Energy Agency. I am currently the acting head of the Incident and Emergency Center, and I am also the Response System Coordinator. And I would like to present to you shortly today what are our roles and a bit from our cases and experiences. I don't have time to maybe enter the details of how we are running our operations here, but I think we can provide the general image of these things.
Next slide, please.
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32 We talk about an EPR framework, an EPR international framework. It is very important for us to concentrate on what are the legal instruments in this framework. When I talk about the legal instruments, I talk about, for instance, the very two important conventions of emergency, the Early Notification Convention, and the Assistance Convention, which were established back at the end of the '86, after the Chernobyl accident.
Around this very strong legal instrument, which are widely for the State parties, we have also the other instruments like the safety standards, which we elaborate together with all our Member States in the agency. Also the safety guides and to the marginal, we have these operational arrangements, which are documenting how we actually discharge these, how we run our operations.
And, of course, the extras here are the Agency, meaning the Secretariat and the Member States then also all States, not only the State's members of the Agency, and also international organizations, which we have a joint plan. I'm going to say a few words about this later. Next slide, please.
We talk, as I said, about conventions, the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 standard of the Agency and our fundamental safety standards, like for instance, the GSR Part 7, which is the document establishing the requirements for proper EPR planning and discharging in the Member States.
And in terms of operational documents, we talk about our internal response plan in the Agency.
That's a document under the elaborational Deputy Director General for Nuclear Safety and Security, and we the Incident and Emergency Center are the keepers of this plan and the keepers of the arrangements.
Also, very important for us and very important for the Member States is this EPR-IEComm 2019.
This is the last edition, and this is the operations manual for information exchanging in the incidents and emergencies. This is actually describing in proper detail our arrangements. It is accompanied by forms and tools. And we have a very strong communication system with a few options, a few communication channels.
At the core, there is a secured website, a strong website, which is our main communication channel with the counterparts.
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34 preparedness with modern system but our roles and response as an international agency, International Atomic Energy Agency, are five-fold, and this is notification, which means performing the function of getting the information, the relevant information from any of our Member States and any of the States, checking and verifying this information, and then dispatching this to everybody.
Then the providing of public information, which is a common duty, I guess, for all the international agencies. Then we have to perform what we call the assessment and prognosis. And this is a new task which was given to the Agency as a part of the Nuclear Safety Action Plan following the Fukushima accident, and we'll say a few words about this.
Then we have to perform the assistance role, which is taking care of the provisions of the Convention for Assistance in case of a local accident radiological emergency and coming with a mechanism, with a system to organize and to be able to deliver this assistance on request.
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35 the other international organizations, and how do we coordinate in between us. How do we arrange our working operations to have some level of coordination? Next slide.
We have, for the notification role, a long history of our operational manual. We started back in '89. In the '98, we had some provisions, and then we consolidated more and more of the first shape of the manual close to what it was today was in 2000.
And since then, we are now to this EPR 2019 version.
It's a public document. There is nothing confidential in it.
It can be found on the Agency web page, so if you just search for this on the internet, you are going to find the EPR-IEComm 2019. This is how we describe our, if you wish, main scenarios. We have here, for instance, for nuclear facilities and for radiological type of events, the main type of scenarios and for each of these, starting with, for instance, a general emergency at the nuclear power plant going to other radiological events.
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36 these major scenarios are described step-by-step in terms of how the message is initiated and then what do we do here in the Agency and then what the counterpart does and so on. We have these iterations described on all the aspects of the five aspects I mentioned:
notification, assistance, assessment, public information, and all this.
So it is a very detailed manual. It is accompanied by attachment one, two and three.
Attachment one is confidential because there are some leaders of the communication channels. Attachment two and three, they are public documents and one of them is dealing with the IRMIS system, which is a system to exchange large volume of radiological monitoring data.
While the attachment three details the standard used to do this. We call it International Exchange Standard, I-speak, and attachment two and three are open documents. Next slide, please.
On the provisional public information, we have certain ways and procedural ways to do it. USIE, which is our main communication channel, the secured website for information exchange is backed by another site, which is public. It is called NEWS. And by the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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37 way, this NEWS is also used, for instance, for the dissemination of the INES-related events. So the INES rating, INES methodology, and the events.
And, really, we have a strong system here for the public information. An entire division is supporting our operations. We have procedures approach, and through our plain language communications, we try to focus in any situation to come forward with a few concerns which the public may have in the terms of, am I safe, or is my family safe, or what do we need to do.
And, of course, we are not, again, responsible person, responsible institution for these.
We are not the firefighters who have to go and tackle and deal with the emergency. We are an international agency with these specific roles, but we need to be able to come with our independent opinion after an assessment and to say what is the situation, what is the country doing, and is this inline or not with the safety standards on the EPR, which we elaborate. Next slide, please.
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38 discharge this. We have set our objectives. We communicated this to Member States. And, actually, last year, the beginning of the year, we come up with our Assessment Manual so the Operational Manual for the Assessment and Prognosis. It is a team manual where we explain the basics, the principles, but this manual is backed up by a much comprehensive guidebook, a PDF file, which is on, again on the Agency webpage.
And more importantly, we have developed a number of tools, operational tools, which can be used by the Member States. We are using them in our operations here. And these tools are getting, you know, very nice detail, and they tackle the issues like, for instance, reactor assessment tools for different types of reactors, research reactor assessment, radiological assessment, nuclear security assessment to the public information tool.
So we give a number of these, we think, very valuable tools, which are concentrating on getting our position to some key operations which we might need to respond based on some key information, not detailed information.
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39 probably to get these, but we need to concentrate on some fundamental questions during the assessment, for instance, for the power reactors about what is the status of the critical systems? Is power available?
What is the current monitoring situations, and so on?
And based on the input which we have from the Member State stating concerns on these matters, we can come up with some very brief statements regarding what is the status and also then trying to do a very prudent prognosis on what is the situation there. Next slide, please.
For the assistance, we have again a long series of operational documents. We started, again, in the 2000, and we are now at the 2018 edition. That's where we describe what are the areas, we have again, eight functional areas in the RANET manual and we describe exactly step-by-step what are the operations.
And this is also supported by our web system to exchange the information.
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40 system, and there are additional partners not only in the training and workshops on these matters but also in a number of response activities.
The next one for the inter-agency coordination, we also have a series of documents we call it the Joint Plan. It is the Joint Plan of the international organizations for the coordination of activities. We have up to now, including the Agency, 18, 1-8 international organizations like such as World Meteorological, World Health, Food and Agriculture, ICAO, International Labor, International Maritime, Interpol, EUROPOL, these are our partners for this Joint Plan where we describe how we support the various activities, what are our roles and how we support each other. For instance, in coming together with some coordinated press statements as needed.
The next one, just to brief you a bit on the response to the events, we receive each year maybe a couple of hundred or so, 200, 300 events. In one-quarter of these events we actually interacted our counterparts in an active way. We ask for information.
We give this information. We put together press statements, and only in a very, very few cases we actually discharge a system emissions, which are, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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41 again, you know, very procedure way agreed as objectives and signed by the requesters, by the donors of assistance, and we'll be leading such a team.
For instance, the case we had was last year in August, actually, during the pandemic conditions when we were asked to go for a short mission to Beirut in Lebanon at the request of Lebanon, to check, there were a number of things which they asked from us. And then it was an international team of French experts and experts from Denmark under the leadership of Agency staff, and they deliver this mission, again, in pandemic conditions for three days.
So this was just the one mission of the year. In the past, we had maybe one or two missions per year. Some of them dealing with medical aspects, medical emergencies, and so, but others dealing with recovery of sources, sometimes dangerous sources, sometimes not so important sources. So, just a few cases from the past.
We were dealing many years ago, for instance, with different event such as threat at the nuclear power plant in Sweden, Forsmark, both threats there where we were asked to take information and dispatch it to the neighbor countries of Sweden to just NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 keep them informed.
In another case, we were providing advice to Mexico for this recovery of this gamma teletherapy, which was robbed back in 2013 at the end of the year.
Of course, our Fukushima response was comprehensive.
We were sitting here in full response operations for 54 days, and we were dealing with some other cases.
For instance, all of our sources in Africa in a number of cases. And the next slide, please.
The senior way we were leading with some elevated levels of environmental radiation of final origin, you may recall the Ruthenium (106) case, recovery of very strong RTG in the forests of Georgia in Lia, the recovery of a brachytherapy source in Cambodia. Again, a number of medical cases, very important experience gained in these medical cases, and we are catching these in reports, publication reports as much as we can. And then a few other such cases, we have a good history of reports. These are all publicly available on our website.
And the next one about exercises, next slide, please, so, yes, and sorry, and the one about exercises. We have a large schedule of both exercises each year. We run convention exercises, approximately NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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43 15 per year is where we test our arrangements. We participate in exercises by Member States. We assist in preparation. We assist in evaluation. And we have all kinds of scenarios like nuclear power plant, RDDs, stolen sources, overexposures and so on. And the next slide, please.
We are, just these days, as we talk around the complex to do exercise dedicated to assistance.
We have about 50 countries participating, and we did the same last year in 2020, again, at the beginning of the pandemic, and I think, to our procedures and arrangements we were demonstrating that we have a way to continue our operations also in all these pandemic conditions.
And I will just end now with my last slide, please, about a complex Level 3 exercises is our full scope exercises only once in a few years, in three or four years, last one in '17 in Hungary and this one, last one for this year in preparation the 2021 at the United Arab Emirates, Al Barakah. And we are planning now for almost two years for this exercise. We are on a good trek, and we are going to, I think, deliver two days, more than 36 hours4.166667e-4 days <br />0.01 hours <br />5.952381e-5 weeks <br />1.3698e-5 months <br /> of full response exercise.
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44 States or more participating and more than 10 international organizations.
I will end here. Thank you for your attention. Any questions, please go ahead with this, and you have my contact site to the complex. Thank you for inviting and any questions through you guys, we can collect here and reply back. Thank you.
MR. JOHNSON: Thank you so much, Mr. Baciu.
That was a great presentation. Now we get to the fun part, which is the questions. So we'll start out with Mr. Evans. Who is responsible for developing the PARs, the NRC or the licensee?
MR. EVANS: Well, that a great question, Clay, about who is responsible for developing the PARs.
Let me see if I can give a quick answer. Obviously, the utility kicks this off. They have a responsibility to provide to the state and local officials any protective actions they recommend.
But in Illinois, as I mentioned, our Radiological Emergency Assessment Center, we do an independent technical assessment, and we come up with our own protective action recommendation, if you will.
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45 goes to the county, and again, as I mentioned, Illinois being a full rules state, that in turn is a protective action decision that the county makes.
Now I should say that the county normally will go with what the state recommends but, again, they are an independent political entity, so they're protective action decision may or may not differ from what we, the State of Illinois, would recommend.
MR. JOHNSON: All right. Thank you.
MR. EVANS: Sure.
MR. JOHNSON: Mr. Lilliendahl, using virtual such as Teams during emergency response may lead to some constraints, especially regarding necessary interactions and discussions to reach consensus on assessment results for protective action recommendations. Have you already, during exercises, identified lessons learned?
MR. LILLIENDAHL: Thank you. Yes, I think that reaches to a bigger question too of as you add new features and new tools such as Teams, you get benefits, but you have more risk comes in, risks of system going down, more vulnerabilities. So we've always maintained, or we have a very robust communication system through our headquarters NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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46 operations officers, so they have traditional phone lines that are redundancies and backed up. So those are our fall back. We've always got them to provide for communications. We also, as I've said, we always have the ability to respond out to a site and to send somebody out locally if that's the best way to get information.
So Teams allows us to share things visually as well as be able to talk with each other and have group discussions has those benefits, but we are wary of adding any extra communications or losses, and so we keep, maintain the robust backups.
MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. Mr. Baciu, this question was directed to you. There is a growing body of research concluding that non-radiological harm to the public caused by an evacuation outweighs the potential benefits from reducing radiological exposure. Is IAEA considering any changes to EPZ planning guidance to address this research?
MR. BACIU: Thank you. I think we are addressing the main lessons after Fukushima, for instance, in the fact that we revised our guidance.
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47 for four or five years that were released in 2015, I think they consider many of the issues learned or issues identified including these letters of non-radiological effects. We have seen, as far as serious consequence at the time, and we are addressing this in a number of guidance documents and also in our training. So I think there is more awareness on this. We know that our colleagues in the European Union have various projects, and we are also keeping in contact. We know the work which is done there.
So, yes, I think that is an important thing, in principle, the things we're tackled. I'm not sure if we need to revise the fundamentals. We can always come with guidance or more guidance for implementation, but I think the fundamentals and the principles are there. Thank you.
MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, sir. So for FEMA, how do Federal Emergency Operation Centers fit into the National Incident Management System and local incident command system structure command and control?
MR. FORD: Well, it's important to highlight that, and I'll paraphrase from the national response framework that all incidents begin and end at the local level. So incidents are scalable. Once NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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48 a jurisdiction determines that it's exceeding the needs or the resources capabilities of that jurisdiction, that's when they start locking in or plugging into their mutual aid network, whether you're a municipality needing help support from a county, county to the state.
When that state becomes overwhelmed, that's when you start seeing some of the federal agencies coming to support. FEMA's role is to help set the table, if you will, so that support through the state, through the tribes for any disaster assistance, disaster operations, and it's not to augment, but to support and provide those resources of the deficits that the state has identified and work through the state in support of their needs.
So it is a seamless, should be a seamless operation, the seamless information flow of information up, down, and sideways as needed within those operation centers. A lot of time, what's you'll see is, you'll see jurisdictions stand up EOCs at the municipality, county level. The state will operate EOCs.
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49 that. It links into the state. They have a physical presence in the state in their ECOs. FEMA establishes EOC through the regions, and the regions and headquarters are all working in tempo together to solve problems and help support the survivors of the disaster.
MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. Mr.
Lilliendahl, how is communication controlled with the public between the licensee, the state agencies, and the NRC so that conflicting or confusing direction is avoided?
MR. LILLIENDAHL: Thank you. Yes, the licensees have a facility called the Joint Information Center where they provide for facility for the licensee's public information along with the state public information and the NRC's to talk together.
This will also happen at the federal level for a large enough event, so we definitely put the effort into making sure that we're sharing press releases and communications with each other to make sure that we're communicating clearly, and that we're staying in our own lanes, typically, is the real challenge.
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50 processes or procedures?
MR. BACIU: All right, thank you. We run a series called the ConvEx two year exercises where we would like a counterpart to address us and say that they want to practice the assessment and prognosis process. We've done this, I think, not numerous times but many times, I think, for instance.
So we go in our scenario, which is proposed by the counterpart, or we can come with our scenario and then we just exercise for maybe a number of hours.
How do we understand the technical situation using our assessment tool? Then we produce this what we call a status report based on this, and we come together with a press statement for the status report.
And then we very, very, very, very nearly and strongly discuss this in short discussions with the counterpart, a technical discussions to understand that we have a clear and factual understanding and that our assessment is in align with what the situation is.
For instance, when you talk about what is the proper emergency classification in a certain stage of the evolution.
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51 wouldn't want to say something which is not aligned with the facts or which is not aligned with what the counterpart wants to further communicate, yes. So we do these stages of short summaries and press statements at intervals such as one hour and a half, one hour, two hours, and this is how we stay together.
So we offer the opportunity to prepare for such ConvEx two year exercises, and we give a lot of series of webinars where we present our tools. We make sure demonstrations, and this is what we have done during last year. We are continuing with this now for webinars. And we will do this at the special request for our special counter, I mean for our counterparts, but we will do it at the special request to accommodate what the specific needs they might have. So just address this for these matters reason we are going to put an activity together.
MR. JOHNSON: All right. Thank you. So this sort of brings our presentations to a close. I want to express my gratitude to Mr. Ken Evans, Mr. Jon Lilliendahl, Mr. John Ford, and Mr. Florian Baciu for providing time, energy to give us more information on emergency response. So with that, thank you everybody, and have a wonderful day.
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52 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 11:57 a.m.)
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