ML22124A050
| ML22124A050 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 03/10/2022 |
| From: | Scott(Ois) Morris NRC Region 4 |
| To: | |
| References | |
| Download: ML22124A050 (65) | |
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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34TH REGULATORY INFORMATION CONFERENCE (RIC)
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TECHNICAL SESSION - TH22
EMERGENCY RESPONSE DURING COVID-19: LESSONS FROM
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THURSDAY,
MARCH 10, 2022
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The Technical Session met via Video-
Teleconference, at 8:30 a.m. EST, Scott Morris,
Regional Administrator, Region IV Office,
presiding.
PRESENT:
SCOTT MORRIS, Regional Administrator, RIV/NRC
LINDA GEE, Radiological Emergency Preparedness
Program (REPP) Senior Site Specialist, Region
6, National Preparedness Technical Hazards
Division, REPP, Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA)
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RYAN LANTZ, Director, Division of Reactor Safety,
RIV/NRC
OSCAR MARTINEZ, Branch Chief / Regional Assistance
Committee (RAC) Chair, Region 6, Federal
Emergency Management Agency
JOHN OVERLY, Emergency Preparedness Manager --
Waterford Nuclear Generating Station, Entergy
BRIAN PARKS, Senior Emergency Response Coordinator,
Response Coordination Branch, Division of
Reactor Safety, RIV/NRC
REBECCA RICHARDSON, Chief, Intelligence Liaison &
Threat Assessment Branch, Division of
Security Operations, NSIR/NRC
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C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S
PAGE
Panelist Introductions.............................5
Outline of Hurricane Ida Events....................6
Photos of Impacts at Waterford Steam Electric
Station..................................... 9
Panel Discussion..................................11
Audience Q&A Period.............................. 32
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P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S
8:30 a.m.
MR. MORRIS: Good morning, everyone, and
welcome to Day 3 of the NRC's Regulatory Information
Conference. My name is Scott Morris. I'm going to
be facilitating this morning's session. I am NRC's
Regional Administrator for our Region IV Office based
in Arlington, Texas.
Today we're going to be talking about
emergency response during the COVID-19 public health
emergency. And specifically, lessons that we all
learned and we want to share with you about our real-
world response to Hurricane Ida, which many of you
know had a significant impact in Southern Louisiana
late last August, early September. Specifically, the
Waterford nuclear power plant.
Today we're going to be sharing our
insights and lessons learned during the response to
Hurricane Ida, given the ongoing COVID public health
emergency.
So let's go to the next slide, please.
Okay. This is just a quick agenda of
what we're going to be going on. Again, the goals
today are to discuss the noteworthy and unique
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aspects of our response to the hurricane, and share
lessons learned.
We're going to start with some
introductions of our panelists today. I'll provide
some context, a couple of photos, and then we're going
to engage in what I think should be a very interesting
panel discussion.
Next slide, please, and we'll do some
introductions.
Today with me we have Mr. Ryan Lantz.
Ryan is the Director of the Division of Operating
Reactor Safety in NRC's Region IV. He was one of
NRC's response directors during the event.
Also with us is Rebecca Richardson.
She's the Chief of the Intelligence Liaison and
Threat Assessment Branch back at NRC Headquarters.
We also have Mr. John Overly, who is an
Entergy employee and happens to be the Emergency
Preparedness Manager at the Waterford Steam Electric
Station.
We also have Oscar Martinez from FEMA,
Federal Emergency Management Agency, Region 6, based
here in Texas. He is the Chair of the Regional
Assistance Committee for FEMA.
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Finally, we have Ms. Linda Gee, who is
also a FEMA Region 6 staff member. She's the Senior
Specialist and the Lead for FEMA Region 6 for the
State of Louisiana.
So please welcome our panelists.
Can I have the next slide? All right.
So just to set a little bit of context, you'll recall
Hurricane Ida was a very significant hurricane that,
when we were initially tracking it, was projected to
make landfall in Louisiana and continue inland,
potentially affecting three different commercial
nuclear power plants, in addition to obviously all
the other infrastructure.
So, obviously, like we always do, the NRC
and licensees were actively engaged in preparations
for that hurricane potentially making landfall and
passing over their sites.
You can see how the storm intensified
over time on Wednesday, the 25th of August. It made
its original hurricane classification at 80 mph. It
was a Category 1 hurricane. And you can see as it
began to track closer and closer to the United States
mainland, it intensified over the days until
eventually reaching a Category 4 storm, which was
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very significant; 145 mph winds on Sunday morning.
Next slide, please. On the 28th, which
was Saturday, was when we first learned about the
forecast of hurricane-force winds actually being
present on the Waterford site.
Sunday morning, consistent with their
procedures, the licensee proceeded to shut down the
unit and cool it down. Obviously, that's the safest
condition for the plant to be in, given the impending
storm. And by around 10:30 on Sunday morning, the
unit was in fact shut down. The unit was off the
grid, and they began their cooldown of the unit.
By around noon, the hurricane made
landfall as a Cat 4 hurricane at 150 mph winds. Later
that evening, the maximum winds reached the Waterford
site. They experienced a loss of off-site power, so
the unit no longer had off-site power to assist in
the plant cooldown and maintain the unit in a cooldown
condition. So they had to rely on their own power
sources on-site.
At that point they declared a Notice of
Unusual Event, which then precipitates a call among
the NRC, executives including myself, and then we
make a decision as to what posture we want to take as
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a federal organization to address the impacts of the
storm.
Next slide, please. So here you can see
just a little bit more timeline. Waterford
officially notifies the NRC of the loss of off-site
power event and their entry into an unusual event
condition.
We made a decision as an agency to enter
what we call the Activation mode, which is
essentially standing up our emergency response
organization, and having real-time communications
amongst ourselves, with the licensees, and other
response entities.
Later that evening, the hurricane-force
winds had begun to subside. But it wasn't for a
couple more days until the licensee exited the
unusual event. And we'll talk about that and what
were the exit criteria for that.
The NRC remained in Activation mode for
a few days. And it wasn't until September 1st, which
was a Wednesday morning, that we finally exited the
Activation mode.
Next slide. So here's just a couple of
pictures. There really was not a lot of damage,
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really no damage, to any of the safety-related
systems, structures, or components at the site, which
is good news.
The bad news was there was a lot of
infrastructure damage around the site, resulting in
the loss of off-site power. But also, damage to some
of the non-safety-related systems at the site, and
certainly impacts to buildings, structures, and other
things. We'll talk about that some more, as well.
But the impacts were limited primarily to the
structures that weren't essential to plant operations
or maintaining the unit in a shutdown and cooldown
condition.
Next slide. Here's some more pictures.
The photo on the upper right shows some damage to the
site's low-level radioactive waste building. You can
see it took a pretty significant beating there. No
safety-related equipment, however. And the
radioactive waste contained within the building
stayed in the building.
The photo on the lower right is actually
part of the intake structure. This is out on the
Mississippi River. This is intake water for the main
condenser cooling, not for safety-related cooling.
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But it encountered some substantial damage.
You can see there's a piece of the weir
wall that's missing. And those structures that kind
of look like tripods -- I believe they're called
dolphins, and they're meant to keep large debris,
ships, and barges from impacting the intake structure
-- they got beat up a little bit too.
Next slide, please. This is just some
internal damage to some of their on-site buildings.
You can see ceiling tiles missing, windows damaged,
et cetera.
Next slide. This is a pretty vivid slide
here, as you can see. This is on the access road on
the east side of the plant. You can see the
containment building for Waterford in the background.
And you can see how after the winds have subsided and
the sun came out, what some of the damage looked like
out on the road and in the community.
With that, go to the next slide. We will
actually, if we could, just bring up the panelists on
the screen.
I'm going to start with Ryan Lantz.
Ryan, given all that I've talked about contextually,
what did you think made this event unique?
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Obviously, hurricanes are not uncommon, and they
certainly have affected power reactor sites in the
past. But what made this one unique, in your view?
MR. LANTZ: Thanks, Scott. Good
morning.
As Scott said, hurricanes are not unusual for this
part of the country. Waterford has certainly seen
its share of hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina from
several years ago was comparable to this hurricane.
But this one was a little interesting in that it
rapidly escalated in its intensity and didn't
necessarily exactly follow tracks, but it was a big
hurricane.
The damage that this hurricane caused,
the winds were pretty much second to none. If you
go all the way back to Hurricane Andrew in '92, the
winds are comparable. So it had been 20 years since
we saw a hurricane with this kind of wind force at a
site.
And what was remarkable with that, as
Scott went over in the slides, there was a lot of
damage in the infrastructure. There was power lines
sitting in the Mississippi River. There was loss of
off-site power, of course, to the site. There was
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significant damages, as FEMA may talk about, off-
site. But on-site, the safety-related structures,
the support needed to keep the plant cooled and safe,
they were unaffected.
There was some affect to the security
systems and monitoring systems at the site. But
physically, the site weathered 140 mph sustained
winds just extremely well. So that was a bit of a
surprise, how little damage there was to the site
structures.
So as far as a hurricane goes, it was a
pretty remarkable hurricane, and that it actually
affected the sites directly.
MR. MORRIS: Ryan, I should have
mentioned, I believe this is true. The winds at
Waterford during Hurricane Ida, I believe, were the
highest recorded winds on a power reactor site since
Hurricane Andrew back in 1992 at Turkey Point.
MR. LANTZ: Right.
MR. MORRIS: So yes. Extremely high
winds, and yet little damage to any of the safety-
related structures.
MR. LANTZ: It was pretty remarkable.
We were expecting, or I guess planning for the worst,
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because it was such a strong hurricane at the site.
So that's talking about the hurricane.
And I don't know if, Scott, you wanted to go into the
response and what else was very unusual about it at
this time. But the hurricane itself, pretty
remarkable.
MR. MORRIS: We'll circle back to that.
Let me invite other people to weigh in on this
question. Maybe Oscar from FEMA? Welcome.
MR. MARTINEZ: Good morning. Thank you
for having us on today's panel.
For sure, one of the unique things for
FEMA and this particular hurricane was the fact that
we were also coinciding with a pandemic that had been
gripping the whole United States. So not only did
we have Ida to deal with, but we also had some
concerns with the ongoing pandemic and how we were
going to get our team of folks in there to do what we
generally do, prior to hurricane and then also after
hurricane for response purposes.
So it was significantly different for us.
At FEMA we needed to change, try to innovate, and do
some things that we hadn't done in the past as far as
our DIR response processes and such like that.
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And then obviously, like was said by you
all, the amount of damage that we had seen because of
Hurricane Ida prevented a lot of ability to gain
access to certain facilities, off-site facilities and
such like that. So it was definitely a different or
abnormal hurricane response that we had for this.
I'll throw it to Linda. Linda Gee is our
senior site specialist for Waterford and for the
State of Louisiana. Let's see if she has any input
on that.
MR. LANTZ: What I might add is normally,
in the past, historically, we were able to get moving,
get down to the area, and start planning for a DIR.
In this case, with everything going on with the
pandemic and the damage, we were prepared to move.
But then we had other issues we had to deal with.
We had hotel rooms. We were able to move
forward. But then there was the issue about
logistics. What do we do about fuel? There was
quite a bit of damage. We weren't sure if we could
get in and talk to the parishes. There were just a
lot of questions.
So we remained back at Denton, actually
at home through teleworking, and decided to go ahead
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and conduct the DIR virtually.
MR. MORRIS: Linda, thanks. Some people
may not know what a DIR is. It stands for a disaster-
initiated review. And that's something that FEMA
will do after an event like this one to provide
assurance that the off-site infrastructure is able to
support operation of the nuclear power plants in case
there should be any emergency response needed.
I want to turn now to John Overly, the
Emergency Preparedness manager at Waterford, and ask
him to share with us what insights or surprises he
had relative to this particular event. Because
Waterford has been subject to other storms in the
past, including Hurricane Katrina back in 2005.
So John?
MR. OVERLY: Thank you, Scott. From my
perspective, really it's two-fold. One, as Ryan
alluded to and talking quite a bit about with the
storm, the intensity, the change in the tracks.
Because up until two days before it came to us, it
was predicted to go much further west of us. The
quick change and the speed in which it intensified
really took us a little bit off guard. It came
towards us quicker than we anticipated.
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And then once it got here, and I know
Linda and Oscar saw this in the off-site activities
and inspections, the storm sat on us for a very long
time. Normally, hurricanes will just continue and
go along its path. But this one sat on us for about
four or five hours.
So you're talking about 140 mph winds for
sustained periods of time, literally hours. With the
swamp areas around, it kept staying at that same
intensity because it was regenerating itself before
it finally moved off.
Anybody that saw the pictures of St.
John, St. James, or St. Charles Parish outside of the
Waterford plant knows exactly what I'm talking about.
It was a lot of devastation of key infrastructures
that are out there required for basic living.
The second part really was, because of
COVID-19 we were already -- all of us were in COVID-
19 protocol. So ahead of the storm trying to
prepare, we sequestered personnel on-site. And then
you're trying to implement COVID controls and protect
them while they're on-site sequestered.
One of the things we learned is taking a
hard look at our sequestration roster. Over the
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years it tends to inflate because it's, well, this
would be nice to have; this would be nice to have.
And then when you get back down to it,
what is it that you're really trying to do? What's
the minimum staffing that you really need to support
the ongoing response prior to, during the hurricane,
and then some of your immediate actions just shortly
after the hurricane?
So really we're looking at -- you
stabilize the plant. We shut down. We stabilize
the plant. You're looking at maintaining
stabilization of the plant until you get your full
staffing back in and really assess the damage. So
we had to take a really good look at that.
Our footprint inside the protected area
is a smaller one. We put people up, let them sleep,
and then do some other things. So the logistics
presented a little bit of a challenge implementing
COVID-19 controls. But I believe we came up with a
really, really good solution.
We really worked a lot with our corporate
staff and lessons learned from others. We worked
with our FEMA and NRC partners to talk through a lot
of these activities.
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And I think one of the things that we did
a really good job is engaging all the organizations
early and frequently, including the state, the
parishes, FEMA, NRC. We all rolled up our sleeves
and really started preparing for this. We were
prepared maybe three days out for a slightly
different response. And then as it got closer and
closer, we had to check and adjust as we went.
So those are the two big points,
intensity of the storm and the rapid changes in it,
and the COVID-19 impacts that we had in that.
MR. MORRIS: Thanks, John. You
mentioned something about rolling up sleeves, early
communication, and working together.
I'm going to go back to Ryan and ask him
to sort of compare and contrast the -- well, let me
start by saying this. Obviously, the NRC is a
nuclear regulatory authority in the United States.
And we typically make decisions based on a thorough,
deliberative process that takes time and involves a
lot of folks, including the public.
That's not the mode we're in when we're
in a response mode. We're in a completely different
role. We're in an operational role. We're
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potentially dealing with incomplete information.
That's standard and that's expected.
But I want to ask Ryan, given that
context, how did the agency's response differ in this
particular event than what we would "typically" see?
And typical is in air quotes.
MR. LANTZ: Thanks for that question,
Scott. As John was talking, I had a thought about
our initial response.
Just for everyone's information, when a
hurricane is predicted to affect a nuclear power
plant, our normal response is to take care of the
residents, the NRC inspectors who are stationed at
that plant. There's always at least two. And we
allow them to leave the plant, go home, potentially
evacuate the area, protect their families. That's a
high priority.
Then we will send a volunteer, a very
knowledgeable NRC inspector to the site, typically
two people to the site to basically be on-site,
sequester with the licensee, which we did this time.
But because of COVID considerations, we sent one
senior inspector, actually from the Arkansas Nuclear
Plant, to the site to sequester with the licensee,
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monitor activities, and assist where he could.
So that was a bit different. We didn't
send two people, although we had others in the area
and others ready to go. And later on, a couple of
days into the event, we actually did send another
inspector to look at security issues, and then
another inspector to relieve the first inspector who
was at the site. So just a little bit different.
Otherwise, this, as you know, was the
very first time that the NRC went into an Activation
mode for an event at a site in a fully virtual
environment. So that was very different.
But I think that helped, specifically,
with communications because we were all in the
response almost immediately. We didn't have to get
in our cars, drive to -- because this was Sunday night
when we activated. We didn't jump in our vehicles
and go to our response center in Arlington, Texas,
which would have taken pretty much a minimum of 30
minutes more for some folks. We were immediately in
Activation. We had folks supporting.
And when I looked back over some of the
communications, I noted that our state liaison
officer who interacts with FEMA and our public
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affairs officers, they were both engaged very early
with their counterparts and with FEMA. And we were
talking about the potential for a disaster-initiated
review need very early in this scenario, very early
in the event.
Whereas before, just like I think Linda
mentioned, we would take our state liaison officer
who works with FEMA and participate in that disaster-
initiated review. He would have to make travel
arrangements, get to the local area in any way
possible, and then meet up with FEMA. Well, he was
automatically engaged with FEMA from the very start.
So I think that facilitated a very rapid
disaster-initiated review, which was another
surprise. That was able to be completed very
quickly. So that was a bit of a different response.
And as far as other communications, one
thing I found interesting is, we were following our
procedures in this first time using an Activation in
this manner. And because the Activation did not
directly involve all Headquarters staff -- normally
we would have the Commission involved.
In our old response mode, they would head
up the response one we go to Activation. And then
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the region would get ready to go to the site, or take
over if we need it to.
The Commission was not directly involved.
And so it was almost an afterthought to make sure the
Commission was kept informed of what we were doing in
the response. We actually got some questions during
the response. "Hey, what's going on," in the
response. So that was kind of an interesting aspect,
when normally they would be directly involved.
We did put out periodic reports that
summarized what the response was. That got emailed
to lots of folks. It was on WebEOC. It was shared
very broadly and I think was very useful. But the
aspect of communication to all folks was almost a
second thought, in some respects, whereas before in
our response mode it was automatic because everyone
was in the same room, including Headquarters.
MR. MORRIS: Thanks for that.
And I want to invite Rebecca to weigh in
here. Were there any surprises from your -- you're
obviously based at NRC Headquarters. What was your
role in the response, and were there any surprises
for you, particularly given the fact that we were in
a COVID environment?
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MS. RICHARDSON: Yes. Thanks, Scott.
I'm a volunteer responder for our security group.
And then for this event specifically, I was in a
support role to Region IV, to the security lead.
This was actually my first time
responding during a hurricane. But I have lived
through a few of them myself, and I know that they
can intensify pretty quickly. That changes what your
response looks like, whether it's deciding to
evacuate your family or preparing the plant.
And as everyone's mentioned, there was
the added layer of the COVID-19 public health
emergency. So for us at the NRC, we were responding
primarily from home rather than in the Operations
Center.
On one hand, as Ryan mentioned, our
response was quick. I think it eliminated some of
the challenges that come with staffing shifts of
people in the Operations Center. But on the other
hand, our reliance on communication technologies
became even more important when you can't just get
up, walk over, and tell someone something.
So for me, it really reinforced the need
to ensure we're regularly maintaining and training on
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all of our various communication systems. That was
probably my biggest takeaway from the COVID aspect of
it and not being in the Ops Center.
MR. MORRIS: Okay. Thanks. John, I'm
going to go back to you. What was your focus? After
the storm had passed by, what was your focus at the
site? There's a bazillion things going on, but how
did your organization decide what the main focus
areas were?
I'm particularly interested in off-site
support. What support did you request/need? What
priorities did you express to the federal and state
governments?
I'm sure the state was real interested in
getting power back to the grid, too. So maybe you
could talk through that a little bit, particularly if
there were any unique or surprising aspects.
MR. OVERLY: Okay. Thanks, Scott.
MR. MORRIS: And by the way, before I let
you answer, I apologize. I want to invite the
audience to use the tool and ask questions that you
have. They can be specific or broad, and they can
be to me or any of the panelists. So I do invite you
to ask questions.
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I'm sorry, John. Go ahead.
MR. OVERLY: That's fine. I'll talk
about a little bit before the response.
One of the things we did also was, we'd
been embracing the probability of one. So while the
storm was not initially predicted to come our way,
using the probability of one, we actually made the
decision to sequester personnel on-site very, very
early.
So we were able to get all of our
sequestration families and all of our teammates out
of harm's way much earlier than what we normally would
have. So that put us in a really good spot to be
able to respond back.
Now, once the storm was over, obviously
we had a loss of off-site power. You all saw the
pictures of the devastation on the support facilities
around the site.
We're in competition with other critical
infrastructures: hospitals, nursing homes, emergency
response facilities, relocation centers, things of
that nature, law enforcement facilities. So there's
a lot of things that we're competing.
And we're asking, okay, we want to get
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power back to the Waterford site, but we also need to
save people's lives. There's always that.
So we're working really closely. We
started prior to the storm and during the storm --
you've got to be lockstep with the transmission,
distribution, and the utilities around the area to
make sure that we're really studying the priorities
of where we're going. So the parishes in the state
and the utilities all worked together to have a lot
of really good calls on what the prioritization of
power restoration was going to be.
For us, getting some of our support
facilities back. How are we going to get people back
on-site? So we started working with logistics.
Our main concern and main priority was
getting the generators brought in to bring back the
facilities. In particular, our Maintenance Support
Building, which houses our Outage Coordination
Center, and it's also our Operations Support Center;
our Generation Support Building, which houses the
vast majority of our engineering organization; and
our Maintenance Building with all the craft
personnel.
So trying to get power back to that so
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that we could get some semblance of normalcy to be
able to respond, including our work control center as
well.
So then the logistics were, we were going
to be without power. We knew we were going to be
without power in most of the area for a very long
time. The initial estimate was seven to 14 days.
So now the logistics are, if we can't
bring people inside, how are we going to let them
sleep; how are we going to feed them; how are we going
to have the sanitation services? So having all of
those logistics of bringing in trailers. We brought
in 30-plus trailers to house personnel on-site.
We're fortunate that back in the
Hurricane Katrina area, we actually had an area where
we set up and where we brought in campers. So we
were able to -- before the storm, we made sure that
that area was fully available again. People who had
their own campers, motor homes, and stuff like that
were actually able to respond to the site and hook up
there as well.
So just kind of getting our feet back
under us for a little bit of a normal organization,
just to go back and start restoring power. So those
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were really some of our main logistical things.
The other thing is, what I'll say that we
really need to do and make sure that we do is, we
were running a long time on the emergency diesel
generator. So we were working through getting fuel
oil from Baton Rouge here.
And if anybody knows anything about the
emergency diesel generators, that's pedigree fuel.
It requires sampling. It requires pedigree.
So having those contracts in place to
have the sampling already done so that it can be
loaded on trucks and get to us, instead of waiting to
go there, sample it, send it off, wait for the
results, and then bring it on-site.
Working those details out well ahead of
hurricane season start is a really good lesson
learned that people should really hang their hats up
on. Make sure you have all those contracts in place.
And again, I can't overemphasize
transmission and distribution. They deal with storms
for a living. They're out for every thunder storm,
every cold weather event. Their logistics and their
ability to get logistics in is really on par with no
one, with the exception of maybe FEMA, who does this
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all across the country and stuff like that.
MR. MORRIS: Thanks, John. I want to
throw it over to Oscar and Linda. FEMA as a large
organization, as John just pointed out, has a
responsibility to provide effective coordination and
response of federal assets, working with the states,
et cetera. I can certainly imagine that FEMA had a
number of competing priorities during the event and
subsequent to the event.
Maybe, Oscar and Linda, you could talk
about what some of those competing priorities were,
what maybe some of the pressures were from different
stakeholders, and how you worked through that?
MR. MARTINEZ: Yes, sir. Thanks again.
So yes, there was definitely a lot going
on during that time period. Here at FEMA we've
always tried to be very flexible. Obviously, that's
a key for our preparedness environment at FEMA.
We've always been on the ground and able to change in
doing some things.
There were a lot of competing priorities,
like you said. One of the ways that we tried to
prepare ahead of time for those competing priorities
is we do a lot of pre-hurricane calls, pre-hurricane
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trainings throughout the year, prior to hurricane
season. We do a number of hurricane calls, not only
with the NRC but with our state, local, and tribal
areas, stakeholders, and such like that. So all year
long, we're definitely preparing for the event that
could occur or that may occur sometime during
hurricane season.
Some of those priorities, like we were
discussing, the political climate obviously is key.
One of the things that took place during Hurricane
Ida was, there was quite a push politically to get
this disaster-initiated review done as quickly as we
could. And we were able to do that.
Again, for FEMA, this virtual disaster-
initiated review was the first of its kind for us at
FEMA. One of the bittersweet side effects, I guess,
of COVID was that we already had been used to a
virtual environment for quite some time. We'd been
doing a lot of things virtually in other aspects of
FEMA.
So during Hurricane Ida, when it came
time to innovate and try to pivot to view the
disaster-initiated review from a virtual environment,
it was -- I won't say it was easy because it
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definitely wasn't. But we were able to do that with
as little problems as we could.
Again, because the state was in such need
to get that disaster-initiated review completed, we
were able to do that from a virtual environment. We
leveraged a lot of social media, different avenues of
social media to help us gather a site picture.
There was a lot of folks in the State of
Louisiana that were using a lot of social media,
different platforms. They were posting various
photographs and different things of different areas
in Louisiana that had been damaged.
And those were actually very good tools
for us to use from a FEMA aspect, because it did allow
us to take a look at different locations. And site
visits that we normally would try to do in person and
boots on the ground, we were able to do virtually,
and request other videos or photographs of different
sites that we needed to take a look at. And Linda
can talk a little bit about that.
But yes, there was a lot of competing
priorities. COVID was still very active. It was a
very concerning situation.
That was one of the things that we were
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having to consider as we were trying to consider
getting individuals into the State of Louisiana to
conduct that disaster-initiated review. Some of that
was how we were going to do that along with the COVID
protocol. So again, just another reason for us to
conduct that disaster-initiated review from a virtual
environment.
Linda, I don't know if you have any
other --
MR. MORRIS: Yes. I was going to ask
Linda to explain a little bit. What is a DIR, and
why is it important?
MS. GEE: Well, we initially -- FEMA
loves their reports. We begin with a preliminary
capabilities assessment, and I started with that.
Early on, I had that framed.
Of course, that triggers the disaster-
initiated review. At that point, there's about ten
questions on a capabilities assessment. We did
realize we needed to go ahead and do the DIR.
Now, what we had to determine was how we
were going to do the DIR. And we weren't certain.
Are we going to Louisiana or not?
Well, with everything going on at the
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time, we decided to do the disaster-initiated review
remotely. And as Oscar pointed out, we started early
on. We started back on August 27th with coordination
calls.
Social listening was done throughout. I
was able to get information on a lot of the facilities
around Waterford. The state was able to provide
information, both LDEQ and GOHSEP. And then they
were able to follow up with information from the
parishes.
So the disaster-initiated review, once we
were able to get all the information where we could
present it for reasonable assurance, it probably took
me about four hours to get the report done. So we
were able to pull that together and push it up to
leadership to review.
Do you have any other questions on the -
MR. MORRIS: I think the audience might
be interested in understanding a little bit. Why is
the DIR -- why is that process so important? And why
did FEMA lean into it so hard early on?
MS. GEE: Well, it's FEMA's reasonable
assurance letter. And I'll let Oscar jump in here.
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MR. MARTINEZ: So those DIR teams that
consist of FEMA and RC regional staff, we conduct
those DIRs in order to coordinate with our off-site
response organizations to ensure that we conduct that
DIR in a timely manner, and it doesn't detract from
any lifesaving responses or things that are going on
initially.
The DIR review, it covers emergency
response facilities, communication, emergency
response organizations, the public alert notification
systems. It covers things such as transport,
evacuation routes, accident assessment capabilities,
the support services that are available, and the
different population shifts.
It's so that we can ensure that the off-
site organizations, they can respond in case of a
plant emergency or anything like that. So that's
essentially the reason that we conduct those DIRs.
MR. MORRIS: Thanks. Thank you for
putting that into context there.
John, I want to ask you, from your
perspective, the federal government and its response
-- and that's the bigger federal government, not just
FEMA, not just NRC, but all of us working together -
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- what was your perspective on the level of support
and interaction that your team had from the federal
government, whether conveying priorities and needs,
timeliness of response, et cetera? Can you comment
on that?
MR. OVERLY: Absolutely. I've been
through a few hurricanes in the Carolinas, but this
was the first major one with a direct impact to the
site.
We've got a really, really good working
relationship with the region, FEMA, the NRC, our
state, and the parishes. In other words, we know
each other. And I think the familiarity and the up-
front work that Oscar, Linda, and Ryan have talked
about where we meet face-to-face, we talk with each
other, I think you build those relationships. And I
know everybody has their part from a regulator to a
utility, but actually knowing each other and being
able to communicate was really good.
For us, now we're throwing in the Coast
Guard. The Coast Guard was critical with some of the
responses. Ryan talked about, and you talked about,
a power line down. The Coast Guard's controlling
that, and so is Department of Transportation. So
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there's a lot of federal agencies that come under
that umbrella of response.
Anything we asked for, we got. Anything
they were inquiring about, we were able to provide
them, because we understood what kind of questions
were going to come. So we were prepared with the
answers.
Really our federal plans, state plans,
local plans, and our utility plans mesh pretty well
together because we've worked on them over the years.
While this hurricane threw a little bit at us earlier,
the damage was a little different, and we had to kind
of adjust on the fly, the processes and the people we
have in place facilitated a much smoother response in
dealing with the uncertainty that we came up against.
MR. MORRIS: Thanks. I think it's fair
to say that all of us were interested in getting power
back to the grid as soon as possible, because
obviously there was pretty significant damage and
people were without power.
And of course, the City of New Orleans
requires power to de-water the city. So it's a
really important thing. And it wasn't lost on
anybody, this push and desire to get power back.
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But for us and for FEMA it's, how do we
do that and ensure safety? We don't want to put the
public at any further risk by expediting a plant's
return to operation.
A question maybe for Ryan. Ryan, we've
talked a little about this, this notion of NRC
response modes. We've got a question from the
audience. Maybe you could elaborate a little bit.
What does Activation mean? What does
that look like, and why is that significant?
MR. LANTZ: Yes. Thanks for that
question, Scott.
Before I get to that, I did want to put
a little context on the disaster-initiated review.
We rely on FEMA. The NRC relies on FEMA essentially
to tell us that after a plant has to shut down because
of some event, some external event, they tell us the
off-site support for operating that plant is intact,
is capable of supporting.
The safety of the plant is always with
the licensee. They are fully responsible for
ensuring they operate a plant safely. So Waterford,
in this case, before they restarted the plant and
maintaining it in a safe condition while they were
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shut down, that is completely the responsibility of
the licensee.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, our
responsibility is to ensure that the licensee is
operating safely. So we monitor. We have folks on-
site.
And this one, we talked about restoration
of off-site power. I just want to make sure everyone
understands that the restoration of off-site power
was very important. And that happened fairly
quickly. We were surprised how quickly the plant was
able to find a pathway to bring power back to the
plant.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that
it's a reliable source of power, and that it would
meet our standards for ensuring the plant could
operate safely. So there was a ten-hour period
following restoration of off-site power to the site
that the NRC was continuing our evaluation. And one
of five criteria we use to exit from Activation was
that there was a reliable source of off-site power to
the plant.
MR. MORRIS: I want to get to the exit
criteria in a bit. Just for the benefit of the
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audience, what is Activation? Why is it different?
Who makes the decision? That type of thing.
MR. LANTZ: Sure. So when an event
occurs at a plant, NRC decision-makers have a phone
call. We're notified by our Headquarters Operations
officer, who is 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day monitoring. They're
required to get phone calls from the sites when
certain events occur. And then a phone call is made.
In this particular case, the decision-
maker for that is the Regional Administrator, who has
oversight of that plant. And he also consults with
the Nuclear Reactor Regulation representative who is
on the phone, and gets essentially concurrence with
going to an Activation mode.
And what Activation does is it sets the
NRC into this response mode where 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day we
have individuals dedicated to analyzing the
situation, looking at the plant, communicating with
the plant, and off-site authorities.
So we are in a mode where we have full
communications. We're assessing. We assign
individuals that are needed depending on what has
occurred at the plant. And then we also are
preparing, if we need to, to send a larger number of
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folks to the site itself. So that's another part of
Activation.
MR. MORRIS: Thanks for that. One of
the key elements of being in Activation for the NRC,
of course, is to be able to provide that independent
assessment, that independent assurance that the
licensee -- that they've thoroughly evaluated the
event, that they're anticipating what might happen
next, that they are taking all the appropriate
mitigation actions, et cetera.
So the NRC's role is, obviously, to make
sure from an independent viewpoint, with its own eyes
and ears, its own staff, making sure that the licensee
is doing all the right things.
But also, in a support role; also saying,
hey, how can we help? And also providing advice to
other off-site, answering questions from the public,
et cetera, and basically coordinating the entire
federal response to support the unit.
So thanks for that. I did get a question
for John Overly about what the sequence of events was
relative to the hurricane moving closer and closer to
the site, mode changes. And what happened at River
Bend and Grand Gulf, since they initially were in the
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path of the storm?
And was the FLEX equipment -- FLEX
equipment is installed, obviously, at Waterford and
other power reactor sites. To what extent was that
equipment used or deployed?
MR. OVERLY: Thanks, Scott. I'll just
kind of touch on that. Grand Gulf, River Bend, and
Waterford, we had utility calls between us from our
storm response calls. The other two sites were
preparing because we believed it was going to be west
of us. So those other two sites would be impacted;
Grand Gulf to a lesser extent.
Once it turned our way and was going to
be much less of a threat to River Bend, they kind of
backed off some of their requirements. But we all
have the same common severe weather response
procedure. We were all entering those procedures.
And River Bend prepared for sequestration but they
did not need (audio interference) FLEX equipment.
We do have some FLEX equipment, because
of the unique characteristics of our site, that are
staged in other locations. For example, we have
basically a permanently installed emergency diesel
generator that can help us with a loss of off-site
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power, in addition to the emergency diesel
generators, versus having to rely on grabbing a FLEX
generator to come in.
So those are some of the logistics that
we had. I think I missed another part of the
question.
MR. MORRIS: Yes. It had to do with mode
changes. I think we kind of covered it in the time
line that I went through at the beginning.
But obviously, the most important thing
is that the unit went from Mode 1 operation down to
Mode 4, which is shutdown and cooldown, pretty
aggressively, starting on Sunday morning when
landfall was made by the hurricane, and it became
clear that the site was going to get some excessive
wind and excessive storm activity at the site.
MR. LANTZ: I'll just add that both River
Bend and Grand Gulf were able to stay at full power
throughout this event, even though they were
preparing for a shutdown if needed.
MR. OVERLY: Scott, I'd like to add just
one thing. We talked about all the great things, the
great outcomes with the disaster-initiated review
being the first full virtual one, how we were able to
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quickly come to that conclusion while we want to bring
power back to the grid.
But we also have to remember although
Waterford was prepared to start up, we actually
delayed connecting to the grid because the grid was
not ready for that power that we had. So it's okay
for us to generate power, but if we have nowhere to
send it or ability to transmit it, then our homes
aren't able to receive it. So that's actually
something we have to think about as well.
So you have your time and you step
through. If there's a critical need, yes, we get it
back up and online. But we also have to delay and
allow the grid to handle the capacity.
MR. MORRIS: Thanks. And Ryan and
Rebecca, maybe weigh in, too.
Obviously, in our role as independent
assessors and trying to be supportive of the site,
the NRC also is still a regulator. And if the site
decides that it wants to restart the unit, there are
some regulatory requirements that have to be met.
The NRC is going to make sure on behalf of the public
that those requirements are met before the licensee
decides to restart the unit.
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Aside from off-site power, were there
other issues of concern that you dealt with as a
response director -- or Rebecca, in your role -- that
gave you concern about the licensee's return to
operation?
MR. LANTZ: Yes. I'd like to let Rebecca
address this specific aspect. NSIR is a pretty
focused organization, so I think you have an aspect
there. And then I'd like to cover some broader items
that we had consideration for.
MR. MORRIS: Sure. Go ahead, Rebecca.
MS. RICHARDSON: Thanks, Scott. Thanks,
Ryan. I would say in the security realm you aren't
just thinking about, what if part of my security
system stops working temporarily. But instead, what
if it's just blown away completely, and how this could
extend your time frames for needing to have
compensatory measures in place, which are
requirements.
I think the beauty of the in-depth
strategies is that they are prepared for that. But
in the midst of a public health emergency, it
definitely adds layers of challenges to work through,
from both the personnel perspective and the supply
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chain, to restore equipment.
One of the, I think, biggest takeaways
for me was how this experience really highlighted the
importance of that safety/security interface, which
is another requirement we have.
And while natural phenomena like the
hurricanes are not the same initiating event as, say,
a physical attack, the physical protection programs
are in place and are set up to compensate for those
degradations in operability, regardless of the mode
of failure. So I think those are two big aspects for
us.
MR. MORRIS: Yes. Maybe we didn't say
this directly, but the security systems at the site,
which are obviously required by NRC regulation -- we
didn't talk about this much, but the security systems
at the site were impacted fairly substantially.
So I think what you're describing is,
it's not just about getting power back to the site
from the grid. But also, making sure that all the
other infrastructure that's needed to support plant
operations, including security systems, is available
and reliable. And that was, I think, an interesting
challenge, not only for the licensee but also for us
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as we tried to do our independent assessment.
MS. RICHARDSON: Yes. And as Waterford
did, it's important for the security organization
then to remain an active participant in the licensee
emergency plans. They staff security emergency
responders in the Technical Support Center and
Operational Support Center.
So this allows them to ensure that
security is aware of any emergency conditions in real
time, allows them to assess any potential adverse
security impacts, and then support the plant safety
and emergency action. So I think that that's a key
piece of the interaction there.
MR. MORRIS: Thank you.
MS. RICHARDSON: Yes.
MR. MORRIS: Ryan?
MR. LANTZ: Yes. As I mentioned
earlier, the licensee has the responsibility to
operate the plant safely. But the NRC is charged
with ensuring that it's done. And part of our being
in the Activation mode meant that we had questions.
We wanted to be able to respond quickly.
Prior to our exiting Activation, standing
down our 24-hour response mode, we did establish five
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different criteria. And just real quickly, I'll talk
about those.
First, we already talked about that we
wanted to do an independent assessment of the
security posture of the site. And that was done by
sending an inspector down, consulting with NSIR, that
office. So the security was really one of the top
priorities.
The next is, we wanted to make sure that
we had good communications with the site, because
early on they were a little iffy. We wanted normal
communications as well as emergency communications
restored; a big, important thing.
The next was, we wanted to make sure that
we could reliably get NRC staff to the site. There
was still a mess on the roads. It was hard to get
around. We wanted to make sure there was a good path
that we could continue to get NRC presence on the
site.
The next had to do with off-site power.
The plant operates using technical specifications.
And of course, the Code of Federal Regulations drive
requirements that must be met for a plant to operate.
Our charge is to make sure those are met prior to the
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plant continuing, and certainly before the plant
starts up. So that priority, did they have a
reliable source of off-site power to continue
operating the plant.
The final criteria had to do with, have
we communicated well enough off-site, to the public
to ensure there was a good understanding of why we
were exiting from Activation, and essentially
allowing the plant to start up when they chose to
start up.
So five criteria. They were all met, but
it took quite a bit to make sure we had that.
The NRC, at any time if we feel like the
plant is not in a safe mode as conducting, we do have
the authority to tell the site, no, you cannot start
up. You must remain shut down. That's within our
regulatory authority.
And we can do that essentially if we
don't have confidence that there is safety. Even if
all the tech specs are met, technical specifications,
and we can't point to a specific regulation that isn't
met. If we don't have confidence, we can tell a site
that they cannot continue operating.
So I hope that answered the question,
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Scott.
MR. MORRIS: Yes, I think so. I
appreciate that. One of the questions that I've
received from the audience is that it sounds like
things went pretty well overall, given the
significance of the hurricane. It went as well as
could be expected at the site, for the licensee, at
FEMA, and NRC responders. And I think that's
generally true.
I'll open it up to anybody. Was there
anything that really didn't go well or it wasn't
anticipated that you had to deal with, and how did
you overcome it?
I'll just open it up to anyone.
MS. RICHARDSON: I can start with a
simple one on communications. Our primary form of
communications on some topics didn't work the way we
had planned, and we had to find alternate
communication. So while I think it went well, we
were able to do that, and we had those alternatives
available, the primary form that we planned on using
didn't work.
MR. MORRIS: Okay. Communications,
obviously, is essential. And in your world, Rebecca,
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we're talking about not just unclassified, but
potentially classified and sensitive information, and
how you communicate that information when you've got
degraded systems.
Others?
MR. OVERLY: One of the things that I
think could have gone better for us is, while we were
getting generators in place, hooking those generators
into some of our buildings that don't normally have
generators.
In other words, having quick disconnects
for connection points to where we can actually put
those generators. Or actually having permanently
installed generators in some of our support buildings
that we didn't have at the time, especially our supply
warehouse, for one.
The others, I won't get into a lot of our
security plan, but we have security posture locations
that need electrical in those locations. So having
quick disconnects and other accommodations to restore
power a little quicker.
From a response standpoint, we have a
corporate Emergency Response Center basically. And
while we did a lot of things virtually, we did not
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activate that facility sooner prior to the hurricane
arrival. So we took that as lesson learned that we
could have activated it a little sooner, and gotten
some of our resources and our communications a little
clearer and crisper ahead of the response.
And then our shutdown time. With the
storm speeding up, we took a hard look back at our
procedural requirements, the storm arrival time, and
how the storm speeding up may have cut into our
decision-making time.
So we're looking at, again, embracing our
risk/probability of one. And taking a hard look at:
do we need to shut down a little sooner than what we
did during the event? We always take a hard look at
ourselves and see where we can improve. Those are
some of the areas that we could really improve in.
MR. MORRIS: Okay. Thanks, John.
FEMA, Oscar or Linda, any surprises or
things that maybe didn't go as well as you
anticipated?
MR. MARTINEZ: Like Ms. Richardson was
saying, communication was a big issue that we were
having to deal with at the time right after the
hurricane made landfall. The lack of phones, cell
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service, and internet service provided a challenge
for us to communicate with some of our state partners
and some of the off-site emergency response
organizations. Some folks had to switch to ham
radios or satellite phones.
And there were even occasions where some
of our points of contact for the state and local
stakeholders that we had, some of those folks even
had to evacuate due to the locations they were at.
So some of the staff that we generally speak to during
these events weren't in the areas. Some of them even
had to evacuate to North Texas just for a day or two
in order to let the hurricane pass.
So those were some of the difficulties
that we had trying to establish that communication.
MR. MORRIS: You mentioned some of the
communication options that you had to employ.
The question from the audience, what
other secondary communications did we wind up having
to use or not use, maybe some of which were
anticipated and baked into response plans, maybe some
weren't? Any thoughts on that?
MR. MARTINEZ: As far as from FEMA goes,
obviously we do have some communication plans already
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established, such as satellite phone numbers and
stuff like that. We do have different radio options
that each state has with them. We have different
UHF/VHF type radio communication methods, if that is
needed.
So yes, just generally, our GETS cards
and our WPS ability for some of those folks that had
to -- because of the lack of cell towers and stuff,
there was a lack of lines and such. So there were
some folks that had to utilize their GETS cards and
stuff in order to bump them up to the front of the
line so they could use some of those communication
methods to reach out to us.
So those were just some different ones.
Because the plans that we have that we prepare for
all year long have multiple redundant systems built
into that, and we review those plans annually, that
did actually play out for us. So that did help us.
MR. MORRIS: Yes. Thank you. Some
folks may not know what a GETS is. It stands for
Government Emergency Telephone System. And WPS is
Wireless Priority Service. The federal response
community has access to these tools to enable us to
get priority service on the cell towers and priority
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access to normal telephone communications in an
emergency. So that's what Oscar is referring to
there.
Back to you, Ryan. There's a question.
You mentioned the five criteria that the NRC used
that needed to be satisfied before exiting from the
Activation mode.
The question from the audience is, are
those criteria kind of made up on the fly or are they
captured in some standard process? How does that
work?
MR. LANTZ: Yes. Thanks for that
question. They are all dependent on the specifics
of the incident that is going on. Obviously, safety
is paramount. That's our charge as the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. Everything that we do is
based on ensuring safety is maintained at the site.
So that's the paramount consideration.
But the particulars of the specific event will drive
some of the other criteria.
So are they made up on the fly? I guess
I would say sort of, that's correct. There's nothing
written down that says you have to have this thing.
There are minimums, and that's our safety standards,
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regulations, technical specifications. But the
others are really driven by the specific event.
And there's a lot of communication and
consideration when should we leave Activation mode.
Public confidence is a huge aspect, and our
confidence that the site is doing everything they
need to to ensure safety is probably the secondary.
MR. MORRIS: Okay. Thank you. It was
mentioned earlier, Hurricane Andrew back in 1992
impacted the Turkey Point facility in Southern
Florida. It was a pretty significant event, a lot
of lessons learned from that.
A question from the audience is, it's
been 30 years since then. What lessons from that
event were incorporated into the response of this or
other planning documents? I can start with John, or
anyone, but let's start with John.
MR. OVERLY: All right. Thank you,
Scott.
From a Waterford and an Entergy perspective,
Hurricane Andrew was obviously an eye-opener for the
entire industry, but especially the Gulf plants and
coastal plants.
We really took a lot of those lessons --
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if you look at our severe weather procedure
currently, a lot of our on-site facilities,
equipment, and protocols, all of those are in place
because of the lessons that we learned from Hurricane
Andrew. So we actually took all of those lessons
line by line, looked at them, and pretty much to a T
adopted those activities.
That's why we have these pre-hurricane
conferences. That's why we have these relationships
with the NRC, the state, FEMA, and the parishes in
place. That's why we have third and fourth layers
of communication systems, because communication is
vital in a disaster. So yes, we really adopted a lot
of those things and put them in place.
MR. MORRIS: Thanks. How about from
FEMA's perspective? Obviously, FEMA is charged with
responding to all manner of events. And certainly
since Hurricane Andrew 30 years ago, there have been
a lot of other hurricanes, a lot of other disasters,
and superstorms.
Sandy rings a bell for me. About ten
years ago, it hit the Northeast and affected a lot of
infrastructure and nuclear. To what extent have
those lessons been incorporated into FEMA's response
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protocols?
MR. MARTINEZ: Well, that was quite some
time ago, way before my arrival here at FEMA. But I
will say that just in general, after every disaster
that we have in FEMA, whether it's a manmade disaster
or a natural disaster, we constantly do reviews and
after-actions of what has occurred, and implement any
new changes or make any improvements to the processes
that we have.
I would say since 1992 to now, we've
obviously made several; not only communication
changes, but relationship changes. Obviously,
improved relationships with various federal agencies.
And now in 2022, we have outstanding relationships
with the NRC and our other federal partners that allow
us to respond in the most rapid way that we can.
So again, I can't really speak to the
huge improvements from 1992 to now, but I can say
that we're always striving to make sure that we're
implementing new changes. Especially with
technology, the way technology is now; again, various
social media platforms and different web platforms,
WebEOC, Adobe Connect, different things like that.
We try to utilize our watch centers that
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we have within FEMA to assist all the different
divisions in FEMA. And our National Preparedness
Branch, which is what houses our Tech Hazards Branch
responsible for that, are constantly doing different
community outreaches and stuff like that. So
preparedness is the key for us here.
MR. MORRIS: Absolutely. Thanks, Oscar.
You mentioned the after-action report. And maybe
I'll put this to Ryan.
To what extent did the action formerly
capture the lessons from this particular event? And
are those lessons -- how are they shared? Are they
publicly available? How do we as a country benefit
from these lessons?
MR. LANTZ: Thanks, Scott. I did want
to mention Hurricane Andrew before we move on to that
question. That was a watershed event. And I
actually remember Hurricane Andrew. I was in the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission when that event
occurred.
We took several lessons learned. One was
coordinating with FEMA. I believe the disaster-
initiated review was actually an outfall of Hurricane
Andrew. We formalized a process in our memorandum
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of understanding and coordination with FEMA for
responding to sites that had to shut down because of
some external event, such as a hurricane.
And also, that was the NRC's first
inkling that we needed to have a common terminology
and vocabulary with off-site authorities in their
response mode. It took quite a long time for NRC to
get there, but we finally have the same terminology
of responders, such as a response director or an
operations sections chief. We use those
terminologies now that off-site authorities --
police, fire -- have been using those terms for quite
some time.
Now to the question of the after-action
report. We did capture the lessons learned from
this, so they are in an after-action report. And I
believe that's publicly available, although I'm not
completely confident in that answer.
Each one of these events is an
opportunity to capture lessons learned. They are
captured. Maybe Rebecca can talk about that quite a
bit more. Those lessons are used to inform our
response methodology and procedures, to improve our
response and make it more efficient.
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MR. MARTINEZ: I'll say -- and this is
Oscar from FEMA -- like Ryan said, those after-
actions -- currently, we do have a draft after-action
for Hurricane Ida and for that event in an improvement
plan that we implement in collaboration with the off-
site response organizations as well as the NRC. We
share that draft with each other before we finalize
that.
MR. MORRIS: Thanks.
MS. RICHARDSON: I can add onto that.
The after-action report, it does get added to our
Corrective Action Program database so that we can
find resolution for those items and adjudicate those
so that we're ready for the next time. That did
occur.
MR. MORRIS: Excellent. So I think it's
fair to say, then, that it's an iterative process,
this continuous learning that happens. And
ultimately, the programs and protocols that are
employed to effectively prepare and respond to
disasters like Hurricane Ida are captured and
continually evolving in our formal documentation.
Of course, people change; people take on
new roles. So it's really imperative not only to
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have quality procedures, programs, and documents that
are revised regularly to account for lessons learned,
but it takes a whole lot of continuing, ongoing effort
as people change, as circumstances change, as
technologies change, to continue to train our
response professionals, many of whom in the NRC all
speak for the NRC.
This isn't their day job. This is
something that they do when the NRC enters that
Activation mode that normally they're inspectors,
license reviewers, you name it. And they all
volunteer to support a response, should it be
necessary, but it's not their day job. You can have
great programs and procedures, but it ultimately
takes people to implement them.
Ryan, I'll start with you. What do we
do to make sure that this volunteer -- obviously,
there are some permanent staff who focus on
preparedness and response. But the vast majority of
the response organization is volunteer. What do we
do to make sure that when the bell rings, so to speak,
that we, the agency, can effectively mount a
response?
I'll also throw that question to
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everybody, to John and FEMA.
MR. LANTZ: Thanks, Scott. As far as
the on-call responders, the NRC doesn't really have
any on-call responders. All of ours are permanent
folks. I know FEMA will talk about on-call folks.
But obviously, we have a continuing
training program as well as the initial training
program that talks about emergency response. We have
inspectors and managers who are trained. And we
exercise. Every two years, at every plant in the
country there is a biennial exercise that we evaluate
and FEMA participates in. And we receive those
reports and see the lessons learned from those.
Every six years we'll participate in some
manner at a site, at every site every six years. We
have our whole response organization that actually
practices. So that comes out to two or three times
a year we are in an exercise that involves the
entirety of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a
site.
There are other national exercises that
are done periodically every year that exercise beyond
the NRC and FEMA, other federal agencies, to
participate in a response drill. So multitudes of
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training opportunities there to make sure both our
new staff and our experienced staff continue to have
the ability to implement our emergency response.
MR. MORRIS: Yes. Thanks for that. And
interestingly, when those biennial exercises are
being conducted at the power reactor sites, NRC is
really wearing two hats, two roles, two functions.
One of which is what you just described, which is
enhancing the training and proficiency for our staff
in how to implement our response program.
But there's a regulatory piece too.
During those exercises we've also got our regulatory
hat on, making sure the licensee is doing all the
things they need to do to be successful in responding
to an event.
So with that, John, did you want to weigh
in on this? We only have about four minutes left in
the session. You're on mute, John.
MR. OVERLY: I'm sorry. I think we've
covered the vast majority of the points I wanted to
make on that, but thank you.
MR. MORRIS: Okay. Oscar or Linda, any
thoughts on that?
MR. MARTINEZ: FEMA does have a reservist
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on-call program that's separate from us in our REPP
program. But as far as the reservists go, FEMA does
hire and seek out individuals to help with those
responses. And then in the time of a disaster or
need, they will call up some of those reservists and
give them opportunities to assist with that.
As far as the REPP program within FEMA,
we do annual DIR tabletop exercises that move from
one region to another. Here in Region 6 that covers
Louisiana, we participated in 2020 with that tabletop
exercise for the DIR there.
We also have standard operating guides
and different things that guide us on preparedness
and training for that. So really, for us it's a
constant training all year long with our off-site
response organizations and our state. So that's kind
of how we do that.
MR. MORRIS: Okay. Well, we're here at
the end of the program. So I want to just thank all
of you for participating and joining in today's
panel.
I thought it was a good, comprehensive
overview of all the aspects of the response to
Hurricane Ida at Waterford, and all the implications
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of that at the licensee's site, within the federal
government. Again, a very big thanks to all the
panelists this morning.
And thanks to the audience for your
participation and your questions. It's our hope that
this was informative and interesting, and you took
some good lessons from this event so that we can be
even better in the future.
With that, I will bang the gavel and
close the session. I wish you all a good rest of the
Regulatory Information Conference. Thanks,
everybody.
(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter
went off the record at 9:58 a.m.)
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