ML24348A102

Public Meeting Transcript Part 53 Proposed Rule Risk-Informed, Technology-Inclusive Regulatory Framework for Advanced Reactors, Pages 1-124

ML24348A102
Person / Time
Issue date:	11/21/2024
From:	NRC/OCM
To:
References
10 CFR Part 53, NRC-2019-0062, NRC-0107, RIN 3150-AK31
Download: ML24348A102 (1)

Text

Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Title:

Meeting to Discuss Part 53 Risk-Informed Regulatory Framework for Advanced Reactors Rulemaking Docket Number:

(n/a)

Location:

teleconference Date:

Thursday, November 21, 2024 Work Order No.:

NRC-0107 Pages 1-123 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.

Court Reporters and Transcribers 1716 14th Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20009 (202) 234-4433

1 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

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MEETING TO DISCUSS PART 53 RISK-INFORMED REGULATORY FRAMEWORK FOR ADVANCED REACTORS RULEMAKING

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2024

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The meeting was convened via Videoconference, at 9:00 a.m. EST, Nicole Fields, Facilitator, presiding.

PRESENT:

NICOLE FIELDS, NMSS, Meeting Facilitator and Rulemaking Project Manager BRAD BAXTER, NSIR BOB BEALL, NMSS, Senior Rulemaking Project Manager ANDERS GILBERTSON, NRR, Technical Lead JIM MALTESE, OGC STACY PRASAD, NSIR, Technical Lead BILL RECKLEY, NRR, Technical Lead BETH REED, NRR TAMMIE RIVERA, NSIR MAX SMITH, OGC

2 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com CHARLES TEAL, NSIR NANETTE VALLIERE, NRR, Technical Lead BRIAN ZALESKI, NSIR ALSO PRESENT:

CYRIL DRAFFIN, US Nuclear Industry Council JONATHEN FACEMIRE, Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI)

RANI FRANOVICH, Nuclear ROSE Consulting JOY JIANG, The Breakthrough Institute (BTI)

MIKE KELLER, Hybrid Power Technologies FRANK KOREN, Mirion Technologies DR. EDWIN LYMAN, Union of Concerned Scientists RICHARD MOGAVERO, NEI JOHNNY ROGERS, NEI DR. ADAM STEIN, BTI DAVID YOUNG, NEI

3 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 9:00 a.m.

MS. FIELDS: Good morning. I just want to verify they can hear us?

Nope? Nobody can hear us?

PARTICIPANT: Yes, we can hear you.

PARTICIPANT: I can hear.

MS. FIELDS: All right. All right.

There you go. Thank you. Great you did that.

All right. So, good morning everybody.

I welcome you back to day three, the final day of our Part 53 meeting today.

We're going to hear and discuss the Part 53 proposed rule risk informed technology with the regulatory framework for advanced reactors.

My name is Nicole Fields, and I am the Rulemaking Project Manager from the NRC's Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. I'm the backup project manager for this project and I'll be facilitating this meeting.

I also have my colleague Bob Beall, who is a Project Manager, and we will be serving as facilitators. So, you know, our role really is to make sure that this meeting is informative, productive, and hopefully it's been that way for the past two days and

4 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com we hope it will continue to be that way this morning.

I have a few logistical reminders. If you've been here the last two days, you have already heard these, so bear with me. So, with the external participants in the room, right, if you need to leave for any reason, please let us know so we can escort you to those places, such as the restrooms, the lobby, anywhere else.

Also, everybody, there are live microphones on the table. If they are green, people online hear us, just for your awareness.

If you have cell phones or things that make noise, please set them to silent or vibrate to minimize distractions. And, if you do speak, please speak clearly, and identify yourself and your affiliation, both for the people online and then also for the transcription.

Also, if you're online, please keep yourself muted if you're not speaking or I will mute you. If you join the meeting using Microsoft Teams dial-in number, you can press star six to mute yourself, and you can press star six to unmute yourself if you have a question.

In addition, please turn off your camera if you have one when you're not speaking, as this will

5 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com help minimize any bandwidth issues.

Okay, we are again still using PowerPoint Live, so you should be able to click through the slides at your convenience if you're using Teams. If you're not using Teams to attend this meeting or you'd like to view or have a copy of the slides, they're available in ADAMS at ML24319A002, and they're on regulations.gov under Docket ID NRC-2019-0062.

To facilitate orderly discussion, we request that those people who are online, they use the raise hand feature. It's a little hand, right.

And, if you joined using the dialing number, you can use the raise hand function as well by pressing star five. If you dialed in, you may have to press star six to unmute yourself in order to ask a question.

We'll call on folks and take questions, in the order in which hands are raised. For folks in the room, just raise your hand and we'll put you into the queue.

Okay. I'm going to ask everybody just like the previous two days, please keep your questions focused so that we have time to discuss as many questions as possible.

We're going to try to give everybody the

6 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com opportunity to ask questions on every topic, but we're also trying to keep to the agenda.

We do have a chat window. If you have technical difficulty with your audio, with video, with slides, anything like that, you can use the chat window for that.

But, please do not use the chat window to ask technical questions because we'd like to capture them as part of the official transcript for the meeting.

It's not part of the official meeting record, and so really please keep it to a logistical issue.

I mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again, this meeting is being transcribed. So again, to get a good transcription and to minimize distractions, please mute yourself when you're not speaking and identify yourself and your affiliation, if you have one, when you do speak.

That's all I have for logistics. So, unless there are questions on that from anybody, let's move on to the agenda. So, that's slide 114, please.

All right. So, today we'll discuss the proposed rule as laid out in this agenda. The staff is going to focus their presentations on proposed content that is significantly different from existing regulations, and each agenda topic will also include

7 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com a discussion of any specific requests for comments.

After the status presentation on each topic, stakeholders will have the opportunity to ask questions on that agenda topic. For any topics in the proposed rule that are not specifically laid out in the agenda, we'll take questions in our last wrap up discussion session today.

If you do have questions that are not specifically on the agenda, and are not discussed by staff in their presentations, please hold those to that final session.

We will try to stick to the agenda as published, but we also want to make sure that topics with more interest get enough time, so that we may end a little bit early or things, we may be a little bit flexible with that.

So, if you're interested in a particular topic, please check back often to make sure you get the content you're interested in. We'll also use the meeting chat to let people know where we are on the agenda like I've been doing for the past two days.

Okay. So, this morning we started off with changes to 10 CFR Part 73 security related topics including security program, cybersecurity, and access authorization.

8 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com And then, the last session is a wrap up and a final question session for any additional questions on topics we haven't covered. We are planning to have one short break and then this meeting will end at noon.

I want to remind everybody that this meeting is an information meeting with questions and answers. The purpose of this meeting is to give stakeholders an opportunity to ask questions about the proposed rule in order to support the submission of informed and specific comments on the proposed rule and associated documents.

We encourage all stakeholders to submit their comments on the Part 53 proposed rule and associated documents through regulations.gov under Docket ID NRC-2019-0062. I mentioned this before that the comment period closes February 28, 2025.

I'm sure you are all sick of hearing me say this, but we are not accepting comments proposed during this meeting. If you do have comments, please submit them by any method as laid out in the Federal Register Notice.

But, we highly encourage the use of regulations.gov to do so. There will be no formal responses to discussions in the meetings, but the staff

9 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com may post additional information on regulations.gov.

Additionally, we are making no regulatory decisions during this meeting. That's all I have.

Any questions on anything I covered?

Okay. With that, I'll turn it over to Chuck Teal.

MR. TEAL: Hey, good morning. I'm Chuck Teal. I'm a Senior Security Risk Analyst in the Reactor Physical Protection Branch.

I'll be kicking off the Part 73 discussion and go into a little more detail into 73.100. Can I get the next slide please?

All right. It's no surprise that we want you to put, as part of the security program, we want you to have a physical security brand. When it comes to physical protection of SMRs, we're basically considering two different pathways here.

One is material protection, and the other is just radiological sabotage. The two bullets on this particular slide are focusing on the material protection aspects of it.

So, if you have special nuclear material of a Category 2 quantity for instance, you would still need to protect that material under the physical protection requirements for materials, which is, for

10 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com most of the facilities we're seeing so far, are going to be Category 2 special nuclear material facilities, which would be 73.67(d).

And, there is a potential for, and licensees should pay attention to, possibly potentially getting up to a Category 1 quantity of material that you also have to have those protections also.

And also, the additional materials that you maybe want to get, they suggest you would have to protect, would be Part 37 materials, which are byproduct materials. Those are your Americium-241s, your Cobalt-16s, and Iridium-92s.

And, those are covered, those requirements are a Category Number 1 and Number 2, versus Roman Numeral I and Roman Numeral II for special nuclear material.

And, you should take those into consideration.

One thing to keep in mind with the Part 37 protections, is there is a risk out there. It's 2015-15, ADAM's Ascension Number, ML15092A432. The reason I suggest you take a look at that, is there is some confusing with licensing.

You can meet the requirements of Part 37 physical protection with a Part 73 or a Part 50 or 52

11 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com of the physical security campaign. I won't go into more detail because it's beyond the topic, beyond the scope of what we're trying to do here today. Can I get the next slide please?

Okay. This slide is really important to understand. This is kind of the entry point into Part

53. If you're able, you've basically got two paths here.

If you can demonstrate through a

site-specific analysis, the radiologic consequence from the DBT initiated event will fall below the criteria in the bubble below.

You are, you can do -- you are not required to do radiological sabotage protections, but you still will need to do physical material protections for the material under 73.67 and Part 37.

All right. The analysis must be site-specific, including target sets and so forth, they'll want all that. As soon as mitigation and recovery actions, cleaning, and any operator is unavailable and ineffective, and the licensee must maintain the analysis until the license is voided, is ceased to be in effect.

However, if you don't meet those requirements, you still will need to do the protections

12 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com under Part 73.100 or 73.55 requirements. The site-specific analysis that we recommend is captured in Draft guide 5076, was also recommended, was also released as part of this FRN that you can take a look at.

Next slide, please.

All right, so as part of this, 53.860 requires you to do a fitness for duty program, access authorization, and cybersecurity

program, and information protection program. We have people later on today that will talk more about this as we go along.

Next slide, please.

Next slide, please.

Now, 73 will be a new section as added at

73. The license used to provide adequate protection against physical radiological sabotage.

This section provides a technology neutral regulatory approach that will accommodate a live reality of reactor design. This is different from 73.55, which provides a more prescriptive approach to achieving adequate protection, which is tabled for the larger commercial light-water reactors in our current fleet.

That bubble down below where it says security should be incorporated during the early design

13 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com of the, early in the design of the facility, is particularly important here, because if you're able to get below those radiological, those numbers indicated in the previous slides, it will alleviate a significant overhead for protection that will have to be in place for the duration of the operation facility. Next slide, please.

All right. So, the rule is going to require you have a physical security plan that accounts for site-specific conditions.

These things could be such as your site being located next to a large body of water or major interstate that will make easy ingress and egress for a potential adversary. And, it should provide defense in depth.

Defense in depth is achieved by either multiple layers and/or barriers to avoid failures that will accomplish this function. And, that's all indicated in the bubble there below.

So, the next slide, please.

All right. Now, the physical script plans should be designed to achieve and maintain the reliability of SSCs required for demonstrating compliance with performance requirements.

These requirements were informed by

14 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 73.55(b) for a light-water reactor fleet entitled, General Performance Detectives and Requirements and the Commissioner's Advanced Reactor Policy Statement.

The proposed performance requirements would permit the applicant or licensee to determine how to design the physical protection program, to protect the plan against the DBT for radiological sabotage without prescriptive requirements that are currently found in 73.55.

Safety and security are considered together to achieve defense in depth by providing multiple layers of protections to the systems and barriers to avoid the capability to tolerate failures.

This is so that, to prevent the accomplishment of the function.

The first, I won't go through each and every one of these, because they're very involved and I can do an entire hour on each one of these. But, we'll focus on the first element, the intrusion detection.

That would be provided that detection equipment controls, access controls, and other programs with a notification to licensee that a potential threat is present and where the threat is located.

15 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com To give you a sense of some of the things that we would find acceptable, it's not an all-inclusive list, but I wanted to mention these, would be two lines of continuous protection and complimentary systems.

Then you have a higher probability of detection and lower nuisance alarm rates, overlapping zones of protection, redundant suppliers, supplier splash, and recruiting equipment. And, it's not all inclusive as I said already.

And, if you really want to see the details, please take a look at Draft guide 5076, I believe, is the number. That contains the details of a much more level of detail of what we find an acceptable approach.

Next slide, please.

Now, part of this, part of this, this is a whole set of requirements. Once again, we're having, we're emphasizing site specific requirements.

We're asking you to establish and maintain a performance evaluation program, access authorization program, cybersecurity program, and cyber mitigation program. And, have a capability to track, trend, and preventing recurrences of efficiencies that should be captured in a site corrective action program.

And coordinate implementation of security

16 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com operations with plan operations, safety security interface is another way of saying that. And, of course, we want firearms background checks for every member of the security force that will be handling any weapons that might be used.

Next slide, please.

All right. The licensees should be establishing and securing a security organization to design staff, trained, qualified, and equipped to implement the physical protection program.

This section was developed from 73.57(c)(7), security implementing procedures of the 73.55(d) security organization from light-water reactor regulations.

The whole purpose of the security organization is to effectively implement the physical protection program. Individuals assigned to perform physical protection with contingent response duties must be trained, equipped, qualified and informed assigned duties and responsibilities.

Next slide, please.

Now, 73.100(d) establishes performance requirements for search of personnel, vehicles, and materials for protection against radiological sabotage. The regulations described a broad range of

17 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com categories that should be searched for, such as explosives, firearms, and incendiaries.

Specifically, the items that should, will be prohibited will be described in implementing procedures as well as exceptions. There are cases where a potentially harmful piece of equipment or chemical needs to be brought on, which chemical is the most common one.

You may have to -- any of those exceptions to those should be put into your implementing procedures. These, we wrote these at a high level, instead of being specific to allow some freedom and some wiggle room, so to speak, for you to put that in there.

And, 73.100(e) requires a training and a qualification plan. And, the whole purpose of that is to ensure people effectively perform their assigned duties.

One method that we find an acceptable requirement meeting this requirement, would be Part 73, Appendix B, which is the general criteria for security personnel.

Next slide, please.

Security plan reviews. Now, we're requiring you to do periodic security plan reviews of

18 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com the physical protection program to ensure effective implementation of the program by independent individuals, people that are not fully involved in the security process.

This was developed from 73.55(m), security program reviews. So, Section (f)(2) also requires a licensee to perform self-assessment of physical detection programs, to ensure the capability to detect,

assess, interdict, and neutralize that DBT radiological sabotage is maintained.

And, we also require the results recommendation on all findings to be documented, maintained, and have those available for any inspection.

Next slide, please.

This is the performance evaluation program. Each licensee should develop and implement a performance evaluation program that demonstrates and assesses the effectiveness of the physical protection program in implementing the licensee's protective strategy.

The licensees should periodically demonstrate the equipment procedures and personnel that compose the physical protection program area effectively integrated and coordinated to ensure the

19 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com threats to the facility will be detected, assessed, interdicted, and neutralized.

The performance evaluation program is intended to provide a documented method for each licensee to demonstrate its physical protection program satisfies the response requirements.

Next slide, please.

MS. FIELDS: Chuck, it seems like we've got a question from Frank Koren. Go ahead, Frank.

MR. TEAL: Yes, sir?

MR. KOREN: Yeah, thank you, Nicole.

Hey, Chuck, Frank Koren with Mirion Technologies. If you recall back in September, we met in Oak Ridge and I also had questions about security then, and of course I've got questions now about security.

In looking at 73.55 versus 73.100, you said early on that if the sites meet the requirements for radioactivity on the outer boundary or something, that they're not required to have radiological protection sabotage.

I kind of didn't know what that was about.

I'd like you to expand on that and I have a couple follow on questions.

MR. TEAL: Okay. Yeah. Basically, you have two doors that you can go through, right? One

20 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com door is, you're below that criteria, right?

And then, you're not, not obligated to defend against radiological sabotage. However, you still have those materials onsite, especially nuclear material and potentially Part 37 materials.

So, you will have to meet the requirements for those physical protections. That would be 73.67(d), most likely, if it's Cat 2 and Part 37.

So, that's the material side of the house.

Now, if you do not meet those criteria and you are above that, you can still utilize, you have the option.

You can use 73.55, which is the regulation we currently have in place for our large light-water reactor fleet to meet the requirements. Or, you can use the new 73.100, which will be implement -- hopefully will be implemented in the future to meet your requirements to defend against radiological sabotage.

So, there are basically two protective strategies, one is theft in diversion, which is a material thing. And, this 73.100, which is focused on radiological sabotage.

So, they're like two different pieces of protection, right.

MR. KOREN: Right.

MR. TEAL: Uh-huh.

21 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MR. KOREN: Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that, Chuck. I appreciate it. The other comment that you had there, you said sites to design their security strategies.

Does that mean the regulation guides as they exist today for 73.55, are there going to be new regulatory guides specifically for SMRs on the implementations of let's say, old technology or even new technology?

Or, is the sites themselves there to show the NRC their strategies and their security plans, and they get the blessing off of that?

How is that done in the future as it is done today?

MR. TEAL: Yeah, yeah. See, that's -- I'm glad you asked that, because it helps me. The 73.55 is more prescriptive, right?

That's been around for a long time. We have more prescriptive requirements there. So, as a

licensee, when you're designing your physical protection program, I would -- oversimplified, you're more constrained on what you can do. Right?

You have to follow with this certain set of boundaries to meet your physical protection standard. And so, that eliminates some alternative

22 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com methods of doing physical protection, right?

The high-level overview that we always key on in security, is detect, delay, and respond, right?

MR. KOREN: Right.

MR. TEAL: So, you can take those three things with Part 73.100, and since they're written in a more technology-inclusive neutral type of way, you can take those three avenues and design a physical protection system that, for instance, that might rely heavily on delay versus response.

Or, have it heavily on response. And, you could design your system in that way. And, there's a lot that goes involved with that, right?

You have to look at timelines, adversary timelines and so forth for when you're done. I'll assume law enforcement to get there, there's a lot of variables to that.

MR. KOREN: Right.

MR. TEAL: That is in the -- we do talk about that in the Draft guide for this FRN. But, that's the overall.

That's what we're trying to achieve.

We're trying to give 73,100 more latitude, to use more modern technologies to meet the requirements for the DBT protections, for radiological sabotage.

23 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com So, it does kind of put a burden on the licensee in a way, because now, instead of using the tried and true methods that have been around for a number of years with 73.55, you're given more latitude.

But, with that more latitude, you'll have to do a more rigorous analysis and show it to us. And, we can say, okay, you convinced us you're going to be okay with this particular plan.

And, it also makes it look, well, I'll leave it there.

MR. KOREN: Yeah, no. I appreciate that.

And, I think, there will be some bridging of technology from an NRC inspection point of view, from old technology to new technology.

Perhaps it's not been, they're not used to it, or it's an AI-enabled technology on the edge that does a lot of things for the site themselves that just isn't written down anywhere except in some testing data that the DOE is doing currently.

But, my last and final question has to do with a couple of slides that you just, you're on now.

MR. TEAL: Okay.

MR.

KOREN:

About reviews and inspections.

MR. TEAL: Right.

24 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MR. KOREN: It seems that 73.100 is written to allow the sites to set up their own planning, their own reviews.

Does that mean that sites today under 73.55, that go through the security inspection, cybersecurity inspections, force on force exercises, is that going to equate over to SMRs to do those inspections by outside adversaries, if you will, to test penetration and test the site security plan?

How is it going to be done for SMRs in the future, because that's a big burden and expense for an SMR facility to do periodically and to have the staff on hand. How's that going to be done in the future versus how it's done today?

MR. TEAL: Okay, yeah. As far as performance testing, like with that force on force, currently the commission policy is that we only do it for the reactors in the CAB 1 fuel cycles.

There hasn't been a determination made, to my awareness, of whether or not we're going to implement that program for the advanced reactors.

That will eliminate a pretty significant burden on the licensee as far as getting that part done.

The performance testing and all that, a lot of it's going to be really similar to what's done

25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com now, right?

You're going to be walking the zones, testing the zones, detecting if your detectors are working, performing the maintenance, and performing the calibrations, and making sure everything works as it should in accordance with.

I don't have anything else to add in addition to that, Frank. My apologies.

MR. KOREN: Okay. No, that's good, Chuck. I appreciate your time in answering these questions. Thank you.

MR. TEAL: You're very welcome.

MS. FIELDS: All right. So, the next question we have is from Dr. Lyman. Go ahead, Dr.

Lyman.

DR. LYMAN: Yeah. Hi, it's Ed Lyman from UCS. So, in light of that last discussion, I'm always focused on how you are going to establish and convince the public that what you're -- that these alternatives provide a comparable level of security to the current regulations.

And, I have to say that it is very unclear why that would be the case with regard to the 73.100 requirements. Now, I can see, you know, you have this entry condition for a wholesale exemption from these

26 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com requirements, and I can understand the logic of that.

I don't agree with it, but that's taking advantage of design feat -- you know, different reactor design features to get credit or to get relief from 73.55.

But, I do not understand why any applicant would have the option to simply adopt 73.100 instead of 73.55 without any particular showing that they have differences, in the fundamental differences in their design, compared to the operating fleet that would warrant this kind of relief, because you're taking prescriptive requirements that were honed over decades and essentially throwing them away.

So, I just don't understand how you are going to be able to convince the public that these are equivalent. Especially in the security realm, where most of the details are never going to be available to the public.

So, -- and, in light of that, to hold out the possibility that you would not have force on force inspections, which are currently required by statute for the operating fleet, to hold out the possibility that NRC wouldn't even be doing those independent evaluations, adds additional uncertainty to this process.

27 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com So again, what will you do? How will you go the extra mile to show that this very, that the very loose guidance and requirements here in the rules are going to actually provide that comparable level of security? Thanks.

MR. TEAL: Well, thank you, Dr. Lyman.

I appreciate you sharing that. Just to make sure I understand your viewpoint, I think, your biggest concern is they're so generic and so highly written that it allows a lot of latitude on the side of the NRC to determine adequate protection.

Would that be a reasonable summary?

DR. LYMAN: Yes.

MR. TEAL: Okay. Yeah, I appreciate that comment. I agree that it's very challenging, especially in the security realm about where we don't share a lot of information for a lot of good reasons to prove to the public that we've made an adequate determination.

And, I don't really have an answer for you today on how we're going to accomplish that. However, I do think your input's very valuable, and if you would do us the courtesy of submitting your viewpoints as a, I lost the word, as a, as part of the FRN, as part of an observation.

28 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com I think, it would do a lot of good, Ed, if we, it gives us the opportunity to look at it and put some more thought into it and reasonably address your concerns, sir.

DR. LYMAN: Okay.

MS.

FIELDS:

Okay.

I'll remind everybody, right, we're not taking comments during this public meeting. But, we do encourage everybody to submit their comments via regulations.gov. So, thanks.

And, the next question we had is from --

DR. LYMAN: Excuse me. Can I add something real quick?

MS. FIELDS: Yeah, sure. Go ahead.

DR. LYMAN: Hi, Dr. Lyman. I just wanted to add in, what you're saying is correct. So, 73.55 is very prescriptive, exactly how you do it.

When we're doing the reviews at the staff level and giving the final safety evaluation, we're using that same level of rigor. So, even though it doesn't say A, B, C, D, we still are looking to make sure you have that same reasonable assurance before we give that safety evaluation.

And, you're correct, like Chuck says, you're not going to be able to see everything that we're

29 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com doing. But, the bar of reasonable assurance and risk informing is the same for both.

We're just acknowledging that there may be different ways to do it, and the staff wants that opportunity to take a look to see what the licensees are planning so we can determine if it is reasonable and equivalent to the protection we're seeing today.

I'm not sure if that helps. But, I'm trying to help. All right, I'm done.

MS. FIELDS: Okay. It looks like we have a question from Mike Keller. Go ahead.

MR. KELLER: Yeah. This is Mike Keller with Hybrid Power Technologies. You know, in today's threat environment, drones are becoming increasingly a problem.

And, it strikes with me that needs to be addressed and perhaps even in the form of allowing the facility to knock them down with appropriate measures, rather than try and deal with mitigation of the damage they might create.

It's just a thought. But, it's a threat that's a, as shown in Ukraine, is becoming more of a concern. And, I think, we need to think about it a little further.

MR. TEAL: Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Mike.

30 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com I appreciate that comment. I can only share with you that we are looking at the drone situation and have been for some time very carefully and very actively.

But, I appreciate your comments, sir.

Thank you.

MS. FIELDS: Okay. I don't see any more hands online. Any questions in the room?

No? Chuck, go ahead.

MR. TEAL: Could I go to slide 128, the next slide, please? Thank you. Where were we? Oh, maintenance and testing, everybody's favorite.

This whole idea here is to keep your equipment operating correctly, right? It requires that we have a corrective action program and compensatory measures to be taken in place, and as part of the procedures, so in case something fails.

We want a maintenance testing calibration program to secure the security systems and equipment including secondary and peripheral power supplies are tested for operability, performance, or predetermined

-- at predetermined intervals.

Maintain that operational conditioning can perform their intended functions. The licensee implementing procedure of maintenance testing and calibration must specify the operational and technical

31 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com details required to perform these activities for each component of the physical protection system.

And, the licensee implementing procedures should identify the criteria for determining when

problems, failure, and deficiencies should be documented and entered into the site corrective order.

Next slide, please.

And, suspension of security measures.

This is the section already drawn from 73.55(p),

suspension of security measures. Same title.

This is basically during an emergency, a licensee may suspend and implement certain physical security program measures when such actions are immediately needed to protect the public health and safety.

This most commonly comes up a lot for our sites around coastal areas, current light-water reactor plants, so, they're subject to hurricanes.

So, instead of making their poor security people stand out there in the weather, let them pull them back and they make, restrict mandatory measures until the threat has emerged, has as went away so nobody gets hurt or injured.

But, as part of that, security should return back to normal posture as soon as possible and,

32 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com of course, never forget to call the operations center and let them know what happened so you don't get gigged on not reporting an event.

Next slide, please.

I think, this is the last slide. Oh, thank goodness, yes, this is the last slide. It's records.

We are an administrative agency, so we like records.

So, this is almost a very close copy of 73.55 with that for records. Basically, the commission may inspect, copy, retain, and remove all reports, and records, and documents required to be kept by the commission, regulation orders, or license conditions, whether reports, records, and documents that are kept by the licensee or the contractor.

Hard copy or electronic files are acceptable. And, you are required to keep these records by the commission regulation orders of license conditions, until the commission terminates the license for which records were developed and shall remain two superseded portions of these records for at least three years after the record is superseded unless otherwise specified by the commission.

And, that's the end of my prepared statements. Any other questions?

MS. FIELDS: Nope. Oh, we have a hand

33 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com from Jim Maltese. Go ahead Jim.

MR. MALTESE: Hi, this is Jim Maltese.

I'm also general counsel. I just wanted to jump in and clarify one point about force on force exercises.

I want to note that the proposed rule does say that for those licensees who are able to meet the criterion in 53.860(a)(2), which would mean that a design basis threat-initiated event wouldn't lead to offsite doses above a certain threshold, those sites would not be subject to force on force exercises because they wouldn't be subject to a design basis threat.

And, the Atomic Energy Act requires that we, the NRC to conduct force on force exercises for classes of licensed facilities that are required to defend against the DBT.

So, those facilities would not, we have not, the proposed rule does not say that licensees that are subject to 73.55 or 73.100 would not have, would not be subject to force on force exercises.

We haven't made any, you know, statements in the proposed rule about that, the baseline of assumption is that they would be, unless there was a future commission determination on that.

MS. FIELDS: Thanks Jim. We appreciate that. Are there any questions? I don't see any hands

34 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com for anybody.

Oh, I see Jon and I see Rani. I don't know.

MS. FRANOVICH: Jon can go first.

MS. FIELDS: Okay, Jon, go ahead.

MR. FACEMIRE: This is Jon Facemire with the Nuclear Energy Institute. I was thinking about the criteria used for the design basis threat, and thinking back to some of the conversation, I think, Tuesday of this week for the aircraft impact assessment.

The aircraft impact assessment has language around a significant amount of radioactive materials. Would it be reasonable to suggest that that significant amount of radioactive material could align with the criteria here?

Right, if the risk, if the consequence is low enough to be exempt from the design basis threat, shouldn't it certainly be low enough to not have to design for a large commercial aircraft impact?

MS. VALLIERE: So, maybe I'll jump in.

So, Jon, let me make sure I understand your question.

This is Nan Valliere from the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.

You are asking if the criteria that are laid out in 53.860 could also be used under the

35 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com requirements for the aircraft impact in 53.440?

Is that the question?

MR. FACEMIRE: Yes. I know it wouldn't be acceptable under 50.150. But, I think, the language in 53.440(j), I think, it is, has that line about significant amounts of radioactive material.

And, I am looking for clarification on what significant inventories of radioactive material means, and if similar criteria could apply?

MS. VALLIERE: Yes. So, when we were drafting the requirements in 53.440 for the aircraft impact requirements, we were, of course, attempting to make those technology-inclusive, because as currently written that rule, the 51.50 has got some light-water reactor specific terminology in it.

So, that's why we tried to go to a more technology-inclusive requirement. I will say that we have not developed guidance yet for that specific requirement.

So, any comments or suggestions about what might be a useful criterion there, would certainly be welcome. And, you know, if you think that it's a good idea to use the same criteria as being used in 53.860, I think, that's, you know, certainly a valid comment.

MR. FACEMIRE: I appreciate that. And,

36 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com just being transparent, since NEI I did develop 0713, which was endorsed in Reg Guide 1.217 for the existing requirements under 51.50.

We're also looking at and trying to develop similar guidance for Part 53 for advanced reactors, micro reactors, and small modular reactors. So, appreciate that feedback and yes, we'll intend to submit that as a comment or as an addendum to NEI 713.

MS. VALLIERE: Great. Thank you, Jon.

MS. FIELDS: Okay. Yes, Rani, go ahead.

MS. FRANOVICH: I just wanted to commend the staff for making a change to 73.100 to reflect reasonable assurance of adequate protection versus high assurance of protection.

There is, I understand the 73.55 in parallel, I understand that it is more prescriptive.

It seems to me that it could also be more risk informative, and performance based.

I also note that 73.55 was issued for public comment with high assurance in the language rather than reasonable assurance. And, I think, the staff really needs to kind of align with commission direction in both sections so that the assurance standard is reasonable.

And, I'm just curious to know why the

37 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com change was made in 73.100, but not in 73.55?

MS. VALLIERE: So, maybe I could just make sure I'm providing clarification for the rest. When you say 73.55 was issued for public comment, you are not referring to the Part 53 proposed rule, you are referring to the limited scope security rule?

MS. FRANOVICH: Correct.

MS. VALLIERE: Right. I just wanted to make sure everybody was clear about that.

MS. FRANOVICH: Correct.

MS. VALLIERE: Yes. So, we did get specific Commission direction in one rule and not in the other on that topic. Which is why you might see a dichotomy.

But, I think, there will be a harmonization of the two rules at the final rule stage. So, they're proceeding in parallel now as proposed rules.

Assuming both make it to the final rule stage, they will be harmonized and put together at the final rule stage, so.

MS. FIELDS: And, we have a hand from Jim Maltese. So, maybe Jim can talk about that.

MR. MALTESE: Yes, thank you. I just wanted to mention, you know, Rani, to your point, we are very conscious of the fact that in the SRM, I think,

38 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com you're aware that the commission specifically noted that in the context of security, the concept of high assurance is equivalent to reasonable assurance.

And so, we've sort of taken that moving forward using the word reasonable assurance in the Part 53 rule.

That shouldn't suggest that our implementation of 73.100 to the current fleet does not also reflect the concept of high assurance.

We are, you know, taking the commission's direction to heart and applying regulations that use the word high assurance, that that is equivalent assurance. And, because, you know, changes to that language in 73.55, whether within the scope of those other rulemakings.

But, the concepts are applied the same.

MS. FRANOVICH: Thank you. I appreciate that James. And, just so we're clear, the Commission direction also included statements like, you know, eliminate any ambiguity on this point going forward with any new regulations, guidance, et cetera.

And so, while I understand the Commission direction has been addressed as a footnote in 73.55, the fact that the high assurance language is appearing in 73.55 is a concern. And, it seems to me that it's contrary to the direction to eliminate ambiguity on

39 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com this point going forward with any new regulations.

So, harmonization is, I'm glad to hear that that is the goal. I'm wondering if the harmonization will be high assurance or reasonable assurance?

And, I know that this is predecisional information, you can't comment on it. But, my expectation is that it would be reasonable assurance, to be consistent with Commission direction.

And, I understand I need to submit a comment, for a comment gathering event. But, I appreciate the opportunity to make this observation.

Thanks.

MS. FIELDS: Okay. Next, with a question from Dr. Lyman. Go ahead, Dr. Lyman.

DR. LYMAN: Yeah. Hi, Ed Lyman. So, going back to the entry conditions in 868.2, so what is going to happen if the design basis threat changes, or the tactics, techniques, and procedures change to the extent that there may be a new attack mode that would lead that, the threshold to be exceeded?

What provisions are there for, is the NRC really going to require that the licensees go from a no protection against the DBT posture, to one that requires protection against the DBT if that changes?

It seems not plausible. But, I think,

40 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com what's the thinking there? Thank you.

MR. TEAL: Well, Dr. Lyman, I frankly haven't thought about that actually.

MS. PRASAD: Yeah, I can just add in. It is a good comment. We are considering it. So, in the target set guidance and in the rule language, we are requiring target sets regardless of if you meet the criterion or not.

So, the licensee will be required to keep target sets onsite. They will have identified on the system that needs to be made inoperable to cause some kind of damage.

So, they'll have that starting point.

Whether there's going to be a required reassessment or not, honestly I don't see that as likely, because you're taking the worst-case scenario.

It's just a different tactic or a different way to do it might be there. But, targets that they're still looking at the worst-case scenario with everything, everything shut down.

I do understand the point. There might be something we didn't think of. We are thinking about it, and we are requiring target sets.

And, we will work from there as we work through this. And, it would be good if you provided

41 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com that as a comment as well.

DR. LYMAN: Okay, thanks.

MS. FRANOVICH: I have a question.

MS. FIELDS: Go ahead Rani.

MS. FRANOVICH: Rani Franovich, Nuclear ROSE Consulting. Just to get some clarification on that, requiring target sets, I mean the target sets are, they are design specific.

So, if I understand you correctly, I think, you're saying require the identification of target sets.

MS. PRASAD: Correct.

MS. FRANOVICH: Okay, thank you.

MS. FIELDS: Any more hands up online or questions in the room? There are a couple of things in the chat that I just want to talk about. They're logistical things.

So, I said that the comment deadline is going to be February 28, 2025. Hopefully, that will get published tomorrow in the Federal Register. But that's the, that's the deterrent side. That is good information, I promise.

And then, the second question is about the presentation. And, the presentation is available in ADAMS. Tyler posted the link in the chat. Thank you,

42 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Tyler.

But, it's ML24319A002. So, if you want a copy of, if you want a pdf copy of the slides that's available there after the meeting.

Okay. So, if there are no more questions on security programs, I think, we can move on to cybersecurity. All yours, Tammie.

MS. RIVERA: Okay. Good morning. My name is Tammie Rivera. I'm a Cybersecurity Specialist in the Office of Nuclear Security and the Incidents Response.

I would like to thank you for your interest in the proposed cybersecurity framework under Part 53.

The focus of the presentation will be on the proposed cybersecurity framework and to provide information to facilitate the submission of informed specific comments on the proposed rule.

I encourage interested stakeholders to refer to the preamble, to understand the intent and some of the technical basis of the language, of the rule language.

As stated throughout the public meeting, staff encourages interested stakeholders to submit comments on the proposed rule via regulations.gov, using a Docket ID.

43 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Next slide, please.

Okay. For discussion, these are the topics. Basically, we are going to talk about the key difference between the existing and the proposed cybersecurity framework, proposed cyber requirements and the graded approach, draft guidance development, and specific requests for comments.

Next slide, please.

Okay. To set the stage for the proposed cybersecurity framework from a high level, starting with the security programs, because the security, you can't really have cybersecurity without physical security.

So, in Section 53.860(d), the requirements for operations previously discussed in Subpart F by Bill, and the regulations discussed by my colleague Chuck just a few minutes ago in section 73.100(b)(8),

security requirements at commercial nuclear plants, these regulations require the licensee to establish, maintain, and implement a cybersecurity program in accordance with 10 CFR 73.54 or 10 CFR 73.110.

And, require the licensee to describe the cybersecurity program in the cybersecurity plan. So, what does that actually mean?

So, to sum it up, the cybersecurity program

44 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com regulations require the cybersecurity program. Or, I should say the cyber sys -- to sum it up, the security program requires the cybersecurity program.

Hopefully, I didn't confuse anybody just now but misstating that. The security program requires the cybersecurity program.

And so, when the applicant comes under Part 53 and submits the application, they would have the flexibility to meet the cyber security requirements under 10 CFR 73.54 or 73.110.

The proposed Section of 73.110 will implement a graded approach to determine the level of cybersecurity protection required for digital computers, communication systems, and networks. The proposed new section is informed by the operating experience for power reactors and existing 73.54 cybersecurity framework.

And so, when we get to the differences, the differences between 73.54 requirements and those proposed in 73.110, are primarily based on the implementation of a consequence-based approach to cybersecurity that provides flexibility to accommodate the wide range of reactive technologies.

And, this has been discussed throughout, you know, the meeting in other technical areas, the

45 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com regulations from Part 50.52 were more prescriptive, and so therefore with 73.110 under Part 53, we are leaning toward a more consequence-based approach.

And so, the graded approach based on consequences is intended to account for the different risk levels among the reactor technologies. Next slide, please.

Okay. So, some key messages that the staff would like to convey about the proposed framework for cybersecurity 73.110, will establish a

consequence-based approach to cybersecurity.

And, will require that Part 53 licensees demonstrate reasonable assurance that digital computer, and communication systems, and networks are adequately protected against cyber attacks in a manner that is commensurate with the potential consequences of those attacks.

The proposed cybersecurity rule will require licensees to protect digital computers, communication systems, and networks associated with the functions described in 73.110(a)(1), which is for the radiological sabotage, the safety piece, and (a)(2), which is the security piece relating to physical intrusion and death and divergence from cyber attacks.

46 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Another key message is to demonstrate reasonable assurance. The licensee will establish, implement, and maintain a cybersecurity program for protective functions of digital assets within the scope of 73.110.

That would make use of risk insights, including threat information, and will consider the resulting level of consequences of the threats.

I think, it's important to note that if that outcome of the analysis that a licensee would perform under 73.110(b)(1) revealed that the potential consequences of a cyber attack would not compromise the functions of the digital assets that support safety and security, those consequences that I mentioned previously for 73.110(a)(1) and (a)(2), then that would result in a more narrow set for meeting the cybersecurity program requirements.

And, this is discussed in the preamble as well under 10 CFR, Part 73, Section 73.110. So, to provide you an example of this, the licensee would only need to develop a cybersecurity program that implements the requirement dealing with, and I'm going to paraphrase because it's kind of, it's not lengthy, but, in the interest of time.

So, analyzing modifications to digital

47 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com assets, ensuring that there is cybersecurity training, evaluating, and managing cybersecurity

risks, reviewing the cybersecurity plan, and retaining records of the cybersecurity plan and any changes.

So, once again, just to reiterate what I'm talking about, this is in the case where you have a narrow set where the consequences are not deemed to adversely impact possi -- adversely impact function.

So, the cybersecurity program will have like, a narrow set of requirements to meet.

For guidance, I'm going to mention it here, but I'm going to discuss it a little bit later on a later slide. But, the guidance describes an approach the NRC deems acceptable for complying with the proposed regulations for establishing, implementing, and maintaining a cybersecurity program at commercial nuclear plants that would be licensed under Part 53.

It's also important to note conforming changes for 10 CFR 73.77, which is the cybersecurity events notification, which incorporates the notification process for cybersecurity events under Part 53.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so this figure basically is a pictorial of what I previously discussed on the last

48 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com slide. It illustrates the proposed cybersecurity requirements, which is, or which will require licensees to protect against cyber attacks capable of causing a consequence as defined in 78.3110(a).

So, that's the column to the left where you have in the two boxes under the first box, the safety and radiological sabotage, and not exceeding the value establishing 53.210.

And, in the second box, or the third box if you looking at it that way, where you have your security for physical intrusion and theft and diversion. So, that's the column to the left.

And, by designing a cybersecurity program, which is your column in the middle, where you are protecting the functions of digital assets in a manner that is commensurate with the potential consequences resulting from cyber attacks through implementing cybersecurity controls and applying defense in depth protective strategies as pictured in the column to the rights.

Next slide, please.

So, I mentioned I would talk about the guidance a little more, the draft guidance as part of the package and post it with the other documents of the FRN. So, when the NRC typically issues

49 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com regulations, they also issue guidance or to assist licensees in implementing the requirements.

As I mentioned on the earliest slide, the guidance was developed to provide an acceptable method for meeting the requirements under 10 CFR 73.110, applies for risk informed performance-based approaches.

And specifically, the guidance accounts for the different risk levels among the commercial nuclear plant technologies and provides reasonable assurance of adequate protection of public health and safety and the common defense and security.

As such, the reg guide provides guidance to the licensee to scale the design and implementation of the CSP or cybersecurity plan.

Next slide, please.

Oh, I'm sorry. Before you go to the next slide, I forgot to mention that the guidance also leverages not only domestic sources, but international sources as well, which reflect best practices for achieving high security.

Next slide, please.

Okay. So, for specific requests for comments, the NRC has posted one question in section six of the FRN. And, I won't read the question, it's

50 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com supposed to be here on the slide.

But, I will say that the context for the question is provided in the FRN as well. And, if you go back to slide 135, the question relates to the security consequence.

So, as you're looking at the column to the left, in that third box down, this is what it relates to, to give you an idea so you can visualize it as well.

Okay. And, going back to, yes. And, next

-- I think, that's my last slide if I'm not mistaken.

So, that concludes the cybersecurity presentation.

I want to thank you for your attention, and I'll turn it back to Nicole.

MS. FIELDS: Great. I don't see any hands. Oh, there we go, we got one. Richard Mogavero, go ahead.

MR. MOGAVERO: Yeah, thank you. And thanks, Tammie. Good brief out on the topic. I have two questions.

The first one, you had a statement about adversely impacting the function, and you said you would have a narrow set of either the scope of the program or a narrow set of digital assets or the conseq

-- where the consequences are not going to adversely impact the function.

51 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com But, I'm wondering, is it the function or the outcome of the impact to the function, regarding the consequence related to 53.210?

And, that's important to the program scope. So, are we protecting functions related to the consequence?

Or, are we looking at just specific functions within the program? Because, you stopped after adversely impacting the function.

I'm just making sure we're more focused on the consequence of the impact to the function. Just some clarity on that.

MS. RIVERA: So, we are protecting the functions that if you go back to 73.110(a)(1) and (a)(2), you're looking at the safety and the security consequences. Right?

And, I don't have the actual language up in front of me, but from what I recall, it said adversely impacting functions.

MR. MOGAVERO: Okay. No, that's helpful.

And, you're right, because (a)(1) does say adversely impacting the functions, but it does reference the values in 53.210 of the same chapter.

MS. RIVERA: Okay.

MR. MOGAVERO: So, my second question was,

52 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com when we're talking about radiological sabotage, and I think this is for my own clarity, radiological sabotage in (a)(1), when we're talking about the values in 53.210, just for clarity, we're talking about from a specific, is it specific to a cyber attack and not a combined physical cyber attack?

So, it is strictly a cyber attack that would lead to exceeding those dose values. Correct?

MS. RIVERA: So, just so that I understand your question, your question was, is it just a cyber attack or a combined cyber attack?

And, the second part was what?

MR. MOGAVERO: A combined physical and cyber attack.

MS. RIVERA: Combined physical. So, I think, the answer is yes. Yeah, it would be covered.

I think, that's what you're asking, right?

MR. MOGAVERO: Yeah, yeah. I'm just making sure that the radiological sabotage portion of it is specific to a cyber attack leading to exceeding the doses in the 53.210 portion of the chapter.

MS. RIVERA: Yes, it is.

MR. MOGAVERO: Okay.

MR. RIVERA: Yes.

MR. MOGAVERO: Thank you.

53 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MS. FIELDS: Next, we have a hand from Mike Keller. Go ahead, Mike.

MR. KELLER: Yeah, I'm a little uneasy about the scope of all of this. You know, safety is kind of in the eye of the beholder.

And, you've got all manner of computer systems throughout the plant and subsystems. I mean, they're everywhere. And, without more of a confined space in terms of what we're dealing with, I could see this opening a Pandora's Box.

Just as an observation, you know, the safety-related functions for the reactor are more important than security. I mean, that's ultimately what you're after, is making sure the radioactive material doesn't get loose.

And, I'm just really uneasy as to where this could lead to. It could be a massive effort that I'm not sure it warrants a massive effort everywhere.

And, I

think, the graded approach recognizes that. But, you know, graded relative to what?

You know, I'm just really uneasy that this thing could really turn into a major effort. Thank you. We'll provide this as a comment.

MS. RIVERA: Thank you, Mr. Keller.

54 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MS. FIELDS: Dr. Lyman?

DR. LYMAN: Yeah, thanks. I'm still kind of confused about how all this fits together. So, going back again to 860.82, so does that design basis threat attack include a coincident cyber attack?

MS. RIVERA: I will defer to my security SMEs on that one.

MS PRASAD: Yeah, let us get back to you.

I'm not sure what we can share and what we cannot share.

I just don't want to cross over into an SRI or a PI space.

DR. LYMAN: All right. Well, let me explain then the issue. So, if it's not, I mean all these pieces have to fit together. Right?

So, if logically that should include a coincidence cyber attack. And, then the question is, well, if the only element that's keeping the dose consequence from below the limit is successful protection against the cyber attack, then you're going to need a cybersecurity program, even if you're below that consequence.

So, I just -- and then, taking into account the operators and the -- well, we'll talk about that access authorization later. But, you know, the presence of operators and their training also has to

55 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com factor into this.

So, I just have a hard time seeing how all these elements are going to be integrated in a way that makes sense. And I, again, it's a comment, but sorry.

MS. RIVERA: That's okay.

MS PRASAD: Sorry, just one thing that I know is publicly available. So, in the regulations of 73.55 for identification of the target set, so when you're identifying the most vulnerable points of the site, we do require that cybersecurity is included in the identification of target set space.

So, the way we're proposing consequence analysis kind of starts with the target sets. So, cyber is included in that space.

And that's the publicly available piece.

I don't know if you want to add something to that.

MS. RIVERA: Yeah, I was just going to add, I thank you for the comment. And, I caught onto the last piece that you said regarding, I think, I covered, if the consequences are not exceeded or you're looking, you performed, the licensee performs the analysis in accordance with 73.110(b)(1), and then they determine that it will be of low consequence, then there will still be a security program required.

It would just be a narrow set of cyber

56 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com security requirements.

DR. LYMAN: All right. Thanks.

MS. FIELDS: I don't see any more hands online for questions. Okay. Questions in the room?

MS. FRANOVICH: Thank you for the presentation Tammie.

MS. FIELDS: Okay. All right. Well, it is 10:11. We are slightly early. Good job. Let's give everybody 14 minutes, and we'll start back up at 10:25 and we'll do access authorization when we come back.

So, about 15 minutes.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 10:12 a.m. and resumed at 10:25 a.m.)

MS. FIELDS: All right. Can we confirm from someone online that you can hear us?

PARTICIPANT: Yeah, we can hear you, Nicole.

MS. FIELDS: Okay. So, welcome back everybody. Now, we'll go ahead and get started with access authorization. Go ahead, Brad.

MR. BAXTER: Okay. Thank you, Nicole.

My name is Brad Baxter. I'm from the Office of Nuclear Security and Nuclear Response. I'm the Access

57 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Authorization Program Manager.

Today I'm here to discuss the access authorization requirements for commercial nuclear plants under the proposed 73.120 for Part 53 licensees.

Today I'd like to discuss our philosophies, our key points on implementing an effective access authorization program. And at the end I'll take any comments that you may have. Next slide, please.

The technology inclusive personnel access authorization requirements. There's three key methods I'd like to discuss with the audience today.

One, the existing regulatory framework for access authorization programs under 73.55, 56, and 57, for the current operating fleet, is sufficient to provide reasonable assurance that individuals subject to these programs are trustworthy and reliable, regardless of the reactor technology.

The access authorization requirements proposed in 73.120 are scalable, commensurate with a demonstrated level of facility risk considering security and provide for an equivalent level of protection afforded by existing requirements for the operating nuclear fleet.

Lastly, as proposed under 73.120 it's

58 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com modeled after requirements for the current licensed research and test reactors and material licensees, including fuel cycle facilities, under Part 37, Subpart B, background investigations and access programs.

Moreover, the staff has also developed associated guidance for this, for implementing an access authorization program under 73.120. And, this could be found in the Draft guidance that was issued at DG-5074, Access Authorization Program for Commercial Nuclear Power Plants. That ML number, I'll read it to you, is ML22199A246.

This guidance provides a methodology that staff considers acceptable for use by licensees to establish,

maintain, and implement an access authorization program for a commercial nuclear plant licensed under Part 53.

The staff also likes to note, research and test reactors, they don't have many specific requirements in NRC regulations other than those associated with the fingerprinting under 73.55(g) for criminal history checks.

But, the commission has issued additional security measures or ASMs to the respective facilities for establishing and maintaining the trustworthy and reliability of personnel who are granted access to

59 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com sensitive secured areas of the facility or who will have access to radioactive material. The respective licensees have adopted these ASMs as a licensing edition under the physical security plan to operate.

So, the staff's philosophy here as proposed under 73.120, is to codify these requirements under the proposal of 73.120 for an access authorization program.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

The access authorization consequence-based criterion flow chart. Here's just a visual for the audience to help better understand the logical path for meeting the consequence-based criteria under 53.860(a)(2)(I).

The criteria provide a safety threshold considering security that an advanced reactor design must meet in order to be eligible.

So, if you look down the left side of the chart here, applicants that do not meet the criteria, they will be required to implement a full access authorization and insider mitigation program consistent with the operating power reactor fleet.

The applicants would adhere to requirements of Part 26 for fitness for duty, 73.54 for cyber, 73.55 for physical security programs, which

60 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com include the access authorization program elements under 56 to include the fingerprint requirements under 73.57.

Advanced reactors may also elect to implement physical security requirements under the proposed 73.100 and 110 of the technology neutral requirements for physical protections to meet the same performance objectives and requirements consistent with 73.56.

So, now if you look down the right side of the column, these applicants, they meet the consequence-based criteria. And, you should notice an applicant would not need to protect against the design basis threat. Those facilities may elect to implement the access program as proposed under 73.120.

And, this philosophy is based upon the risk and consequence of the facility, and the access program can be scalable and modeled after the requirements for licensed research and test reactors, including those requirements for fuel cycle facilities under Part 37.

And, I'll explain that in greater detail later on.

Next slide, please.

73.120(a) consideration for manufactured reactors. As a result of the commission's approval of Framework A, the commission directed staff on March

61 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 4, to include factory fuel load provision in the proposed rule and work with stakeholders on the development of regulatory texts.

And, that's what you see here in the bold text, part of the regulatory requirements. I know yesterday, Bill Reckley spoke a great deal about Subpart E under 53.620, where a security provision must be in place to meet performance objectives under 73.67 whereby in this case, screening applicants for unescorted access.

So, I definitely won't elaborate any further on that because we talked in great detail yesterday. But, we would welcome any comments that you will have to submit through regulations.gov.

Next slide, please.

Okay. 73.120(b), this is applicability.

Generally, who the access program will apply to. This is consistent with the personnel identified under 73.56(b) for operating fleet.

These individuals noted in this section are required to be trustworthy and reliable, such as they do not constitute unreasonable risk to public health and safety or common defense and security.

There are five classes of individuals subject to the program, those being individuals with

62 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com unescorted access to the protected area, vital area, or controlled access area where materials will be used or stored.

This statement considers individuals specified in 73.56(b) and the orders and additional security measures that were issued on power reactors and material licensing licensees, through the licensee intends to grant unescorted access to the facility's most sensitive or secured area.

And, basically this will be your general plant population that will be requesting unescorted access.

Next, you have individuals with virtual or remote access. So, this is a cyber invitation.

This applicability statement is to include individuals who may be offsite or onsite with virtual or remote access to important plant operation or communication systems based upon their assigned duties and their responsibilities to have such access. And, they must be trustworthy and reliable.

Number three, you have security personnel and those familiar with site protective strategies.

Now, this is not applicable to offsite law enforcement, and they will not be subject to your access authorization program.

63 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com The tendency here is to ensure that security personnel are responsible for protection of the nuclear plant, are included in licensees' access program because of their critical responsibilities with respect to plant security, and therefore the need for added assurance that they are trustworthy and reliable.

Next, you have reviewing officials, licensees, applicants, or contracted vendors, if applicable, program reviewers, will be subject to the access authorization program.

And, this is just assuring any individual who's responsible for access authorization decisions are trustworthy and reliable.

And lastly, other individuals at the discretion of the licensee or applicant. This is a little bit of a catchall if the licensee has identified certain individuals in their procedures who will be included in their program, that they will be maintained in their access program.

So, I like to note these five classes of individuals identified under performance requirement (b) here, will be included, will be included in the access program and will be also reinvestigated periodically in accordance to 73.120(c)(4), which is

64 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com unescorted access under the proposed rule at a ten-year periodicity, consistent with Part 37 for maintaining unescorted access at the facility.

Next slide, please.

Okay. 73.120(c) general performance objectives and requirements. And, the objective here is to ensure that individuals subject to the access program are trustworthy and reliable, such as they do not constitute an unreasonable risk to the public or health and safety or common defense of security.

From this slide, you can also see that the ten performance objectives for licensees and applicants need to establish and implement and maintain an effective access authorization program consistent with NRC regulations.

Licensees and applicants under 73.120 will design an access program establishing and applying these performance objectives consistent with 73.50(c),

and also model the requirements for an access program similar to that as what was required of a non-powered licensee, material licensee, or fuel facility under Part 37.

Licensees and applicants that implement these requirements under 73.120 in accordance with the proposed rule shall establish and implement and

65 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com maintain their access program as part of the physical security plan.

And

lastly, to assist a

licensee development and implementation of an access authorization program that's effective that contained the following ten performance requirements listed here, the staff developed the Draft guidance of DG-5074, Access Authorization Program for Commercial Nuclear Plants.

Next slide.

73.120(c)(1),

the background investigations. Now this is consistent with the background investigations elements found at 37.25, 37.26 as well as 73.56(d)(1) through (7).

These performance objectives and requirements under 73.120 would include several requirements that applicants must meet in designing their access program. Some of these requirements are administrative in nature, but equally as important for developing an effective program.

Those background investigation requirements under 73.120(c)(1) also include the additional security measures that I spoke about that were issued by the commission to the respective facilities for personnel granted access to sensitive

66 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com areas or to material.

The staff's philosophy, as I mentioned, is to codify the security requirements under the pros of 73.120 for the access authorization program.

But, the background investigation shall include important performance elements to establish true ID, and trustworthy and reliability of individuals to the granted, who will be granted unescorted access.

And, a few of these elements will include informed consent, that's where an individual consents to allow a background investigation to be completed, personal history questionnaire disclosure, this document review that captures an individual's background history and previous work-related activities to include criminal history, allows the Licensee to make an access determination based upon the information provided to them in this report.

Of course, you have criminal history record review, this is checks for any prior arrest or convictions, and credit evaluations that demonstrate the individual's financial responsibilities.

Verification of true ID, the individual is who they say they are, and character reputation checks the character reputation through use of references.

67 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com And lastly, the employment verification, this would also include education in lieu of employment, which would also include military service as employment.

Next slide.

Paragraph (c)(2), this is behavioral observation. This paragraph outlines the roles and responsibilities of individuals subject to behavioral observation, as well as the licensee's expectation for managing the performance elements for reporting and observing personnel behavior activities.

The purpose of the behavior observation is to increase the likelihood that behavior is averse to the safe operation and the security of the facility are identified and reported.

This is done by observing the behavior of workers in the workplace and detecting and reporting aberrant behavior or changes in behavior that might adversely impact the individual's trustworthiness and reliability.

As currently proposed under 73.120, this would be a scalable version of a full behavioral observation program found under 73.56(f) for power reactors.

Now, the staff believes the scalable

68 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com version will provide the licensee the greatest flexibility to consider behavioral observation options to implement performance objectives found under Section C for advanced reactors.

These provisions as proposed would not require the establishment of a full training program however, for behavior observation. For example, they wouldn't have initial or refresher training to include knowledge checks as currently required under 73.56.

Moreover, the staff believes these flexibilities provide licensees with numerous options from an awareness standpoint. For example, licensees may opt to use corporate behavioral awareness initiatives to report any aberrant behavior or changes in behavior of personnel, or licensees would also have the flexibility to openly develop initiatives on reporting behavior to management that could be very similar to the Department of Homeland Security Program, you see something, you say something.

Paragraph (c)(3), the self-reporting of legal action. Now, this establishes a self-reporting requirement for employees who maintain unescorted access consistent with requirements found under 73.56(g).

Self-reporting requires licensees to

69 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com evaluate the totality of the legal actions taken by law enforcement authorities or the court of law and make the access authorization termination based on that information.

The objective of the performance element is to maintain trustworthy and reliability of personnel while individual maintained unescorted access.

Individuals shall -- so, individual shall self-report their involvement in any legal actions taken by law enforcement authority or court of law to which individuals have been subject to, that could result in incarceration, or court order, or that requires a court appearance.

Such actions are included in the proposed rule under (c)(3) to include, but not limited to, an arrest and indictment, the filing of charges or convictions, with the exclusion of minor traffic violations and excessive parking tickets. The term legal action will be defined in greater detail in the draft guidance that was provided.

The staff's philosophy is to reflect important awareness initiatives that enhance the licensee=s behavioral observation of performance objective, while maintaining an employee's integrity to be trustworthy and reliable.

70 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com The staff believes the element contained in the performance objective (c)(3) here, would be less stringent, but equally as effective for licensees who would elect to implement 73.120.

The staff believes this can also be an extensive cost savings to the industry since the program is scalable compared to the current fleet.

Next slide, please.

MS. FIELDS: It looks like we have a question.

MR. BAXTER: Yep, go ahead.

MS. FIELDS: Johnny Rogers. Go ahead, Johnny.

MR. BAXTER: Um-hum.

MR. ROGERS: All right. Good morning everyone. Johnny Rogers, technical advisor with NEI.

I commented and talked about yesterday in the fitness for duty presentation about the importance of the role of behavior observation. And, how impactful that element of our program has been in identifying adverse or deleterious behaviors that could affect the safety and security of the station.

I'm just, I'm interested in the philosophy behind not requiring some level of standardized training, albeit scalable, maybe not annually, you

71 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com know, even without a test. You know, but some sort of awareness training.

I just, I find it hard to accept the responsibility to detect behaviors without some level of training that informs people on what behaviors look like and should be reported. You know, the say something, see something/say something standard, in my view, just does not go far enough in informing personnel on what they need to be reporting.

As a mental health professional myself, and having been in this program for well, almost 40 years now, and dealing with deleterious behaviors in the workplace, I can tell you this is a program that needs to be reinforced.

And, the best way to do that is through some level of training. So, I'm just interested in the philosophy. What was the philosophy in not requiring some level of training?

And then, I have a second question on legal actions.

MR. BAXTER: Okay. Well, thank you, Johnny, for that question. I appreciate how you articulated that, and I would request you to provide that in greater detail so we could entertain that during the comment period.

72 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com But, just holistically looking at it from a philosophical standpoint, it was based on the risk of, to the reactors and the flexibility of these reactors, that licensees could develop an awareness program that was suitable to that specific entity.

Now granted, if it was in greater detail where a licensee would want to provide a more robust program, I would think that would be, I want to say, I would look at it from the standpoint of it being needed to be a, you know, further inspected from the NRC's point of view, of what does the licensee want to request that their program should look like?

We wanted to have the licensees to have the flexibility to develop their own program based on the risk of their, and development of their footprint, basically.

So, I don't know if that answers your question, Johnny. But, like I said, if you submit that in greater detail, we'd be glad to entertain that.

MR. ROGERS: Okay, thank you, Brad. And then, I wanted to ask a short question about the legal action perspective.

The Draft guide mentions a review of legal actions and the impact on unescorted access. It's intuitive to assume that, and what it tells you to do

73 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com is, if you read the rule in the Draft guide, is that individuals have to report their legal actions to plant supervision.

It's intuitive to assume that plant supervisors would report subsequently the legal action to program personnel. But, I can't find any words in the draft guide or the rule that stipulates that.

Shouldn't, and here's the question, shouldn't the Reg Guide and/or the rule state the responsibility of plant personnel to report the legal action to access authorization program personnel, as is currently the case in the 73.56 program?

You could logically make that connection if you read it. But, you would really have to, you know, just assume that people understand it. It's not plainly stated.

So, that's the question. Shouldn't the Reg Guide give direction on that and inform on how that legal action is supposed to be reported?

The reason I bring this up is, again, 40 years of dealing with programs like this, you know, there are cases where plant personnel have received legal actions and just didn't think it was worthy of being reported to program personnel.

And, there are a variety of reasons behind

74 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com that. I hate to go back to the training issue, but that's one way to mitigate that.

But, in respect to what we're talking about here, I'm just wondering, shouldn't we plainly state that these legal actions need to be reported to program personnel?

I'll be quiet and listen.

MR. BAXTER: No, thank you, Johnny.

Again, a very good question and I appreciate it.

And, I don't know if that was a possible oversight from the staff, but I would tend to assume that that should be included in such guides that provide that clarity, that the responsibility of the reporting of the legal action.

So, I think, just from me thinking off the top of my head here, is that yes, it should be included to provide that clarity.

And so, it's not assumed that that's what the staff has intended in case it's misconstrued that the licensees with the additional guidance in the area that is critical to an area of behavioral observation that we need to provide some type of closure to.

So, I agree with you, Johnny. I just asked you to submit that in a formal comment and so it's not left to the wayside, if, in fact, we did misinterpret

75 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com it, or it was an oversight on our side.

Does that --

MR. ROGERS: Thank you, Brad.

MR. BAXTER: Does that answer your question? Okay.

MR. ROGERS: Yes sir. Yes, sir. Much appreciated. The last thing I'll ask you about, and this is a quick one, it has to do with the release or the protection of information.

And, you mentioned the consent earlier.

A consent is required to share information, and it's also required to release information. And, of course, I'm thinking largely about the 73.56 program.

I didn't see the conditions in the rule or draft guide for which information can be released without consent. Again, such as outlined in 10 CFR 26.37, for example.

So, these conditions would include, of course, court order, administrative proceedings, appeals, audits, HR functions, those sorts of things.

You don't need consent in the existing program when we're dealing with these types of functions.

So, the question is, should there be a provision to include these types of conditions in the rule or draft guide?

76 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MR. BAXTER: From my standpoint, again, from the operating side, yes. I would tend to agree, Johnny. I would have to converse with my constituents and see how that's going to be laid out in the final version of the rule.

So, that's another question. Feel free to go ahead and ask. And, that's something we can bring closure to.

But, from my standpoint on the operating side, yes, I see your argument and I have agreement with that.

It's just that from the standpoint of these facilities, how to bring alignment to these facilities, which really hasn't had so much of a robust program as a power reactor experience.

So, yeah, I would have you submit that comment as well, Johnny.

MR. ROGERS: Thank you, sir. That's all I have. Thank you.

MR. BAXTER: Thank you, Johnny.

MS. FIELDS: No more hands online.

Questions in the room?

No? Okay, Brad, keep going. Thanks.

MR. BAXTER: Next slide. 73.120(c)(4) through (5). These are performance objectives of

77 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com granting, maintaining, and terminating unescorted access, which goes hand in hand pretty much.

(c)(4) unescorted access. Unescorted access shall be granted only after the licensee has verified the individual is trustworthy or reliable.

An applicant access program would include provisions or maintaining a list of persons currently approved for unescorted access to a protected area, vital area, or controlled access area, must be maintained at all times.

Unescorted access terminations would also be reviewed annually in accordance with 73.56(i)(1)(iv), which is basically annual supervisory review.

And, lastly, conduct the FBI criminal history update or reinvestigation would be completed within ten years of the last review.

And, I like to say this is a departure from an operating nuclear power

plant, where the reinvestigation periodicity for personnel is conducted on a three-year or five-year periodicity based upon job function. However, it's consistent with Part 37 for a ten-year review.

As a note for those on the call today who are very familiar with the access authorization program

78 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com for the current fleet, two major program elements that are not carrying forward in the proposed 73.120 rule is, the need for psychological assessments and reassessments as required under 73.56(e) for granting unescorted access, and 73.56(i)(4)(b), for individuals who maintain unescorted access.

The staff decision not to include this major program element was based on the lesser risk and consequence demonstrated for the advanced reactor facility.

(c)(5), termination of unescorted access.

This is pretty much common sense. Unescorted access shall be promptly terminated when a licensee determines this access is no longer required, or a reviewing official determines that an individual is no longer trustworthy and reliable in accordance with this section.

This requirement is consistent with the intent or determination found under 37.23(e), where a reviewing official shall determine whether to grant,

deny, unfavorable, terminate,

maintain, or administrative withdrawal, an individual's unescorted access authorization status based on the evaluation of the information required for this section.

This performance requirement provides

79 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com licensees flexibility in considering when a person no longer requires the need for unescorted access or no longer meeting the access authorization requirements found under 73.120.

Licensees have the flexibility to terminate personnel access to specific areas when the access is no longer necessary to perform their duties and responsibilities.

Next slide, please.

Okay. The next are the performance elements under (c), which is (6) and (8) and (c)(9) and (10), which is located on the next slide after this, are administrative in nature, but equally as important to effectively implement and management of the program.

The performance elements are pretty self-explanatory, which I'm not going to go into great detail as to why they're included.

But, as I mentioned, these administrative requirements are consistent with the requirements found under respective sections of Part 37 and 73.56.

They include (c)(6) termination basis for access, establishes the roles of a reviewing official and responsibility of reviewing official to make determinations regarding unescorted access.

It also establishes a review process for

80 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com individual's right to correct and complete information prior to any final adverse determination obtained as a result of a licensee's background investigation.

And, here's where individuals can initiate challenge procedures.

(c)(7) review procedures, include provisions for the notification of an individual who are denied unescorted access, or who are unfavorably terminated.

This procedure contains provisions to ensure individuals are informed of the grounds of the denial or unfavorable termination and allow individuals an opportunity to provide additional relevant information and an opportunity for objective review of the information, upon which denial of unfavorable termination was based.

(c)(8) is protection of information. A system of files and procedures shall establish procedures to ensure personnel information is not disclosed to unauthorized persons.

Okay, the next slide, please.

Access authorization reviews and corrective actions under (c)(9). Licensees and applicants must develop, implement, and maintain procedures to conduct access reviews and corrective

81 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com actions in accordance to 37.33.

Licensees must ensure that the access program continues to be effective and that the program elements are in compliance. The program is required to be reviewed at least annually and confirmed for compliance and ensure comprehensive actions are taken to correct any noncompliance issues that are identified.

And, lastly, (c)(10), licensees and applicants must develop, implement, and maintain procedures to document the process for maintaining records used or created established individuals' trustworthy and reliability, or document access determination.

Here it requires records maintained in any databases to be available to NRC review consistent with the requirements found under 73.56(o). And lastly, record retention period of a three-year record retention.

And now, this aligns with Part 37 for record retention. But, it is lesser from the operation side, which has a five-year retention span.

And lastly, this section provides a new requirement under Part 37, but consistent with 73.56(o) for the current fleet, where any records maintained

82 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com in any database must be made available for NCR review.

This provides NRC access to review records at the commission's request. This, NRC currently uses this process to obtain information from licensees to vet against federal databases.

And, with that, that concludes my portion of 73.120 for access authorization. And, I'll be glad to answer any further questions.

Or we could have it up in the wrap up discussion after I'm done.

MS. FIELDS: Okay, so we have a question from Dr. Lyman. So, go ahead.

DR. LYMAN: Thanks. So, here's an example where I do think the reasoning is circular.

So, my question is, when these original, when the initial design basis threat evaluations are done to determine eligibility, does that include an active malevolent insider operator or not?

MR. BAXTER: I can't discuss anything about the prob -- about DBT in this forum, Dr. Lyman.

DR. LYMAN: Well, but it's critical to understanding this issue. Because, if you don't assume that, then the ability to exempt or to provide an alternative taking credit for meeting that threshold, there's circular reasoning going on.

83 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Because, if you don't assume that there's an operator who's doing the worst thing possible to the reactor and still doesn't break it, you know, if that's the case, then I can understand this.

But, if you're not assuming that, then how can you give credit for design features that -- and allow exemptions from insider mitigation and psych evaluation, and everything else, if you're not assuming at the beginning that if you don't protect against that malevolent insider operator that it still will, you want to exceed the dose criterion, right?

I mean, you have to assume that the worst thing possible is happening and the reactor is broken and then you can give relief. But, if you don't assume that, then this is circular reasoning.

MR. BAXTER: Yeah. I can understand your frustration a little bit, Dr. Lyman. But, you really need the DBT in order, you need to look at the DBT in order to put your physical protection system in place.

And, that's one of the challenges that's so early in the licensing process, you don't really know the threats that you're trying to defend against and you're looking at it from the out -- any member of the public looking at it from the outside that do not know that also, and we're asking them to essentially

84 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com trust us, which is sometimes received well, sometimes not.

I will say that one of the things you should consider, it is in the regulatory guide, it talks about this and it's important. I'm very grateful Stacy's here to help me out in case I misspeak, because she's very skilled in this area.

Is when they, we look at this scenario, you got to understand that our criteria from the meeting, that entry threshold is beyond what is required for the safety analysis.

So, you take your safety analysis limitations and then you take the DBT type scenario, and you apply that to the plant and basically just let it go. So, the threshold was quite high.

DR. LYMAN: Right. But, the potential of damage that a malevolent operator can cause is another variable.

And, you know, one example is if you have a micro reactor, and you assume a certain source term associated with that micro reactor. If you have an operator who can defeat the reactor protection system and throttle up the power to 10 or 100 times what the rated power is, then you're going to exceed the dose criteria and that has to be protected against.

85 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com And, you look at the history of military and space reactors, where we had a, there was a sequence of reactivity insertion tests that caused these reactors to explode.

You can see that an operator who has access and is able too again, overcome a reactor protection system and cause this kind of reactivity insertion, is an event that has to be included if you're going to, if this is going to make sense.

And, you have to look at the potential for changes to the source term that could lead to exceeding these dose criteria as part of any adversary or design-based threat attack.

MR. BAXTER: I don't disagree with you, Dr. Lyman. I think, your observations are spot on.

And, I am familiar with those incidents, and I do appreciate your comments.

MS. FIELDS: I'll just remind everybody, right, this is not a, we're not accepting comments at this meeting. But, if you do have comments on the proposed rule or any of the associate documents, please submit that to regulations.gov.

Anything else Brad? Okay, go ahead Patrick.

MR. WHITE: Patrick White, Nuclear

86 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Innovation Alliance. Just one, just an idea, and I know you just said no comments. But, just one quick technical comment on that.

Even if a malevolent operator were able to instantaneously increase the power level by orders of magnitude, that wouldn't necessarily affect the actual instantaneous source term within the reactor.

So, I think, that would be a thing to consider as part of, kind of, that larger conversation around DBTs.

So, just then again, something to consider there.

MR. BAXTER: Thank you for providing that.

DR. LYMAN: The short-lived isotopes that are in equilibrium with the power level, could you know, you have to look at that.

But, there are short-term, short-lived isotopes, very high activity that could impact them, especially the acute dose or the thyroid dose.

So, I wouldn't discount it. I wouldn't automatically rule it out.

MR. BAXTER: Fair enough.

MS. FIELDS: We have a hand up from Mike Keller. Go ahead.

MR. KELLER: Yeah, it's been a while since I operated a reactor, but you couldn't override the

87 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com reactor protection system even if you wanted to.

So, I'm not so sure an operator could actually meaningfully impact the reactor, because of the reactor protection system.

It's just an observation from, you know, from days gone by. But, anyway, thank you.

MS. PRASAD: I'll just add something.

Stacy Prasad, I'm with NSIR, the same area as Chuck.

Just so this doesn't go too far down the line.

In target set space, which is an SRI draft guide, and Dr. Lyman, I think, you might have seen it before. So, there is guidance in there for what specifically you're going to look at and assess, worst-case scenario, minimal combination, that stuffs all in the statements of considerations.

In addition to that, there is the consequence analysis of Part 53 and then there's another consequence analysis with the limited scope rule that we talked about previously.

And, just so everyone knows, we are working to provide additional guidance in those areas and that would include stuff such as assumptions that are going to go into the calculations that we're making.

So, if you have any ideas or want to make a point about what you think should be included, feel

88 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com free to provide them as comments.

But, we are working on additional guidance, so it is more specific and consistent and appropriately risk informed when it comes out.

MS. FIELDS: So, I don't see any, oh, sorry, Rani, go ahead.

MS.

FRANOVICH:

That's all

right, Patrick's blocking the view, so.

MR. WHITE: Sorry.

MS. FRANOVICH: Rani Franovich, Nuclear Rose Consulting. Just looking at slide 149 and the provisions of paragraph (c)(9), I'm pleased to see that the licensees and applicants are the ones responsible for ensuring that their access authorization programs are effective, and program elements are in compliance.

I'm thinking in compliance with the regulations?

MR. BAXTER: Um-hum.

MS. FRANOVICH: Okay. And so, for oversight, assuming a reactor is licensed under these provisions, I'm assuming that the oversight process would be focused on their performance and implementing the program and verifying compliance. Correct?

MR. BAXTER: Correct.

MS. FRANOVICH: Okay.

89 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MR. BAXTER: Right.

MS. FRANOVICH: Thank you.

MR. BAXTER: Um-hum.

MS. FIELDS: So, I'm going to ask, are there any additional questions from anybody online or in the room about access authorization?

Okay. Are there any questions online or in the room about any of the topics we've discussed this morning?

That would include Chuck's presentation, Tammie's presentation.

So, with that, I know that there were maybe a couple of outstanding answers we wanted to provide from yesterday. So, we'll go ahead and do that.

And then, we'll move into our final wrap up discussion, so.

MS. VALLIERE: Thanks Nicole. So, we did have a couple of questions over the last two days about some specific guidance work.

So, the first, related to a guidance document, DG-1410, which was related to seismic analysis. And, we did talk with our experts working on that guidance.

So, we are working to update the draft guide to be consistent with the Part 53 proposed rule

90 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com as published. There was a predecisional draft at least in 2022.

We are not anticipating any significant changes in the approaches that were described in that preliminary draft. The revision unfortunately, will not be released before the end of the Part 53 public comment period.

But, in developing any comments in this area, stakeholders can refer to that predecisional draft, recognizing that there may be some changes in the areas such as, you know, revising previous references to the NRC safety goals that were changed with the SRM on the Part 53 proposed rule.

And, the staff is planning to begin its public engagement, its next public engagement on that draft guide in mid 2025.

And then, I think, the second guidance document that was asked about was with respect to a revision to reg guide, 1.242, which is a draft -- which is a regulatory guide that was issued with the final rule on emergency preparedness for small modular reactors and other new technologies.

So again, that draft revision also will not be issued before the end of the public comment period on the Part 53 proposed rule. Partly, because

91 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com as you may recall, we have a specific question related to the interplay with emergency preparedness and security under the Part 53 regulations in particular.

And, we would be interested in seeing some of that feedback as we are working to update the draft guidance on reg guide 1.242.

And, maybe just lastly, I'll state, obviously we've talked about a lot of guidance documents, either that were issued with the rule or that weren't issued with the rule, but also support provisions in the rule, as well as provisions in 50 and 52.

And, I just wanted to mention that there's nothing from preventing anyone from submitting comments on ideas they may have about prioritization of the engagement on those guidance documents.

So, if you have ideas in that area, I think, we would find that helpful. Thank you.

MS. FIELDS: It looks like we have a question from Jon. Go ahead, Jon.

MR. FACEMIRE: Yeah, Jon Facemire with NEI. I really appreciate that update. That helps a lot as we develop our public comments.

And, we do intend to submit a comment with the prioritization of vague guides that we think are

92 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com important to update to support Part 53.

I would ask, you all mentioned that you do have your own list that you have identified as potentially needing updates. Is there any way that that can be made public?

That would help us as we compare notes with our list.

MS. VALLIERE: Yeah, so there's actually, well there's a large list included, if you're familiar with the NRC's integrated schedule on the advanced reactor webpage of the public webpage, there's something called the integrated schedule.

I believe, the majority of documents are there. And so, I think, that's probably the best place to look for guidance documents that we are actively working on.

Obviously, there may be others that, I think, we had a discussion about this in one of the earlier days of the public meeting, others that really the technical contents of the guidance may not change so much, but we would need to update them simply to recognize Part 53 as an alternative licensing process.

You may not see all of those listed there, because as I mentioned, we would prioritize documents that will require technical changes above ones that

93 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com just require the addition of some references.

MR. BEALL: This is Bob Beall with the NRC.

We also have a small section in the Federal Register Notice also.

MS. VALLIERE: We do.

MR. BEALL: Where we talk about reg guides and other supporting documents that will go out with the proposed rule and after the proposed rule.

So, that's another additional source too, to figure out what's coming down the line, so.

MR. FACEMIRE: Yeah, that's helpful.

And, I would just say that the list that does not require technical updates, and only requires a reference to Part 53, is arguably the more important risk.

While it seems a little silly, a lot of applicants are not willing to submit an application under Part 53 unless there's a reg guide telling them that their methodology will be acceptable under Part

53.

But, we'll make that comment and we'll provide our list.

MS. VALLIERE: Thank you, Jon.

MS. FIELDS: Okay. And, it looks like we have a question from Mike Keller. Go ahead.

MR. KELLER: Yeah, this is more in the way

94 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com of a general philosophical concern, I suppose. And, it relates to forcing applicants to respond to guidelines as opposed to demonstrating compliance with specific elements of the NRC regulations.

To the extent that the applicant has to defend not demonstrating compliance with guidance documents, it puts a pretty heavy burden on the applicant. And, I'm not so sure that's a proper approach.

But, again, this is more of a philosophical concern that the guidance documents tend to promote over-regulation. And again, this is philosophical.

I just thought I'd put that food for thought. You know, we will follow up with a concern.

But, thank you.

MS. VALLIERE: Yeah, Mike, this is Nanette Valliere from the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, I might just respond just to remind everybody that compliance is against the NRC regulations, not against guidance documents, and no one has to show how they comply with a guidance document. You can always --

the guidance document is meant to present one way that the NRC staff has found acceptable to meeting a particular regulation.

But an applicant or licensee can always

95 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com propose a different way, and the NRC would review that, and determine the acceptability of that alternative way in their review of the application.

MR. KELLER: But wouldn't that put the guidance document as something that the applicant has to respond to?

MS. VALLIERE: No, it's one way the NRC has found acceptable to meet a particular regulation, but it's not the only way.

MR. KELLER: Okay, thank you.

MS. FIELDS: So, with that I think we're going to move onto --

PARTICIPANT: Brian has a follow up question also.

MS. FIELDS: He does, okay. Sorry, Brian, go ahead.

MR. ZALESKI: Hi, good almost afternoon.

One of the questions yesterday received was from Johnny Rogers at the Nuclear Energy Institute, and it pertained to the fitness for duty program presentation.

Johnny had asked about substance abuse expert credentialing requirements, and whether there was flexibility provided in Subpart M for the use of a substance abuse expert.

So, I did some more research on that, and

96 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com it depends on the programmatic element that applies.

So, if you remember there was a slide that I presented yesterday, slide 108, I don't know if you can put that up on the screen, Nicole or Bob? It was a table with three columns that reflected the programmatic requirements that would apply to the various types of facilities, and at the various stages of either construction or operation.

So, the provisions in 26.604, which is a low consequence program, and 26.605(a), which is a program for construction, as well as main fashion license holders, there is no provision that talks about substance abuse experts in those requirements. They're modeled after the Subpart K program. So, anything that's discussed pertaining to a

fitness determination, which is what an SAE does, is in the 26.619, so that's Subpart M, so there's nothing in there.

So, the licensee would be defining what that approach would be, and the acceptable credential.

However, under the 26.605(b)

program, the applicability to determinations of fitness falls under Subpart H. Subpart H, sorry, long story short for this discussion, but Subpart H does impose the full requirements for substance abuse experts, and that

97 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com includes the credentialing requirements that you were talking about.

So, there is that difference between the Subpart M, 26.604, and 26.605(a) program, and then the 26.605(b) program. Does that answer your question, Johnny? I think you're still online.

MR. ROGERS: I am, and it does, but as is usual, I'll submit a comment on that.

MR. ZALESKI: Right, so you highlighted there's a discrepancy in the different programmatic elements, and I would encourage you to submit that comment for the record. And then there was one other question you asked, Johnny, yesterday, and it was with respect to the employee assistance program requirements, correct? And you were asking if they applied for the Subpart M program.

MR. ROGERS: Yeah.

MR. ZALESKI: So, again, the Subpart K program, which was the model, the starting point for the Subpart M does not include an EAP program. So, there is no EAP program requirement for the 26.604, or 605(a) programs, or even in the 26.605(b) program.

So, as was written right now, there is no EAP programmatic requirement. If they implemented the existing FFE program, there would be.

98 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com So, you also identified an inconsistency in the regulations as proposed, and it's possible that the reason that occurred is because again, the Subpart K program did not have that EAP program, but the Subpart K program is for a limited state of facility construction, right? It never covered an operating facility, so that's possibly why that provision wasn't in the Subpart K provision, it was a good comment, hopefully that gives you some more clarity there, and you can submit that for the record, and we can take a further look at that as well.

MR. ROGERS: Yes, sir, I will, thank you.

MR. ZALESKI: Sure thing. Thank you, that's all I have.

MS. FIELDS: Thanks, Brian. All right, any other outstanding questions from yesterday that we have answers to, did we get them all? Okay, great.

With that I'd like to move to the wrap up discussion.

So, if we could go to slide 150 please?

Okay.

So, I just want to really thank everybody for your participation, and your attendance in this public meeting so far.

I just want to give everybody a few quick reminders, this will be our last session of this

99 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com meeting.

Slide 151 please.

Okay, so reminder, give you the regulation stack ups, get your comments, the link on the slide will take you right to the document, there's a big blue button that says submit comments, submit comments there.

We had a lot of good discussion over these two and a half days, and we are not accepting comments on the proposed rule during this meeting, but we'd be happy to get them in writing. So, please, please, please submit them, I know a lot of very interesting and useful things have been brought up already. There will not be formal responses to discussions during this meeting, but again, if there are things that the staff feel warranted, we may post additional information on regulations.gov, which would be available after.

So, I can announce that we are planning to hold another public meeting during the comment period, which I had mentioned already, but I'll mention again closes on February 28th, 2025. We're planning for a multi-day meeting, as Bill Reckley alluded to the other day, it will cover at least factory testing, there is that refresher on factory testing.

And we're also interested to see what other

100 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com topics people are particularly interested in. I think this meeting has given us a lot of things that people are interested in, which we appreciate. And so at the end of the meeting, if there's particular topics that people would like us to cover during that meeting, we'll ask for that then.

MR. BAXTER: Is there any tentative timing for that additional public meeting?

MS. FIELDS: Early January.

MR. BAXTER: Okay, thank you.

MS. FIELDS: The dates have not been finalized, but we will certainly notice it, give you all as much lead time as we can.

MR. BAXTER: So, after the holidays, thank you very much.

MS. FRANOVICH: Nicole, a quick question on that.

MS. FIELDS: Sure.

MS. FRANOVICH: So, factory testing will be a subject of that meeting, but what about some of the unique considerations for the high-volume rapid deployment line, and the terminology around what's stationary, what's transportable, what's mobile, those deployment models, will that also be covered in the meeting?

101 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MS. FIELDS: That might be a Bill question if that is not covered in --

MR. BEALL: Or Nan.

MS. FIELDS: Or Nan.

MS. VALLIERE: Yeah, I was going to say let us confer with the folks that are working on the advanced micro reactor sections, and the next of a kind micro reactor paper to see what their public engagement plans are to determine which is the most suitable.

MS. FRANOVICH: Although I will say that with the time frame for public comments closing at the end of February --

MS. VALLIERE: You want it to be --

MS. FRANOVICH: Yeah, right, if this is the window of opportunity for getting this into a technology inclusive Part 53, there just needs to be sufficient time to work through those issues.

MS. FIELDS: So, slide 152 please.

Okay, so I just want to remind everybody that there are specific requests for comments in the Federal Register notice, we've gone through them as we've covered the various topics. They're organized in this way, so organized by 10 CFR parts, so we have Part 26, Part 53, Part 73, and there's one specific request for comment related to recent legislation,

102 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com which is essentially the ADVANCE Act.

We're particularly interested in comments on these topics, that's why we put out specific requests for comment. As we've mentioned throughout the meeting, your comments are obviously not limited to these specific requests for comment, but these are things that the staff is particularly interested in, and we recommend that you go take a look at them, and if you have responses, please submit them.

But yeah, so is there any questions now?

I've set aside this time if there are any questions on the specific requests for comment, we'd like to take a look at those now, although we have obviously been talking about them as we've gone on.

MS. VALLIERE: Jon.

MS. FIELDS: So, Jon, go ahead.

MR. FACEMIRE: This is Jon Facemire with NEI. Question about the format for our public comments.

Currently we're thinking enclosures, one for Part 26, one for Part 53, one Part 73, and we're going to put the ADVANCE Act stuff in with the Part 53 piece. But there are a lot of draft guides and interim staff guidance documents. Is there any preference from the NRC on how they'd like to receive comments on those draft guides and interim staff guidance?

103 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MS. FIELDS: Let me first of all say that obviously you're welcome to submit comments in any format you'd like, no formats are required. I don't know if we have a way that would be easier for us to process those comments.

MS. VALLIERE: I guess the only thing I'd say would be it would be helpful to keep subject matter comments together.

MR. BEALL: Correct, it makes putting in the comments much easier. So, Jon, your idea of Part 26, Part 53, Part 73, that kind of stuff is a great idea. And if you have specific comments on say the draft guides, put those in the appropriate bins also for that. So, if you have comments on the Part 53 draft guides, that would be great.

So, that at least helps us out, but again, like Nicole said, we don't have any fixed formats, so we'll accept any format you want. But --

MS. FIELDS: But of course if the format is easier for us, then it is easier for us to respond to your comments, and we appreciate that. Okay, looks like we have a question from Cyril, go ahead.

MR. DRAFFIN: Hello, this is Cyril Draffin from the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, and it's circling back to additional topics for discussion in

104 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com January. I think you need more detail on how applicants would move from Part 50 and Part 52 to Part 53, a little discussion on that. Also as was just mentioned by Rani, discussion on Nth of a kind, and whether how Part 53 is going to address that.

Particularly if you have let's say an industrial application where you hope to have the fixed design, and many of them coming in quickly from different applicants. So, a discussion on somewhat the implementation that might be reflected in guidance later would be helpful in the January discussion.

MS. FIELDS: Great, thanks, Cyril, we will certainly take that into consideration.

MR. BAXTER: Nicole?

MS. FIELDS: Yeah.

MR. BEALL: I have one more clarification on the last point, obviously you're correct, there is no required format for submitting comments, that's sort of pinging to the license renewal guys' experience when there are so many different documents out there, when you are submitting comments, if they can be clear which document you're referring to in your comments, that would be extremely helpful.

Again, no requirements, but there are so many ISGs, and draft reg guides, as well as the rule

105 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com which is voluminous, keeping it clear which comment correlates to which document is very helpful for us.

MS. FRANOVICH: In the spirit of regulatory efficiency I agree.

MR. BEALL: Yeah, we have 28 supporting documents besides the Federal Register notice, so.

MS. FIELDS: Yeah, and I guess along those lines. But anything you can do to help us from the administrative side for comments is always welcome.

If you say in this section it says this, in this draft guide it says that, as much specificity as you can put in your comments is always welcome, we appreciate that.

Any other questions online, or --

MS. FRANOVICH: I have more of a thought than a question that I just wanted to kind of leave with the staff. So, first of all these meetings, Tuesday, Wednesday, and this morning have been very constructive for achieving some coherence around the staff's intent, and I really applaud the staff for hosting them.

There has been occasional raising of costs as being kind of beyond the regulator's concern, or even purview, and I want to talk about that for just a minute to make sure that expectations around this historically thorny kind of elephant in the room are

106 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com carried forward. And the first thing I want to mention is there are some regulatory provisions where costs are directly considered, the back fit provision, the back fit rule is one of those.

There's also the principle of efficiency among the principles of good regulation that talks about where several effective alternatives are available, the option which minimizes the use of resources that translate to costs should be adopted.

And then lastly, and this slide on recent legislation with the ADVANCE Act.

There is a provision in the ADVANCE Act that focuses on the NRC's mission, and emphasizes the importance of licensing and regulation of the civilian use of radioactive materials and nuclear energy, and the need to conduct that licensing and regulation in a manner that is efficiency, and does not unnecessarily limit the civilian use of radioactive materials, and the deployment of nuclear energy for the benefit of society.

And of course costs can be an unnecessary limit, or an unnecessarily limiting barrier. So, I just wanted to leave that thought with the staff going forward, because it's not quite as clear cut as it has been in the past, in terms of the regulatory kind of

107 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com easy button, we don't have to consider that. I think the landscape has changed, and there is an expectation that these barriers to deployment and challenges to efficiency actually do need to be considered by the staff.

And with that, I thank you for the opportunity to make that little observation, and express my appreciation for these meetings.

MS. FIELDS: Thanks. So, I saw a hand, and then it went away, Joy, did you still have a question, or comment?

MS. JIANG: Yeah, can you hear me?

MS. FIELDS: Yes, we can hear you, go ahead.

MS. JIANG: I had a technical issue with this raise hand function, so when I click on it, it does not show raised hand on my end.

MS. FIELDS: I saw it for like a minute, but go ahead.

MS. JIANG: Yeah, thank you, so I kind of just rejoined, but I'm able to speak now, thank you.

So, this is Joy Jiang with the Breakthrough Institute.

and I just want to continue Rani's point. First of all, I think this public meeting is a very great format for us to do public engagement. And one thought I have

108 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com is that the ADVANCE Act is listed here for specific requests for comment.

But this presentation, this is the only place in the side that touched on the ADVANCE Act.

So, I'm wondering, could it be helpful for the next public meeting to include some more discussion, even workshop style, on the ADVANCE Act implementation.

Because as far as I know, by January 2025 maybe we'll receive more public comments regarding that. And you have some time to prepare this kind of material, and also a lot of ADVANCE Act implementation, like reports, or deadlines would fall there, so things would be clearer by then, what does NRC think about this.

MS. VALLIERE: So, I can address that, this is Nan Valliere from the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. Yes, so perfectly understand that the external stakeholders desire to have more engagement on the NRC's activities under the ADVANCE Act. And the agency does have a fairly sizeable team working on implementation of the ADVANCE Act. And I know they are also planning for public engagements.

So, I would say that between the ADVANCE Act team public engagement plans, between the micro reactor team's public engagement plans, and between the Part 53 team's public engagement plans, we will

109 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com make sure that these topics are being covered in a time frame that could support comments related to them on the Part 53 proposed rule.

Yeah, just recognize that the ADVANCE Act came out when the rule was essentially already written, and we had received commission direction on it. So, it was difficult to make significant changes to the rule at that point in time, which is why we are asking for specific requests for comment on that to help us consider what we might be able to do in the final rule.

MS. FIELDS: And I will just emphasize that from a rule making perspective, we're in the proposed rule phase, and so these public meetings really have to be focused on the content of the proposed rule and the associated documents, just for everyone's awareness.

MS. JIANG: All right, thank you.

MS. FIELDS: Are there any more questions on our requests for comment in the Federal Register?

No, okay.

So, with that, let's go to slide 153.

Okay, so finally we have some time specifically set aside for questions on any topics in the proposed rule, or the associated documents that we have not covered already. We've obviously covered

110 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com a lot, that I see a very large bowl package, there's lots of stuff going on.

So, we didn't have time to talk about everything, so if anybody has any specific package about anything that we didn't cover, we'd be happy to take those now. We'll start with that. Yes, Dr.

Stein, go ahead.

DR. STEIN: Hello, Adam Stein, I'm from Breakthrough Institute. This is in relation to the time line expected for disposition comments for the proposed rule after the initial prompt period closes, I realize that it was just extended. How long does the staff expect in the rule making plan to take or need to disposition comments before moving onto the next stage? Just as an overview issue.

MS. FIELDS: So, to answer your question, we're still working on revising that schedule. The comment period has been extended to February 28th, 2025, it will obviously take us some time to address the public comments, make changes necessary for the final rule, the final rule will then go to the commission, and then it will be published, and then it will become effective.

There is a NEMA deadline associated with the publication of the final rule, and that's December

111 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 31st, 2027. But we are working on revising the schedule, and making that available.

MR. BEALL: Also, Dr. Stein, this is Bob Beall with the NRC, I would suggest you monitor the rule making web pages, the public side of the web pages, and also the unified agenda for rule making. Those dates for Part 53 will be updated with our new schedule.

DR. STEIN: Thank you.

MS. FIELDS: Going to another question from Jon, go ahead, Jon.

MR. FACEMIRE: Yeah, Jon Facemire with NEI. Looking back at slide nine on the typical rule making process, and at this point traditionally it would be just addressing public comment, and then any commission review comments on the draft final rule.

My question is how do we think about the ADVANCE Act in that context. Would it be right to say that if public comment doesn't bring up items in the ADVANCE Act, or if the commission doesn't bring up items in the ADVANCE Act, they won't get in?

Or is there some deviation from this typical rule making process where say the ADVANCE Act decides hey, this should really be addressed in Part 53, and we divert from this typical rule making process?

MS. VALLIERE: So, yeah, that's a good

112 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com question, Jon. I would say the ADVANCE Act, I don't recall, and anybody correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I don't recall it actually saying this item has to be addressed in this Part 53 rule. I think it kind of gave us options as to this Part 53, or another rule making, or perhaps even guidance, I don't recall the exact wording.

But, so I don't think we are faced with a situation where there's something, the ADVANCE Act specifically directed must go in 53. So, that said, obviously at the final rule stage when the commission reviews the staff's draft final rule, they can direct us to address some of those issues. We are faced with this logical outgrowth question, for those of you that aren't aware.

And generally in a typical rule making, anything that the NRC ends up doing in the final rule, if it either needs to have been telegraphed in the proposed rule somehow, and or raised through public comments, such that at the end, at the final rule stage, the general public could say well, I could see how they got there from the proposed rule, it wasn't something completely new.

So, we will of course have that same test on this rule making, so it's a really good question.

113 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com I think things discussed in the ADVANCE Act that relate to topics that are already addressed in Part 53, and for example we've addressed some factory modeling sorts of questions in Part 53, I think those definitely would be fair game for inclusion in the final rule. But I think we still have to face the logical outgrowth question.

MR. BEALL: This is Bob Beall, we also have to -- go ahead, Jon.

MR. FACEMIRE: So, just for the logical outgrowth question, NEMA did direct the NRC to provide a technology inclusive rule, right? So, almost everything in the ADVANCE Act arguably is allowing different technologies to be licensed. Now, maybe that is stretching that concept a little further. But what I'm hearing is if we believe something should be addressed in Part 53 that is called out in the ADVANCE Act as potentially being addressed under Part 53, then we need to provide it in the public comments.

MS. VALLIERE: Yes, I would say that would be more than helpful.

MR. SMITH: This is Max Smith from OGC, and just to clarify what Nan said, the logical outgrowth test arises under the Administrative Procedure Act, which is the law that governs this rulemaking process,

114 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com and all rulemaking processes, or most of them for the federal government. So, ultimately we have to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act, and that's the legal source for the requirement that Nan was talking about for the logical outgrowth test that will ultimately govern what shape the final rule can take.

MS. FRANOVICH: I have a question.

MR. SMITH: Sure.

MS. FRANOVICH: Rani Franovich, Nuclear Rose Consulting. Thank you for that explanation, Max, and Nan. If I understand you correctly, the administrative concern comes in with anything being added that was not in the draft. The draft is currently out for comments, such that the opportunity for public comment on that particular product is foregone.

And I'm wondering if legally there would be a means and mechanism by which the staff could proceed on the things that did go out for public comment, and maybe amend an update to that rule that would streamline the process for getting regulations out, and not necessitate the initiation of a separate rule making, and all of the steps in that process.

MS. VALLIERE: So, maybe first a clarification then, and attempt to answer the question.

And I'm relying on my back up here. So, with respect

115 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com to logical outgrowth, it's not only the rule text, but also those things we ask questions about. So, maybe we didn't write rule text on the topic, but asked for specific requests for comment, telegraphing that we are considering this topic, okay? I mean, that's how I interpret it.

MS. FRANOVICH: Okay.

MR. SMITH: And the idea is to help the public know what is the scope of things that are under consideration by the agency, so they can immediately comment on it. So, the idea is that the final rule will take a form that was foreseeable if someone had a chance to comment on the rule, so they knew kind of what was on the table.

MS. FRANOVICH: Okay, it wasn't clear to me if the distinction was commenting on some specific text, versus commenting on an idea. So, it's inclusive of both?

MS. VALLIERE: Yes.

MS. FRANOVICH: Okay, good to know, thank you.

MS. VALLIERE: And maybe just to follow through to the end of your question, for this very reason we've been talking about, to ensure the public understood what the commission was intending with the

116 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com rulemaking, I'm not sure there's a way that we could have a follow on rulemaking that also did not provide an opportunity for further public comment on an issue that was not telegraphed in the first proposed rule.

MS. FRANOVICH: Understand, and so I think the fact that it's inclusive of even the question soliciting comments on how the staff might address the ADVANCE Act would get it to Part 53 kind of makes that other point moot about a follow on, or amendment, or update too. Okay, thanks, good to know.

MS. FIELDS: So, back to wherever we are in our presentation. Back to slide 153 please. So, again, I will ask for any questions from anybody on the proposed rule or associated documents in topics we did not cover in this meeting. Any hands online?

I don't see hands in the room. Okay, now I'm on camera, cool. All right, so now I'll open it up to questions on previous topics that we did cover, but maybe we didn't have time to get to, or maybe you were just thinking really hard, and you had some really great question about some topic we already did cover.

MS. RIVERA: I'm going to offer just one addition to, I think during Dr. Teal's presentation someone asked a question regarding performance testing. And I forget the gentleman's name, but he

117 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com mentioned cyber and performance testing, and I just wanted to mention that there isn't a requirement for performance testing. But in oversight space, once you get into the inspection procedure, one of the requirements, an optional requirement is for performance testing for cyber.

MS. FIELDS: Okay, thanks, Tammie. I will open it up to any other questions or answers from the staff on previous topics that we didn't have time to get to, or maybe you just thought of it. No hands online, okay, from the room? Okay, one more hand, Dr.

Stein, go ahead.

DR. STEIN: Hi, this is Adam Stein from the Breakthrough Institute. If stakeholders have additional questions for the staff between now and the next public meeting are we able to contact the staff to ask?

MR. BEALL: Are you talking about having questions before the public meeting then, on the Part 53 rulemaking?

DR.

STEIN:

Correct, clarification questions about the rule text as published in the FRN.

For example if I had a question say, tomorrow, which would be before the next public meeting, are we able to ask clarifying questions?

118 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MR. BEALL: You can send them in, yes, we would of course make them public, and push them on ADAMS and regulations.gov.

MS. VALLIERE: And perhaps your answer to the question as well.

MR. BEALL: Yes. We prefer of course to have it in a public forum so everybody can listen to it, and have maybe any follow on questions.

MS. VALLIERE: But yes, please, I think there's contact information in the slide, and those will get to the appropriate technical person to address your question, and then we can post that in the regulatory --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

MR. BEALL: Yeah, Programs has the addresses for Anders and myself.

MS. FRANOVICH: And regulations.gov, Rani Franovich, Nuclear Rose Consulting, one of the thoughts that occurred to me is how will others know that that's there. Putting them in regulations.gov is a great idea.

MS. VALLIERE: Yeah, absolutely would do that.

MR. BEALL: We always do that, but again, it requires other stakeholders to monitor those things.

119 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com And there is a function in regulations.gov, you can enter your email, and it will auto notify you. In fact one of the things when we do a final wrap up, those steps and how to do that process in the FRN is coming out on the extension request.

MS. FRANOVICH: Okay, good to know, thank you.

DR.

STEIN:

I appreciate that clarification, and would also personally prefer to ask questions in a public forum like this. It would be more beneficial to all to be able to hear it at that time, but I wanted to have feedback on the process.

Generally if I submit something to regulations.gov, it's just considered a public comment, and does not get responded to until after the public comment period.

And that's why I'm asking about clarifying questions before that period. But you answered my question satisfactory, thank you.

MS. VALLIERE: Yeah, Dr. Stein, I would just suggest maybe in your correspondence you make it clear that you are asking for clarification to help inform a comment rather than submitting a comment.

MR. BEALL: Yes.

DR. STEIN: Very helpful.

MS. FIELDS: I'll open it up again. Any

120 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com other questions at all on the proposed rule and the associated documents, anybody? Don't see any hands, questions from the room, okay.

MS. FRANOVICH: I have one clarifying question.

MS. FIELDS: Okay, Rani, go ahead.

MS. FRANOVICH: The correspondence would be to perhaps you, Bob, project manager, not through regulations.gov, but just an email to you, and the email response would be then entered into regulations.gov such that the email correspondence should identify the rulemaking identification number, docket number so it's clear where it would be placed in the public domain.

MR. BEALL: That's correct, yes, ma'am.

MS. FRANOVICH: Okay, thank you.

MS. FIELDS: And I just want to emphasize for everyone's awareness, we are planning on having another public meeting, so that will be another opportunity for people to ask questions. Hope these public meetings are useful.

Okay, if there are no other questions from anybody, slide 154 please.

Okay, so this is my final slide.

I really want to thank everybody for your

121 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com attendance, and your participation, because really good questions, really good discussion over the past two and a half days. I know I appreciate it, I know the staff appreciate it. So, hopefully it helps you provide specific and informed comments, which is really the whole goal of this meeting, and the next meeting.

So, really the slide says it, please submit your comments on regulations.gov, I know I said it a lot, but I'll say it again because it's really important, and that's how we can address those comments, and consider those comments for the final rule. Just click on the blue comment button, it should be really easy.

And then again, I said this before, but I'll just mention it again. All comments are due by February 28th, 2025. There's some language in the Federal Register notice that we will try to consider comments after that date, because that is the due date, so please, please, please get them in by then. We'd appreciate that. And finally I want to thank all of the NRC staff, because they've all done a really great job presenting all of this information.

I know it's a lot, there's a lot of questions, and there's a lot of things going on, so I appreciate all of their hard work on the proposed

122 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com rule, on all the guidance, and for this meeting, and also in future meetings, really appreciate that. And then finally, last but not least, we're always looking for ways to improve our public meetings, and your feedback is important to us.

So, if you click on the link on this slide you can provide meeting feedback for this meeting specifically through that link. The meeting code is for this meeting specifically, so if there's anything you liked about the meeting, anything you didn't like about the meeting logistically speaking, please let us know. You can also find it through the public meeting schedule, but that to me is worse than just going to this link.

Okay, so thanks everyone again for attending and participating in this meeting, I appreciate all of the comments and all of the dialogue, although we are not accepting comments during this meeting. So, I hope everyone has a good day. One more thing from Bob.

MR. BEALL: So, the Federal Register notice formally extends the public comment period is coming out tomorrow. So, if you look in the Federal Register for tomorrow, it will be there, okay?

MS. FIELDS: Yes, all right. And with

123 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com that the meeting is now closed.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 11:55 a.m.)