ML25066A005
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| Issue date: | 03/04/2025 |
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1 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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BRIEFING ON ADVANCE ACT ACTIVITIES
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- TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2025
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The Commission met in the Commissioners' Hearing Room, at 9:00 a.m. EST, David A. Wright, Chairman, presiding.
COMMISSION MEMBERS:
DAVID A. WRIGHT, Chairman CHRISTOPHER T. HANSON, Commissioner ANNIE CAPUTO, Commissioner BRADLEY R. CROWELL, Commissioner MATTHEW J. MARZANO, Commissioner ALSO PRESENT:
CARRIE SAFFORD, Secretary of the Commission BROOKE CLARK, General Counsel NRC STAFF:
MIRELA GAVRILAS, Executive Director for Operations MIKE KING, Special Assistant for ADVANCE Act, Office
2 of the Executive Director for Operations CHRISTOPHER REGAN, Director, Division of Rulemaking, Environmental, and Financial Support, Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards MICHELE SAMPSON, Director, Division of New and Renewed Licenses, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation JEREMY GROOM, Deputy Director, Division of Radiological Safety and Security, Region IV ERIC DILWORTH, Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer, Office of Chief Human Capital Officer EXTERNAL PANEL:
WILLIAM MAGWOOD IV, Director-General, Nuclear Energy Agency DOUG TRUE, Chief Nuclear Officer, Nuclear Energy Institute KATHRYN HUFF, Associate Professor, Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign NADER MAMISH, Vice President for Nuclear Regulatory Affairs, Westinghouse
3 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 1
9:00 a.m.
2 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Good morning, everyone. I will call 3
this meeting to order. The passage of the ADVANCE Act was a clear message 4
to the NRC that the time for reform of your regulatory processes is now, and I'm 5
looking forward to our discussion today on this topic.
6 Before we get started I wanted to take some time to speak 7
directly to the NRC staff. We know there's a lot of change happening. In fact, 8
it's a very dynamic environment, but I'm confident that our staff will respond, as 9
you always do, by staying focused on our mission. And for one, myself, I 10 believe in you and I know you can do it. And I'm sure that my colleagues share 11 that as well.
12 In today's public meeting of the NRC we're going to hear from 13 two panels. The first will be an external panel that will provide their 14 perspectives on the implementation of the ADVANCE Act. The second is a 15 staff panel that will discuss actions the agency is taking in response to the act.
16 After that we'll take a short break between the two panels and, as is our 17 custom, we'll hold questions from the Commission to the end of each panel.
18 I think this meeting is very timely and I thank everyone for 19 their participation today. I'm looking forward to a good dialogue this morning.
20 Before we start let me ask my colleagues if there's any 21 comments any of you would like to make. Anybody?
22 (No audible response.)
23 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Okay. Thank you.
24 So with that, we'll begin. We're happy to be joined by the 25
4 Director General of the Nuclear Energy Agency, William "Bill" Magwood, who's 1
live from Paris this morning, by the way. And Bill is a former Commissioner of 2
the NRC, as you know.
3 DG Magwood, I'm going to turn the floor over to you.
4 MR. MAGWOOD: Thank you very much, Chair, and it's a 5
great pleasure to see all of you this morning, Chair, Commissioners, friends, 6
colleagues. I am sorry I'm not there with you in person today, but I do look 7
forward to visiting you myself in the coming weeks and continue to build on the 8
very strong cooperation between the NRC and the Nuclear Energy Agency.
9 Before I begin my remarks, let me once again congratulate 10 you, Chairman, on your appointment. You've been a fantastic friend to the 11 agency over the years and we're very excited to work with you in this new 12 capacity.
13 Also, my congratulations and welcome to Commissioner 14 Marzano. I look forward to meeting you in person. Your impressive 15 background I think will add a great deal to the Commission especially since you 16 once worked in my laboratory. So look forward to seeing all of you in person.
17 I think that the most important thing for me to say is that we 18 certainly see the ADVANCE Act as a very, very positive step forward towards 19 modernizing the legal and regulatory framework for civilian use of nuclear 20 energy in the United States. It takes into consideration the current environment 21 on energy security where not just in the United States but really in countries 22 around the world have heightened concern.
23 And we are very impressed with the new mission statement 24 for the agency. I find that it is a good balance in maintaining the core essence 25
5 of having an independent regulatory body, but also closely aligned to the 1
missions that are before you, missions that are very similar to those of the NEA.
2 Given the direction of the act to further international 3
cooperation, we are very much looking forward to working with you and working 4
more closely with all of our colleagues in the U.S. in years to come.
5 It's very important to note that while regulators have national 6
responsibilities, the market for nuclear energy technologies is a global one.
7 And it's really far past time that regulators around the world embrace reality that 8
if they're going to avoid being obstacles to progress, that they are going to have 9
to have a global vision to some degree.
10 Congress has given very clear direction in this way as part of 11 the ADVANCE Act, Section 101 in particular. It gives the Commission the 12 mission to support the development of nuclear regulatory organizations and 13 legal frameworks in foreign countries and to consider the best ways to use 14 international technical standards for the establishment of licensing and 15 regulatory basis. I think that if there was a clear signal the NRC needed to take 16 a more global mind set as all these new technologies are making their way to 17 market, this is certainly it.
18 Organizations comprised of like-minded countries like the 19 NEA provide an efficient and effective framework for the Nuclear Regulatory 20 Commission to coordinate and engage in such activities. It's clear that 21 Congress understands the nature of the membership of the NEA and the OECD 22 and that working with like-minded countries, highly-developed economies 23 provide a path to successful implementation of the ADVANCE Act.
24 In that respect I note that we at the NEA are planning a 25
6 discussion on achieving a realistic path to multinational review of SMRs with 1
like-minded countries of the NEA in the context of our upcoming Road Maps to 2
New Nuclear Ministerial Conference coming up this September. This will be an 3
outstanding opportunity for NRC to implement this vital congressional guidance, 4
and in that way we will look forward to inviting the Chairman of the NRC to 5
participate in this discussion along with other leading regulators. So we will be 6
forwarding that to you in the weeks to come.
7 We also appreciate the provisions of the ADVANCE Act to 8
focus on the need to develop the workforce of the future. As you know, during 9
my 10 years at both DOE and NRC I made this a priority focus. I'm very proud 10 of the important contributions the NRC has made to the development of young 11 scientists and engineers throughout the United States.
12 The ADVANCE Act directs the NRC to support international 13 coordination and training programs to foreign countries relating to civil nuclear 14 licensing and oversight to improve the regulation of nuclear reactors and 15 radioactive materials. The NEA is a leader in this area through its education 16 and training programs in nuclear law, radiological protection, and encouraging 17 students to pursue careers in the nuclear field. The NEA Global Forum on 18 Nuclear Education, Science, Technology, and Policy and the Nuclear 19 Education, Skills, Technology Framework are standouts in this area and we 20 believe that they will help advance the goals the NRC has in these directions.
21 We at the NEA look forward to working closely with the NRC 22 as it implements this new congressional direction and we look forward to 23 seizing this historic moment. My friends and colleagues on this panel will also 24 be providing excellent observations and recommendations that encourage the 25
7 Commission to review carefully.
1 Before I give up the floor, I'll make an observation as a former 2
Commissioner and continued member of the NRC extended family. It's my 3
feeling that much of the direction in the ADVANCE Act that you will be 4
implementing in the years to come were already in the NRC's remit and 5
authority. The agency has always had the tools and capacity to do all the 6
things in the act, and really more. And as you move forward to implement the 7
act and move forward into the second half-century of the NRC's existence there 8
are three things I think the Commission should be looking about as you go 9
forward.
10 First, I deeply feel it's vital to reinvigorate, reenforce, and 11 encourage the NRC's instinct to constantly challenge itself to be an ever more 12 efficient and effective regulator. I think that whatever congressional direction 13 you get from the outside the instinct to push for this inside is even more 14 important.
15 I also think that the culture changes of the modern era make 16 the tasks of leaders different from the past. Given this, all regulators must find 17 new and better ways to achieve alignment at all levels with the policies, 18 understandings, and philosophies related to risk-informed regulation and 19 performance-based regulation.
20 And finally, in an expanding global market for nuclear 21 technologies in which applications and uses of nuclear energy are likely to be 22 far broader and diverse than we've ever seen before, I think an important 23 question the NRC has to ask itself is how do you define and understand what 24 the U.S. and the NRC leadership means? It may be a different perspective on 25
8 that than we've had in the past and I think it is worth giving careful thought to 1
this.
2 So again, Chair, Commissioners, thank you very much for the 3
time. I'm looking forward to the discussion today.
4 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Bill. And you gave me a 5
real good opportunity to put in a shameless plug for our Regulatory Information 6
Conference which is coming up next week. And hope we see you there. And if 7
you have not registered, you can still register online. It's free. And we look 8
forward to having you be a participant.
9 So with that, Doug, we're going to hear from you, the Chief 10 Nuclear Officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute. Welcome today and the floor is 11 yours.
12 MR. TRUE: Thank you, Mr. Chair and Commissioners, for 13 having me here today. I'm pleased to be able to participate in this session 14 today with a focus on the ROP, but also more broadly the ADVANCE Act.
15 I prepared these slides 6 weeks ago, or maybe more like 8 or 16 10 weeks ago, and I'm going to deviate a little bit from my original remarks to 17 sort of reflect on the moment. It's been a pretty extraordinary six weeks here in 18 Washington and I want to give credit to the Commission and the NRC staff for 19 continuing to keep their eye on the ball and work forward on the things that are 20 in front of them. It's really important that we do that. The industry needs the 21 NRC to move forward and I think recognizing that progress is important, and 22 particularly the ADVANCE Act. I think the staff has done a nice job of 23 continuing to work forward.
24 The U.S. needs a strong independent regulator that provides 25
9 a social license here in the U.S. and provides a foundation for us to be able to 1
export U.S. technologies worldwide. NRC needs staff to support that mission, 2
adequate staff. But the industry is at an inflection point where there's an 3
opportunity ahead of us like we haven't seen maybe ever. And so efficiency 4
and action remain important, and it's important that we keep our eye on those 5
balls as well.
6 And that brings us to the ADVANCE Act. And the 7
Commission's role on this to model effective decision-making and good 8
decisions that promote efficiency I think is also really important in this. I think 9
the staff's working hard and it's going to be landed in your laps shortly. So I'm 10 pleased to be here to talk to you about the ADVANCE Act.
11 I'll go to my first content slide now. Many of you know me 12 over the years as being a data -- next slide, yes -- as a data person, probably 13 coming through my background in PRA. So I thought it would be fitting to start 14 with some data to help us reflect on the ROP and how things have progressed 15 over the last 25 years.
16 On one side of this slide we just tried to pick out a couple of 17 metrics on how industry performance has gone under the ROP. The upper 18 circle reflects the number of greater-than-green inspection findings that occur in 19 the first five years versus the last five years. And that trend is not just to --
20 happen to be selections. That's an overall trend that has occurred through that 21 time. Similarly, the bottom graphic shows a performance indicator is in the 22 same vein, those that exceed the green-white threshold.
23 On the right-hand side it reflects more at the high level how 24 industry has performed and the fraction of plants receiving normal oversight, 25
10 staying in column 1, versus those that needed enhanced oversight in column 2 1
or greater over those first five years and last five years. So significant reduction 2
in the number of plants. Still have plants leaving column 1. That should be 3
expected with any good oversight process I think, but a significant 4
improvement. And as you are all aware, back in 2020 we published a 5
document, NEI 20-04, that describes in great detail all of these metrics and 6
many others that reflect this improved performance.
7 Next slide, please? This slide sort of turns and looks at 8
what's been going on more recently. On the left side we talk about the Part 170 9
fees. So over the last several years NEI has been collecting our member e-10 billing data and assessing it. And the left donut chart reflects the aggregate 11 total of where the Part 170 fees have been charged by the NRC. The left half of 12 that donut reflects on the direct and indirect inspection charges which comprise 13 over half of those total fees. So inspections are about half of the total 170 fees.
14 It's notable that indirect charges actually exceed the direct 15 inspection charges with a whopping 27 percent of the total fees. You would 16 think in this day and age and after 25 years of doing this we'd be better at doing 17 those indirect things and focusing our efforts on the actual inspection activities.
18 Finally, I'll also point out in the upper right-hand corner the 19 orange slice, which is a sort of modest 21 percent, which are licensing activities 20 submitted by licensees. And I pull that out separately because, as you've seen 21 in our recent survey, there's a lot coming at us. That orange slice is about to 22 grow substantially, I think by a factor of two over in the major areas of license 23 renewals and applications for power uprates and otherwise. And so whatever 24 we can do to become more efficient in inspection processes is going to benefit 25
11 us and benefit you in this era.
1 The pie chart on the right-hand side takes a look at greater-2 than-green findings over the last about seven years and classifies them in how 3
they were revealed. What mean by revealed are sources, how we found out 4
about them. And the vast majority of them, over 80 percent, were self-5 revealing, either a plant event, or an equipment failure from something that was 6
safety-significant that occurred, inspection found or there was a performance 7
deficiency. But it wasn't through inspection activities that yielded that.
8 We also had the next biggest slice. About 10 percent came 9
from licensee-identified items where the licensee was doing its own reviews 10 and found the issues. And then about 10 percent, a little less than 10 percent, 11 actually came from headquarter and resident inspector inspections under the 12 ROP process.
13 Next slide, please? So when we get to ROP focus areas, I'm 14 not going to go through all the items here. I'll leave that to the Q&A portion.
15 But I got to say that -- as in my opening remarks that we're really encouraged 16 by the staff's approach in the ROP area. I think we've had a lot of very 17 constructive public interactions on this. I think we've seen situations on a 18 number of occasions where industry proposed something, the staff reviewed it, 19 came back with even an enhancement of that, how to be more efficient. That's 20 a really good sign when we're looking at how to achieve efficiency when we 21 have staff that are leaning into this.
22 Next slide, please, to try and wind up my time here. Since 23 you asked me to speak to the ROP, I've done that. I want to cover a few other 24 items on the ADVANCE Act because I'm sure we could get into robust 25
12 discussion on almost any of these.
1 And we listed a number here, and I'm happy to take questions 2
when we get there, but I think it's one of the -- the take-away box is important 3
that this needs to apply across the agency. This is not an NRR thing. It needs 4
to be NSIR, NMSS, even OGC, in my opinion. All aspects of the agency need 5
to be focused on how can we be more efficient and take this to heart? And that 6
will be the true test of whether we can actually achieve the efficiencies that the 7
ADVANCE Act calls for us to seek.
8 With that, I'll wind up my session and wait for your questions.
9 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Doug. Really appreciate 10 your presentation. And we will have questions when we get there.
11 Next we're going to hear from Dr. Katy Huff, who's an 12 associate professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological 13 Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Huff is joining 14 us online.
15 So I will let you take it from here. Good to see you.
16 DR. HUFF:
17 (No audible response.)
18 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: You're on mute.
19 DR. HUFF: I think I -- okay.
20 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Yes, you're there.
21 DR. HUFF: Great. Thanks very much. Thank you very much 22 for having me. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. As 23 others have said, congratulations on new chairship, new Commissioners, and 24 on your new mission statement. I have prepared a few slides and I'll just jump 25
13 right into those starting with a disclaimer that I am speaking entirely on -- in my 1
role at the University of Illinois and under no other role.
2 Next slide? So the American Nuclear Society has had 3
recommendations over many years with regard to how NRC can improve their 4
efficiencies across a range of different activities. I highlight a few of these 5
which are sort of most formally communicated to NRC through American 6
Nuclear Society position statements because this is a society made mostly of 7
highly technical professional nuclear engineers across the United States who 8
really want to see nuclear energy deployed.
9 You'll see in these recommendations over the last many years 10 many recommendations that the NRC staff, having a very similarly highly 11 technical professional background as that membership of the American Nuclear 12 Society, have implemented or have made progress toward implementing. I 13 think among these the most important one that I would like to sort of call out is 14 that no matter what is done to improve environmental efficiencies and 15 environmental reviews, which is the topic of my discussion here, the state-of-16 the-art safety requires a well-staff, well-funded, safety regulatory authority which 17 is responsible for independently assuring operational safety and protection of 18 the environment.
So I think some of these words need to always 19 be kept in mind. And I think NRC does need to be congratulated for continuing 20 to maintain its independence and continuing toward remaining well-staffed and 21 well-funded.
22 Next slide? The reason the American Nuclear Society of 23 course has these recommendations is associated with its mission which 24 includes the expansion of nuclear power. And of course while we've seen a 25
14 downturn over the last few decades, the increase by two of new nuclear 1
reactors is a credit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Looking back on 2
ways in which this process can be made more efficient should not undermine 3
the fact that it has gone through and we have two new reactor units in the 4
United States in the form of Vogtle 3 and 4.
5 Next slide? I think a lot of the recommendations associated 6
with improving the efficiency of environmental reviews in the NRC are extremely 7
well captured by Dr. Matt Bowen and Rama Ponangi from Columbia. That 8
Center on Global Energy Policy has produced this report of which I pull out the 9
four main recommendations that I'd like to highlight here.
10 One, they recommend that the NRC should pare down two of 11 the analytical sections of the EIS: (1) the need for power, and (2) the 12 alternatives chapters. These are not currently adding much value, especially 13 because they're somewhat long. I'll talk about that again in a minute.
14 But the second recommendation is that the NRC should use 15 generic environmental impact statement approaches. This has been effective 16 for reactor license renewals and it could really improve the speed with which 17 one does new reactor licensing. Many issues are expected to be generic for 18 new reactor projects and those issues should be simplified in this manner.
19 Third, NRC is encouraged by this report to use the concise 20 environmental assessment review instrument instead of an EIS for every 21 subsequent deployment of a reactor at the same site or to sites with operating 22 reactors or retiring coal plants where it's very likely that the EA will reveal no 23 need for an EIS.
24 And finally, remove the EIS requirement for each new reactor 25
15 licensing. So not just subsequent reactors, but take it out of Part 51 1
regulations. This would give NRC the flexibility to choose either an EIS or an 2
EA to tailor those reviews to specifics of a given project.
3 Next slide? This report is really good because it's full of data.
4 Some of the data is really targeting how NRC can tailor its EISs towards the 5
requirements in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, which has specific page 6
limits in red here. There's a 150-page page limit that NRC regularly blows past 7
due to the length and technical complexity of their EISs. Your 300-page limit for 8
extraordinarily complex items also gets blown past. These are not to sort of 9
pick on NRC, but rather to show the scale of improvement that could be made 10 by meeting this Fiscal Responsibility Act page limit.
11 Next slide? So it's really important to note that this isn't 12 exactly aligned with the page limits associated with COLs. So the page limits 13 are the same, but for each COL the numbers actually go way up for some of the 14 projects in the past while not all of them. So Vogtle 3 and 4, the most 15 successful of these license applications, was one of the shortest.
16 Next slide? One thing that I was curious about that the paper 17 answered is whether the page numbers correlated with NRC staff time. And 18 while it's not a perfect correlation you do see some trends where the longer the 19 EIS the more staff time and contractor time was required to do the review, and 20 the shorter the EIS the less staff time and less contractor review was required.
21 So I thought that was really, really important information brought out by this 22 report.
23 Finally, next slide, the Bowen and Ponangi recommendations 24 specifically highlight some of the NRC assessments of the actual environmental 25
16 impacts associated with each of the resource chapters and specifically draws 1
one's attention to some of the resource chapters that do not have a high impact 2
in environmental changes ever, right? So many of these rows are completely 3
green, which means there's a very small impact environmentally determined in 4
each of these chapters. These may be targets for reducing page numbers 5
because if we've never found a significant impact, we probably won't be likely to 6
find a significant impact in the future.
7 Next slide. I know we'll hear from the NRC staff, but I do just 8
want to highlight in orange many of these recommendations are already part of 9
the kind of thinking that NRC staff are doing with regard to some of these 10 changes. So I do want to congratulate you on having an aligned approach.
11 And finally, I'll leave you with the next slide, which is that the 12 American Academies of course wrote a very long report regarding how to 13 advance the speed of new nuclear reactors, and one of their recommendations 14 is associated with not just the emergency planning zone, but also guidance 15 governing siting, which does tie into environmental impact assessments. And if 16 you're looking for motivation, I think that section of the National Academies 17 report is quite good. That's all. Thank you.
18 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Dr. Huff. That report is 19 very interesting. I can't wait to delve into that with you.
20 We're going to finish up the presentations on this external 21 panel with Mr. Nader Mamish, the Vice President of Nuclear Regulatory Affairs, 22 Westinghouse and a former NRC employee.
23 Nader, you're up.
24 MR. MAMISH: Thank you, Chairman, and good morning to 25
17 you and to your fellow colleagues. And thank you for the opportunity to join you 1
at this meeting to share Westinghouse's perspectives on efficient regulation and 2
oversight.
3 Next slide, please? The ADVANCE Act sends a clear 4
message that the time to be a modern risk-informed regulator is now and that a 5
cultural shift is necessary and urgent to deploy clean advanced nuclear energy.
6 Westinghouse appreciates the Commission's efforts to revise its mission 7
statement and applauds the Commission's SRM which noted in part that the 8
NRC protects public health and safety by enabling the safe and secure use of 9
nuclear technologies for the benefit of society and the environment; enabling, 10 rather than encumbering the safe and secure use of nuclear energy.
11 12 An effective revised NRC mission statement can set the tone 13 for the NRC, but a mission statement alone is not enough. NRC leaders must 14 drive the necessary cultural changes at the NRC to ensure that enhanced 15 efficiencies and risk-informed regulatory decisions are realized at all levels in 16 the agency.
17 Next slide? Advanced and microreactor licensing has been 18 evolving in the past couple of years with significant NRC effort and industry 19 engagement. The policy issues on this slide can greatly advance the goals of 20 the act. They have been previously presented to the staff in our comment letter 21 of September 2023 and have been discussed in detail in NEI's paper of July 22 2024 involving regulation of rapid high-volume deployable reactors in remote 23 applications, otherwise known as the RHDRA paper.
24 Westinghouse believes that rapid deployment could be 25
18 facilitated by streamlined COL review process for sites that fit within a pre-1 characterized set of site criteria or an efficient licensing process that allows for 2
licensing of multiple units in multiple locations.
3 Regarding staffing levels during normal operations, 4
Westinghouse believes that staffing should be commensurate with the size, 5
simplicity, and reduced risks associated with microreactors.
6 Next slide? The upcoming LEU+ license amendment request 7
for our Columbia facility provides an opportunity for increased efficiency in 8
reviewing the license amendment request and associated environmental report.
9 As you're aware, Westinghouse completed a 40-year license 10 renewal in September of 2022. And so we believe that the NRC should 11 leverage the conclusions from that review to support approval of the upcoming 12 license amendment request. We believe that the protection offered by the 13 existing well-established programmatic elements will continue to ensure that 14 adequate protection is maintained and the environment impact statement for 15 the 40-year license renewal should be leveraged to conclude that an 16 environment assessment, not an EIS, is needed for the upcoming LEU+ license 17 amendment request.
18 But more broadly speaking, and Dr. Huff alluded to this, the 19 provisions of the -- as the provisions of the act are implemented, the NRC 20 should, to the extent permitted by law and regulations, default into the issuance 21 of environmental assessments rather than EISs.
22 Lastly, Westinghouse generally aligns with many of the 23 comments submitted in January by NEI on fuel facility licensing and oversight 24 efficiencies.
25
19 Next slide? In terms of plant licensing, Westinghouse 1
appreciates the NRC's efforts to drive efficiencies in the design certification 2
rulemaking. We are eager to see the direct final rule language and as 3
appropriate to work with the staff on the timely publication of the final rule in the 4
Code of Federal Regulation. This is a great example of an efficiency that is 5
totally and completely consistent with the ADVANCE Act.
6 Regarding new plant licensing applications, we believe that 7
the staff should apply precedent to the maximum extent possible. NRC staff 8
can rely on existing safety conclusions and focus attention novel features or 9
scaling concerns associated with the differences in power between plant 10 designs. Here I'm referring to AP1000 and AP300.
11 Another example of an efficiency involves minimizing the use 12 of Tier 1 and eliminating Tier 2 star information. Specifically, the staff should 13 accommodate streamlined methods for re-characterizing or dispositioning this 14 information without the need for license amendment requests. Minimizing the 15 use of Tier 1 and Tier 2 star information increases efficiency by reducing the 16 need for non-safety-significant license amendment requests during both 17 construction and operation. We believe that the staff should also target more 18 efficient review expectations. For example, a maximum of 24 months for design 19 certifications and a maximum of 18 months for topical reports.
20 Finally, we applaud the staff for its focused efforts to support 21 international regulators with their reviews of U.S. reactor designs and request 22 that those efforts continue as they support the goals of the ADVANCE Act and 23 more broadly foreign policy and United States' goals and objectives.
24 Next slide? Through the ADVANCE Act Congress mandated 25
20 that the NRC take bold actions, enhance efficiency, and prepare for future 1
expansion of nuclear technologies and energy, both domestically and 2
internationally. To meet the intent of the ADVANCE Act the NRC must engage 3
in a cultural change to enable the safe and secure use of nuclear energy and 4
ensure that efficiency permeates the entire organization. Thank you and I'd be 5
happy to take any questions.
6 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Nader.
7 And thank each of you, both here in the room and online, for 8
your presentations.
9 The overwhelming bipartisan support of Congress in passing 10 the ADVANCE Act was a clear direction to the NRC that the time to reform our 11 regulatory processes is now.
12 And I'm looking forward to getting into the Q&A portion. And 13 as luck would have it I think I won the draw, so I get to go first.
14 DG Magwood, and I guess Dr. Huff, I think I want to start with 15 both of you on something that actually I wasn't planning to ask, but DG 16 Magwood kind of brought it up.
17 Bill, you talked about three things that we needed to 18 challenge ourself with, right, three questions to look at. One was to challenge 19 ourselves. The second was to achieve alignment at every level in the agency.
20 And third, you -- which is the one that intrigues me, was for us to kind of reflect 21 on what does U.S. leadership mean today.
22 And one, I will take that as a task to do myself, but I'd kind of 23 like to hear from you and from Dr. Huff, because she has been in a very high 24 position in DOE and has traveled the world as well. I'd kind of like to hear if you 25
21 have any reflections or have any ideas about what U.S. leadership would mean 1
today where the NRC is concerned in this space.
2 MR. MAGWOOD: I appreciate this question, Chairman. It's 3
very important to note that NRC is -- while I want to answer the question in 4
context of the NRC, the NRC is not a stand-alone entity in this respect. I really 5
do believe -- and I think that we discussed this when I was chairman of the 6
Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee -- Katy put me on there, by the way -- that 7
we really felt strongly that there needed to be a whole-of-government probing of 8
that question: What does it mean to be a leadership in the world today, 9
particular in the nuclear sector?
10 My answer for the NRC is to recognize that international 11 cooperation is not just good for allies and recipients. It really does directly 12 benefit U.S. interests in part by providing business opportunities for U.S.
13 developers that in turn can contribute to U.S. goals to achieve production scale 14 of new reactors.
15 But in order to enable to an environment where Nader, for 16 example, could sell dozens of AP300s, you need to have a very -- you need to 17 have an organizing principal that will enable regulators and policy makers in 18 other countries to align with the type of licensing approach that the U.S. is 19 taking. But that won't happen by itself and it won't happen without aggressive 20 positive engagement overseas. And that is something that is not easy to do 21 and it doesn't happen just simply by saying we want you to do this. It means 22 engaging with partners, having the discussions, sitting in the meetings, and 23 showing how the benefits really accrue to everyone when we can align on 24 common directions.
25
22 But that requires a great deal of leadership and I can tell you, 1
as the head of an international organization, international organizations can't do 2
that. We can facilitate it, but we can't make it happen. It has to come from 3
member countries, and clearly the U.S., as certainly the biggest of our member 4
countries, really has I think the opportunity to assume that leadership role.
5 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you.
6 DR. HUFF: I'll just say, yes --
7 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Dr. Huff --
8 DR. HUFF: Go ahead.
9 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: -- go ahead. No, I was going to see if 10 you had --
11 DR. HUFF: I couldn't agree more with Director General 12 Magwood. I think that one piece that I would add is the 100-year relationship 13 that we establish with other nations when we are able to supply them with 14 American nuclear reactor technology supported by American nuclear regulatory 15 assessments of that technology.
16 The independence, the strength, the standards of the Nuclear 17 Regulatory Commission give confidence in those purchases. And a lot of 18 countries have seen it firsthand that that is one of the key components of 19 bringing secure safe energy-secure nuclear reactors to other nations that 20 involve American technology. The NRC, while it improves its efficiencies, must 21 continue to maintain that high standard. I would say maintain the standards, 22 but decrease the barriers to some of these licenses and you'll be hitting the 23 mark.
24 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you for that. And I don't have 25
23 any questions for you, Dr. Huff, but your presentation was good and it really 1
strikes a chord with me because I really believe that the FRA amendments to 2
NEPA provide us an opportunity to enhance the efficiency of the NRC's 3
environmental reviews. And having been a former public utility commissioner I 4
totally get that need for power part of it because that should be more of a PUC 5
area, not an NRC area.
6 I agree with the recommendations from the report that you 7
referenced in your presentation, that we should pare down our analysis of the 8
need for power and alternatives and that we should take advantage of the use 9
of EAs rather than EISs for new reactor builds.
10 So I think we are aligning in a lot of these things within --
11 internally here and I look forward to how we develop the GEIS, the advanced 12 reactor GEIS and moving forward as quickly as possible to allow these early 13 movers that are looking to build now to take advantage of this EIS as well as 14 using the information gathered from these early environmental documents to 15 inform the future GEIS.
16 So I look forward to our working together here as a team at 17 the NRC to do the things we need to do to expand the use of categorical 18 exclusions and through the use of other agencies' CATEXs so that we can build 19 those necessary data sets and take advantage of those efficiencies.
20 So I really appreciated your presentation. I look forward to 21 going in detail into that report. So thank you for that.
22 Doug, we've got about three minutes to go and I wanted to 23 come to you. From your perspective what do you think is the biggest 24 opportunity for the agency to maximize efficiency? You talked about it a little 25
24 bit, but if there's -- where do you think the low-hanging fruit is for us?
1 And then I guess the second thing I was going to ask you 2
about had to do with do you have any thoughts on some ways we could 3
address the time we spend on non-safety issues?
4 MR. TRUE: Yes, I think that's a key part of it because if you 5
can stop focusing on things that are not safety-significant, it gives you more 6
time to be able to focus on the things that are truly safety-significant and 7
hopefully get those processed in an efficient manner.
8 I think under the ADVANCE Act, my slide generally talked 9
about it. I covered most of the main areas. I think the NRC regulated a pretty 10 static industry for 50 years. And then it's not surprising they would get to a 11 moment like this where all of a sudden everybody's saying, well, let's hit the gas 12 and deploy all this extra stuff that we're not in a position to -- with processes or 13 even regulations necessarily to support that pace.
14 So getting to the point where we have efficient predictable 15 licensing schedules I think is really important. Progress has been made so far.
16 Whether we can sustain that at scale I think remains to be seen. So focus on 17 that is important.
18 I think project management and transparent performance 19 metrics is also important. Understanding where you are, what's hanging you 20 up, what's not, how are you meeting what you're expecting to do under these 21 new efficient and predictable licensing schedules is important. And being able 22 to rapidly disposition those things that are of low safety-significance is really key 23 and having efficient decision-making process.
24 Efficiency requires be able to make a decision quickly 25
25 sometimes. Sometimes it's not always the best -- the favored decision, but 1
leadership is going to have to step in and drive those decisions to conclusion in 2
a timely manner.
3 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: I want to ask you one other question 4
based on something you said earlier. I want to kind of explore it in the last 5
minute we have here.
6 On one of your slides you had the circle and you had the little 7
orange part of it that was licensing, right?
8 MR. TRUE: Yes.
9 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: And it was 21 percent. That was what 10 I think you had in that. But then you made the comment that that was going to 11 expand by a factor of two, right, potentially. I kind of would -- I don't know, 12 sometimes percentages mean one thing but numbers mean another. Can you 13 tell me what that 21 percent reflects in numbers and what that -- when you say 14 a factor two what is the potential number we might be looking at, right? And I 15 mean, because we --
16 MR. TRUE: Well, so, yes, let me be careful here because the 17 21 percent includes a lot of different things. The factor of two comes from the 18 survey we did that showed -- as compared to the past we expect twice as many 19 of the -- what I would consider large applications, not just a single tech spec 20 change or some narrow license amendment, but things like license renewals, 21 power uprates that require extensive review, oftentimes environmental 22 assessments. So it cuts across the agency. And we see -- I think that in the 23 data we presented it was about a factor of two increase in just those. And that 24 was not counting the new reactor applications that could be coming along with 25
26 that.
1 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Okay. Thank you for that. My time is 2
expired, so the next up is Commissioner Caputo.
3 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Good morning. Thank you all 4
for making time to be here. And to Bill and Katy, thank you for making the time 5
to turn in and make your contributions this morning. As always, you've given us 6
a lot to think about and I really appreciate your remarks.
7 Doug, thank you once again for making a data-driven case for 8
modernizing the ROP to account for improvement in the industry's safety 9
performance. I have long believed that a top-to-bottom review is overdue and I 10 am eager to see the data-driven outcome of the staff's efforts and the resulting 11 efficiency gains.
12 Doug, you also mentioned opportunities under the ADVANCE 13 Act in the areas of efficient predictable licensing schedules and efficient 14 decision-making processes. As you know, the current proposed rule for Part 53 15 includes requirements for PRAs and establishing comprehensive risk metrics 16 and has -- the Commission has directed the staff to include a PRA requirement 17 for Part 50 operating licenses.
18 While PRA is valuable as a tool to risk-inform decision-making 19 and has been encouraged under Commission policy for the purposes of 20 reducing unnecessary conservatisms, I believe it's cumbersome for the purpose 21 of a risk-based regulatory compliance. While PRA is simple in concept, an 22 actual PRA involves many assumptions, estimates, and treatment of 23 uncertainties likely engendering debate about the accuracy of each facet to 24 verify compliance.
25
27 The agency and the industry already struggle with this 1
dynamic on a much smaller scale in the significance determination process for 2
reactor inspector findings where debates between licensees and staff often 3
continue over differences between the agency's computer model versus the 4
licensee's site-specific model leading to delays in determining the risk 5
significance of a finding. You commented earlier on the need to improve realism 6
in this process.
7 So, Doug, I just want to ask you sort of a broad question. Do 8
you have concerns regarding the time it will take applicants and the NRC staff 9
to debate the accuracy of assumptions and calculations in PRAs? Given the 10 number of different designs that we will be looking at, how do you think that will 11 affect licensing schedules, decision-making, the adjudicatory process? What 12 safety benefit do we actually get out of what I expect will be a fairly 13 cumbersome process just in licensing, but also an ongoing licensing exercise to 14 maintain these documents to meet regulatory requirements and updating and 15 maintaining them accordingly? Can you just sort of talk broadly about that for a 16 few minutes?
17 MR. TRUE: Yes, well, you hit a geyser here. So as you 18 know, I spent about 40 years of my career leading an organization that did PRA 19 for the industry and played a major role in the development of what's now called 20 the risk-informed regulation as part of that. And I'm very proud of the safety 21 improvements that we found in doing those studies. Every study I ever did we 22 found a way -- that personally I was involved in -- we found ways to make plants 23 safer. So PRAs are a very valuable tool. There's no doubt about that.
24 I believe that understanding the risks of new designs in 25
28 important. I don't know that a detailed ASME standard PRA should be required 1
for every single design. And as you may know, in our comments on Part 53 2
that were just submitted a few weeks ago we identified that we think that the 3
Part 53 is too lashed to a risk-based, sort of risk-founded approach, and in fact 4
we'd be better served by using PRA, enabling the use of PRA and other 5
different methods.
6 If someone wants to go down a path of using PRA as the 7
basis for their licensing basis, that's fine. There's a mechanism to do that. I 8
think it could raise a number of the issues that you have pointed out in terms of 9
understanding all of the inputs and assumptions that go into those studies. But 10 also to tie back to Bill Magwood's comments, that's not really the way the rest of 11 the world is looking at this either. And if we're going to license these plants and 12 we want to export them, we need methods that are more akin to the way that 13 we -- the rest of the world does it, which might be -- involve using more 14 traditional methods, even enabling the IAEA methods for defense-in-depth 15 where a PRA plays a role but is not the primary basis.
16 So I think in our comments we moved in the direction of 17 suggesting that a requirement for a singular comprehensive risk metric may not 18 be the best approach. A risk-informed approach more like what we've done 19 with the current fleet is a better use, where you use risk information, not 20 necessarily a detailed PRA to tell you the answer, along with deterministic 21 methods to get you to the answer.
22 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Thank you.
23 Nader, the proposals in last year's staff paper on microreactor 24 licensing which were included in the proposed Part 53 rule would seem to 25
29 require issuing one license to fuel and test a microreactor out-of-factory, 1
another one to transport it to a site, a different license to operate it at that site, 2
and another license to transport it back to a refueling or decommissioning 3
center, et cetera.
4 Under the Atomic Energy Act and NRC regulations the 5
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards must review and report on each of 6
these applications for licenses. The ACRS however is limited to meeting about 7
10 times a year with 40 Subcommittee meetings.
8 Can you give us a sense of how many microreactors 9
Westinghouse alone would be contemplating producing in the next few years?
10 MR. MAMISH: Thank you for the question, Commissioner.
11 Westinghouse's deployment model is looking at tens of microreactors in the 12 next few years, so --
13 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Per year?
14 MR. MAMISH: Yes, it's not going to be single digits. We 15 might start with one or two, but our clients have indicated that there will be 16 double-digit numbers.
17 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Okay. Nader or Doug, do you 18 have recommendations on how to streamline this process to reduce the number 19 of regulatory decisions necessary to make this business model effective and 20 efficient?
21 MR. MAMISH: I can take that. As I indicated in my remarks, 22 Commissioner, I think the idea that you're going to license these microreactors 23 one at a time is just not consistent with the ADVANCE Act and it's not 24 consistent with the deployment models that many companies, not just 25
30 Westinghouse, is looking to deploy.
1 I think there needs to be a mechanism to conduct efficient 2
licensing. One way to do that is through general licenses, issuance of general 3
licenses. Another way to do it is through putting together some bounding 4
conditions. And you license those bounding conditions and as long as these 5
microreactors fit within these bounding conditions, you've got a general license 6
to basically deploy those reactors.
7 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Okay. Thank you.
8 Dr. Huff, appreciated your remarks on environmental reviews 9
and for highlighting that report out of Columbia which I found very, very useful.
10 You brought up a recommendation for the use of 11 environmental assessments for microreactor deployments. However, for review 12 and approval of transportation routes for irradiated fuel we don't use 13 environmental assessments. We use categorical exclusions. Would this 14 perhaps be a better option for microreactor deployments?
15 (No audible response.)
16 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Oh, you're on mute.
17 DR. HUFF: Testing, testing.
18 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Yes.
19 DR. HUFF: Testing. Okay. It seems to just have a little bit of 20 a lag.
21 Okay. I think it's an excellent question. My experience 22 between (audio interference) --
23 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Sorry, Katy, you're breaking up.
24 DR. HUFF: They warned me I'd have -- I'm switching 25
31 microphones. Hopefully that changes it.
1 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Loud and clear.
2 DR. HUFF: Fantastic. My experience between categorical 3
exclusions and environmental assessments is pretty minimal. I think it does 4
seem to indicate the categorical exclusions may be a bridge too far in terms of 5
transition from an EIS all the way down to a categorical exclusion for some of 6
the technologies we're dealing with.
7 But you raised the question of microreactors and I think when 8
we think about the kind of philosophy around the bounding licenses that Nader 9
mentioned, I think one could imagine categorical exclusions for certain bounded 10 cases for microreactors, but I don't think it's clear to me that that would be a 11 slam dunk with the public and public trust.
12 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Okay. Thank you.
13 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Commissioner Caputo.
14 Commissioner Hanson?
15 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And 16 let me just associate myself with a number of comments that have been made 17 this morning congratulating you in becoming Chair. And while some of the 18 seats have changed up here on the Commission and while the mission 19 statement has been revised, the fundamentals around our safety and security 20 mission have not, and I look forward to working with you and the rest of my 21 colleagues to implement that, so --
22 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you.
23 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Thank you very much. I guess 24 I'd like to just -- I've got a number of questions this morning, but I want to touch 25
32 on something that I think Doug as well as Bill touched on, and I just would like 1
to kind of put an extra point on it if we can.
2 And let me just kind of go around and ask if all of you could 3
kind of weigh in on the importance of having an independent regulator who, 4
when it's acting in its core safety and security mission, is able to make 5
decisions kind of free from political interference, and that that's true anywhere, I 6
think, in the globe. Anybody can go first.
7 MR. MAMISH: I can go first. For the industry to thrive and 8
really fulfill the mandates of the ADVANCE Act, you've got to have a trusted 9
industry and a trusted regulator. It takes two to tango, and that regulator has 10 got to be independent from the rest of the executive branch and has to make 11 independent decisions that are founded on safety and environmental sound 12 findings.
13 MR. TRUE: Yeah, I mean, I agree with --
14 MR. MAGWOOD: I'll jump in. Oh, I'm sorry.
15 MR. TRUE: Go ahead, Bill.
16 MR. MAGWOOD: No, sorry about that. I was just going to 17 jump in and say that, you know, I think, Commissioner, we've learned the hard 18 lessons the hard way. I don't know why this question would even really 19 seriously come up. I recognize that it does.
20 I was just in the Philippines and there's actually an ongoing 21 discussion about how to structure their regulatory organization. We certainly 22 saw in our Japanese colleagues when the old regulator, NISA, was under the 23 influence of a ministry whose job it was to promote nuclear energy.
24 Despite, I think, good faith efforts by the staff, it was very, 25
33 very clear that the culture was captured by other priorities than safety, and we 1
don't need to learn those lessons again in my view. I think we learned them the 2
hard way and our Japanese colleagues have worked extraordinarily hard to 3
build the NRA into an independent regulator that's completely divorced from 4
those topics.
5 But I think that those are lessons that everyone should absorb 6
and understand because if the regulatory, if the regulator is not independent, 7
there will be problems, I promise you that, and secondly, to pick up on a point 8
that really echoes something Katie said a few minutes ago, from a public 9
stakeholder engagement standpoint, the trust factor is very, very low, so I think 10 there's lots of reasons why an independent regulator is important.
11 MR. TRUE: Yeah, I mean, I included it and added it to my 12 opening remarks with intent because I think it is important, and while the 13 industry takes its responsibility, ultimate responsibility for the safety of reactors 14 and other facilities in the industry very seriously, the NRC's oversight and 15 confirmation of that is extremely important with the public and on the global 16 stage, and we can't understate the role that if the U.S. wants to be a leader in 17 energy globally, having a strong independent regulator is a great source of 18 motivation for that.
19 DR. HUFF: I'll agree with everything everyone has said. I will 20 say the role of the Department of Energy, for example, is to advocate, and so, 21 you know, having a separate DOE and NRC -- part of the forming of the NRC 22 was specifically to ensure the independence between that advocate for the 23 expanded safety use of nuclear power and research and development to 24 expand it from this sort of regulation and safety of that safe use, and I think that 25
34 has to be maintained for trust to continue, not just domestically, but as was 1
already mentioned, internationally. IAEA basically requires it in order to 2
recognize the, you know, validity of a regulator.
3 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Great, thank you all very, very 4
much for that. I think we've heard a lot this morning about, you know, 5
recognition of things that are already going on in the agency and the recognition 6
of where we can kind of tackle additional challenges on specific things with 7
regard to the ROP, and your data rich presentation on that, Doug, is very much 8
appreciated.
9 And I think there's -- you know, as we talk about the 10 ADVANCE Act and the implementation, we talk a lot about the expectations on 11 the NRC staff and how we go about making decisions and so on and so forth, 12 and we can certainly get into some of the particulars around that, but I'd like to 13 just kind of take a step back because some of these, I think, expectations that 14 are out there, and whether they're expressed in that legislation or whether 15 they're kind of set by the Commission, et cetera, there are expectations for the 16 staff, but I think there are also expectations out there in the world on the 17 Commission itself.
18 And I would just like to kind of hear from anybody who'd like 19 to weigh in about what those expectations are on the Commission, that it's not 20 just about changes that we want the staff to make, although those are super 21 important and things that the staff can and should be doing, but there are also --
22 there's a particular role, as you all well know, for the Commission itself, and I 23 just wanted to give you an opportunity to perhaps share some of those, you 24 know, with the five of us.
25
35 MR. TRUE: I'll jump in. I think that, you know, I think the 1
Commission is distinct from the staff, but certainly, and I tried to mention this in 2
my opening remarks also, the Commission has an important role to model what 3
they expect the staff to do. So, efficient decision-making, collegial engagement, 4
productive moving forward of issues is all things that fall equally, in my opinion, 5
on the Commission as it does on the staff.
6 And we've had a lot of issues that have languished for a time.
7 If something -- like everybody agrees there's no safety significance to non-8 emergency reporting, and how long have we been waiting for that to move 9
forward? I mean, I'm sorry, but come on, guys and gals. Let's move forward 10 here.
11 We could be on an eight-year journey to do something that 12 we all agreed to many years ago was the right thing to do to put the right focus 13 on things that are more important than non-emergency reports that are 14 unnecessary in a modern age.
15 So, I don't want to belabor that point, but I'm just the poster 16 child maybe of this topic. So, yeah, I think it falls to the Commission too, to 17 model that and make decisions that ultimately lead to the Commission being 18 more efficient. I think the ADVANCE Act doesn't apply just to the staff.
19 I think it applies to the Commission and the decisions you all 20 come out with on how to go forward to the Hill with responses and 21 recommendations, or reports, or whatever comes out of the various sections 22 are going to be important, and I think you should be held accountable if you're 23 not moving in the direction of efficiency.
24 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Okay, well, thank you. I think 25
36 we've gotten some good things done on the Commission, but like the staff, I 1
think there's always more to be done and I look forward to moving ahead on 2
that, so thank you for those remarks.
3 I've got just about a minute left and I'm going to let anybody 4
jump in on this one too. I think one of the sleeper provisions of the ADVANCE 5
Act, the one that -- you know, there's a lot of emphasis on efficiency and 6
certainly fairly going forward, but I think one of the sleeper provisions is actually 7
having to do with foreign ownership, control, and domination that maybe doesn't 8
get talked about very much.
9 And I guess I'm interested in, you know, either Nader, or 10 Doug, or Bill, or others about the importance of that provision, particularly as it 11 opens the aperture potentially for investment in the United States by our friends 12 and allies in the nuclear sector.
13 MR. MAMISH: I'll take a quick stab at it. Thank you, 14 Commissioner, for that question. Westinghouse staff has been heavily 15 engaged with NRR on the foreign ownership matter because of the nature of 16 our global company, and I'm delighted to say that the working relationship and 17 the cooperation, collaboration on that specific issue has been exceptional.
18 So, we have talked about the need to open the aperture a 19 little bit. We're getting ready to send a letter to the staff in that specific regard, 20 and I believe that OGC, our legal folks will be engaging with OGC as well on the 21 issue, so it's going very well.
22 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Great.
23 MR. TRUE: Not to add a lot, I think it was an important 24 provision also. I think we ran into this back in the early 2000s, and this was 25
37 good to get it out of the way now as we hit this inflection point so we're not 1
scrambling to try and deal with it later, so I think it's a step in the right direction, 2
definitely.
3 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Great. Bill, any thoughts?
4 MR. MAGWOOD: Yeah, just very briefly, I agree with Nader 5
and Doug on this, but I also think it's important that the Commission develop 6
some kind of guidelines and process to how you will make decisions on foreign 7
ownership going forward. It actually makes your job more complicated because 8
you now just can't say no foreign ownership with this provision. You now have 9
to have criteria.
10 And certainly, there have been times where I've thought that 11 close U.S. allies like, you know, UK, Japan, and others can't have an ownership 12 role in nuclear power plants is kind of silly, but where do you draw the line?
13 And that, I think, is less clear to me at this moment and that's something the 14 Commission will have to work on.
15 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Okay, well, thank you all very, 16 very much, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
17 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Commissioner Hanson.
18 Commissioner Crowell?
19 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and 20 thank you to all of the panelists today. Let me just start with an official, on the 21 record congratulations to Chairman Wright on his designation. I look forward to 22 working with him and my colleagues going forward.
23 As I sit here today, I'm also reflecting on the difference in this 24 conversation from when we had originally scheduled this meeting about six 25
38 weeks ago until now. It seems like it was six years ago. It's been a long few 1
weeks and much has changed, and a lot of that change is, you know, the NRC 2
is experiencing that change as well.
3 Director-General Magwood, I'm going to start with you, and 4
first, I'm sorry I missed you recently at your headquarters, but I very much 5
appreciated the briefing I received from your staff in the very room that you're 6
speaking to us from today. You've been in this game for a while, you know, at 7
DOE, at NRC, at NEA, and as you said, you gave birth to a lab that focuses on 8
nuclear, so you've seen the prior what we hoped were going to be renaissance.
9 What makes this different given your experience? Why do you think this is 10 going to be different and that the renaissance is actually going to be realized?
11 MR. MAGWOOD: I appreciate that question, Commissioner.
12 Yes, I have been around a long time.
13 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: But you look great.
14 (Laughter.)
15 MR. MAGWOOD: Thank you, thank you, thank you for that.
16 You know, the real difference is that in the last go around of the nuclear 17 renaissance, there were -- the people who were driving that were not 18 necessarily the users. I think it was much more supply side driven as opposed 19 to demand side driven. What I see now is a very broad, very deep need for 20 nuclear energy around the world. It really is everywhere.
21 As I mentioned, I was just visiting Manila in the Philippines 22 talking to ministers in that country, and they highlighted the fact that they are, A, 23 very worried about climate change, it's something that's very present in their 24 minds, and B, very worried about energy security.
25
39 And when they look at all of the options, nothing satisfies 1
those concerns more than nuclear energy, and the fact that there is now 2
technologies coming to the market that are much more accessible to countries 3
like that makes it almost an obvious choice for them.
4 So, I think that this is very, very different from the last time. I 5
think that the opportunities are very broad, and I think this is not just in a few 6
places. I think this is really a global phenomenon and it really is demand 7
driven, and I think that's the biggest difference from the last time.
8 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: I appreciate that, and I 9
obviously hope you're correct and we're able to do it, you know, in a 10 cooperative way. One theme we've seen from the new administration here in 11 the U.S. is a move away from engaging with international organizations. If that 12 were to happen with, say, NEA or IAEA, what would the impact be?
13 MR. MAGWOOD: Well, obviously that would be devastating 14 in lots of ways, and I should say I have not had any reason to believe that is the 15 direction that things will go.
16 I recognize that there is much more of a focus on domestic 17 issues as opposed to international ones, but as I said earlier, U.S. interests 18 really depend on having access to markets and having the ability to influence, 19 you know, decisions made overseas to accept U.S. technologies, and you can't 20 do that if you don't leave your national borders.
21 So, I continue to believe that there's going to be a very strong 22 role for international organizations, particularly those that are comprised of like-23 minded countries, and I remain confident that we'll be able to provide value to 24 our U.S. colleagues as things go forward.
25
40 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Thank you. Dr. Huff, if I may 1
turn to you, thanks for joining us today. I'm sorry that you have to be with us 2
virtually and that we missed you in person the last time.
3 I found your presentation insightful. As a general matter, I 4
think we have a rebalancing to do at the NRC, because right now, we're in a 5
dynamic of our environmental reviews taking longer than our safety reviews, 6
which seems a little upside-down on its face. So, I'm a big supporter of finding 7
ways to bring those back into alignment.
8 I think only in very rare cases should the environmental 9
review take longer than the safety review, and so, you know, between the FRA 10 and other efficiencies we can find, we need to seize those, but I also agree with 11 you that we don't want to move, you know, overnight from an EIS to a CATEX 12 because of the impact that may have, particularly on the social license related 13 to commercial nuclear power.
14 So, you know, that being said, I kind of want your expert 15 opinion here on how much the environmental reviews by the NRC can be 16 impacted by first-of-a-kind versus nth-of-a-kind technologies, whether site 17 selection, you know, smart site selection is the most important thing in keeping 18 a timely, you know, in achieving a timely environmental review, and also maybe 19 how the quality of the submission by the applicant factors into the timeliness of 20 the environmental review. If you could touch on those, I'd much appreciate it.
21 DR. HUFF: Thank you very much. I really appreciate -- oh, 22 come on, okay, yeah, there. Thank you very much. I completely agree. I think 23 it's the social license at the heart of all of this. You've mentioned sites.
24 I think that really is an area where efficiencies can be 25
41 realized, especially in a scenario in which there's a coal to nuclear transition 1
where retiring and retired coal plants specifically called out in the ADVANCE 2
Act are an opportunity for a nuclear power plant's presence to clean up the 3
environment, to reduce the impacts on the local community in terms of health.
4 So, my expectation is that that work, working on a coal to 5
nuclear transition, working on siting and comparisons between nuclear energy 6
and coal with regards to environmental impacts will have an impact.
7 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Thank you. Mr. True, let me 8
turn to you next. I appreciate your presentation on the ROP. At a macro level, I 9
think what your slides demonstrate is that the ROP has worked as intended and 10 as designed. And, you know, does that mean it's perfect? Not necessarily, but, 11 and improvements can always be made, but the trend line from your data 12 shows that it's moving in the right direction.
13 How would you -- where would you give credit for that? Is it 14 because of, more so because of the regulators' action, the operators' actions, or 15 the cooperation among the two?
16 MR. TRUE: I mean, I think it goes both ways, but I do believe 17 the industry has expended a great deal of effort to improve its performance, and 18 that's been reflected in things like capacity factor, and reduction in scrams, and 19 other things that are, you know, maybe peripherally tied to ROP, but are not the 20 centerpiece of compliance with regulations.
21 And that has been a concerted effort led by our individual 22 utilities as well as INPO and their role in this, and that whole philosophy has 23 carried over into the regulatory side where I think we have stepped up our game 24 to make sure we're prepared for inspections and are in good stead, and that in 25
42 turn has led to reduced findings.
1 And I think that good performance should be credited as we 2
go forward. If we see performance being to slip, then bring the inspections 3
back, but there's no reason to be steady at a period where you've made, you 4
know, five-fold improvement in performance of the industry or more.
5 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Yeah, and I think your last 6
point is important, which is if, you know, if best practices start to slip, then you 7
do need to snap back into more enhanced oversight, and it's good to hear --
8 MR. TRUE: That's the whole point of oversight.
9 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Yeah, in theory. Both Mr.
10 True and Mr. Mamish, let me pose this to both of you. I heard lots of phrases 11 from you both about moving forward, a strong independent regulator, you know, 12 right-sizing NRC staff, fulfilling the ADVANCE Act, et cetera.
13 How -- to me, it seems like many of the things in the 14 ADVANCE Act, giving us new tools, giving us new authorities to do things that 15 we need to do to meet the moment and Congress directed us to in the 16 ADVANCE Act are contrary to some of the actions writ large across the 17 executive branch right now.
18 The ADVANCE Act is all about hiring the right kind of people 19 and now we can't hire any people. The ADVANCE Act is about, you know, 20 doing things better and smarter, and that's tough to do when you're losing more 21 people than you're able to bring in, and it certainly doesn't foster a culture that 22 helps us achieve those goals.
23 You know, Nader, you represent industry. Doug, your NEI 24 represents industry. How do you, from your respective chairs, see this contrast 25
43 between current direction from the administration and what the ADVANCE Act 1
says? They seem to be going in opposite directions.
2 MR. TRUE: I'll start by saying I'm hopeful that this is a 3
transient condition, that we are, you know, working our way through the first 45 4
days or so of an administration, and as we settle out, we'll begin to see what the 5
future really holds in these areas.
6 As an agency that's funded by the industry, you know, we feel 7
like we pay for a lot of the resources here at the NRC. Ninety percent or so of 8
those resources come from the fees we pay.
9 So, and we have made clear in a letter we sent to you, and 10 letters and interactions with other parts of the administration, that we need to be 11 mindful that the NRC be staffed adequately and with the right resources, and 12 we'll continue to advocate to make sure because, you know, we'd like to have 13 power uprates happen, we'd like to have plant license renewals happen, and if 14 there aren't staff sufficient here to do that, that's going to be a problem for the 15 industry as well, so.
16 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Okay, thanks, and I'm over 17 time, so, Nader, I'm going to let you off the hook, which you'll probably 18 appreciate.
19 (Laughter.)
20 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
21 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Commissioner Crowell.
22 Commissioner Marzano?
23 COMMISSIONER MARZANO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, 24 and I want to join my colleagues in congratulating you on your chairmanship 25
44 and being appointed there, so congratulations.
1 Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the presentations.
2 Dr. Huff, I had hoped to welcome you back to the DMV, but I'm sure, as you're 3
well-familiar with, the challenges that winter weather can bring to this area, 4
especially compared to central Illinois, so I digress.
5 The ADVANCE Act represents a broad recognition of the 6
need to reestablish the United States' leadership in nuclear energy 7
development, with a focus on the vital role of the NRC in enabling the safe and 8
secure use of nuclear technology and radioactive materials.
9 The provisions in the ADVANCE Act constitute a 10 comprehensive strategy that aims to improve the readiness of the NRC to 11 execute its statutory authorities, responsive to the innovations and 12 advancements in nuclear technologies.
13 As you've touched upon in each of your presentations, the 14 ADVANCE Act calls for the NRC to ensure that the licensing regulation of the 15 civilian use of radioactive materials and nuclear energy be conducted in a 16 manner that is efficient and does not unnecessarily limit their uses in 17 deployment.
18 Efficiency has always been a pillar of the NRC's work and our 19 values as prescribed in the Principles of Good Regulation for over 30 years, 20 and so I appreciate Director Magwood's comment that, you know, the 21 ADVANCE Act essentially restates what is already within the NRC's remit and 22 authority, so I appreciate that recognition.
23 Meeting our growing workload and securing our nation's 24 energy future requires a renewed focus on how to incorporate efficiency in the 25
45 work we do and our culture. That being said, while the ADVANCE Act directs 1
the NRC to incorporate greater efficiencies into activities, the ADVANCE Act 2
also restates and reaffirms the NRC's half century-long role as an independent 3
safety regulator.
4 So, we asked you all here today because the input that we 5
receive from you, our external stakeholders, is fundamental to the NRC 6
conducting its regulatory functions in a way that is responsive to the needs of 7
the nuclear community and the public.
8 As we endeavor to implement the ADVANCE Act, it is 9
incumbent upon us to look to our stakeholders and the broader public as we 10 prepare for the next phase of nuclear innovation. Your continued engagement 11 will help advance the nation's energy goals and realize the benefits that safe 12 use of nuclear technology can deliver to society.
13 All right, stepping off my soapbox, I think I want to start with 14 you, Director Magwood. Again, I appreciate your perspectives here, and 15 especially your remarks on the NRC and how it relates to global leadership in 16 nuclear energy, and the ADVANCE Act recognizes this, the crucial role that the 17 NRC plays in maintaining and enhancing U.S.-international leadership in the 18 safe development, deployment, and regulation of nuclear technology.
19 So, to that point, hopefully we get a chance to get your 20 thoughts on opportunities that you see for the United States and the NRC to 21 collaborate with other countries and intergovernmental organizations such as 22 the Nuclear Energy Agency in developing approaches to regulating new nuclear 23 technologies.
24 MR. MAGWOOD: Thank you for that question, 25
46 Commissioner, and again, welcome. I hope you're enjoying your tenure thus 1
far on the Commission.
2 You know, I think that there's opportunities in many places, 3
but I do believe that something I mentioned earlier is very relevant, and that is 4
for small modular reactors to really be successful, we have to build them in 5
considerable numbers.
6 As Nader pointed out in his comments on the microreactors, 7
that Westinghouse anticipates building tens of microreactors. I think most of 8
the small modular reactor vendors have an aspiration to build tens of SMRs, 9
and I don't believe that they expect that all of these will be built in one country.
10 They don't expect to build them all in the United States. So, if 11 these reactor are going to be built in multiple countries in a relatively short 12 period of time, that's going to require a coordination among regulators on 13 licensing unlike anything we have seen in the past.
14 The NRC has taken very important first steps under, you 15 know, previous Chairs Svinicki and Hanson, to advance cooperation on a 16 bilateral basis with close countries, but we have to go to the next step.
17 We have to go multilateral and that's where I think an 18 organization like the NEA could be helpful, but it really, again, can't happen 19 unless there is a driving desire by the NRC and like-minded regulators to do it.
20 For what it's worth, I have had very substantive conversations 21 with ministers in various countries, and they recognize there's a need to deal 22 with this and they would like to deal with it, and so we're hoping to be able to 23 facilitate this, to make this happen, but I think that's the biggest opportunity, to 24 create that global market for SMR technologies, and it won't be an easy thing to 25
47 do, but I do think it's absolutely within our grasp.
1 COMMISSIONER MARZANO: Yeah, and thank you for that.
2 I completely agree. I think when it comes to our international engagement, you 3
mentioned also having a whole-of-government approach here, and that's really 4
what's needed to kind of put all of the pieces that we need to generate 5
investment overseas for U.S. technologies, so thank you for that statement.
6 Doug, I appreciate your time today. I was hoping we could 7
get slide three of your presentation up? I appreciate your comments on the 8
NRC's reactor oversight program. You know, as you've kind of shown in your 9
slides, there's been tremendous improvement in the safety performance of 10 operating reactors over the last 20 years.
11 And I know very well that this safety record and high level of 12 performance was achieved because of the combined efforts of NRC staff 13 executing our licensing and oversight functions every day and industry 14 professionals who maintain high standards for safety in the plants they support 15 every day.
16 That said, the ADVANCE Act compels us to revisit our 17 approach to oversight and deliver a more efficient and, excuse me, effective 18 ROP. Expectations for the deployment of new technologies, as we've heard 19 here, and the increase in the number of operating reactors requires us to grow 20 and adapt our oversight program in response to a rapidly evolving technology 21 landscape.
22 So, you know, I don't necessarily believe that the NRC staff or 23 industry professionals are content with resting on our laurels. We should all 24 applaud the culture of continuous improvement that has produced these results 25
48 that you saw on that slide, and there are far fewer greater than green findings 1
today compared to 20 years ago.
2 And I also observed though, you know, one thing that I did 3
want to kind of touch on in that data, that although the number of findings has 4
declined, we still are at about 80 percent of those being self-revealing, and that 5
suggests to me that there's obviously still room for the NRC and the industry to 6
improve in how we detect and disposition issues throughout the fleet.
7 So, my question here is as we're reevaluating the NRC's 8
ROP, how can licensees and the NRC work together to identify these potential 9
safety issues before they become self-revealing? How do we work on that 10 problem?
11 MR. TRUE: I mean, I think that -- well, I look at it from the 12 industry perspective that industry is driven to excellence by INPO, and we strive 13 every day, as you know from having been in a plant, for that goal of excellence.
14 I mean, it's so ingrained in the INPO process that they didn't even finish the 15 final E of excellence in the stone in some plaque in the lobby, that you're never 16 done on that journey.
17 So, I think there's always going to be a set of these. I would 18 be more concerned if we were having regional inspectors and resident 19 inspectors finding lots of problems on their own and the majority was flipped the 20 other way. You know, humans make mistakes.
21 Many of these self-revealing, I can think back to the specifics 22 where they were in security or in operations were due to human performance 23 errors, so we continue to strive towards higher human performance, but I'm not 24 saying we shouldn't look at things that are greater than green.
25
49 If they're greater than green, they deserve to be evaluated, 1
and the NRC should understand them, and we should make sure we're getting 2
to the right root cause corrections, but I don't think we get there by necessarily 3
changing our oversight process to make that happen either.
4 COMMISSIONER MARZANO: Thank you for that. I 5
appreciate it, and yeah, I'm familiar with how human performance and the 6
importance of it factors into safe operation of plants across the country, so 7
thank you.
8 Not much time left, but I did want to get one question in for Dr.
9 Huff. I appreciate, you know, highlighting some of those recommendations for 10 environmental reviews as we work to enhance our processes, especially in light 11 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
12 So, we are -- we have several efforts ongoing, including the 13 generic environmental impact statement for new reactors, simplifying the NEPA 14 process as appropriate for the Kaires, or sorry, excuse me, I just combined 15 those words there, Kairos Power Hermes 2 construction permit by using 16 environmental assessment in lieu of an environmental impact statement.
17 And then we also have utilized previously published 18 documents to capture efficiencies in environmental reviews for the Turkey Point 19 and North Anna license extension applications. So, Nader, to your point about, 20 you know, building on past work, I think that that's an important efficiency that 21 we can gain.
22 So, Dr. Huff, to that end, you highlighted again some other 23 recommendations. What areas do you think that the NRC staff should prioritize 24 as we're working towards improved environmental review efficiencies in the 25
50 recommendations that you shared today?
1 DR. HUFF: Thank you very much. I think that the most 2
interesting table in this whole report by Matt Bowen is in the appendix, Table 3
A1, and it's sort of an assessment by NRC staff of which of the resource 4
categories had the most environmental impact in the various environmental 5
assessments for Vogtle 3 and 4, for Fermi, for V.C. Summer, and for Levy 1 6
and 2.
7 Some of the ones that were sort of by and large small 8
environmental impacts for every review that were done was, you know, the 9
economic impacts to the community were either small, or moderately beneficial, 10 or largely beneficial, so they were all beneficial. So, reviewing them and 11 continuing to look for downsize may not be appropriate or a good use of time.
12 Resource categories associated with air quality, non-13 radiological health, and radiological health were all also always small in these 14 reports, and so I think these are areas where, you know, yes, we must continue 15 to assess radiological health, but perhaps former assessment can be drawn 16 upon to avoid replication of work given how small all of the assessments have 17 been so far.
18 Those are the ones that I would highlight the most. Site and 19 vicinity also typically is small, though there are a couple of cases of moderate 20 environmental impact that would be worth taking a look at.
21 COMMISSIONER MARZANO: Thank you, Dr. Huff, and I am 22 well over my time, but I did want to just acknowledge kind of a common thing 23 that I've heard from the panelists here, and that's how we maintain our public 24 license. Again, I think that's an effort by both the NRC and the industry working 25
51 together, and we should keep that focus in mind as we're trying to tease out the 1
efficiencies. So, with that, I'm done.
2 (Laughter.)
3 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Commissioner Marzano, 4
and thank you again to our external panel. I really appreciate the conversation, 5
both from the two of you here in the room and the two online, and we look 6
forward to taking a break here now for, let's say let's come back, what do you 7
think, 20 'til, about 20 'til, and then we'll reconvene with the staff panel. Thank 8
you so much.
9 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 10 10:32 a.m. and resumed at 10:42 a.m.)
11 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: We'll call the meeting back. Good 12 morning, again. Our next panel will be kicked off by the NRC's Executive 13 Director of Operations, Mirela Gavrilas. Mirela, the floor is yours.
14 MS. GAVRILAS: Good morning, Chairman, Commissioners.
15 Behind the people at this table, there is a wonderful ADVANCE Act team. We 16 actually have some alums already.
17 But most importantly, there is the enthusiasm and credibility 18 of very many of our staff, who not only contributed their own ideas, but who 19 listened carefully to our external stakeholders and incorporated their thoughts 20 and recommendations into our products.
21 The one current area of focus that you will not hear a lot 22 about today is our new mission statement implementation, because most of the 23 progress we made was in the last six weeks or so since this meeting was 24 rescheduled. However, we will address the mission statement in-depth in a 25
52 public meeting next Thursday after the regulatory information conference. And 1
with this, I am passing the microphone to Mike, the mic to Mike, who will give an 2
overview of our efforts and introduce the panelists. Thank you.
3 MR. KING: Thank you, Mirela. Good morning, Chairman and 4
Commissioners. It's been a busy eight months since the enactment of the Act.
5 We have made progress in addressing the requirements and taking actions 6
consistent with the spirit of the Act through open and transparent 7
communications, engaging our stakeholders to discover innovative ideas, 8
delivering on the early milestones, and establishing mechanisms to monitor our 9
impact.
10 I will touch on our progress in each of those areas, and 11 together with my colleagues on the panel, we'll highlight some of the activities 12 we're undertaking across the agency to implement the Act. We're not only 13 taking actions to address the activities specified by the Act, but also 14 implementing actions consistent with the spirit of the Act, and moving forward 15 without process delays wherever possible so we can reap early benefits.
16 For example, the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation or 17 NRR recently issued a revision to the inspection manual chapter for the light 18 water reactor inspection program to provide clear expectations and best 19 practices to monitor inspection technical support between headquarters and the 20 regions. These revisions aim to ensure issues are processed in a timely 21 manner and that low-level issues do not take up more time than what's 22 warranted.
23 Another example is a memo NRR management recently 24 issued to reinforce expectations for licensing efficiencies, and this came out of 25
53 an effort to engage external stakeholders on the NRC's review process for 1
license amendment requests that we began before passage of the Act.
2 Michele Sampson, Director, Division of New and Renewed 3
Licenses at NRR, to my left, will discuss this NRR memo and how it dovetails 4
with other ADVANCE Act-related activities. Next slide, please?
5 Transparency, both internally and externally, is a key aspect 6
of our implementation of the Act. Internally, we established a website to track 7
our progress on the 36 actions we identified to respond to the Act. These 8
actions have been assigned to 20 different project teams with NRC staff from 9
across the agency who are sharing ideas across business lines.
10 The Office of the Executive Director of Operation, or OEDO, 11 establishes clear expectations and provides guidance to the project teams, 12 maintaining oversight and accountability for each of the taskings associated 13 with the implementation of the Act.
14 Externally, we've launched a public website dedicated to the 15 Act. This site includes background materials, a progress tracker for key 16 milestones, and a list of published ADVANCE Act-related documents and 17 reports.
18 One of the reports I'd like to highlight is the NRC's plan to 19 implement the new special hiring compensation authorities provided by Section 20 502 of the Act, which will be discussed in more detail later by Eric Dilworth, our 21 Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer, seated to my far left. Next slide, please?
22 Engagement is another tenet of our implementation strategy, 23 so we established mechanisms to solicit ideas and feedback on our internal and 24 public web pages. To date, we've received 32 submissions from members of 25
54 the public and industry groups.
1 My team routinely monitors these submissions to direct them 2
to the appropriate project teams to act on the ideas, comments, or questions.
3 Michele will highlight an example of how this feedback helped to shape our 4
recently issued report on advanced manufacturing and construction.
5 Similarly, our internal website has a contact us feature for 6
NRC staff use. We've received over 100 submissions to help support the 7
ADVANCE Act implementation.
8 As you might gather from the word cloud generated using 9
staff idea submissions, the most popular topics were related to making the most 10 of interactions with our licensees, improving the efficiency of our inspections 11 and licensing reviews, and making the most effective use of our staff's time.
12 Jeremy Groom, Deputy Director of Region IV's Division of 13 Radiological Safety and Security, seated to my left, will discuss some of these 14 ideas and how they're shaping our assessment of the oversight and inspection 15 programs.
16 We've received all of the early advance -- oh, next slide, 17 please? We've achieved all of the early ADVANCE Act deliverables, 18 completing eight of the 36 task actions so far.
19 This slide identifies and contains links to four of our early 20 actions. The first one is a new memorandum of understanding or MOU with the 21 Department of Energy, or DOE, to enhance technical readiness and 22 coordination with DOE.
23 With this MOU in place, the NRC and DOE will benefit from 24 sharing technical expertise. This will provide the NRC with access to DOE's 25
55 experimental data and codes, yielding efficiency gains in the licensing process 1
for advanced nuclear fuels.
2 The last three bullets are recently issued reports. Eric will 3
cover the report on the second bullet in more detail, Michele will address the 4
third bullet during her remarks, and Chris Regan, seated to my immediate left, 5
will discuss the final bullet on our efforts to modernize our environmental 6
reviews.
7 Chris is the Director of the Division of Rulemaking, 8
Environmental, and Financial Support in the Office of Nuclear Material Safety 9
and Safeguards. One thing to know about reports is that they include a 10 consistent structure to identify actions that we're already taken, actions that are 11 currently underway, and future actions that are under consideration. Next slide, 12 please?
13 Our work does not stop with issuing these reports. It's 14 imperative that these changes move beyond just words in a report and become 15 embedded in our culture to drive efficiencies are aiming for. We've identified 16 our implementation of the ADVANCE Act as an enterprise risk for the agency to 17 ensure accountability and to regularly assess the impact of the changes.
18 OEDO is tasking the responsible offices to implement the 19 ADVANCE Act-related changes in a timely manner and directing them to 20 establish metrics to monitor the effectiveness of the changes, including actions 21 identified in the reports provided to Congress.
22 To increase transparency and achieving desired outcomes, 23 the NRC will use new public-facing metrics to track the completion of licensing 24 actions, inspections, and different professional views completed within schedule 25
56 and projected resources. We'll also monitor our success in resolving low safety 1
significance issues within targeted timeframes.
2 These metrics will provide us with data to adjust if we find out 3
that the changes are not as effective as we expected or if we're having 4
unintended outcomes. I'll now turn it over to Chris Regan. Next slide, please?
5 MR. REGAN: Thank you, Mike. Good morning, Chairman 6
and Commissioners. Today, I'll be sharing information we captured in the 7
recent report to Congress on our environmental program improvement 8
initiatives, providing an update on fuel facility licensing streamlining activities, 9
and briefly touching on the path forward on changes to foreign ownership, 10 control, or domination, or FOCD requirements. Next slide, please?
11 The NRC took a comprehensive look at the whole 12 environmental review program to identify actions to make our processes more 13 timely, efficient, and predictable.
14 Examples include implementing a 5,550-hour resource model, 15 a roughly 30-percent reduction from previous estimates for operating reactor 16 license renewal environmental reviews, and which we are measuring the 17 current applications against to inform future model adjustments; assessing a 18 streamlined phased approach for the licensing of microreactor technologies, to 19 include the potential use of design certification specific generic environmental 20 impact statements, which could result in as much as 4,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> in resource 21 savings per application; developing an e-portal for microreactor application 22 submittals that would allow for full, complete, transparent, and timely 23 communications between all parties involved in the NRC's environmental 24 review process; considering potential new categorical exclusions to reduce the 25
57 resources necessary for review of certain actions.
1 You'll be hearing more on how we propose to further 2
streamline environmental reviews for microreactor applications at the 3
Commission briefing in April. Also, we're working on the new reactor generic 4
environmental impact statement rulemaking, which if finalized, could save up to 5
40 percent of staff's efforts per application or roughly 6,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br />.
6 Additionally, maximizing incorporation by reference to 7
previous environmental studies and also the ongoing brownfield assessment 8
per Section 206 of the Act to use existing site data and information. This 9
assessment may identify additional savings for environmental reviews and will 10 be further discussed by Michele shortly.
11 We established MOUs which increase efficiency by 12 establishing the respective roles and responsibilities of lead and cooperating 13 agencies, as well as schedule and deliverables for environmental review. We 14 now have MOUs with the Department of Air Force on the Eielson Air Force 15 Base project, and DOE on projects such as the Palisades restart request and a 16 trio of new reactor projects.
17 In the agreement with the Department of the Air Force, they 18 are the lead for consultation under Section 106 of the National Historic 19 Preservation Act, which we anticipate will save roughly 50 percent of the NRC 20 staff's effort on the consultation process. Next slide, please?
21 The environmental review staff host roughly 25 public 22 meetings per year or what equates to approximately one every two weeks.
23 These meetings have reduced the risk for future issues that could impact the 24 schedule by ensuring environmental review actions have appropriate scope and 25
58 adequately address technical issues.
1 To be more transparent, we created a new public website that 2
shares review information such as our environmental program blueprint, which 3
serves as a roadmap to all of the activities the environmental program supports.
4 This includes an environmental document capture and visualization tool, which 5
can reduce staff time when searching for information in support of review 6
activities by as much as 70 hours8.101852e-4 days <br />0.0194 hours <br />1.157407e-4 weeks <br />2.6635e-5 months <br /> per project.
7 The website also provides external stakeholders the ability to 8
independently identify and find relevant information, which reduces the burden 9
on the public and the NRC staff as the information is more readily available to 10 the public without staff assistance. We encourage pre-application 11 engagements for environmental reviews to increase timeliness and reduce 12 overall agency resources expended.
13 This past year, we consulted with over 200 tribes, sent over 14 480 letters to tribes and state historic preservation officers, and led 27 tribal 15 meetings. Engaging with tribes and state historic preservation officers during 16 the Carbon Free Power Project, for example, helped reduce schedule risks 17 while the review was ongoing and strengthened relationships with the tribes.
18 For our recent Clinch River environmental assessment, staff 19 completed tribal engagement under the Section 106 consultation process with 20 minimal schedule risk, saving about 700 hours0.0081 days <br />0.194 hours <br />0.00116 weeks <br />2.6635e-4 months <br /> of staff's effort since staff were 21 able to build off the working relationship developed with tribes and state 22 agencies during these previous reviews. These early engagements allow staff 23 to forge meaningful trust relationships with tribes and understand and address 24 concerns earlier in the process.
25
59 Finally, the use of virtual or hybrid meetings to supplement in-1 person interactions enables us to reach broader audiences and increase public 2
engagement during the environmental review process. Next slide, please?
3 Now, we'll share an update on a streamlined fuel facility 4
licensing program that we initiated in 2020, fully implemented in 2023, and are 5
continuing to build upon in response to the ADVANCE Act.
6 Thirty-six process improvements were implemented, including 7
revised processes for pre-application engagement, acceptance reviews, site 8
audits, and use of precedents. Actions from this program are resulting in 9
completing 95 percent of the actions within public schedules, a significant 10 improvement from the 85 percent previous average.
11 Staff is building upon these improvement initiatives as part of 12 the Licensing Efficiencies and Processes, or LEAP team, in support of Section 13 505 of the ADVANCE Act that Michele will elaborate shortly on for the other 14 business lines.
15 Industry is projecting an increase in applications for accident 16 tolerant fuels in new reactors. Use of the streamlined program facilitated 17 completing review of the first license amendment request to increase 18 enrichment to 13 months, and for the most recent amendment request to 19 increase enrichment limits in 11 months, roughly 15 percent faster.
20 The fuel facilities business line also created a new tool to 21 enhance visibility and accountability for major licensing reviews, starting with 22 the TRISO-X fuel facility application. The tool provided the first public-facing 23 source for licensing information for the business line and it has increased 24 transparency on the status of NRC's review.
25
60 The staff has since expanded the use of this approach to 1
other major licensing reviews, including the LES increased enrichment license 2
amendment request that piloted new features to visualize and track estimated 3
versus expended hours and the project schedule status.
4 Lastly, I wanted to mention the rulemaking and financial 5
centers of expertise efforts to streamline rulemaking options for implementing 6
Section 301 of the ADVANCE Act changes that designate certain exceptions to 7
the foreign ownership, control, and domination prohibition.
8 We are utilizing a smaller, more focused working group, and 9
using lessons learned from recent rulemaking activities to facilitate shortened 10 concurrence timeline, like minimizing review layers in the concurrence process 11 and running reviews in parallel wherever possible.
12 With these improvements, we expect to save at least six 13 months over a typical schedule and to deliver the rulemaking package to the 14 Commission by the summer of 2025. This concludes my remarks and I'll now 15 turn it over to Michele. Thank you. Next slide, please?
16 MS.
SAMPSON:
Good
- morning, Chairman and 17 Commissioners. Next slide, please? In line with Section 505 of the Act, we are 18 implementing change across the agency to improve licensing efficiency, 19 timeliness, and predictability.
20 These efforts are being coordinated through the Licensing 21 Efficiencies and Processes, or LEAP team, to ensure consistency across 22 agency licensing programs. Over 70 percent of current power reactor licensees 23 are interested in requesting power uprates in the coming years.
24 Because we have extensive experience with power uprate 25
61 reviews, we have delegated approval from the office director to the division 1
level, which is expected to shave weeks off of the review timeline. Moreover, 2
we are using a graded approach to streamline the review based on safety 3
significance. We are benchmarking against the 172 power uprate applications 4
that have been approved since 1977.
5 For extended power uprates, the graded approach is 6
expected to reduce resource expenditures from the uptick to 8,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> in 7
recent years back down to about 5,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br />. We will be tracking results to 8
ensure these changes have the intended effect.
9 We are continuing our work to further streamline the staff's 10 safety review for subsequent license renewal applications. The staff has 11 implemented the license renewal roadmap to reliably complete reviews in under 12 14,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> per application with a high-quality application and timely 13 responses from the applicants to requests for information.
14 We have challenged ourselves to identify additional 15 improvements, including further risk-informing our reviews commensurate with 16 safety. One of the most impactful changes is to streamline our review of aging 17 management programs by recognizing overlap with the existing oversight 18 program.
19 We are also developing subsequent renewal guidance for a 20 delta review approach to the scoping and screening portion of the application to 21 leverage information from the initial license renewal if the methodology for 22 scoping and results of screening are unchanged and continue to apply.
23 For example, structures such as the turbine building and 24 water treatment building, scoping and screening results may be incorporated by 25
62 reference into the subsequent license renewal application. We anticipate these 1
changes will save 20 percent in staff hours for the safety review.
2 Recently, NRR management issued a memo to staff to 3
reinforce expectations for licensing efficiencies. The memo will drive staff to 4
focus on disciplined, safety-focused, risk-informed reviews, and we will be 5
following up with guidance later this year for staff and applicants to apply best 6
practices across all pre-application engagements. Next slide, please?
7 One of the early developments, excuse me, one of the early 8
deliverables for the agency was the Section 401 report on advanced methods 9
of manufacturing and construction for nuclear energy projects. We built on the 10 agency's ongoing activities in this area and benefitted from stakeholder 11 engagement to think beyond the traditional reliance on nuclear codes and 12 standards to identify the actions in the report.
13 Both participants in our public meetings and written input 14 identified additive manufacturing for large reactor components as an 15 enhancement for future reactor construction. Stakeholders also highlighted the 16 use of new materials that would be suited to the expected high-temperature 17 environment of advanced reactors such as a new Class A advanced austenitic 18 stainless-steel alloy.
19 Based on this input, the NRC team identified the development 20 of additional guidance for emergent technologies as an action that would 21 enhance efficiency in staff reviews and provide greater clarity to applicants.
22 The staff plans to initiate development of this guidance later this year.
23 We are also accelerating the endorsement process to provide 24 regulatory predictability for applicants who want to use code approved 25
63 innovative manufacturing techniques and materials.
1 An early demonstration is publishing the draft regulatory guide 2
that, if finalized, would endorse the 2023 edition of ASME Section III, Division 5, 3
for high-temperature reactors. This draft regulatory guide was published in an 4
expedited timeframe this past December.
5 Timely endorsement is of particular importance for applicants 6
who rely on these standards for the construction of metallic nuclear plant 7
components that operate at temperatures greater than 700 degrees Fahrenheit, 8
such as the salt-cooled, high-temperature Hermes test reactor. Next slide, 9
please?
10 Over the past seven months, we have worked to identify 11 crosscutting solutions and coordinate across teams to ensure a synergy 12 between implementation of the various sections of the Act. For example, as 13 part of implementation of Section 206, we are exploring ways to expedite the 14 licensing review process for proposed nuclear facilities at or near brownfield 15 and retired fossil fuel sites.
16 Public meetings provided insights into legacy site issues and 17 potential benefits for sites historically involved with energy production. Reliance 18 on previous site characterization offers the opportunity to reduce the time 19 needed for an applicant to prepare site-specific information for an application.
20 Additionally, the ability to use existing infrastructure, such as 21 electric transmission and switchyard components, provides other potential 22 benefits for applicants. The staff is on track with its assessment to support 23 meeting the deadlines in Section 206.
24 The staff is also making progress in implementing Section 25
64 207, which provides for an expedited combined license or COL procedure for 1
qualifying license applications. The staff stands ready now to review 2
applications submitted requesting the expedited procedure.
3 We are developing guidance to be issued later this year to 4
provide clarity on which applications will fall under Section 207, and we 5
recognize that our work developing expedited processes will have benefits for 6
all reviews.
7 In addition to utilizing the design-centered review approach 8
described in guidance, the use of applicable existing data, such as 9
meteorological or other environmental information, may reduce the time to 10 develop an application.
11 The type of application that we anticipate seeing submitted 12 under Section 207 would be for an existing design, like the AP1000 reactor, 13 planned for deployment at an existing reactor site.
14 In this scenario involving a previously approved design and 15 existing early site permit approved at the site, significant portions of the staff's 16 safety review have already been completed, and in accordance with our 17 guidance, can be incorporated by reference into the application, saving time 18 and resources for applicants and the staff.
19 You will hear about the work we've been doing to implement 20 Section 208 regarding microreactors at the upcoming April Commission 21 meeting. This concludes my remarks and I will now turn it over to Jeremy 22 Groom. Thank you.
23 MR. GROOM: Thank you, Michele. Good morning, 24 Chairman and Commissioners. Today, I'm going to brief you on how the NRC's 25
65 regional offices are impacted by the ADVANCE Act with a focus on staff actions 1
to respond to Section 507, which requires the NRC to assess improvements to 2
the efficiency of our Oversight and Inspection Programs. Next slide, please.
3 To start, I'd like to build on Michele's discussion of 4
stakeholder outreach and the importance of considering a wide range of views 5
as we conduct the assessment for Section 507. One of the most important 6
pieces of feedback we've leveraged is input from our inspection staff. These 7
staff are deeply familiar with the intricacies of our Inspection Program and know 8
where our oversight delivers significant safety benefits. On the other hand, they 9
are also well aware of where we face inefficiencies, duplication or where the 10 safety benefit doesn't align with the effort we expend.
11 Over the past seven months, we've sought feedback from our 12 inspectors through focus group sessions, presentations at annual inspector 13 counterpart meetings, suggestion forms and through the ADVANCE Act 14 engagement portal. This outreach effort yielded over 100 different improvement 15 ideas from our inspectors. For example, our resident inspectors identified that 16 we have been expending duplicative resources monitoring reactor coolant 17 systems for RCS leakage using overly conservative action levels. While 18 tracking leakage remains an important part of our Oversight Programs, the 19 resident inspectors contributions to our ADVANCE Act work will allow us to 20 eliminate this redundancy while maintaining an appropriate focus on the RCS 21 barrier. Next slide, please.
22 Before diving into some of the ideas currently under 23 consideration related to Section 507, I'd like to briefly outline how we approach 24 this task. Very early on, we recognized that understanding the origins of the 25
66 NRC safety framework and the current state of industry performance was 1
crucial to this project's success. This chart, which shows the total number of 2
reactor SCRAMs and accident sequence precursor events each year since the 3
inception of the reactor oversight process or ROP, is one example of 4
information used to develop our ideas. Analysis of this data showed us that the 5
average number of SCRAMs each year since 2020 is about half of what it was 6
during the first five years of the ROP. Likewise, accident sequence precursor 7
events are down by almost two-thirds when comparing the same time frame.
8 We then examined the expected baseline inspection resource 9
expenditures over the ROPs 24-year history. This data revealed to us that the 10 ROPs expected level of effort when comparing 2000 to 2024 dropped by about 11 12 percent, with most of that reduction coming in the last three years because 12 of the initiatives to better risk inform the Inspection Program. Our takeaway is 13 that while the ROP has seen significant modifications over the last 24 years, 14 most changes were internal shifts to our inspections that didn't significantly 15 change the resources we expend on oversight.
16 We also looked at other measures such as greater than green 17 findings, NRC performance indicators and overall plant risk profiles. These 18 other measures show similar performance trends and suggested improvements 19 in industry performance have outpaced how the NRC allocates oversight 20 resources, driving us to be ambitious as we work to modernize the ROP. Next 21 slide, please.
22 I'll now highlight the enhancement ideas under consideration 23 for the ROP. Our most ambitious idea involves a comprehensive review of all 24 performance indicators and inspection procedures across every ROP 25
67 cornerstone. We expect this review will identify readily available plant 1
performance data currently used by the industry but not considered in the ROP 2
that can be leveraged to reduce inspections in areas where industry 3
performance is adequately monitored. Although this comprehensive review will 4
take time, we've identified immediate opportunities for change within the 5
existing ROP framework. These changes include a scope reduction to our 6
largest team inspections as well as the development of staff guidance allowing 7
inspection reductions for plants that had maintained column one performance.
8 Likewise, in the security cornerstone, we've identified 9
opportunities to adjust the frequency, schedule and content of our security 10 inspections. This would reduce travel costs, improve consistency across the 11 regions and prioritize inspector focus on those elements with the greatest 12 security significance.
13 Collectively, as a result of these changes, we expect average 14 ROP resource savings of 300 hours0.00347 days <br />0.0833 hours <br />4.960317e-4 weeks <br />1.1415e-4 months <br /> annually for each reactor site. This is 15 approximately a seven percent total reduction in ROP resources per site, which 16 is the equivalent of one less major team inspection.
17 We are also developing ideas involving white findings to 18 better align these assessment inputs to their actual risk of public health and 19 safety. For example, we are considering an idea that would give licensees 20 credit for identifying white findings. These findings would still be inspected to 21 confirm corrective actions but would not result in increased oversight typically 22 associated with the regulatory response column of the Action Matrix. This 23 change would encourage licensees to identify and address issues proactively 24 directly improving safety and security of NRC regulated facilities.
25
68 Finally, we plan to change how the NRC prepares for, 1
documents and closes out inspections. For example, we are currently revising 2
our Inspection Manual to strengthen our use of the Very Low Safety 3
Significance Issue Resolution or VLSSIR process. This expansion would allow 4
our inspectors the opportunity to use VLSSIR for all very low risk compliance 5
issues rather than just limiting the program to licensing basis questions.
6 Further, we will include new staff guidance addressing the amount of inspection 7
resources we expend on an issue before we enter the VLSSIR process, 8
ensuring that we don't expend unnecessary resources on issues of low safety 9
or security significance.
10 To monitor our performance in this area, we will use public 11 facing metrics to measure our ability to complete our inspections on time and 12 within the expected number of resources. Next slide, please.
13 Like we did for the ROP, we closely examined the history of 14 our materials oversight programs to explore new ways to better expend our 15 resources. For example, in the Fuel Facilities Inspection Program, we adjusted 16 inspection frequencies, reduced overlapping requirements and provided 17 oversight reductions for sights with an approved Corrective Action Program.
18 Over the last three years, these program adjustments reduced our direct 19 inspection costs by as much as 16 percent without compromising safety or 20 security. We have made similar inspection changes to our other Materials 21 Inspection Programs and business lines and we are incorporating the VLSSIR 22 process into those programs allowing our staff the ability to resolve challenging 23 compliance issues that are resource intensive but carry low safety significance.
24 In addition to these recent changes, we are developing 25
69 several ideas that will make materials inspections more efficient using modern 1
information technology, improved inspection report formats, centers of expertise 2
and streamline internal processes such as those used for enforcement actions.
3 These improvements would help make our staff's work easier and reduce the 4
regulatory burden on NRC licensees.
5 Finally, I'd like to highlight our Differing Professional Views 6
Program. Like our Oversight Program work, we gathered feedback, conducted 7
benchmarking and analyzed key data including timeliness metrics to assess the 8
programs impact on agency work. Our team is developing an analysis 9
determination tool that uses evidence strength and safety significance to guide 10 scheduling and resource allocation and, in some cases, identify alternative 11 resolution to differing opinions. This will help ensure that differing views are 12 resourced and resolved in a manner that is consistent with their safety 13 significance.
14 This concludes my remarks. I will now turn it over to Eric 15 Dilworth. Thank you.
16 MR. DILWORTH: Good morning, Chairman and 17 Commissioners. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss our efforts to 18 implement Section 502 of the ADVANCE Act. I would like to note that we are 19 engaging with the union, NTEU, on appropriate aspects of the implementation 20 plan for the new authorities associated with Section 502 of the ADVANCE Act.
21 Next slide, please.
22 I would like to begin today by talking about hiring authorities 23 which are pivotal in addressing work force gaps. Thanks to the ADVANCE Act 24 we now have the ability to streamline hiring for exceptionally well qualified 25
70 individuals when needed. One of the most impactful tools at our disposal is 1
direct hire authority. Direct hire authority accelerates the process for bringing in 2
highly specialized professionals and allows us to target external professionals 3
for covered positions.
4 This outreach can include industry engagement, partnerships 5
with educational institutions and networking to attract high caliber talent. The 6
NRC can identify covered positions that require highly specialized expertise or 7
necessary for timely, efficient and effective agency performance. For example, 8
the timely completion of novel or first of a kind regulatory issues. This would 9
also include individuals in fields where expertise is scarce, such as advanced 10 reactors, data science and risk informed regulatory processes. Next slide, 11 please.
12 Over the past decade, we improved our ability to overcome 13 high rates of attrition. Over the past two years, we onboarded a net gain of 155 14 new employees. We've done this by prioritizing recruitment to hire individuals 15 with highly specialized skills. The NRC's attrition rate continues to be in line 16 with the seven to nine percent attrition rates for the federal government; 17 however, our attrition rates for highly specialized positions, such as structural 18 engineers, health physicists and other scientific positions have seen attrition 19 rates up to 20 percent.
20 These figures reinforce the importance of strategic work force 21 planning and the need to strategically address recruitment and retention 22 challenges, forecast work force trends and ensure the alignment of human 23 capital with work force and workload needs.
24 I look forward to sharing OCHCO's progress on the 25
71 development of the new strategic work force planning process and the initial 1
results by June of this year.
2 To further enhance our conversation offerings, the ADVANCE 3
Act allows us to implement targeted recruitment bonuses, new hires in covered 4
positions can receive a one-time recruitment bonus contingent on a two-year 5
service agreement. This is consistent with other NRC incentives where a 6
service agreement is tied to the incentive and assures we're not only attracting 7
the best candidates, but also retaining them.
8 The act allows us to offer higher base salaries for designated 9
covered positions. These will be positions for exceptionally well qualified staff 10 that require highly specialized expertise or are necessary for timely, efficient 11 and effective agency performance. Next slide, please.
12 In this environment where we value innovations, especially in 13 challenging technical areas or in identifying efficiencies, recognition is 14 extremely important. Consistent with our mission statement, we recognize that 15 the quality and timeliness of our contributions are important to the safe and 16 secure use and deployment of civilian nuclear energy technologies and 17 radioactive materials through efficient and reliable licensing, oversight and 18 regulation.
19 Under the ADVANCE Act, we have the authority to reward 20 exceptional employee performance with bonuses up to 25,000 dollars. These 21 bonuses are awarded to employees who demonstrate exceptional performance, 22 whether through solving complex regulatory challenges or completing high 23 impact projects ahead of schedule. This strategy incentivizes high caliber 24 performance and addresses retention challenges for critical roles.
25
72 Utilizing existing authorities, such as time off awards, special 1
act recognition and end of the year performance awards are also key tools in 2
our strategy to reward staff for significant contributions to achieving our mission.
3 Next slide, please.
4 Investing in the next generation of regulators is essential for 5
NRC to meet frequent work demands. The ADVANCE Act requires annual 6
solicitation of applications for the Nuclear Regulator Apprenticeship Network 7
Program versus every other year. The increased frequency will provide a 8
pipeline for targeted specialized positions with high attrition rates or positions 9
with retention challenges. The program offers structured training and 10 mentorship and allows participants to gain hands on experience in regulatory 11 practices, technical analysis and stakeholder engagement.
12 We're also expanding our focus on employee development.
13 Through the NRC's Learning Management System, we track training needs, 14 outcomes and completion rates. This system allows us to deliver targeted 15 training programs that align with organizational priorities and employee career 16 goals. By offering programs that prepare employees for technical roles, we're 17 ensuring a smooth succession pathway. These efforts are more than about just 18 training, they're about creating a culture of continuous learning and professional 19 growth.
20 Now, I will turn to Mirela for closing remarks.
21 MS. GAVRILAS: I'll keep the closing remarks and just offer 22 us for your questions.
23 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Mirela, and thanks to each 24 of you for your presentations today and to those who are behind you supporting 25
73 you in your preparation as well. I'd be remiss if I did not thank my own staff for 1
preparing me, so thanks to them.
2 As we did in the first panel, I'm going to begin with questions 3
from the Commission. Mirela, I've got to come back to you. As you mentioned, 4
the Commission recently approved our new mission statement. What are we 5
doing now? Where are we in this process to get the new mission statement 6
embedded and enmeshed throughout our culture?
7 MS. GAVRILAS: I think we made great progress since the 8
Commission passed the new mission statement. Most significantly, we broke 9
down the mission statement into its four fundamental elements and that's a 10 departure from how we treated the previous mission statement, where we 11 focused on reasonable assurance of adequate protection because the new 12 mission statement is so much more than that and each element matters.
13 We've also solicited from the staff, we designed a straw man 14 of what can we specifically ask the staff to consider when implementing each of 15 the four elements of the mission statement. So far, we got quite a bit of 16 engagement and we were able to put the right categories under each element.
17 The other part of the strategy has been to bring a leader to oversee this effort.
18 A leader who can quickly integrate with the first line contributors so that we can 19 have a bottoms up kind of feeding into the implementation strategy.
20 Our implementation strategy will focus on identifying how the 21 new mission statement applies to everybody be they in rulemaking, be they in 22 licensing, be they in oversight and also in our corporate areas which are called 23 out explicitly financial, keeping the lights on, what have you. Our friends in the 24 Commission offices, for example, our colleagues who are doing legal work, our 25
74 colleagues who are doing international work have also agreed to help us out 1
with identifying the right things for them to do.
2 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you. This might be for you, but 3
others can chime in. Michele, maybe you or Jeremy and Mike, safety continues 4
to be our north star, that's the strike zone over home plate so this is not about 5
safety, this is about process and it's about results. You heard in the first panel 6
that alignment that D.G. Magwood spoke to, right, at every level. It's about the 7
process to improve the process, to fix the process, change the process in order 8
to get things through and out the door. Whether it's part 53, SDA reviews, 9
power up rates, subsequent license renewal, novel technologies or other items 10 or issues that we tend to get stuck and bogged down on that are of low to no 11 safety significance.
12 What can we do? What are we doing today that can get us to 13 show results and I mean more results, not just one result, but where we can just 14 keep banging these things out the door.
15 MS. GAVRILAS: I see Mike reaching for it so I'm going to let 16 him take the lead on that, please.
17 MR. KING: Okay, I see this as an area where there is a lot of 18 opportunity for us as an agency to gain some additional efficiencies. We've 19 done a lot over recent years, things like the VLSSIR process that Jeremy 20 mentioned, but I think we still identify amongst the staff when we ask, we've 21 identified situations where we were slow to recognize when we were spending 22 too much time on a low-level issue. Or, when we discover we're dealing with a 23 low-level issue that we were already spending too much time on, sometimes we 24 find that we've got barriers that just don't make sense and interfere with our 25
75 ability to what seems to be kind of common-sense things.
1 The real opportunity for us in things we're doing is we're 2
expanding, as Jeremy said, expanding the opportunity for VLSSIR to cover 3
more areas, all compliance issues not just things that are limited licensing basis 4
questions, being more explicit with our expectations. If leadership has an 5
expectation for how much time we spend on a low-level issue, let's be explicit 6
about it and so we're looking to be explicit, document what that expectation is.
7 Develop metrics to hold ourselves accountable. If we think we've got an 8
expectation, let's make sure we're measuring everywhere we do that so that we 9
can see are we having the intended effect.
10 The discussion we had earlier about the Differing Views 11 Program, being smarter as we enter that process, of course, we have to be 12 open to differing views that's very important for us to make informed decisions, 13 but also being deliberate about how much time we want to spend debating an 14 issue if it's a low-level issue and making that into the frame work of our process.
15 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Exactly, and is this an opportunity for 16 us in a project management kind of reorganization that I've heard you speak to, 17 Mirela?
18 MS. GAVRILAS: Project management is definitely going to 19 be a very high priority for this agency in the next couple of months. I will be 20 rolling that out in a more disciplined fashion, but heads up, it's going to impact 21 all of us.
22 I want to add something to what Mike said. One of the best 23 things that we can do to eliminate barriers is to provide people with tools and 24 one of those tools is a fundamental assessment of the safety and security 25
76 implication of something or the impact of an activity in the corporate domain.
1 That tool should be available to everybody so that we can align on that early, so 2
that we can decide what effort is necessary commensurate with that safety 3
significance and impact.
4 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you. Mike, this stuff has come 5
up many times over the years and it's what's considered consulting versus 6
being a helpful regulator. I felt for a long time personally and I've expressed it 7
to you that we sometimes don't answer questions we know the answer to and 8
instead sometimes play bring me another rock. I know this is something that 9
you're looking at. Can you kind of tell me where you're looking at drawing the 10 line or where is that line drawn?
11 MR. KING: Yeah, this is kind of a cross-cutting issue. I think 12 it reaps benefits across licensing, inspection so it's an area of opportunity for us 13 that could reap significant benefits. Through our interaction with stakeholders, 14 we have heard and I think staff I've interacted with from the NRC have heard, 15 sometimes there are differences between how some staff, the level of comfort 16 they have in interactions with stakeholders, on sharing operating experience.
17 Sharing things that have been successful in the past to help get past situations 18 where we're apparently talking past each other and not making progress 19 particularly in situations where there's a low-level safety issue at play.
20 The analogy I give frequently is you're doing a kitchen 21 renovation and you have to do an electrical inspection. Do you want the 22 inspector who comes out that doesn't interact with you, doesn't answer your 23 questions, gives you a ticket and says you failed the inspection and which rule 24 you failed or do you want one that comes to you and answers your questions 25
77 along the way, says yes, you failed, but here are some things I've seen that 1
have been successful in passing this inspection. We need to move the 2
organization in a direction where we're more like the latter.
3 We have to do it in a transparent way so that our stakeholders 4
feel confident that we're not doing something behind the scenes, not in 5
transparent view of the public. So, we need to help the staff understand where 6
is that line between being a helpful regulator consistent with the mission to 7
enable the safe use where it makes sense and crossing the line to where you're 8
essentially saying ahead of time if you do this, we will approve it.
9 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Yeah, so I was going to ask you the 10 mission statement, I think, we really intended to try to get to that a little bit, not 11 just safe use but safe deployment, right? Because that's in there too. This is 12 something we're following, I just wondered if the mission statement, as people 13 get used to it, do you think that's going to give them the confidence that yes, we 14 are supposed to get involved a little bit deeper?
15 MR. KING: Yeah and that's a key aspect and you'll hear a lot 16 more about that on Thursday at our public meeting after the RIC.
17 MS. GAVRILAS: I'm going to take a moment and chime in 18 there. That's a big cultural shift and one of the things that we're careful about in 19 the deployment and implementation of the mission statement is to not appear 20 that the decisions are made by a select few. We want to engage everybody so 21 that they understand the rationale for every word that's going to appear in the 22 guidance for the mission statement implementation.
23 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you for that. I've got about 25 24 seconds left. Michele, I'm going to get to you later and we're going to have a 25
78 conversation. I'll bring you up and we'll talk about some things. I wanted to let 1
you know and Theresa Clark too, by the way, you all are two people I hear kind 2
of in tandem, a lot of good things people are saying about you and about the 3
work that you all are doing. I wanted to one, thank you for the work that you're 4
doing and let you know what I'm hearing inside and outside the walls because I 5
think it's important. I think that demonstrates that we are trying to be more 6
proactive and accommodating where we can be on those things, especially in 7
the areas -- safety is safety we get that, but in the areas where we can try to 8
streamline and push things together, so thank you.
9 With that, I will turn it over to Commissioner Caputo.
10 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Good morning. Thank you all 11 for being here. As the Chairman said, thanks for all your preparations to be 12 here today.
13 Director General Magwood and Commissioner Marzano both 14 noted and made comments about the fact that the authorities in the ADVANCE 15 Act were largely authorities that the NRC already held. I think for me when I 16 think about that I have to question why was it that Congress felt the need to 17 reassert those particular authorities. Why there was such strong support for 18 doing so. That is something I think all of us need to take to heart and reflect on 19
- how did we get here? Like the Chairman said safety being our north star, I'm 20 confident that every employee works to preserve safety.
21 One of the challenges I think we struggle with is to recognize 22 that individual independence doesn't imply isolation. Each person should 23 consider their role not standing on its own but how it contributes to the whole 24 because the agency is going to be judged on results. While the NRC has long 25
79 been regarded as the gold standard for nuclear safety regulation and has a 1
proud history, it's clear that the administration and Congress both expect 2
improvement from the agency and all of us have a role to play in creating those 3
changes.
4 No where is it more evident than Congress' direction to revise 5
our mission statement which the Chairman mentioned. We responded with a 6
mission statement that stresses enabling the safe and secure use and 7
deployment of nuclear technologies. This is a significant shift in culture and 8
mindset but fully consistent with our principals of good regulation as Mirela has 9
stressed before.
10 Mirela, the mission statement should also guide strategic 11 planning, providing a framework for setting goals and measuring progress. In 12 line with this being an element to change culture, obviously the industry knows 13 very well it's incredibly important when attempting to change culture that 14 training plays a significant role. So, how are you planning to train the work 15 force to conduct the timely, predictable and consistent licensing reviews as 16 stressed in the ADVANCE Act?
17 MS. GAVRILAS: So, we don't have all the answers yet, but 18 what we do have is I have a cheat sheet in front of me that has the breakdown 19 and the major categories and I'm looking at what do we have under enabling 20 safe and secure and we have timeliness, we have goal driven. We have 21 customer service orientation and by customer service, I mean a predisposition 22 to say yes whether Chris is asking me a question or an external stakeholder is 23 asking me a question, it's not the traditional customer service that people may 24 think about.
25
80 Under timeliness we have adaptability, flexibility and what 1
we're going to do is actually give examples on how the activities that we've 2
done so far have actually demonstrated that we can be adaptable, we can be 3
flexible. We're going to look in the past and try to find examples of where we've 4
done something right to incentivize people to exhibit the same behaviors going 5
forward.
6 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: And is this going to become 7
enshrined in performance plans because don't performance plans then extend 8
from the strategic plan?
9 MS. GAVRILAS: We expect -- we have an implementation 10 strategy that goes all the way from modifying the management directives, office 11 instructions, organizational performance and other performance plans, but 12 there's going to be an order in which that is going to happen because --
13 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Okay.
14 MS. GAVRILAS: At least some of them --
15 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Thank you.
16 MS. GAVRILAS: Need to be discussed with the union.
17 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: So, in keeping with culture, 18 Mike, obviously we've had a lot of talk this morning about progress. There's a 19 website. We've got project teams assigned, lots of public meetings, collecting 20 suggestions. There are a lot of things that sound like common agency 21 practices at a time when the administration and Congress are expecting 22 change. How can you be sure that these activities are actually shifting culture 23 and having a real measurable impact on how things are done? How will we be 24 able to tell when we've actually achieved a shift in business as usual?
25
81 MR. KING: Well, first off, just share, you know, in my role I 1
got the opportunity to go to several offices of the agency and interact directly 2
with staff. One of the things that I was most impressed with is there's a thirst 3
and recognition to contribute to the inflection point we're seeing and the 4
important role that we have as an agency in that. We've seen a lot of efforts of 5
staff to contribute ideas and some of the ideas have been pretty big ideas. I 6
think there is an energy amongst the staff of really kind of helping to contribute 7
to the future direction of the agency in a positive way.
8 But how do we make sure that's sustainable and we measure 9
our progress? We have to ingrain that, you know one thing staff always do or 10 inspectors love to do is follow procedures and engineers do that. We have to 11 find everywhere in our procedures where there's a decision point and we need 12 to change consistent with our mission to make sure we're making those 13 decisions. We have to ingrain and measure the outcomes, right? An update of 14 the mission statement is that we deliver results, it's not just we're enabling, it's 15 enabling the delivery of results and it's got to be safe.
16 We put metrics in place, we'll measure it and a measure of 17 success is over time the same type of licensing reviews, I would expect, we 18 would take less time to do the same time of licensing reviews.
19 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: So, if that's the case, I mean 20 given just the measure of talk about efficiency, the focus on efficiency in the 21 ADVANCE Act, if we're going to see these real efficiencies and they're actually 22 going to be measured, where is that going to be reflected? How is that going to 23 be reflected in budget going forward? Because the reality is if we are saving 24 money through efficiencies and licensing and inspection, if we aren't reflecting 25
82 that in the budget then the cost will simply be shifted from Part 170 into Annual 1
Fees and the notion of efficiency really becomes a mirage because the savings 2
actually weren't captured.
3 MS. GAVRILAS: So this is where the project management 4
initiative will come into place because there will be no place to shift without a 5
conscientious putting in place another project and when a project is put in 6
place, it's going to be put in place according to the priorities that we have in the 7
Action Matrix which was developed during Project M, but remains current today.
8 We intend to do that to an extent to which the agency has never done it in the 9
past.
10 MS. SAMPSON: If I could just add a brief thing. For 11 example, with license renewal, our budget model for license renewal we 12 adjusted to reflect a 14,000 hour0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> level of effort, but then in looking forward to 13
'27, we recognize that we have additional efficiencies that we see are in the 14 works and so we actually further reduced our budget model.
15 It won't fix this year, which is the question that you were 16 raising, but it will ensure that as we are putting together the '27 budget model, 17 that we recognize the lower level of effort that it's going to take per case, which 18 also enables us to be better prepared to cover the number of license renewal 19 cases that we see coming in.
20 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Wow, I like Mike's focus on 21 metrics because at some point, I think we need to prove it to ourselves that we 22 are actually seeing efficiencies. It is very easy to talk about processes and 23 efficiencies, we need to actually prove it to ourselves and to our external 24 stakeholders that we are, in fact, more efficient.
25
83 There's one last issue I'm going to spend a moment on.
1 Commissioner Marzano focused on self-revealing events and I just want to start 2
from a position of regulatory activity should be consistent with the risk reduction 3
achieved and to the extent that self-revealing activities, self-revealing issues 4
are safety significant, we have an inspection program in place to address those 5
if they are not safety significant. Then, we also have the VLSSIR process 6
which Mike talked about for dispositioning things that are not safety significant.
7 I guess my concern would just be at a time when we are 8
trying to focus on being efficient and focus on things that are safety significant 9
that we not open up another front into areas which are by definition not safety 10 significant, since they are not focused on within our inspection authority.
11 Pursuing some of these things that are beyond what we account for in our 12 inspection program and what we focus on in safety significant in trying to 13 anticipate these equipment issues that are self-revealing. The very nature of 14 pursuing that ends up being subjective and speculative.
15 I think it's very difficult to determine how much of an effort 16 would actually be warranted, how much of a safety benefit you would get from 17 such an effort. So, I would just like to caution that we have programs in place 18 like the Maintenance Rule, Corrective Action Program and our Reactor 19 Oversight Process that clearly have done quite a bit to drive safety 20 improvement in the industry. I would caution against getting into areas that are 21 inherently subjective and speculative. Thank you.
22 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Commissioner Caputo.
23 Commissioner Hanson?
24 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
25
84 Well, thank you all for being here and for the presentations this morning. I just 1
wanted to kind of start off just recognizing the incredible work that the staff has 2
done, not only in the last eight months, but I think really leveraging some of the 3
ongoing efforts over the last several years to make this place more efficient.
4 The way that you all have dived in and tackled the ADVANCE 5
Act and gotten organized around and have already some deliverables to show 6
for this, I'm really impressed and proud of all of you for the effort across the 7
entire agency that's gone into this so thank you so much.
8 Jeremy, I'm just going to start with you for a minute if I can.
9 There were a couple of things in your presentation that really jumped out at me.
10 There was a 12 percent efficiency and a 16 percent efficiency and those 11 numbers were really good, but I think what jumped out at me even more was 12 those are things that would have been achieved in like the last three years. It's 13 almost like the agency took the disruption of the pandemic to take a step back 14 and focus on things that were actually more important and more relevant for 15 safety to really revise our inspection procedures and focus on the things that 16 are really essential to our oversight mission. Do you think that's a fair 17 assessment?
18 MR. GROOM: Yes, sir, I do think that's a fair assessment.
19 We've been through ROP enhancement for several different iterations and it's 20 been some piecemeal progress. I think that the efficiencies that I highlighted in 21 my presentation show the progress we've made.
22 The ADVANCE Act gives us the opportunity for more and I 23 think that as we really looked at where the ROP was in the year 2000 compared 24 to 2024 and then we compared the state of industry performance, the 2000 25
85 resource expenditures that we expected for the ROP were based on 1
performance in the mid '90s at these plants. Things have changed so much in 2
the last 24 years.
3 Mr. True's presentation highlighted some of those things. My 4
presentation highlighted those things. I think we agreed on the dataset and we 5
understand that changes have happened and so even though we've made 6
changes, the changes have been incremental. We see the ADVANCE Act as 7
opportunity to do more and get us to the right point.
8 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Yeah, to keep going, keep 9
moving head.
10 MR. GROOM: That's right.
11 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Building on the success that 12 we've seen.
13 MR. GROOM: Yes, sir.
14 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Yeah, I think that's great. I 15 want to stick with you just for a second because occasional certainly from -- I'll 16 just own this myself, occasionally, I express a little dissatisfaction with the 17 content of the slides and so forth that we have, but on page 18 of your section 18 on the presentation, I think you all kind of hit that out of the park. It tells a clear 19 story, the bullets support the data on the chart, so, well done on that. Sorry, 20 Mirela's laughing.
21 Eric, I want to pick up on something that Commissioner 22 Crowell brought up in the first panel and that was the potential for a disconnect 23 between some of the actions we're seeing out of the administration and some of 24 the actions that we've got ongoing here. I think it's really important for us to be 25
86 specific about the potential impacts to the agency.
1 We've got some of our folks here from the NRAN group, 2
right? I mean one of the things the ADVANCE Act did was to tell us to do 3
NRAN on an annual basis. I think the expansion of that program and doing that 4
on an annual basis because it has been so successful over the last four or five 5
years in getting new folks in the agency, getting them trained up, getting them 6
invested in the mission.
7 I worry about well how do we kind of figure out and chart a 8
path forward to maintain and improve and build where we need to that program 9
given the environment and the other things that are going on that are impacting 10 the federal work force at large.
11 Have you guys thought about that and how are you all 12 approaching that?
13 MR. DILWORTH: Yes, sir. Of course, we continue to train 14 the current NRANers we have. They're getting the experience of going out on 15 their assignments, but as we work through the different hiring restrictions with 16 agency leadership, we'll look at where our priorities should be. We'll work with 17 leadership to identify those in the future and figure out where we need to hire 18 and keep our talent coming in. I think that's more things we'll have to do.
19 In the meantime, as far as we talk about efficiencies, we'll 20 keep doing efficiencies on how we bring in people so when we do start hiring, 21 we'll be able to do that more efficiently and be able to get the right people on 22 board.
23 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Okay, thank you.
24 MS. GAVRILAS: If I may?
25
87 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Please.
1 MS. GAVRILAS: We always see a caveat for public safety in 2
the executive actions that are in front of us and we are seeing now, I've heard in 3
Region III, I visited them last week, they told me that the pipeline for residents is 4
drying up. There are other examples where the nexus between public safety 5
and our staff may be so direct, my favorite example is a reactor examiner. The 6
reactor examiner is responsible for licensing operators who in turn operate the 7
plants safely. That's a really close nexus. It's a high burden for us to go and 8
ask that we need to hire, but we will do it if it becomes necessary.
9 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Great, thank you very, very 10 much for all of you on that. Michele, I'm sorry, I'm homing on the statistics this 11 morning. You had a point in your presentation about going from 8,000, I think it 12 was EPUs, right, extended power uprates from 8,000 to 5,000 but how do you 13 know, is 5,000 a hypothesis? How do you know that that's the right number or 14 if it should be lower or even potentially higher? How did you come to that?
15 MS. SAMPSON: Sure, thank you for the question. The 5,000 16 is really based on historical trend analysis that we had done on the EPU 17 reviews that were completed in the past. We made safety findings in the past 18 with about that level of effort and so we've set that as our initial goal to aim for 19 that as being an appropriate level of effort.
20 Let me just add there that it is not our intent to rest on that as 21 the final answer. We will continue to track progress to look at the programs that 22 we're putting in place and ensure that we are actually completing reviews in the 23 most efficient manner, consistent with the importance to safety and risk for that 24 review.
25
88 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Okay, great. Thank you very 1
much. I appreciate it. The reevaluation of that and the testing of that 2
hypothesis is really going to be important going forward.
3 All right, Mike, let me just finish up with you. You talked about 4
some of the barriers that we encounter occasionally to dispositioning potentially 5
low safety significant issues in a timely way. In that discussion, you talked a 6
little bit about procedures and desk guides and office things, guides, binder 7
things --
8 MR. KING: Instructions.
9 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Right, office instructions, thank 10 you, good lord. Even I can't keep it straight. Office instructions, etc., but 11 sometimes they're actually our own rules, right? Some of these things are in 12 regulation, right, and we have to follow our own rules. Sometimes those rules 13 can be subject to interpretation and we can do that and engage the public and 14 do that in a very transparent way, but sometimes the rules are actually pretty 15 clear and we have to go in and actually change the rules. Are staff identifying 16 those places where a rule change is potentially warranted and how are you 17 doing that? What's the time frame of that potentially over the next, say, year or 18 18 months or 24 months for some of that stuff to come to the Commission?
19 Where we've said look, here's this piece of our regulations that, given what we 20 know today, based on 50 years of experience and all of this stuff, isn't working 21 for us or the public the way we think it should.
22 MR. KING: We're definitely, as part of the Congressional 23 reports, I mentioned in my remarks, there's a three structure format. One is 24 things that we've done, things that are ongoing and future things. Anywhere 25
89 there's an opportunity that we've identified as a potential future opportunity that 1
potentially would include rulemaking, we will identify that and we have identified 2
that as part of our Congressional reports so far. Perhaps Chris could talk with 3
ongoing efforts of what they're looking at for streamlining rulemaking. There 4
are efforts going on there.
5 I also wanted to mention one thing that I think there's an 6
opportunity for us to look at. Compliance is you have to do it if it's clear it's a 7
compliance issue, right? Frequently, we find ourselves where it's not quite clear 8
and so we've got the VLSSIR process. I think frequently one of our biggest 9
challenges is how do we deal with the situations where we do have a 10 compliance issue, but it's really low-level risk.
11 We have the ability as an agency to issue enforcement 12 discretion, interim enforcement policies, those sorts of things. One of the things 13 we want to look at is figuring out do we have the right guidance in place for 14 determining when it makes sense based on the risk to perhaps do that. If we 15 see that we're doing that in the same area enough times, that's a sign maybe 16 we need to change the rule, so that we don't have to do that anymore. That's 17 one of the things we are looking at.
18 COMMISSIONER HANSON: Okay.
19 MR. KING: Chris, if you want to -- anything you want to add 20 about the rulemaking?
21 COMMISSIONER HANSON: You don't have to, it's okay, 22 Chris. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
23 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Commissioner Hanson.
24 Commissioner Crowell?
25
90 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
1 Again, thank you to all the panelists today for your presentations and thank you 2
for all that you and your staffs do during these unprecedented and challenging 3
times.
4 Mike, I'm going to start with you and talk a little bit about 5
public engagement vis-a-vis the ADVANCE Act, which I appreciate you 6
presenting on and my understanding is that that's going well. I'd like to 7
understand a little bit more from you about what's going well about that process 8
and maybe specifically in contrast to some of the concerns about how we 9
manage public engagement in the Part 53 Rule Development Process.
10 Obviously, one is statutory information and the other is a rulemaking effort so 11 there are different parameters there.
12 That being said, I think the shortcoming with Part 53 was that 13 we were taking a lot of input and not giving much output or rationale for what 14 we were considering or why or what we were going to take. How have we 15 improved upon that model in the context of ADVANCE Act engagement?
16 MR. KING: No, thank you for the question. Early on when we 17 divided up the efforts between the 20 different teams, we encouraged them to 18 have frequent public engagements and frequent internal engagements with 19 staff. We made sure staff was aware of what was going on and had the 20 opportunity to contribute ideas and the public had opportunities.
21 As members of the core team for the ADVANCE Act, we have 22 had at least one of the members in every public meeting that's occurred. As we 23 started having the sequence of meetings, we've learned lessons. We figured 24 out which formats for meetings tended to get the most traction for engagement 25
91 with the public. To the public's credit, many times some of them have given us 1
pretty direct feedback on what works and what doesn't work.
2 I think we've learned a lot through that process and during the 3
course of the meetings, one of the things I do and I know others do is as we get 4
questions where we feel like there's a lingering issue there, we really kind of 5
help prompt the discussion to keep it going and to get very specific, can you 6
give us more specifics? You say this is unclear, what aspect is unclear. So we 7
really get to the root of the issue because some of these things are moving so 8
quickly, we have to get the feedback in a very specific manner so that we can 9
feed it into our process and inform our decision-making for some of these 10 issues.
11 The other thing I'll mention is having multiple channels for 12 getting that feedback, I think we've seen, has been important. We get verbal 13 feedback during the meetings. Frequently, we get written input before or after 14 the meetings and the public website. We've gotten a lot of input, as I 15 mentioned during my remarks, electronically. We also identified every one of 16 those 20 teams, who is the staff lead? We gave their email, we provided a 17 separate email and so the multifaceted approach, I think, has yielded some 18 benefits because we've gotten a lot of input along the way.
19 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Along those same lines what, 20 if anything, have you been able to do to expand the scope of the participants in 21 these public engagements? I ask in the context of making sure we're not just 22 preaching to the choir, hearing from the choir and making sure we're educating 23 communities and individuals who may be impacted by an action that the NRC 24 takes all in the vein of enhancing and maintaining our social license. Have you 25
92 been able to get much traction bringing new voices and interests to these 1
meetings?
2 MR. KING: Yeah, obviously we've tried to announce them 3
ahead of time and some sections of the act are very explicit about which 4
stakeholders we have to engage. Of course, we've reached out proactively to 5
those, but in some areas of the act, and an example isn't coming to me, but I 6
know we had these discussions ahead of time.
7 We discussed deliberately hey, who else could be a 8
stakeholder here that we haven't seen in a recent public meeting? Let's just go 9
ahead and proactively reach out to make sure they're aware that this public 10 meeting is coming, the opportunity. The example isn't coming to mind, but I 11 know we've had those deliberate discussions. If any of you have got an 12 example?
13 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Michele?
14 MS. SAMPSON: Within development of our Section 401 15 report, one of the aspects the act asked us to look at was the use of non-16 nuclear codes and standards. We made a specific outreach effort to look at 17 what codes and standards are used in the oil and gas industry, to look at the 18 construction standards and to reach out to those standards organizations to ask 19 them to engage in our public meetings that we were having on Section 401.
20 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: And I would just encourage all 21 of you to think broadly think about other state, local and regional associations or 22 entities that you can engage with that may not realize that they have an interest 23 in this, but with the hopeful renaissance that's coming our way, they're going to 24 benefit from not being surprised.
25
93 Along those similar lines, I'm going to move to Chris. We've 1
talked a lot today about ways to streamline the environmental review process 2
and I think these are good things, necessary things that we need to do and I 3
hope it's one of the near term actions we can take to really continue to get the 4
balance between safety and environmental reviews back in good shape.
5 That being said, when we start to use categorical exclusions 6
and generic EIS and things like that, it also changes the nature of our 7
interaction with the public and with stakeholders. I think it actually changes it in 8
a good way. I think it allow us to change our focus from engaging exclusively 9
under a NEPA context to being able to engage -- let me just say it this way, as 10 human beings, one and other. Just have early pre-NEPA engagements or pre-11 application engagements so that people don't feel that their only opportunity to 12 weigh in and to be informed is through the NEPA process and then if they're 13 concerned about how quickly something is moving or how well they can 14 understand it, they can use NEPA to their advantage to slow things down.
15 That's not necessarily what they want or what we want, but it's the only lever.
16 Engaging more frequently with a wider variety of audiences, 17 particularly with regard to environmental reviews, I think is going to benefit us in 18 the near and long term. Any thoughts on that?
19 MR. REGAN: Thanks, Commissioner, for the question.
20 Yeah, I leverage what we heard from Dr. Huff about the right, appropriate 21 balance between stakeholder involvement and the actual technical analysis. It 22 does resonate with me from my experience, not only engaging with the tribal 23 communities and pre-application activities, but also with the public.
24 We frequently host open houses prior to public meetings that 25
94 we host. The ability to speak one-on-one with members of the public, talk to 1
them about what our role is, talk to them about what we do, what our process 2
looks like to inspire that stakeholder confidence does reap its benefits when we 3
actually come to entertaining comments on the documents that we produce.
4 The tribal communities, I think I mentioned in my remarks, we 5
engaged with one particular tribal community for one action and lo and behold, 6
developed a relationship with them and they are now interested in being a 7
consulting party in another agency action. You can kind of see that laying the 8
groundwork with ensuring an understanding with stakeholders and the public on 9
what we do and why we do, has its benefits across the entire program.
10 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: I appreciate that. I think 11 educating our constituents and the public broadly is always to our benefit and 12 will help smooth things out down the way. I'm going to turn to some hiring and 13 retention issues and this is either for you, Eric, or Madam EDO. Are the hiring 14 and retention authorities contained in the ADVANCE Act exempt from the 15 current executive order hiring freeze?
16 MR. DILWORTH: As far as we know, they are not exempt 17 from it. As Mirela alluded to, if we identify some critical hiring needs, we can 18 work with the Office of Personnel Management and request exceptions.
19 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Have we done that yet?
20 MR. DILWORTH: We have not.
21 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: What's the process for doing 22 it? How are we strategically going about that?
23 MS. GAVRILAS: We have not. We haven't even looked at it, 24 so it's a look up for us.
25
95 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Okay. I hate to draw the 1
general counsel in here, but is it accurate that the ADVANCE Act authorities are 2
not exempt from the hiring freeze?
3 MS. CLARK: The NRAN authority, the direction to solicit 4
annually for the NRAN is excluded in our view because that is a statutory 5
authority that the hiring freeze by its terms did not apply to. The other 6
provisions, the direct hire authority and the incentives, are associated with 7
positions so if we were to seek an exception from the hiring freeze on a public 8
safety basis and we wanted to use ADVANCE Act hiring authorities, I do not 9
believe we would be limited in that regard, but positionally the first step would 10 be to seek an exception from the current hiring freeze for the positions.
11 The most recent executive action associated with work force 12 optimization indicates that once the agency's plan for work force optimization is 13 reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget and the 14 Office of Personnel Management, the hiring freeze would be lifted. So, we are 15 in the process of preparing that report for submission consistent with the 16 administration's deadlines.
17 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Yeah, but that timeline is 18 uncertain in terms of when that plan will be proposed and approved. Who is 19 considered the head of agency for making these exception requests for hiring?
20 MS. CLARK: The EDO through the Chairman, keeping the 21 Commission fully and currently informed in most cases. Individual 22 commissioners retain the authority to hire in their own offices and Commission 23 Reporting Offices would work through the EDO.
24 COMMISSIONER CROWELL: Okay, great, thank you.
25
96 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
1 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Commissioner Crowell.
2 Commissioner Marzano?
3 COMMISSIONER MARZANO: I want to start by saying thank 4
you all again for your presentations. The NRC's updated mission statement 5
has set the tone for the way as the agency closes the book on the first 50 years 6
and enters into the next 50. I want to thank my colleagues here and their staffs 7
for the efforts to release the updated mission statement in a timely efficient way 8
to support both our staff and our Congressional obligations.
9 I believe that this mission statement strikes to the heart of 10 NRC's role as a safety regulator and is aligned with the spirit of the agency's 11 foundational statute, in the Atomic Energy Act, which clearly established our 12 responsibility to ensure that nuclear technology is deployed safely and securely.
13 The updated mission statement also reflects this direction.
14 Accomplishing it requires us to think differently about longstanding approaches 15 to our essential work and to foster a culture of continuous improvement and 16 innovation. Ensuring the NRC remains an effective regulator in this 17 environment requires us to be more responsive to the paradigm shift in the 18 generation of delivery of nuclear energy and applications of radioactive 19 materials.
20 However, as I pointed out in my vote on the mission 21 statement, the words on the page while they describe what we do and why we 22 do it, do not entail how we do it. The latter requires clear direction to staff that 23 describes mindset and behaviors to incorporate in their approaches to our work.
24 It also requires concrete models of the type of actions that serve to forward our 25
97 mission.
1 I think a key piece of the staff efforts under the mission 2
statement, and I appreciate, Mirela, your efforts here especially, of the 3
socializing of ideas, communicating those across the agency to help visualize 4
what culture is needed to affect the updated mission statement and direction 5
from Congress.
6 I am very grateful for all of your efforts in meeting the near-7 term ADVANCE Act milestones. I am encouraged that the staff has already 8
demonstrated their commitment to modernizing our regulatory frameworks, 9
improving our efficiency and strengthening our work force.
10 With that said, I think I want to open up a question to the 11 entire panel. The ADVANCE Act includes some very specific direction from 12 Congress of different areas for the NRC to kind of do a deep dive in terms of its 13 regulatory structure, especially in response to new applications involving 14 technology. I'm also aware that there was plenty of work going on in each of 15 these areas as the ADVANCE Act was being developed and passed. To that 16 point, can anyone offer some of the areas that staff is addressing in response to 17 the ADVANCE Act that were not previously identified or kind of lower in 18 prioritization for the agency?
19 MR. KING: Yeah, I think the example we had the discussion 20 on earlier about us clarifying the line between consulting and just being a 21 constructive, helpful regulator that is an effort that's really certainly come out of 22 our efforts. There's something that Mirela launched called strategic direction 23 initiatives, which are broader agency initiatives that are cross cutting in nature.
24 We went about that effort in a way where we didn't feel 25
98 constrained to just look at areas specifically directed by the act. For example, 1
when Section 505 of the act talks about licensing, it's largely focused on NRR.
2 We made the decision early on to if we're going to expend agency resources, 3
look for ways to be smarter about how we do licensing. Why would we restrict it 4
to one business line? Consistent with the spirit of the act, let's spread that 5
across business lines. We made the decision through our strategic direction 6
initiative to go ahead and include all business lines in that effort. That's what's 7
led to the LEAP teams that were mentioned in the presentation. There's one for 8
materials and there's one for reactors. That's an example.
9 COMMISSIONER MARZANO: Thank you for that and yeah, I 10 think to what's already been discussed here, the ADVANCE Act has some 11 specific timelines and directions, but I think what it says ultimately is that the 12 NRC needs to continue this culture of improvement into the next 50 years.
13 To the point about finding instances where the business as 14 usual is not serving us, I think that those are probably the most high-value 15 areas that we can address and having a systematic way of elevating issues that 16 require the Commission to weigh in. To that point also, where our authority 17 may be needing an update from Congress in keeping Congress informed of our 18 potential needs from a legislative perspective is going to be crucial in this time 19 as we lay out the foundation for the next decades or the coming decades.
20 As you start this look across the ADVANCE Act in these 36 21 areas, one of the things to be mindful of is that the reports, they're trying to dig 22 up lots of information about do we have policy questions? Do we need 23 rulemaking? Do we need to develop guidance? Like, what do we need to do 24 with our process, etc.? Can anyone maybe comment on what they think would 25
99 be the long pole in the tent right now? Something that we'd have to focus on 1
over several years in order to affect.
2 MS. GAVRILAS: That's easy, culture. Culture does not 3
happen overnight. The cultural shift, so I am very glad that we're not starting 4
now. Today is not time zero. Time zero has been in my view about a year ago, 5
a year and a half, when we knew that the ADVANCE Act is imminent, I think.
6 As you well know, culture develops. There's the early adopters, there's the bulk 7
of us who are learning and then there's going to be some people who we're 8
going to have to bring along.
9 I think we're already past the early adopters and we're in the 10 midst of where the majority of us are buying in.
11 MR. KING: Yeah, I would say because of the shift in the 12 potential need, the focus on microreactors. There are so many new policy 13 issues associated with that and obviously, we've had a lot of engagement on 14 that issue that that's going to be -- there's a lot to that and some of those are 15 probably going to take a lot of work to resolve.
16 I would think that's probably one we've got to spend a lot of 17 time focused on to be able to be successful to make sure we're ready when the 18 time comes, that those really start landing in our lap. That's another longer lead 19 item, I think.
20 COMMISSIONER MARZANO: I would just encourage 21 communicating with us early and often as this examination plays out. Just a 22 brief comment about culture here and I think it was kind of clear from the staff 23 presentations that getting buy in for that culture change is directly supported by 24 kind of the deckplate level leadership in affecting those cultural changes.
25
100 I'm encouraged that many of the solutions that we're finding 1
here are coming from the people doing the work every day. I believe that that, 2
again, develops a sense of ownership and responsibilities and so I think 3
continuing that as a way to maybe accelerate the cultural adoption that we're 4
going after is going to be very important.
5 Really briefly, I think we talked at length about metrics and I 6
share Commissioner Caputo's sense that how the metrics are measured and 7
what they communicate and how we communicate that progress is absolutely 8
essential to show that we're doing the work that's needed.
9 So, I kind of want to turn slightly on metrics driven by data 10 and what data can tell us and so I want to turn to the hiring authorities 11 especially. Eric discussed how we're implementing the program and obviously 12 there is still discussion with the union as far as building out the final structure 13 here.
14 I view the work force provision as kind of one of the 15 preeminent provisions in the ADVANCE Act that essentially kind of gives the 16 NRC additional tools and resources. You know there's a lot of direction, but 17 researchers are important here as well. In terms of data, how are you 18 approaching and examining how our work force looks today, especially given 19 the environment that we're in directing us to do that? To identify the gaps in the 20 expertise that can be targeted with this hiring authority?
21 MR. DILWORTH: Our work force shaping efforts, not work 22 force shaping, but our analysis, economic forecast of the work force, advanced 23 strategic work force planning which we will have initial results by June. We 24 started around the November timeframe and we've been really pushing hard, 25
101 that's something that the agency has talked about for a little while now and 1
we're going to finally get results. That's going to identify gaps where we really 2
need to focus our critical hiring needs.
3 You know with limited resources and funding, we need to be 4
able to hire the right people in right places and fill those gaps. Our metrics on 5
that will tell us a lot. Within that, you have metrics on retention, where we're 6
hurting and then our retirement numbers and what we expect on those, so all of 7
those things.
8 Then another metric that we've talked about is being able to 9
hire, time to hire, that's the other part that's been lingering out there, so our 10 results and report out on that is for the end of this month. We will still start 11 implementing those efficiencies whatever environment we're in and so when 12 we're trying to execute these authorities, we'll be able to deal with those better 13 than we've done in the past.
14 COMMISSIONER MARZANO: I appreciate you bringing up 15 the strategic or first planning. I think this effort is absolutely necessary as we 16 navigate the directives that we've gotten from the administration to make sure 17 that our work force continues to be able to execute our mission and respond, 18 again, to the growth of the work that we see coming. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, 19 I appreciate the opportunity.
20 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you, Commissioner Marzano 21 and to my colleagues, thank you for your questions and to your answers as well 22 from both panels. To paraphrase a recent Chair in our midst, it appears we've 23 come to the end of our time together today.
24 (Laughter.)
25
102 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: As we conclude my first meeting as 1
Chair, I want to thank my colleagues for their good wishes today and to 2
Commissioner Hanson, I'd be remiss if I did not take a moment to thank you for 3
your many years of service as Chair, so thank you so much.
4 It's been a great first Commission meeting on the ADVANCE 5
Act. I look forward to many, many more of these. I want to thank everybody for 6
their participation today. It was very informative and I've got even more 7
questions we will follow up on later. Before we close, I want to ask my fellow 8
commissioners if they have any comments they'd like to make. Commission 9
Caputo?
10 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: Thank you, Chairman Wright. I 11 just want to say congratulations to you --
12 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you.
13 COMMISSIONER CAPUTO: On your ascension to Chair. I 14 look forward to all of these future meetings with you. I look forward to your 15 leadership and supporting your goals and objectives so thank you for taking on 16 that responsibility.
17 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you so much.
18 COMMISSIONER MARZANO: Mr. Chairman?
19 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Yes?
20 COMMISSIONER MARZANO: If I may. Again, we want to 21 thank the staff for all of the work and the preparation that went into today and 22 the dedication to the new mission, thank you for that. Maybe some words of the 23 why this mission statement is really reflecting and kind of bringing it back to a 24 high level and that is to remind everyone that our success as an agency will 25
103 help the nation meet its energy needs, reduce harmful emissions, address 1
climate change and strengthen our national and economic security. That is why 2
our work is so important and, again, why the ADVANCE Act is so crucial to 3
those goals. Thank you.
4 CHAIRMAN WRIGHT: Thank you. Any other comments?
5 Hearing none, we will adjourn this meeting.
6 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 7
12:16 p.m.)
8