ML25218A236
| ML25218A236 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 08/11/2025 |
| From: | Phil Brochman NRC/NSIR/DPCP/CSB |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML25149A232 | List: |
| References | |
| Download: ML25218A236 (8) | |
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1 Transcript - Public Meeting: Discussing Options for a Follow-On Enhanced Weapons Rulemaking (polished)
June 26, 2025, 4:53PM Lynn Ronewicz 5:36 Hello, we'll get started right at 1:00.
Good afternoon, everybody.
Welcome to this virtual public meeting with industry and stakeholders for a discussion of options for follow-on enhance weapons rulemaking.
My name is Lynn Ronewicz and I will be assisting with meeting facilitation.
There is no court reporter for this meeting.
There is also no audio transcription, but via MS Teams we are doing a written teams transcript.
Before I go through some ground rules, I would like to introduce Joe Willis, acting chief of the Material Security Branch within the Division of Physical and Cyber Security policy in the NRCs Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response for some opening remarks.
Joe Willis 7:11 Thank you, Lynn. Good afternoon.
First, I want to express my appreciation to all of you for joining today's meeting.
Your continued engagement is both valuable and essential to our work.
Now the purpose of today's meeting is to discuss potential rulemaking options that would designate additional classes of licensees as eligible to apply for new authorities related to the use of firearms.
You should know that the NRC is looking critically at regulations and guidance.
Consistent with the Advance Act and executive orders to improve regulatory efficiency where appropriate and minimize regulatory burden in alignment with executive order 14300, ordering reform in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
NRC staff will continue to evaluate and prioritize rulemaking activities, including the development and recommendations to the Commission.
Your feedback and questions during today's discussion are vital.
They will help us inform our assessment of valuable of available options and guide the recommendations we ultimately present to the Commission.
Please note that this is a high level overview of the rulemaking effort and our staff will provide more detailed information in the future.
I look forward to a productive and thoughtful discussion.
With that, I'll turn the meeting back over to you, Lynn.
Lynn Ronewicz 8:35 Thank you, Joe.
This meeting will include a slide presentation with the opportunity for questions and
2 feedback afterwards.
No regulatory decisions will be made during this meeting.
Just for some basics, please keep yourself muted unless you have been called on to speak or have a speaking role.
Although the Team's chat is enabled, please only use the chat if you are having technical difficulties [with this webinar].
This meeting is being conducted using Microsoft Teams. Should you have trouble with the team's application, you can use a Microsoft Teams link provided in the meeting notice as opposed to Microsoft Teams app. In that case, disconnect [from the app] and try to reconnect to this team's meeting, or use the audio teleconference number that has also been provided in the meeting notice to listen to the meeting.
When we get to the public engagement portion of the meeting, please use the raised hand button to indicate your desire to speak.
Wait for me to acknowledge your turn to speak and then unmute yourself. As a reminder, please state your name and affiliation, if applicable, when you ask questions or provide feedback. If you're on the phone, you'll be pressing *5 on your phone to raise your hand and then *6 to unmute your bridge line connection when prompted.
And with that, I turn the meeting over to Phil Brochman.
Phil Brochman 10:01 Thank you, Lynn. Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Phil Brochman.
I am a senior policy analyst in the Materials Security Branch. Within the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response in the Division of Physical and Cyber Security Policy.
Today I'll be presenting an overview of the NRC staffs considerations of options for rulemaking on enhanced weapons that [is presently planned] to be presented in a paper to the Commission.
Next slide please.
This is an information meeting with a question-and-answer session. After I finish going through the NRCS presentation, we will have an opportunity for an open discussion where the meeting attendees can ask questions and provide feedback.
However, we will not be providing written responses to comments or questions.
Next slide, please.
Purpose of this meeting.
The staff would like to discuss what we see as potential options for what we're calling a follow-on enhanced weapons rule implementing the provisions of Section 161A of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. And I'll get to a little bit later about what this does.
Our objective is to share information and gather feedback from industry on the staff's development of an options paper. And for the Commission's consideration, we are seeking industry's perspective on these options.
3 Next slide please.
As some background, on March the 14th of 2023, the NRC issued a final enhanced weapons rule. For the purposes of clarity, we're going to call that the 2023 final rule the initial enhanced weapons rule. One of the components of that final rule was the Commission's designation of eligible classes of facilities and activities.
That they [eligible licensees] could apply to the NRC for the authority provided under Section 161A of the AEA.
You may have heard that this is sometimes referred to as preemption authority or enhanced weapons authority. Eligible licensees can voluntarily apply to the NRC for this authority, and it would essentially permit them to preempt state and certain Federal firearms laws.
The initial rule designated several classes of eligible facilities.
These included power reactors, Category I special nuclear material fuel cycle facilities, and independent spent fuel storage installations. And one class of activities, the transportation of spent nuclear fuel.
Next slide please.
In 2008, the staff had presented a paper to the Commission [SECY-08-0050] that provided a big picture concept of how we were going to move forward in implementing Section 161 A and as part of that, we recommended designating a small group of eligible facilities and activities, including those that I just mentioned.
The staff also recognized that there were additional classes of facilities and activities that might be appropriate for Section 161A authority.
But the decision was made that those would be dealt with in a separate, sequential, rulemaking. What we're calling the follow-on enhanced weapons rulemaking.
What you're seeing here in table one is the potential additional eligible classes that the Commission would consider were a rulemaking to be accomplished.
In developing this table, we [the staff] used several criteria.
Including things like applicability of the design basis threats, presence of weaponry, et cetera.
The criteria that we used back in 2008 and the criteria in updated table of what we would propose in 2025, the criteria have not changed.
We've learned some things and eliminated some categories and we've added some additional categories.
As I mentioned, the Commission, in response to this paper in 2008, directed the staff to conduct two sequential rule makings.
And now we're talking about the second of these two rulemakings.
And I'm going to just here to let you review this Table.
I think I've paused long enough so you can see some of the potential classes of facilities and activities [we would address in a follow-on enhanced weapons rule].
So we can always come back to this Table if there are questions on that. But I think at this point we're going to go to the next slide. So, we can move through this presentation and get to any questions that you may have.
So, our overall objective is to seek updated Commission direction.
4 The Commission had directed that staff to do 2 sequential rules. However, the staff's view is that given the length of time that has happened [since this direction in 2008]
and other considerations such as Joe mentioned, the Advance Act and other factors that it that it would be best to get updated Commission direction before proceeding directly to the rulemaking.
The other key factor is that since we issued the proposed enhanced weapons rule in 2011, the staff [meaning me] have not received any indication of interest in obtaining section 161A authority from licensees or potential applicants for a license other than those already identified in the classes of facilities and activities that are already specified in the section 10 CFR 73.15(c).
So essentially for everybody else, nobody has said, hey, we might have a possibility of interest [in obtaining Section 161A authority].
The other factor that's relevant to this discussion of the need for a rulemaking is that under the statute (section 161A) the Commission can designate by order individual additional classes of facilities and activities as eligible to apply [for this authority].
So, we would not need to go through rulemaking.
Next slide please.
So in that context, the staff has identified 2 potential options to be considered in a paper for the Commission's consideration.
One option would be to continue the follow-on enhanced weapons rule as previously directed by the Commission. The other would be to discontinue the follow-on enhance weapons rule and issue orders in a case-by-case basis as necessary.
Next slide please.
Our next steps - Right now we're working on developing an options paper, and we've scheduled this public meeting so we can get feedback from industry that we can include in the paper for the Commission's consideration.
Our schedule is to submit this paper to the Commission in the fourth quarter of this calendar year. We don't have a more precise date than that.
We'll just leave it as I said and as Joe mentioned there may be some issues with the NRCs response to executive order 14300 and how some of those issues may affect this options paper, but this is our this is our plan at the moment.
Next slide please.
So we're seeking feedback from industry on any interest in applying for section 161 a authority and on this overall effort.
We're interested in knowing if we are interested in knowing if there's any interest from licensees who are not who are not already designated as part of an eligible class for this authority.
And I think what we'll do at this point is we'll turn the meeting over back over to Lynn to facilitate the discussions, I'm going to ask Jahari could you go back to the slide that has the options. There that one.
So, I think this would be a good slide to have up as we discuss any questions as we
5 go forward.
And there, Lynn, I'll turn it back over to you.
Lynn Ronewicz 19:15 Great. Thanks Phil.
So we will now ask for your questions and feedback. As a reminder, please use the raise hand button to indicate your desire to provide a comment.
I will call on you by name in order of hands raised.
Please remember to speak loudly and clearly stating your name 1st and if you are affiliated with an entity, please state that entity. If you dialed in by phone, please raise your hand by pressing star five and then once called on press *6 to unmute yourself.
So now we will go forward and please raise your hands for any questions or feedback.
And again, for anybody that has any questions or feedback, please go ahead and raise your hand.
So we see no hands raised yet, but we have one now, OK.
Yep, please go ahead.
PJ Seel, please unmute and proceed.
PJ Seel (BTI) 20:40 Hi there. My name is PJ Seel.
I'm from the Breakthrough Institute.
And I just want to say that we generally support the expansion of eligible classes.
I was curious just if the NRC either with the original rulemaking or an evaluation of this has done just any further research on how expanding this [to] other facilities might have like tangible safety benefits?
If that has come about and just doing evaluation of possible attacks or just in general like looking at case studies in other industries as well.
Phil Brochman 21:22 Good question.
Thank you for that.
I don't believe that the NRC has done any additional case studies or other things along that the criteria that we used in assessing whether a licensee would be a reasonable candidate. In some ways, it's simple criteria like is the licensee required to possess weaponry, what we've thought about for some of these issues, [but] let's
[first] back up a step.
We have a small number of licensees that currently have Section 161A authority in the United States.
Those were issued by order, and they've been codified and transferred into the regulations that were published in 2023.
For some of those entities, the reason they requested the authority was that their
6 State had established restrictions on their [existing] weaponry.
That could be the caliber of the weaponry. That could be the number of rounds in a magazine or some other factor.
And so they requested Section 161A authority [specifically, stand-alone preemption authority].
So, therefore one of the categories about who would be appropriate is a licensee that is required to have armed security personnel [and there is a change to their relevant State regulations].
Other criteria are more security risk based as opposed to a specific analysis.
That could be whether the either the design basis threat of radiological sabotage or the design basis threat of theft or diversion applies to a particular type of licensee.
As I mentioned earlier in my presentation, we develop these criteria back in 2008.
And in looking at them today, we don't see a need to change.
They would be applied tomorrow if someone new came in and requested being designated [as eligible on a case-by-case basis], we would look to those criteria. But the NRC would look at any other individual factors that they could identify as to why they needed this authority so that that's about the information that ee have at this point.
Lynn Ronewicz 23:44 And we'll look for any other hands race for any feedback.
So we'll just give it, give it a little bit more time.
We have plenty of time left, so if anybody has questions or feedback, go right ahead and raise your hand.
Phil Brochman 24:18
- 2.
Lynn Ronewicz 24:42 And should we wait a minute or so, Phil?
Or do you want to go forward?
Phil Brochman 24:49 Let me ask Joe, do you want to [wait?
I think we've gotten the input for from interested persons.
Do you do you want to just wait a few minutes more or do you want to just wrap this up?
Joe Willis 25:05 We could wait, you know another minute or two, just in case someone late pops on.
But I wouldn't want to make everyone on the line wait. If I think we're done our presentation.
7 Phil Brochman 25:17 The other thing I would say on our last slide, there's contact information for myself and the other staff are working on this is Johari Moore. So if someone comes up or thinks of a question after the meeting is over that they wanted to ask, you can reach out to us and we can fold that into [our summary] as I as we said in the beginning.
Our objective of this meeting is essentially to provide additional feedback and consideration to the Commission in the context of an options paper. [Essentially]
What did what did industry think?
And so, to summarize what I've heard as the feedback so far was yes, there was a view that this this authority was appropriate and that it should be used where applicable.
That was sort of the scope of the comments that we received.
I think having said that, I don't see any more hands raised.
If were there.
Let's see we've gone through the questions and feedback.
If you want to jump to slide #10 please.
So.
I guess having seen no further hands up or request for comment or feedback, we'd like to thank you for again for your attention and participation in this in this webinar today. You see our contact information here.
With this, I'm going to turn the meeting back over to Joe Willis for any closing remarks.
Joe Willis 27:09 Thanks Phil.
Again, I'd like to reiterate our appreciation for your participation today.
We hope this has been a valuable discussion and as I stated before, your input is especially important to inform the staff's assessment of the rulemaking options and provide any appropriate recommendation to the Commission. With that, I'd like to say thank you.
Phil Brochman 27:32 And the Lynn will turn it back over to you for any closing closeout actions.
Lynn Ronewicz 27:39 Sure. Yes.
Again, no hands raised.
So, we greatly appreciate everyone's time as was indicated and we hope you have a nice rest of your day.
And again, thanks for joining [this webinar].
8 Phil Brochman 27:53 Thank you very much everybody.
Lynn Ronewicz stopped transcription