NRC Generic Letter 83-17, Integrity of Requalification Examinations for Renewal of Reactor Operator and Senior Reactor Operator Licenses
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WASHINGTON, D. C. 20555
April 8, 1983
TO ALL POWER AND NON-POWER REACTOR LICENSEES, APPLICANTS FOR AN OPERATING LICENSE AND HOLDERS OF A CONSTRUCTION PERMIT
Gentlemen:
Subject: Integrity of the Requalification Examinations for Renewal of Reactor Operator and Senior Reactor Operator Licenses (Generic Letter 83-17)
Recently, an investigation was completed which determined that a senior official at a nuclear power plant certified to the NRC that a licensed individual had successfully completed the licensed operator requalification program, when in fact, that individual had cheated by submitting another person's work in response to some examination questions.
Such an individual has not successfully completed the requalification program and has not discharged his licensed responsibility in a safe and competent manner, as required by 10 CFR Part 55. Furthermore, it should be noted that cheating on examinations which are used to certify individuals to the NRC will result in an automatic denial of a license application or license renewal and could result in more severe penalties.
The purpose of this letter is to highlight the need for you to ensure that the validity of the certifications required by 10 CFR Part 55 and the integrity and honesty of the requalification program are adequately addressed in facility procedures. You should review your procedures on this subject to ensure that an applicant's individual performance can be determined. Your procedures should include provisions to detect and prevent instances of cheating. In particular, unproctored examinations, take-home quizzes and on-shift tests allow ample opportunity for cheating which could go undetected and, therefore, are not an acceptable means for certifying individual performance. While some portions of examinations may be conducted in an open-book format (e.g., use of steam tables on thermodynamics problems or use of facility procedures and drawings during oral examinations),
adequate monitoring provisions are essential to ensure that the persons being evaluated are working independently and are using only authorized instructional or reference materials.-2-
No submittals of procedures or results of your procedure reviews are required by this letter; however, we will review these procedures as a part of our audits of the licensed reactor operator and senior reactor operator requalification programs.
Darrell G. Eisenhut, Director Division of Licensing