ML22118A890

Transcript for Technical Session - W15 Regional Session-Reactor Inspection Program: Leaving Tomorrow Behind

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Issue date:	03/09/2022
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

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34TH REGULATORY INFORMATION CONFERENCE (RIC)

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TECHNICAL SESSION - W15

REGIONAL SESSION-REACTOR INSPECTION PROGRAM:

LEAVING TOMORROW BEHIND

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WEDNESDAY,

MARCH 9, 2022

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The Technical Session met via Video-

Teleconference, at 1:00 p.m. EST, Jeff Baran,

Commissioner, Nuclear Regulatory Commission,

presiding.

PRESENT:

THE HONORABLE JEFF BARAN, Commissioner, NRC

KELVIN HENDERSON, Senior Vice President & Chief

Nuclear Officer, Duke Energy

RAYMOND LORSON, Deputy Regional Administrator,

RI/NRC

MARIA LACAL, Executive Vice President and Chief

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Nuclear Officer, Arizona Public Service - Palo

Verde Nuclear Generating Station

LAURA DUDES, Regional Administrator, RII/NRC

EDWIN LYMAN, Director of Nuclear Power Safety, Union

of Concerned Scientists

JACK GIESSNER, Regional Administrator, RIII/NRC

JEFF SEMANCIK, Director, Radiation Division,

Connecticut Department of Energy and

Environmental Protection

SCOTT MORRIS, Regional Administrator, RIV/NRC

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P R O C E E D I N G S

1:01 p.m.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Good afternoon,

everyone, and welcome to the regional session. I'm

Commissioner Jeff Baran and I'll be moderating

today's session. One of the best things about this

session is there are no opening statements or long

presentations.

It will be 100 percent Q&A with the panel

so we can focus on the issues that you're most

interested in. As you think of questions, please

submit them through the RIC platform. We'll work

hard to get through as many questions and topics as

we can.

To get things started we have some

prepared questions but we're counting on the audience

to come up with questions to sustain a great

discussion.

Because it's a big panel, in most cases

I'll ask one of the regional administrators to

respond and invite the other panelists to weigh in if

they have thoughts they want to share on the topic.

But every panelist should always feel

free to jump in with a different perspective or a

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point they want to make.

Let me start by introducing our terrific

panel, first our four NRC regional panelists from our

Region 1 Office outside Philadelphia we have Ray

Larson, from Region 2 in Atlanta we have Laura Dudes,

Jack Giessner is here from our Region 3 Office outside

of Chicago, and Scott Morris is our Region 4

administrator from Arlington, Texas.

We're also lucky to have executives from

two of our licensees join us, Duke's Chief Nuclear

Officer, Kelvin Henderson, and Maria Lacal, Executive

Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer for the

Arizona Public Service Company.

For the first time, one of our state

partners is joining us on the panel, Jeff Semancik,

Director of the Radiation Division of the Connecticut

Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Rounding out the panel, we have Ed Lyman,

Director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of

Concerned Scientists. I know we're all looking

forward to hearing their views on a range of topics

so let's get started with the first question.

During the 2019 health emergency, summary

actor inspections need to be performed remotely.

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What lessons has the NRC learned about the

effectiveness of remote inspections compared to

in-person inspections?

What did we learn about technologies that

could be used to supplement or enhance in-person

inspections, and what do the non-NRC panelists think

about the relative narrative remote and in-person

inspection?

Scott, do you want to start off on this

one?

MR. MORRIS: Yes, sure I'm happy to. Can

you hear me okay?

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Yes.

MR. MORRIS: This is a really interesting

and important question.

Obviously, because of the public health

emergency we out of necessity had to do a lot more

remote inspections in order to complete the nominal

or at least the minimum set of samples for our

baseline inspection program at all operating power

reactors. And I think, well, I don't think, we were

successful, it was challenging but we learned a lot

and we're still learning.

We talk about this all the time, it's an

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important issue that I know that NRR and the other

regions are actively focused on in looking for ways

to enhance our guidance.

But I'll say this, I think we were

successful in large measure over the last couple

years doing remote inspections because we started

with a set of highly qualified inspectors to begin

with.

These are folks who are seasoned

inspectors who have been in the field and done most

of these inspection procedures I'll call live and in

person. And so it was a little bit easier of a

transition for them to go remote in the first place

because they knew the right questions to ask and who

to talk to.

That becomes less impactful the more and

more people that we lose through attrition and the

more new people we hire. So, that elevates the

importance of in-person inspections.

But I will say I personally believe and

I'm sure others will weigh in here, there is a role

for some remote inspections going forward. It's not

the end all be all. Yes, we can get some efficiencies

out of doing it.

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For example, we can do document reviews,

corrective action program looks, we can look at self-

assessments, we can conduct some interviews.

And as a consequence, the time that we do

spend on site I think can be more sharply focused on

things that really do require in-person inspection.

So, again, I think there's a role for

remote inspection. I think in part it can also help

supplement team inspections. We do a number of team

inspections and we've had cases where we've got one

or two folks who are back in the office so to speak

and some guys in the field, and there's still mutual

support that happens that way.

That's something we've done for years by

the way. It also is unfortunately not the end all

be all. I think most of us would agree that on-site

inspection, in-person inspection is more appropriate,

more effective for a lot of reasons.

I think about remote inspections, it's

almost like looking through a straw. You can only

see what's on the other end of the screen in some

cases. You don't necessarily get all the other

contextual things that you would get by walking

around a plant listening, hearing, smelling, all

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those other sensory inputs.

We add a lot of value I think as an agency

and most licensees that I speak to would agree, just

are walking around with our inspectors, leaders and

managers during site visits, seeing, touching, doing

is helpful because we see things that licensees don't

necessarily see, many of which are not particularly

significant.

But they're observations that we make and

we can share those with licensees in real time and

bring them to their awareness.

We wouldn't see through remote inspection

and I think we add a lot of value as an agency by

sharing what I'll call those low-level observations

with licensees that never find their way into

inspection reports, never find their way into

assessment documents.

But a lot has been learned, we're still

learning, there is a role for remote inspection but

at the end of the day, I think we have much more

effective and meaningful engagements and learnings

through onsite inspection.

And if we have enough time, I can share

some examples to help illustrate that, but I'll stop

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there and let others weigh in.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Any other panelists

want to weigh in on this issue of remote inspections

versus in-person inspections and the relative merits?

MS. LACAL: Sure, Commissioner, I'll

weigh in if that's okay.

I think we've proven that we can continue

to have very effective inspections remotely. I know

that we immediately provided our resident inspectors

with technology, computers.

They've had access to anything and

everything that they wanted access to, whether it was

parameters and being able to monitor our plants

remotely to being able to participate in all kinds of

meetings.

I think it's also really helped us focus

on our resources, less time in airport and on

airplanes and a lot more time doing the inspection

activities.

We've also really homed in on our

communications and making sure that we kept our

residents in the region involved and engaged,

communicated at all times. And I think we've learned

a lot through these past two years.

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I know at APS we're transitioning to a

hybrid workforce. We're not necessarily all going

to come back to the site but it will be more of a

hybrid where it will be on site and some folks where

it makes sense to be at home.

I think the NRC can do the same when it

comes to inspections.

We'll continue to review documents

remotely, use Teams meetings, et cetera, and then

we've got our resident inspectors so if there's

anything that needs to be observed or any sort of

activity that needs to happen on site, the resident

inspectors are here and can certainly do that for an

inspection team.

I'll say we had a great example of that

during this timeframe. We had a RAD material control

inspection where there was a lot of question around

a particular aspect about our storage facility.

And so our senior resident walked down,

took photos, and provided that information directly

to the inspection team and we were able to resolve

the inspection team's questions without necessarily

having them come to the site.

So, I think this hybrid approach, we've

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learned a lot and we can continue to think about that

going forward beyond hybrid and really try to manage

our costs and our precious resources.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Thanks, Maria. Any

other thoughts on this issue?

MR. LORSON: If I could just add one

thought related to remote inspections? With respect

to some of the technology and the tools, there has

been a benefit for us, particularly when it comes to

off-hours event response.

In some cases, we've seen situations

where the plant may trip in the middle of the night.

In the past, the resident inspector might

leave his house and drive in the plant early in the

morning whereas now we can use our remote tools to

determine whether or not we need to go in immediately

or if we can wait a little while.

So, we have achieved some of the benefits

but I would also echo what Scott talked about, there's

really no substitute for direct onsite visual

inspection.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Thanks, Ray. Ed,

you have something you want to add as well?

MR. SEMANCIK: Yes, just as an outsider,

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first of all, I think what the inspections teams have

done is amazing to deal with this crisis. And

certainly at the height of the pandemic, there was

very good reason to move to that remote posture.

But certainly, going forward I am

impressed by the anecdotes that I have been hearing

that there is no substituting for the onsite

inspection.

I would submit that rather than remote

tools be used in lieu of critical inspection

functions, they be used to augment and supplement

those.

And moving forward, once hopefully the

public health emergency resolves, there should be the

resumption of a more normal posture. That's my view,

thank you.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Jeff, do you have

something you want to add as well?

MR. SEMANCIK: Yes, I'll just also echo

Ed. The presence of NRC resident inspectors on the

site during the height of the pandemic was pretty

quickly a public interest item that we got engaged in

at the state level.

And I thought at least regionally here

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they did a great job of keeping us informed of what

was going on onsite, what was going on offsite, what

was being done hybrid.

And I think also a good common focus on

maintaining safety and integrity for the operators at

the plant to make sure we weren't putting them at any

additional risk that wasn't necessary for it.

But on the whole, I think it went very

well and communication was good on it. So, thank

you.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Let's move to

another question.

What impacts has the public health

emergency had on nuclear power-plant sites and plant

safety and what effect has it had on your

organization's planning and staffing?

Jack, do you want to take the lead on

this one?

MR. GIESSNER: Yes. When I think of this

question I break it into two parts. I break it into

the impact and safety on the people, the people who

running the plant and the oversight, and I also base

it on plant safety.

They are not mutually exclusive, nor does

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one guarantee the other. So, when we work on looking

at this issue, let's face it, this is a huge challenge

and continues to be a huge challenge to the families,

to the people.

But the processes and the procedures and

the contingencies that the utilities built and the

processes and procedures and contingencies the NRC

built and frankly, the exemptions that provided that

temporary flexibility by the program office at

Headquarters ensured the plants continued to operate

safely.

I don't want to underestimate the impact

to the people. When we initially started the

protocols, generally more than what was implemented

by the federal outlines, we as good neighbors at the

NRC followed those, whether it was masking, social

distancing, and testing, we were able to provide that

framework.

The resident inspectors went in

periodically, every couple days, and some inspections

were continued. Our operator licensing needed to

continue, it was a mission-critical function.

So, I wanted to make sure folks

understand there's a huge challenge to the people but

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that balance of ensuring safety of our inspectors,

safety of the utility folks, we needed to meet and

ensure we could oversee correctly and also ensure the

safe operations of the plant continued.

We came up with a methodology and looked

at yourself, looked at the outside community, looked

at the site, and then we looked at the risk.

Ray mentioned we might not have gone in

for a trip, but if it was a complex evolution, it

could have been a difficult item in an outage,

incident response, especially on the SIT teams, we

would send those out. They would take the appropriate

precautions.

So, in short, we did ensure plants

operated safely. Big challenges continue with the

Staff and we continue to work through the processes

that we have with the help from our folks in the

program office.

That's all I had, Commissioner.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Jeff, did you have

anything to add on this one?

MR. SEMANCIK: There's a couple of things

I would say from the local perspective.

The first part is early in the pandemic

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we worked with plant staff at the local power-plant

to do things like get them priority access to offsite

testing when that was running scarce, get them on

vaccine lists for critical workers and in the right

phases of those.

So, we helped do our part as partners in

the area. The other thing we did is we took a strong

look at our offsite emergency plan for the COVID-19

pandemic, again during the early parts prior to

deployment of vaccines and other measures.

We really took a look at would we shelter

in place versus aggregation of large personnel, where

we could do hybrid on the offsite response teams, and

how we could minimize spreads on that.

So, through that whole process we engaged

with all the stakeholders and were able to really I

think come up with some of those modifications and

also to exercise those modifications by continuing to

do some drills to demonstrate proficiency in those.

Thanks.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Any other comments

on this question?

MR. MORRIS: If you don't mind,

Commissioner, I'll put in a shameless plug for a

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session I'll be facilitating tomorrow morning where

we had a real-time opportunity to respond to a

real-world event, Hurricane Ida going through

Southern Louisiana right over the Waterford site and

how all of us worked together to combat that in a

COVID-19 public health emergency environment.

We'll explore some of these issues

related to this question during that session as well.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Sounds good, let's

turn to Kelvin next.

MR. HENDERSON: So, it really did have

an impact really only on how we execute our business

at the plant.

Our key resources such as operators,

maintenance, radiation protection, chemistry folks,

the folks that were on the plant day in and day out,

they were there from day one of the public health

crisis and they were there through the end.

We learned how to operate by coaching

each other from a safety standpoint. Social

distancing, wearing of masks, things of that nature.

The people that were sent home and working remotely,

they still came in for critical evolutions.

So, from a plant safety standpoint, plant

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safety was never jeopardized or even challenged, it

was just how we executed. We executed all of our

refueling outages in 2020 and 2021 and we were able

to do it successfully within the bounds of the

allocation for those outages.

So, the organization really learned to

adapt and we're carrying some of those learnings to

how we operate today.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: It looks like Maria

and Ed both have comments. Let's start with Maria

and then go to Ed.

MS. LACAL: I think we would be remiss

to not recognize the support from the NRC on

exemptions to the workout rules.

We submitted those on the spot, very,

very timely support so I just really appreciate and

thank the NRC for their quick turnaround on those

sorts of things.

Much like Kelvin said, we've got two

refueling outages every year so we executed all four

of our refueling outages without really any incident

whatsoever.

I think one of the things that we quickly

learned was how important it is to be intentional

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regarding staying connected to the remote workforce

and making sure that we had leaders checking in on

them and having that heightened communication just to

make sure they're onsite as well.

Because they work here on site and we

want to make sure things were operating well from

home. That was a big learning for us as well.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Ed?

MR. LYMAN: From the public perspective,

it's a little hard for us to really assess the impact

of all this, so I hope the NRC will be collecting

data in a form that's publicly accessible so that we

can see for the usual metrics how safety may or may

not have been maintained during this period.

I've been doing my own non-scientific

analysis so with regards to one planner at least

unplanned SCRAMS, it looks like 2021 was actually

lower than it's been.

So, I can't say anything from one

data-point but it doesn't look like there was a sudden

explosion of operator error and deferred

maintenance-related SCRAMS. So that's positive and

again, I'd love to see a comprehensive analysis once

the situation is settled, thank you.

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COMMISSIONER BARAN: Any other thoughts

on this question before we move on to the next one?

A new feature of the reactor oversight process is the

very low safety significance issue resolution or the

LSIR process.

We got one question about this already.

Ray, can you describe the process and give us a

regional perspective on it? I'd also like to hear

what the non-NRC panelists think about the process of

how it's being implemented.

MR. LORSON: The very low safety

significance issue resolution process, or VLSIR, was

incorporated into our inspection program in 2019.

And what we did was we had a lot of

internal discussion and we developed a process so

that we could take issues that previously we might

spend an awful lot of time on that we would

acknowledge were very low significance, but we were

trying to do further investigation to determine if

there was an actual violation or not or a regulatory

requirement.

And so what the VLSIR process achieved

for us, and folks can refer to it, it's Manual Chapter

612, it allowed us to make a conscious decision for

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some issues that are of low risk significance to not

expend an inordinate amount of time trying to

determine if there was an underlying compliance issue

or not.

So, it was just another tool that we had

to allow us to better focus our efforts. So, that

at a high level is what it is. It's been used

successfully approximately a dozen times across the

agency that I'm aware of so it is being used.

It's something we routinely think about

as we're pursuing issues. That's a little bit about

what LSIR is, it's probably also worth talking about

what it is not. And it's not a substitute for

restoring compliance.

If we determine that there's a compliance

issue and we take some type of formal action, let's

say for example an enforcement action, the issue

still has to be addressed and if there's a

disagreement with the action we've taken, then there

would be a process for contesting that.

And so that would be outside the LSIR

process but it would be an avenue by which a licensee

could express disagreement with a conclusion we've

reached. Or if we've reached a conclusion and taken

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an enforcement action but we all agree it's of low

significance, the licensee has other means they can

use to remedy the issue.

For example, they could correct the

condition or they could request an exemption. To

that extent, a couple years ago NRR developed a

risk-informed process for requesting the exemption.

That streamlines the exemption process.

So, all three processes all work together if you will

and I think it's just important that we all recognize

the importance that the VLSIR tool has provided to us

to focus our time on things that are most important.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Thanks for that

overview, Ray. Maria, do you have thoughts on this?

MS. LACAL: Yes, Commissioner, thanks.

I agree with Ray, this is a very effective way of

using our precious resources.

I think we had a really good example

recently with the use of this process during the NRC's

review of an interim change that we made to Staff

augmentation time due to the COVID-19 public health

emergency.

This was an emergency response

organization, staff augmentation time change and so

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the NRC in their review raised some questions

regarding facility augmentation times that have been

resolved with the NRC really decades earlier.

And so the NRC originally had approved

our emergency response organization change to the

augmentation time. Back in the early 1990s, 1994,

the letters with the NRC region versus NRR and that

approval letter at the time didn't have a safety

evaluation.

And so even though our example didn't

exactly fit into the type of cases that I think were

originally believed to be part of this VLSIR process,

in our case emergency plan, the team really quickly

and effectively resolved and saved a lot of time and

resources again due in large part to the NRC's

application with this process.

So, it was captured on a condition report

and now we've included the basis for the original

approval.

So, I agree that really focusing our time

and energy on the more safety-significant issues

mitigates our distraction on the lower-level things

and really helps us maintain laser focus on the things

that we need to.

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And actually, at the end, it ultimately

improves our nuclear safety posture. So, I

appreciate the work that was involved in that

application for us.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Jeff, do you have

thoughts on this?

MR. SEMANCIK: Time will tell certainly

on this to some extent as we see more of these issues

resolved this way. I think there is a challenge with

complicating an already complicated process from the

public's point of view.

It's just more adjectives thrown on and

a little more screen, it looks like there's a problem

that's not getting fixed with that appearance. So,

I think I'll withhold judgment on it from that point

of view, but I think the public struggles with

resource balance of utilities.

And the NRC, with respect to running

nuclear power-plants, they see it as an endless

resource and the stuff we have to monitor, I do

applaud the fact that at least the documentation of

this in the inspection reports gives us all a chance

to look at it in the public view and see what happens.

So, I think the book is still open a

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little bit on it but there is obviously some benefit

to it in general. I just have to be cautious about

how we approach it and make sure the public fully

understands.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Thanks, Jeff, and

of course it is a new process. Laura, do you have

thoughts you want to share on this?

MS. DUDES: Thanks, and I really

appreciated Jeff's comments about the documentation

because I think it's important to recognize there's

transparency in this process and we're sharing with

everyone, here's what we're doing with this, we're

not pursuing it at this time.

And then it's all important to realize

that if new information becomes available to the NRC

or the licensee, it doesn't preclude us from

revisiting this issue at a different time.

So, I really just wanted to highlight the

transparency of the process. Thank you.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Ed, do you have

something you want to share?

MR. LYMAN: Yes, and I think Jeff hit the

nail on the head.

From our perspective, if there's a safety

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problem and it looks like the lay characterization of

this process is maybe it's not worth trying to figure

out whether or not it's an actual violation, and even

if we do that, maybe we'll not require that it be

fixed.

Those are problematic for us and this

stems from our concern about perhaps the overuse and

overlying site PRA in these inspection

determinations. I think we would want more assurance

that these are really very low safety significance

and I'm not sure that's always borne out by the PRA

analysis, because as we all know, there are

uncertainties and deficiencies in missions and the

use of things like flex credit, which I'll talk about

later, which we have concerns about because of their

potential lack of validation.

So, we don't want to see safety issues

essentially being thrown out because no one wants to

take the time to dig through the history and find out

if it's really a violation or not.

That says something about the way this

licensing basis has evolved and it would be great to

take a fresh look, I agree, at the safety significance

but maybe not the way it's playing out here.

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COMMISSIONER BARAN: Any final thoughts

on this question before we move on to the next?

MR. MORRIS: Yes, I had a thought on

this. I think really, the main genesis of this whole

process, the safety significance piece is certainly

an element of it but the real driver for me in our

experience at least in Region 4 has been when you

talk about is it or isn't it a violation, what we're

really talking about is the licensing basis around

this issue clear or not?

Or is it ambiguous?

If that's the case and it happens to be

low significance from a safety or risk standpoint,

then the LSIR, exercising VLSIR, and all the

transparency that Laura talked about is going to

happen.

So, it really gets to the ambiguity of

the licensing basis given the issue, not the safety

significance solely.

And I will say if there is a safety-

significant issue and it's not in the licensing

basis, we're still going to deal with it.

We're not going to walk away from a

safety-significant issue regardless of whether or not

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it's in the licensing basis.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Any other thoughts?

Ed looks tempted to respond.

MR. LYMAN: Then you get into backfit

space and that's the problem. If it's too hard to

follow through on a back fit, that's a very blunt

sword you have.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Jeff, go ahead.

MR. SEMANCIK: I would also indicate that

from a reassurance to the public thing, you have an

ambiguous licensing basis and don't really understand

it so therefore won't pursue it is less than

satisfying.

So, I think if there's an ambiguous

licensing basis, some effort to resolve and clarify

that would make sense to me.

MR. MORRIS: It's a question of the

amount of resources necessary to do that. In a world

of limited resources, we obviously want to be risk-

smart and focus on the most important things.

But your points are very well taken.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Good discussion on

this, it's kind of early days on this program and we

welcome the feedback today on going forward on it.

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Let's turn to a question from the audience and maybe

I'll ask Laura to answer this or take a first stab at

it.

With retirements and other attrition

contributors depleting the workforce of inspectors,

what incentives, training, and knowledge management

programs are being employed to ensure new inspectors

are being recruited, educated, and maintained in the

most efficient way?

MS. DUDES: Great question, although I

think we could have had a whole RIC session on VLSIR

given the very spirited conversation. But I like

look forward to in terms of the next generation of

NRC inspectors and our EDO, Dan Dorman, has a focus

on hiring for this year.

And he's got all of the senior leadership

focused on hiring. And then I think the question

gets to the fact of once you hire them, how do you

transfer 30, 40 years of inspection knowledge to this

new generation?

We have multiple strategies in place. I

think one of the things we're really proud of now is

our Nuclipedia, or our Wiki tool that's a great

knowledge management tool that people post videos and

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discussions about knowledge management.

And the great thing is it is a one-stop

shop and as we build that it will continue to grow in

terms of knowledge management.

But beyond that, we're really focused on

competency modeling, which is a qualification

process, really identifying what competencies are

needed for inspectors, aligning them with senior

inspectors so they're able to work and get on-the-job

training.

And then competency-based qualifications

is another item that we're focused on to make sure

that our inspectors are really getting a 360-degree

knowledge transfer and training.

NRC always has very good training

programs and we continue to use our effective

training center to give people firsthand experience

in simulators and then working with our operator

licensing folks because they also have a tremendous

amount of plant knowledge.

So, I think there's a lot out there but

this is something that we are all as a senior

leadership team laser focused on as we look at the

demographics of the Agency and how we bring new people

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in.

And I will say, the challenge that we

have and one of the things that we're trying to

communicate and coordinate on is we're bringing

people in in a hybrid work environment.

And I think Scott mentioned this earlier

in terms of the reasons we were able to be so

successful with our remote inspections is because of

the quality of our inspectors.

And so now as we are working in this

hybrid environment we have to be incredibly

intentional about taking our new hires, getting them

out to the sites, having the senior inspector spend

as much time in OJT as possible.

Let me pause there and see if there's

other comments.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Any other NRC folks

want to weigh in?

MR. MORRIS: I will just say Laura's

points are all absolutely dead on.

We've taken other steps, we have weekly

question and answer sessions in the region for

example, where anyone can come in, seasoned

inspectors and brand-new ones and it's an open forum

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where people can just ask questions.

What does this acronym mean? Why is this

issue important? Why did you pursue this line of

questioning? And just an open exchange that happens

every week, very robust sessions. We do inspection

debriefs every time we have an inspection.

That inspector comes back and debriefs to

their colleagues what they did and what they found

and there's an opportunity for conversation and

learning there. We're trying to take advantage of

opportunities at the sites.

I know a lot of Region 4 sites, we've had

a fair amount of attrition in our resident inspector

cadre and we've obviously got a lot of new folks out

there. But we try to match them up with seasoned

people and we're putting a lot of our newer hires out

in the field for observational rotational assignments

and details.

Again, it's to maximize that OJT and

accelerate that learning. We all know that training

and qualification is great, it's important, but it

doesn't make you a proficient inspector.

Proficiency comes with time and wisdom

and just being out there.

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COMMISSIONER BARAN: Let me ask a related

question so folks can keep answering this one but

I'll throw this in as well.

We had an audience question of how do you

deal with the challenge in terms of mentoring new

staff where you have the more experienced inspectors

who may be busy or overworked as is and may not have

the time that they would want to have to mentor.

How does the Agency address that to

really make sure this vital part of the role of the

more seasoned inspectors have the time and bandwidth

to convey that knowledge and experience and help

bring newer folks up to their level of capability?

MS. DUDES: I think that's a great

question. This is a phrase that's often used, it

takes a village, right? So, you need your entire

organization engaged in attracting this talent and

retaining the talent.

And so it's not just the seasoned

inspectors.

I'll give you a great example. We have

a lot of new resident inspector development program

hires and so we had three Branch Chiefs take them up

to the technical training center for three or four

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days and they went through how do you respond to an

incident?

They had the simulator going. That's

just one example.

And so as an agency and organization, we

need to utilize all the resources that we have, bring

people together for intentional focused training on

specific topics so it's not just hooking them up with

a senior inspector but it's using the Branch Chiefs

and using the former inspectors at Headquarters and

seeing if you can have specialized topic sessions.

So, again, you're giving the employee a

full 360 experience with the tremendous skills and

experience we have in the Agency.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Scott, you have

something you want to add?

MR. MORRIS: Yes, just real quick, every

NRC employee has a performance plan that becomes the

foundation of their individual performance assessment

at the end of every year.

One of the elements of every individual's

performance plan including our inspectors is this

notion of organizational effectiveness. What have

you done to help the organization get better?

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Not just what you've done to develop

yourself personally and professionally in your own

career, but what have you done to contribute to the

whole organization?

And so directly to your question,

mentoring is one way of doing it, imparting

knowledge, creating Nuclipedia pages, conducting cam

and knowledge management sessions and on and on and

on.

So, it is an overt expectation on the

part of our staff.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Any other thoughts

on this before we move on to another question? Let

me ask one about inspection findings, since 2015, the

number of nationwide inspection findings has declined

from 821 per year to 269 per year.

That's a 67 percent decline. All 4

regions have seen this trend in inspection findings.

What do you think is driving the significant decline

in inspection findings and are you concerned about

it?

Who wants to chime in on this one?

MR. MORRIS: I would be happy to but I

feel like I've been throwing in too much. I'll just

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kick it off then. Yes, am I concerned about it? No.

Is it something we need to pay attention to? Yes.

Have we done analyses, detailed analyses,

to try to understand the drivers? Yes. In fact, NRR

teamed up with us and they did a very detailed

analysis of this very issue and what were the drivers

behind it?

And I think that analysis is available

and it was done about eight or nine management so I

don't remember all the details. But I will say the

main drivers in my opinion and what came out of that

analysis, many aspects.

Number one, we are more focused on

spending time on risk-significant issues and we did

more focused on the threshold between what's truly

minor and what's more than minor and therefore gets

documented in a report?

So, there's more scrutiny of that,

there's more questions being posed by Branch Chiefs

and others during these inspection debriefs for

example, where folks are saying why is this more than

minor?

I think many people would be surprised

the kind of dialog that happens in those inspection

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debriefs. There's a lot of why did you even look at

that? Or why are you even talking about this? How

does this meet the minor, more than minor or exceed

the criteria?

That's one piece of it. Risk models are

better, there's more margin that's been identified so

the significance of issues that are identified are

now potentially less risk-significant than we once

thought because the modeling is better.

I think this notion of consistency among

regions, there's been a lot more cross-talk, a lot

more dialog across and between regions to make sure

there's better alignment, sharing of examples to help

people understand.

And there's a whole bunch of other

reasons but one of the bigger and most fascinating

things that I recall from the NRR analysis last year,

one of the biggest drivers was this notion of

management, really questioning and challenging

inspectors on whether or not an issue that they're

working on or have raised really meets the criteria

of being more than minor.

There's a lot more focus on that and I

think in my estimation, that's a big driver here.

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And I would be remiss if I didn't say something about

industry performance. I think the industry

collectively is performing.

They continue to show improvement year

over year I think, there's a lot of data to support

that, not necessarily NRC data. I'll stop there.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Jack, do you have

thoughts you want to share?

MR. GIESSNER: Yes, I do. First, I want

to say that at least the preliminary data we have for

2021 shows I think a 15 to 20 percent increase in

findings and I think in 2020 there was probably less

onsite time.

So, we'll get that data so this

precipitous drop that people are worried about, I do

sense that we're coming to this level. I agree with

Scott's assessment that it's probably complex.

The one thing I wanted to add is I do

think the backfit training added a lot of value,

things were Criterion 3 in the past. We've done a

good job focusing on that.

But one thing that is slightly different

than Scott is concern is not a bad thing, I just have

a little concern because in some of the feedback maybe

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some inspectors won't bring up these very low issues.

And it's not that somebody is saying

they're just going to not inspect and just bring up

issues, but when you hear there's potential culture

perspectives in there it gives me pause.

So, I like to pull the data.

I do think we have more work to do to

ensure that it is a combination of better ideas from

minor industry performance, understanding backfit,

but anytime there's a drop like that, I want to make

sure we're focused on the engagement with the

frontline inspectors, our specialty inspectors, and

residents to make sure there isn't something there we

need to address.

I think it's something that's always on

our radar and we are going to get feedback on it.

That's my two cents, Commissioner.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Let's get one more

NRC perspective and then maybe hear from some of our

external panelists too. Ray, do you have thoughts?

MR. LORSON: Yes, just briefly, I agree

with everything that Jack and Scott have already

discussed but I'd particularly like to focus

on...concern is not the right term but I just want to

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make sure we're not putting unnecessary barriers in

place that preclude the inspector from going off and

identifying issues and bringing them to fruition if

you will.

We were aware of the survey that was done

of inspectors that NRR had developed a report for and

on the topic that Scott brought up of management

engagement, we are very concerned that making sure

what we're doing as a management team in terms of our

actions, behaviors are not precluding or inhibiting

inspectors from identifying issues or pushing issues

to their final conclusion.

And so we basically called SKIP-level

meetings where myself and David Lew, the regional

administrator, met with every inspector in the region

just to try to get their perspectives and make sure

we were not behaving in a way that put forth these

artificial barriers.

So, we were very pleased with the results

of that but that was not necessarily concerning but

we just wanted to make sure we weren't making it too

hard on folks. Thanks.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Ed, do you have

something you want to say on this topic?

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MR. LYMAN: I hope this is tied to better

performance and not a dynamic where inspectors are

afraid to raise issues because they get too much

pushback.

And if Scott is referring to the same

report, I recall that conclusion was there was no

clear improvement in the overall safety performance

in the explanation.

So, that makes me concerned and it's not

just the total number of findings but it's also the

number of findings that are escalator engraved in

green. And I did hear also in ROP meetings that the

use of flex credit has significantly dropped the

number of grey and green findings.

And that might be one factor, and that

again concerns me because of the potential lack of

validation for not only flex human error

probabilities but also flex equipment reliability

that I think we'll be talking about later.

So, I would certainly not want to see a

dynamic where there's pressure on inspectors not to

rock the boat and allow these findings to be missed

or not dealt with.

And as with the low safety significance

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resolution process, the accumulation or the

aggregation of minor findings could lead to something

that's greater than the sum of its parts.

That's my concern, thank you.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Jeff, do you want

to chime in?

MR. SEMANCIK: Just a couple of things.

It would be nice to have a comprehensive review and

evaluation of the drop vice anecdotal evidence on

there to really understand what are the drivers and

determine those.

That would be helpful, especially with

maybe some outside perspective as well into some

comprehensive review on that.

And then I would just caution that you

wonder from an external point of view, the previous

discussion about bringing on new Staff and

experience, does that tie into the ability to

identify findings or the willingness to raise them?

But again, that would also be anecdotal

and speculative but it would be good to have that

good understanding because I think certainly, if a

utility had a drop of 67 percent in the number of

condition reports they were submitting, we'd

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certainly be interested to understand what the

difference was that caused that.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Anyone else want to

weigh in on this issue? Maria, did you have

something you wanted add?

MH: I just wanted to add a couple of

things. Let's not forget about INPO, INPO has been

just a phenomenal standard-setter with standards of

excellence that we all have to meet.

And I think that definitely has helped us

to continue our performance in all aspects of

operation. Actually, NEI put out a really good

document in 2020, it's NEI 2004.

It's called the nexus between safety and

operational performance in the U.S. nuclear industry

and it clearly shows how the industry has continued

to improve its safety posture year over year.

A lot has to do with the regulations that

have been imposed over this timeframe but clearly, it

shows that the industry in general has the ability to

improve.

And it looks at a lot of different areas

and there's a lot of good metrics there, and there's

a lot of really good basis behind this analysis which

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a lot of the information comes from the NRC.

So, that's a pretty good document to take

a look at and really, truly understand the

improvements that the industry has shown in safety

over the last 10, 20 years.

I think also just like the NRC does and

shares amongst the different regions, we do the same

thing. We share amongst the different sites on

inspection findings, we do assessments across sites

in preparation for inspections.

Clearly, our problem resolution

identification programs continue to strengthen and

that includes low-level trending and analysis, our

issue evaluations and looking for that extended

condition and making sure that we close the issues

with a lot of rigor in looking for similar gaps in

other programs or processes or equipment, et cetera.

All of those things truly have I believe

kept us focused on the important things and I think

the risk-informing regulations and that risk-informed

thinking really helps us focus on the more safety-

significant issues, getting those resolved quickly

and early.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Kelvin, did you

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want to jump in?

MR. HENDERSON: The only thing I would

add to Maria's comment, it also starts with

leadership and leadership behaviors and the drive for

continuous improvement and really identifying issues

at such low levels that we promptly get those created.

And that starts with me as a CNO setting

the tone throughout the organization that our purpose

is to find our own purpose and make sure that we

quickly identify those and quickly get them into the

corrective action program and place the right sense

of urgency to get them resolved.

And I think that is reflected in what

we're seeing as far as industry performance over the

past few years. I think it's a direct tie to it but

it really starts with us as CNOs and the tone that we

set with our organizations.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: I think it's been a

good discussion. In the course of the discussion up

to this point, we heard a couple of references to

flex equipment.

Let me ask a question on that, one of the

most significant post-Fukushima safety enhancements

is the presence of flex equipment at reactor sites.

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Maria or Kelvin, can you discuss flex operating

experience?

And if other panelists want to weigh in

about what has been learned about the maintenance and

use of flex equipment?

Maria, you want to start?

MS. LACAL: When flex came up a number

of years ago, we really focused on how do we make our

dollars count, not just during the emergency but in

our day-to-day operation of our plants?

So, if we're going to spend this large

amount of money and resources on flex, let's make

sure that we design and follow modifications and

procure our flex equipment such that it will help us

increase our margins of safety from a day-to-day

perspective.

So, that was big focus for us from day

one, maximizing our use of flex to maximize our safety

posture. I'll say that at Palo Verde we extensively

use our flex and portable equipment as mitigating

actions for maintenance rule.

We routinely deploy our flex team

generator makeups and our portable DC generators to

mitigate risk during certain planned maintenance

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activities as well as an emerging equipment issue.

It's baked into our procedures and so

it's really part of our work management process now

as part of our planned maintenance activities. It

maintains our risk profiles low in the green band and

making sure we have the right purpose and attention

on our risk management action levels.

I'll say prior to flex our outages were

such that we would be in yellow risk for almost the

entire outage with clearly a large part of our

refueling outages.

And now with the deployment of flex we

maintain low in the green band posture throughout our

entire outage duration.

Our modifications for the connections to

flex equipment were designed so that it kept our

operators in line and making sure that performance

was top of mind so they had easy access, all external

connections.

They don't require any doors or anything

to be left open where we don't traverse cables and

hoses, et cetera, throughout the site.

The other thing I think that we learned

a lot is the proficiency and we talked about that a

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little bit of our operators and our maintenance

personnel from deploying this equipment a lot.

They've got a very high level of proficiency

regarding the use of the equipment.

At Palo Verde we're fortunate to have a

standalone fire protection department and that

consists of full-time firefighters, maintenance

personnel and engineering personnel.

And so our fire protection maintenance

organization do a fantastic job maintaining our flex

equipment in very top shape, keeping sure that we

maintain through the requisite numbers and they

ensure that we do all the preventative maintenance,

et cetera.

I'll say we had early on some indication

of some battery failure issues which we communicated

to the industry and we have since resolved those but

as an industry we collaborate.

There's a committee that's focused on

flex equipment, sharing operating experience, having

routine communications around these. We have

dedicated program owners to share this operating

experience.

We've partnered with EPRI to capture the

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data that we have across all of the stations to make

sure that we've got a good reliable database and that

we share best practices.

So, this is all in a very shareable

retrievable database for knowledge retention and I

think just continued interaction between INPO and

EPRI and the industry, sharing that operating

experience and using our flex equipment has just been

very, very valuable from a reduction of I'll say an

increase to safety as a result of flex.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: I think a lot of

panelists want to weigh in on this one. How about

we have the order be Kelvin and then Jeff can weigh

in and if Ed wants to weigh in and then Ray?

MR. HENDERSON: Thank you, Commissioner.

I agree with everything, obviously, Maria

said and the interesting thing is I can remember when

we first put flex in place, it was equipment that

existed and now it's more part of our overall risk

reduction strategy that's ingrained in all of our

procedures.

Maria mentioned how it's deployed during

refueling outages where in the past we would have

elevated risk levels during certain configurations in

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the refueling outage.

Now our procedures will require use of

staging flex and make sure we have the right things

in place to minimize that risk.

We also have leveraged opportunities

where we've had degraded components online and we've

taken the opportunity where we can take that

component out of service online by deploying flex

that would allow us to improve the reliability of

that safety piece of equipment.

And obviously, overall improve plant

safety.

In the past, we really didn't have that

flexibility but all that's ingrained now in our

procedures and processes and strategies so it's not

just equipment that exists, it's really part of our

overall strategy in how we manage risk.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Jeff?

MR. SEMANCIK: I would think in general

we really applaud the use of flex and the

implementation of flex.

In general the response to Fukushima, it

provides a real tangible benefit that we can

articulate to the public and demonstrate a commitment

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to safety as opposed to a reanalysis or a refinement

of something there.

So, from the public perspective, they see

an action, it's good, and I also applaud the use of

it to reduce real risk in refueling outages and online

issues. So, we do appreciate that because

ultimately, that improves safety for all of us.

I think the one part I would like to see

is it integrated more in emergency plan exercises and

just challenging it in those timeframes to see its

use in those roles.

It would also allow the offsite folks to

internalize the ability to have that equipment on and

prioritize actions to assist in responding to those

types of events.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Ed, do you have

thoughts?

MR. LYMAN: Yes, I already raised this a

couple of times.

I think the main problem here is the

regulatory footprint and since the beginning, we did

not think the current requirements for maintenance

inspections and flex equipment were sufficient given

their importance.

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And given they're now being relied on for

these other uses including pretty safety-significant

maintenance tasks that it's important that the credit

for flex does not go beyond the level of reliability

and assurance that the NRC has over that equipment.

So, looking at the issues at River Bend

and Clinton with the diesel generators and potential

common cause failures, Id like to have more

confidence that the NRC has the regulatory authority

to make sure that equipment is in adequate working

order, again commensurate with its potential expanded

uses.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Ray, do you want to

go next? And maybe just for those who are familiar

in the audience with River Bend maybe just talk a

minute about that or Scott can chime in on that too

so people have that background.

MR. LORSON: Scott, do you want to go

over River Bend and then I'll follow you?

MR. MORRIS: It's all a matter of public

record at this point but I will say in essence, it

came down to a number of portable diesel generators

that unfortunately when they went to start them, they

didn't start or they started but didn't continue to

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run for a variety of different reasons.

And ultimately it got traced back to

maintenance practices, preventative maintenance

practices and some initiate design issues.

And we obviously expanded our sample and

look at that issue across the fleet particularly in

Region 4 and particularly the Entergy fleet since

River Bend is one of the Entergy facilities.

So, at the end of the day, yes, there

were challenges with that, I don't want to go into a

lot of detail.

I will say that when the initial

inspection, we called it a temporary instruction, was

performed by the NRC Staff, after all licensees had

essentially reported in that they had completed

implementation of their flex strategies, our

inspections at that stage were more are the licensee

strategies for flex in line with EPRI's NEI

guidelines that we had endorsed?

And had training been performed, were

procedures available, that type of thing.

Those inspections, those initial

inspections, were not what I'll call design

inspections where we actually looked at the design of

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the generator and looked at was the manner in which

the system installed or built in line with the design

that had been proposed or ordered or expected?

Those are the types of inspections we're

doing now, we've moved to that degree of inspection

as opposed to I don't want to say cursory but a high

level have they taken steps to implement the

guidelines, do the procedures and training exist?

Now we're taking a deeper look into some

of what I'll call the engineering aspects of the

equipment.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Thanks for that

background. Ray, do you want to take it from there?

MR. LORSON: Yes, I certainly agree with

everything I heard. I think to Maria and Kelvin's

point, obviously licensees have made big investments

in flex and so they expect to see some credit in terms

of the reduction in overall plant risk profiles.

And we would agree with that,

installation of equipment that wasn't there

originally can lower the risk profile. But, and I

would add the caveat, if it's properly designed to

perform the function and if it's properly maintained

to perform the function.

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And so Scott talked about some of our

initial actions we did in terms of inspections

following the original implement of flex. We've

embedded review and inspection of flex equipment as

part of our baseline inspection program.

We have had some findings related to

maintenance of flex equipment and to my knowledge,

none of the findings have gone beyond the green range

if you will. But certainly, we are finding issues.

We recently had a case of a significant

diesel failure, a flex diesel failure, at one of our

sites that we're still evaluating but the point is

the diesel failed in a manner that hadn't been

anticipated.

So, I think to Maria and Kelvin's point,

flex does offer a benefit but the benefit is only

achieved if the equipment is properly designed,

installed, and maintained.

Second point with respect to use of risk,

we agree with the reduction in risk in general space

but I think Ed brings up a very good point, we need

to be careful that we don't overcredit how much credit

we give for the use of flex as a risk reduction tool.

And to that extent, we have used flex in

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terms of adjusting regional some findings where we've

seen findings that have maybe gone from white to green

when you consider flex.

We're very careful and mindful of how we

do that in part because we think there's a level of

uncertainty related to the reliability data

associated with the flex equipment.

I know a key aspect of industry right now

is trying to get better numbers that we can use to

give ourselves more reliability with respect to the

uncertainty of this equipment's performance.

So, it is a tool to lower inspection

findings. That being said, we are very careful of

how we use it and making sure that we're not using

inappropriate assumptions related to how we use flex.

So, thank you.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Good discussion,

any other points anyone wants to make on this? We've

got about 20 minutes left so I'll just give our

audience a reminder that if you have a question, get

it into the queue and I'll try to get to it.

Let's turn to one of the questions we got

from the audience and it's about gazing into the

future a little bit on inspection and also I'd maybe

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expand it to operation of the plant.

Any considerations for future inspection

using robots or artificial intelligence as an

effective tool?

And maybe either one or both of CNOs want

to chime in at all about the degree to which they're

using AI or robotics at their plants, I think probably

folks would be interested in that as well.

MR. HENDERSON: Commissioner, I'll start

from a CNO perspective. We are really deploying use

primarily of robotics.

We have robots that now can crawl pipes,

we have robots that we can send into spaces where we

would have to set up a different configuration to

allow a person to go in that space, for example, from

a dose standpoint.

We have robots that can walk up stairs,

that can pick up things, that can take pictures and

more in some hazardous environments.

And we've leveraged technology to

identify early signs of equipment performance, we've

used technology to pick up small vibrations even on

large transformers.

And we're doing it from the standpoint

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that it helps us optimize our staffing resources

because before people would do all that and now we

have robots that are able to go in and gather a lot

of this data for us.

We're starting to work through use of

artificial intelligence primarily on data analysis

and things of that nature to help us predict either

where we could have some performance challenges

either with behavioral gaps or equipment gaps.

And we're pretty far along in that

process and we're actually leveraging others in the

industry on what they've learned through use of AI

that a lot of technology uses, at least within the

Duke system, that we've deployed here over the past

few years.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Any other thoughts

from an NRC perspective, industry perspective, or

other perspective?

MS. LACAL: I'll just add one more to

Kelvin's list. We do a lot of very similar approach

with the use of robotics in radiological-controlled

areas and minimized dose, et cetera.

But also, we're using drones in our

cooling towers and that has significantly saved, from

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an investor safety perspective, not having to build

scaffolding, et cetera, to try to get to all these

areas way up high.

And so that's been a technology fairly

recent that has proven to be very successful and you

can get up close and personal to what you're trying

to see through the use of these drones.

So, there's a lot of technology out

there. I challenge our vendor partners every day.

They know a whole lot of more about

what's going on globally and what's being used out

there globally and bringing it back to us so that we

can evaluate and assess whether it makes sense here

in the United States and Palo Verde, et cetera.

And so that is a big focus area is how do

we continue to use the technology to improve the way

we do business to optimize the way we do business,

whether it's robotics, drones, artificial

intelligence, et cetera.

There was a really good session yesterday

on the use of artificial intelligence at the RIC that

was very good.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: I moderated a panel

on artificial intelligence last year and it was just

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fascinating. From the NRC folks, anything? Laura,

do I see a hand up, or Jack?

MS. DUDES: I saw Jack. Why don't you

start, Jack?

MR. GIESSNER: I was just making a quick

comment. That is an area where we're going to have

to get up to speed quickly.

I've heard a lot of utilities use

artificial intelligence to cull through data and make

decisions on what to maintain and that's an area where

we don't have expertise but we will get the expertise.

We'll have to figure that out, that's an

area that's on my to-do list looking forward to the

future.

That's all I had, Commissioner, thanks.

Go ahead, Laura.

MS. DUDES: Thanks, Jack. I think I

agree with what Jack said and I think there's a lot

of benefit to this.

I think we need to keep leaning forward,

we need to get the expertise on AI but we also always

have to be mindful of the cyber issue as well as we're

deploying these technologies.

I'm all for it, I'm in favor, I've seen

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drones go into containment to rapidly identify a

leak. In the past you would have had to send humans

in there. There was a lot of challenges with that.

So, I think there's a lot of benefit to it.

I've actually driven one of the robots

down at St. Lucy and actually, they use it to go into

their resin rooms. That saved a tremendous amount

of dose and that's really a positive for the workers'

safety.

But again, we need to just proactively

lean in and discuss the cyber issue and find solutions

to that issue.

Because I think the technology is great

and we should be deploying more of it but we always

have to be mindful. And there's a solution for the

cyber but we've all got to be coming to the table to

talk about that. Thanks.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Anything you wanted

to add, Scott?

MR. MORRIS: Yes, Laura actually made a

couple of the points I was going to make so I

appreciate that also, and I agree with Jack.

At the end of the day, one of the products

we produce as an organization is on behalf of the

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American people is our independent assessment of

overall licensee performance relative to safety and

security.

So, I think any of these tools, any and

all, should be used, I'm certainly open to it. I'm

admittedly a bit skeptical at this point,

particularly when you move away from inspection and

into assessment and particularly safety culture

assessment.

I'm not quite sure how AI would

necessarily help us with that but, hey, I'm open to

the future. I need to know more I think. There's a

lot to be learned here.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Let's turn to

another question, this one is probably more for the

NRC folks. It's a follow-up on VLSIR.

The regions had firsthand experience

using the VLSIR process and MSS so the material side

of the house where NRC is currently evaluating how it

can use VLSIR to address potential issues associated

with extreme weather events during fuel offload

activities. Are the regions engaging with NMSS to

discuss how best to apply the VLSIR process to that

kind of situation?

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MS. DUDES: The short answer is yes,

we're actively engaged with the program office and

we're talking through the various scenarios. But Ray

did a very good job of talking about the distinction

on VLSIR as is it a compliance issue or not?

And then the significance, I think we

agree on the significance, we just need to make sure

we work with the program office to identify the

compliance aspects but, yes, we're very engaged in

that issue.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Here's another one.

Have the regions identified any trends in inspections

not being completed within the scheduled timeframe

for requiring subsequent reactions?

If so, are there any insights you can

share about that?

Any takers on this one?

MR. MORRIS: I'm struggling to come up

with one but the one that leapt to my mind, and I

don't know if it's a great example or not, but there

are certain things that can only be done during

planned outages, there are only certain times you can

go into containment, et cetera, particularly in a

boiling water reactor.

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So, we've had to defer some of that stuff

and some of the required inspections that licensees

have to perform have been deferred through the

exemption process. So, it's been done proactively

and deliberately with good thinking behind the how

and why.

But for the most part, we've been able to

get it done, it's just we've had to adapt and flex a

little bit and leverage different resources. But I

can't really think of an example that fits that.

Maybe my colleagues.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Ray?

MR. LORSON: I can just follow on, Scott,

and like Scott, I only know of one inspection that we

were not able to complete during calendar year 2019.

I don't know of any inspections that we were not able

to complete in 2020.

2019 was a COVID-19-related impact, a

short fuse opportunity that we just missed because

you can only see certain things during certain times,

as Scott mentioned. So, we haven't had a significant

backlog of, if you will, uncompleted inspections.

We report on that every year to Congress

and so we endeavor to complete the inspections on

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time.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Let's ask maybe a

little bit more of a big-picture question. Jack, I'm

sorry, did you want to get in?

MR. GIESSNER: Yes, in 2020 there were a

couple inspections that we didn't do and we validated

the reasonable assurance of safety by other means.

A couple were security inspections and a couple,

health physics inspections.

And those related to high COVID-19

incidents in the surrounding community and we were

able to use the resident staff and the review of

records to follow up and ensure that the delay in the

inspection to the following year was okay.

And also, we also had containment entry

where we elected based on where we were in COVID-19

to not do it and do it later on.

So, I think those are well documented on

the public record and I think it shows, as I talked

about before, the balance of safety of people and

still ensuring safety of the plants.

So, I just wanted to highlight ours,

thanks.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Thanks, Jack. Let

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me turn to the more big-picture question.

In your work, and this could really apply

to the NRC folks or others, but in your work how do

you ensure the interests of local and other non-

licensee stakeholders are considered?

Does someone from the NRC want to start

with that? Laura's going to take it.

MS. DUDES: To the extent that we can be

engaged with our local community, that's the first

step and I know we have made ourselves available and

have gone out to various community activities such as

the Investor River Walk or the Phidalia Onion

Festival and had a booth.

And so we have to start to have a

relationship with the community first and then if

there are issues with that community, you can hear

from them. But the first step is starting that

relationship, engaging with people in the local area.

And then once you have that dialog and

that relationship, their interests, their thoughts

will be shared with you. I do know our residents

will typically meet with local community leaders at

least once a year.

So, it's really about listening first and

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developing relationships. I'll pause.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Jeff, do you have

something you want to share on this one?

MR. SEMANCIK: Yes, this is an

interesting one out there.

I spent 23 years at a local power-plant

as both the senior license operator and management,

and when I came over to the state and became the state

liaison officer I think I mentioned at one of the

early conferences, I had more exposure to senior NRC

leadership as a licensee than I did as the state

liaison officer.

To the Commission's credit, I think you

guys responded well to that but I also learned that

I've got to really make those interests known. But

I think there are some ways to make sure of that.

Commissioner Baran, you came up for a

visit, I was informed of the visit, we had an

opportunity to sit and meet and hear concerns we have.

And I think it's important because while I may

understand the authority of the Atomic Energy Act,

the public really doesn't.

And so often my phone is the first one to

ring with issues and concerns and things in the paper,

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and how the public might perceive it. And I think

we're a valuable resource for that.

We've also worked through the National

Organization and the Conference of Radiation Control

Program Directors to form a working group of state

representatives that have power-plants so we can keep

an eye and look at some of those issues that might be

affecting those and see that perspective.

And just reaching out for state and local

partners is also important, I think we've learned

that through the material side of the program and I

think although it varies state to state how much

interest is out there, I think we can be a valuable

resource.

And the example I would provide is

there's a production facility in New Haven here that

has been remediated and the typical approach for the

public meetings was put it on the website and let

people come see.

We were able to reach out and let them

know that New Haven has got a very unique community-

led structure that's below the Mayor system.

We've got the team to the community

management team meetings, meetings with the local

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alders, and that really helped to get a lot of

information out to the public and get some of those

direct concerns for in this case a very EJ community

that didn't have access to Internet and things like

that.

And so getting those out there, we were

able to help navigate that process. So, I think all

those things are really important and I think state

and local partners are a good starting point for it

too.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: It looks like Ray

is interested in chiming in and then Ed.

MR. LORSON: I agree with basically

everything I heard from Jeff. We worked very hard

to try to make it effective and strong relationship

with our state partners.

Jeff, I know you've been out on

inspections, I've been on inspections with you and so

we do have a state liaison officers in each regional

office that report directly to the regional

administrator.

And so they keep our conduit with

information and concerns where if there's something

we're doing of interest, we want to communicate that

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to the states. So, we try to be very forward-

leaning, very proactive in trying to maintain an

effective working relationship.

We have memorandums of understanding with

many of the states in our region and so often, while

we have an inspection we'll make them aware of

significant inspection activities in advance and

invite them to come and participate in all of our

inspections from an observation process.

The last point I want to make is we have

a number of plants in Region 1 that are currently

undergoing decommissioning, and as part of the

decommissioning that is very much of course a public

process.

And all of the sites have some form of

some sort of citizens advisory panel and so we

frequently would go and provide information upon

request just to communicate with the local government

officials and also with members of the public

regarding what our activities entail and what's the

next step in the cleanup process.

So, I think it's a very critical

relationship, I appreciate Jeff's participation today

and also everything you've done to help us interact

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with things going on in Connecticut. Thanks, Jeff.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Ed?

MR. LYMAN: Really quickly, I certainly

would like to make a plea for more transparency and

in this context, a lot of the processes we've been

talking about are of a very low safety significance

determinations, STP and significance determination

process are all pretty inscrutable to the public and

there's only so much you can do to explain those often

complex proceedings.

But the more open and transparent you are

about how decisions are made, I think the better, and

that involves these qualitative aspects like the

human element to weigh, as we heard, the dynamics of

management inspections.

I think for inspector findings it's very

interesting and humanizes the Agency, at least makes

me understand that it's not just this mechanical

black box but there is this human aspect to it and so

subjective judgment.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: We have just a

couple minutes left, I think we have time for one

more question. As always, we have more questions

coming in than we really have time to get to, but let

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me ask this one and I'll just read this one.

The industry is adopting the so-called

value-based maintenance and converting many

time-based preventative maintenance work items to

predictive maintenance.

And the question is interested in knowing

I think at least NRC folks' view about whether

existing compliance activities are going to be

adequate to assess the safety impact of that,

particularly if licensees are going below the

manufacturer-recommended preventative maintenance

work.

Any insights anyone wants to share on

that in our last couple minutes?

MR. MORRIS: I will start by saying this,

it's something we're aware of and focused on,

Commissioner.

When it comes to key equipment,

particularly safety-related or important to safety

equipment or things that can cause plant trips and

challenges, we do have a performance-based rule in

place, 10 CFR 5065, affectionately known as the

maintenance rule.

But it does factor in ultimately the

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performance of the equipment and condition monitoring

of the equipment.

So, there is a role for modifying

maintenance frequencies and test frequencies based on

operating experience, based on better data and

analytics.

But it has to be done in a measured way

and I think our regulatory infrastructure is set up

to detect significant challenges in that area should

they manifest themselves.

COMMISSIONER BARAN: Any other thoughts

on this issue? Jack?

MR. GIESSNER: I'll just add that a lot

of the processes that have some risk-informed already

have a feedback loop.

For example, the surveillance frequency

control program, if you extend the frequency of what

you do in your surveillance and you do have a failure,

you're required to go back and reassess that.

So, in addition to the maintenance rule,

the processes that are allowing the licensees a

little more flexibility have a tool in them for

feedback loop.

So, I think I agree with Scott we need to

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check on that and our processes are going to ensure

we don't inadvertently miss that.

Jeff?

MR. SEMANCIK: One aspect of this that

is I guess tangentially related or would go back to

Ed's call for more transparency.

While generally we're supportive of risk-

informed programs, some of them, like the

surveillance frequency control program or 5069 for

classification of components, once they're in house

to the utility after the initial license amendment,

the transparency of those changes is gone.

They become opaque and so you change a

diesel surveillance frequency, there is no longer a

public piece of that, there's no longer opportunity

for state and local feedback on those processes.

So, unlike 5059, which kind of has that

annual report that talks about what safety evals were

done, a lot of these programs -- I think especially

in aggregate it would be nice to see something that

enhances the transparency, even if it's a review

after the fact to understand what major changes were

done, so that folks outside of the NRC and the

licensee are aware of them.

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COMMISSIONER BARAN: I think we have to

stop at that suggestion. It's been a great

discussion I think.

Thank you all to all of our terrific

panelists, I think we covered a lot of ground and a

lot of different topics and got a variety of

perspectives on so many them.

Thank you all and thank you to those who

have been watching and submitting questions, we

really appreciate it. Sorry we didn't get to all of

them but I think we got to almost all of them.

So, thanks so much and enjoy the rest of

your day, everyone.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter

went off the record at 2:30 p.m.)

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