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IN RESPONSE, PLEASE
REFER TO: M980806

September 3, 1998

The Commission was briefed by the NRC staff on the nuclear regulatory research program. The Commission encouraged the staff to move forward on a number of issues:

1. The staff should establish a distribution between research work to be performed by internal resources and that to be performed by external resources. The distribution should be based on a set of well-defined criteria.
   
   
2. The staff should similarly define the needs for anticipatory research and confirmatory research, such as engineering services, in direct support of other NRC offices, in accordance with the agency's needs. The distribution between anticipatory and confirmatory research should be based on a set of well-defined criteria.
   
   
3. The staff should use the Operating Plan to define planned accomplishments and milestones for the resolution of present and foreseeable technical issues consistent with the budgeting and planning process. The revised Operating Plan should be submitted to the Commission for information.
   
   
4. The staff should work to complete the timely prioritization and resolution of all generic safety issues (GSIs), utilizing clear criteria and precise milestones, and assigning explicit responsibility and accountability.
   
   
5. The staff should proceed without delay to work with NEI on the whole-plant risk-informed initiative and agree upon the tasks, scope, criteria, approach and ground rules for proceeding with the project.

With regard to SECY-98-076, Core Research Capabilities, the staff should address stakeholder comments (e.g., from the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safety and the NRC Inspector General), make appropriate revisions, and submit a paper documenting the results to the Commission. This should be considered a part of the overall agency efforts in identifying NRC core capabilities.