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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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ALL EMPLOYEES MEETING ON "THE GREEN" PLAZA
AREA BETWEEN BUILDINGS AT WHITE FLINT
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PUBLIC MEETING
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Nuclear Regulatory Commission
11555 Rockville Pike
Rockville, Maryland
Thursday, October 17, 1996
The Commission met in open session, pursuant to
notice, at 10:40 a.m., the Honorable SHIRLEY A. JACKSON,
Chairman of the Commission, presiding.
COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, Chairman of the Commission
KENNETH C. ROGERS, Member of the Commission
GRETA J. DICUS, Member of the Commission
NILS J. DIAZ, Member of the Commission
EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR., Member of the Commission
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P R O C E E D I N G S
[10:40 a.m.]
MRS. NORRY: Good morning.
Welcome to the sixth annual All Employees Meeting
at the NRC. Back in the early days of this gathering, some
of you may recall we had to have it at downtown hotels and
now we are lucky to have a beautiful campus and a beautiful
location and beautiful weather, which was arranged for you
by the Office of Administration.
[Laughter and applause.]
MRS. NORRY: After the Chairman speaks, we will
have questions from the audience. You will notice that
there are microphones spread around. The regions and the
resident sites are plugged in and those questions will be
relayed by our reliable Sue Smith and James Heck, stars of
former years.
We may have some press here and we welcome them
but we ask that the questions be limited to those from NRC
employees; this is an employee meeting.
Now I would like to introduce Chairman Jackson,
who will introduce her fellow commissioners.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Good morning everyone. Can
everyone hear me?
VOICES: Yes.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you.
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Now, on behalf of my Commission colleagues, I want
to welcome you to this special meeting of the Commission
with the NRC staff. These All Employee Meetings have been
held annually since 1991 and are intended to facilitate
communication between the Commission and individual members
of the staff and to enable employees to become better
acquainted with newly appointed commissioners. Today's
meeting serves both of these purposes.
Before I launch into the more formal parts of my
remarks, I want to thank very much Mrs. Norry and the Office
of Administration, particularly for the weather.
Because this is the first All Employees Meeting in
some time in which we have had a full five-member Commission
and since many of you may not have had the opportunity to
meet all the members of the Commission, I would like to
introduce my colleagues to you.
On my immediate right is someone all of you know
and you know him well, Commissioner Kenneth C. Rogers, who
is serving his second five-year term as commissioner and as
dean of the corps.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Didn't know that.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: He previously served as
president of the Stevens Institute of Technology.
On my immediate left is Commissioner Greta Joy
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Dicus, who previously served the state of Arkansas as a
commissioner and as Chairman of the Central Interstate Low-
level Radioactive Waste Commission among other activities
and, in fact, was a member of the board of directors of the
U.S. Enrichment Corporation.
On my far right is Commissioner Nils J. Diaz.
Dr. Diaz came to the NRC from the University of Florida,
where he was a professor of nuclear engineering sciences and
director of the innovative Nuclear Space Power and
Propulsion Institute.
And, last but not least, on my far left is
Commissioner Edward McGaffigan, Jr., formally a senior
advisor to U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and a
member of the U.S. Foreign Service for seven years.
All of us have been looking forward to this
meeting with you and the opportunity to have an interchange.
Our format today will be the same as that used for our
session last year.
Following my opening remarks, the Commission will
entertain questions from NRC employees here on the Green as
well as from our regional and field offices, which are
connected to us by open telephone lines. And, again this
year, we will be holding the second session of this meeting
this afternoon at 1:30 p.m., since we have insufficient
space to accommodate all of our employees here in a single
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session.
I want to remind all of you that this is your
meeting. The agenda will be determined by your questions.
This is your opportunity to ask us the questions you would
like to have answered.
I strongly encourage each of you to participate
actively and to be candid in expressing your concerns. The
Commission needs to know what your concerns are if we are to
be effective in directing agency policy and you need to hear
our responses so that you can be effective in carrying out
your responsibilities as members of the NRC staff.
My Commission colleagues and I will respond to
your questions to the best of our abilities based on our
understanding of your concerns as well as our individual
perspectives on those concerns. This informal exchange of
views is our sole reason for being here this morning.
Before I turn the microphones over to questions,
however, I would like to take a few minutes to outline for
you my assessment of what we have accomplished in the year
since our last All Employees Meeting and where I think we,
as an agency, need to be moving in the future.
As you will recall, shortly after becoming
Chairman, I described my early impression of the NRC as an
excellent technical organization that was finding itself
subject to an internal and external environment undergoing
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rapid change. In light of the strong impact of this
changing environment, I suggested that it seemed inevitable
that the NRC would have to change as well if we were to
carry out our regulatory responsibilities successfully.
In retrospect, I think the picture I drew last
year was reasonably accurate. The agents of change were
very busy in the past year. Competitive pressures and
economic deregulation did have a strong impact on the
nuclear industry and that industry has begun to react,
somewhat tentatively to be sure, by consolidating its
activities and merging to form new, larger operating
entities. And I am primarily talking about the electric
utility industry.
Interestingly, one of the first such mergers took
place right here in our own backyard, so to speak, when
Baltimore Gas and Electric and PEPCO announced their plans
to merge. In the meantime, several state public utility
commissions, some of the most active agents for change, have
begun to define rather precisely the responsibilities that
existing utilities and new entities in the business of
producing and distributing electric power will have in a new
competitive local area marketplace.
The U.S. Congress, always a source of new
concepts, ideas and plans affecting the regulatory agencies,
including the NRC, has had a fairly broad agenda of energy-
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related legislative proposals to consider this year and can
be expected to maintain its strong interests in such matters
next year, no matter what the outcome of the November
elections.
At the NRC, we have been busy reacting to change
and to challenge over the past year and I think we can be
proud of what we have accomplished. We have continued to
carry out our regulatory mission of protecting public health
and safety and to maintain our fundamental regulatory
activities despite continuing budget restrictions and the
national effort to reduce the size of government.
Sometimes, when we look at ourselves and our
budget, which has been shrinking, we think of ourselves as a
small, not-so-important agency. However, if we look at the
importance of our mandate, namely adequate protection of
public health and safety and the environment and the common
defense and security in the use of nuclear materials in the
United States, and if we look at the scope of that
responsibility, together with the net capital investment in
the range of activities that we regulate, our importance is
very great indeed.
Potential new activities will give even greater
weight to what we do at a time when significant changes are
occurring for those we regulate. I believe that we have
taken significant steps to position ourselves for future
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change.
Last month, we issued a draft policy statement on
economic deregulation of nuclear power plants outlining our
concerns about the adequacy of decommissioning funds and the
potential impact on reactor operational safety. Our
relationship with the Department of Energy is rapidly being
redefined. As you know, the Department has requested NRC
involvement in its pilot project to develop a high-level
radioactive waste solidification system at Hanford,
Washington, in order to facilitate possible NRC licensing of
a privatized Hanford facility soon after the year 2000.
During fiscal year 1997, NRC will begin the
development of an overall review strategy to be made
available as guidance for potential DOE contractors at the
site. Also in FY 1997, the NRC will begin assisting DOE
through a memorandum of understanding in evaluating
alternative approaches to tritium production. One
alternative under consideration by DOE for evaluation is the
production of tritium in commercial light water reactors.
The NRC will be evaluating potential policy issues and
licensing requirements to implement this approach.
Possibly even more farreaching, we are being
considered for a major role in the oversight of DOE's
nuclear activities more broadly. Such an increase in our
regulatory responsibilities to encompass DOE facilities if
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adopted by the Congress would require adequate resources and
sufficient time to develop a sound regulatory program.
Finally, we intend to assume regulatory oversight
of the operations of the U.S. Enrichment Corporation by
March 3, 1997, as well.
On the international scene, the Convention on
Nuclear Safety negotiated over a three-year period by
representatives from over 65 nations will enter into force
on October 24, thereby helping to ensure a safer global
environment. In the United States, ratification of the
treaty which the U.S. and the NRC in particular had major
roles in developing, is currently before the Senate and we
hope to obtain early Senate approval in the new Congress.
We are also finding international support for my
proposal to establish an international nuclear regulators'
forum in which nuclear regulatory officials from all over
the world can exchange views, coordinate approaches and
harmonize arrangements for the safe and secure use of
nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Finally, within the agency, we have made
significant progress in our strategic assessment and
rebaselining initiative. Although I will have more to say
about this in a few minutes, I want to note here that the
issue papers are out for public and NRC staff comments and
we intend to be in a position to reach final decisions on
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them in the December/January time frame.
While we have been busy preparing ourselves for
future changes, we have also continued to improve our
existing major safety programs. In the reactor area, we are
expanding our use of probabilistic risk assessment to ensure
that the Agency's resources and activities are focused on
the issues that are most important to safety. We have
modified our processes for evaluating nuclear plant
performance and we are taking steps to improve our program
for protecting allegers against retaliation.
In the nuclear materials and nuclear waste areas,
we have improved our cooperation with the states on
regulation of radioactive material. We have streamlined our
materials licensing and inspection processes. We have
adopted a new, performance-based licensing approach with
respect to uranium recovery facilities and we have started a
process, initially with respect to our medical program, to
evaluate whether our materials program standards and
regulations are appropriately focused on the health and
safety issues of significance for these licensees.
In research, we are focusing our efforts on PRA,
on understanding the reactor component aging process and on
consolidating our efforts on thermal hydraulics into a
comprehensive long-range plan.
Now, I have covered a lot and, taken together, all
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of these efforts represent a significant attempt to improve
our performance and to adjust to changing circumstances and
we, as an agency, have much to be proud of in our record
over the past year. I certainly am proud of our
accomplishments and our efforts to be ready to address the
new responsibilities we may take on during the next twelve
months and beyond. And I think each of you should take
pride in the individual roles that you have played in the
overall effort.
Now, unfortunately, much of what we have
accomplished has been seriously overshadowed by events in
New England. The Millstone and Connecticut Yankee plants
are likely to leave in many people's minds a more permanent
stamp on the record of the last twelve months and to
characterize the performance of the NRC far more than any of
the numerous accomplishments I have described over the same
period of time.
In part, this result is only to be expected. The
role of the regulator is a difficult role to play. Those of
you who are sports fans or have participated in a formal
debate know how much more difficult it is to maintain a
defensive posture than it is to mount an effective offense,
since the latter requires only a plan for a single course of
action and some ability to actually carry it out while the
former, the defensive posture, must have effective plans
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against all possible contingencies. Regrettable as it may
seem, it only takes one event to call into question the
ability or willingness of a regulator, an umpire, a referee
or a traffic cop to accomplish his or her mission.
Yet it would be a serious mistake on our part to
dismiss the events at Millstone in particular as presenting
merely an interesting set of technical problems that will
ultimately be addressed and resolved with time and a certain
amount of increased attention on the part of the NRC. As I
noted last March when I addressed all of you about the Time
Magazine article about the Millstone situation, if we
honestly assess the performance of the utilities in question
and our own performance, we would agree that not all aspects
of nuclear operations and nuclear regulation are as they
should be, despite all of our efforts to the contrary. And
although we have much to learn yet about the situation at
Millstone and it would be premature to state totally full
conclusions, we do know enough about the conditions at the
plants to begin to ask ourselves some thought-provoking
questions about whether we have succeeded in establishing
the safety culture we have been trying to establish
throughout the industry, whether we are succeeding as well
as we should in anticipating problems in advance, whether we
are asking ourselves the right questions about the way we
have done things in the past or are doing them now and
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whether NRC personnel both in headquarters and on site, in
evaluating licensee activities are sufficiently familiar
with regulations and requirements that apply to the specific
activity being carried out.
When I look at the recent events at Millstone, I
see two broad decisions that, if we could go back and
change, we could. We should have put more NRC resources on
discovering the problems at Millstone at an earlier stage
and possibly turned the facility around prior to its
reaching its current state. The other is that perhaps we
stopped doing design-basis inspections too early and we
relied on industry to address the problem without
maintaining an appropriate regulatory focus to assess
whether, in fact, they were dealing with the issue in a
timely manner.
Now, this is not to say -- this is very
important -- this is not to say that we cannot rely on
industry. We have to, because they are responsible for the
safe operation of their facilities. However, it is our
responsibility to regulate them, to set appropriate safety
requirements and to insist upon compliance with existing
requirements. We cannot delegate regulatory responsibility
to the industry.
Now, I want to address a few remarks toward our
expectations of licensee performance and the emphasis of our
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own regulatory oversight. I see real danger in our becoming
ensnared by false distinctions between safety and compliance
in our regulatory program. In fact, the concepts are bound
tightly to each other.
A licensee's compliance with our regulations and
license conditions is fundamental to our confidence in the
safety of licensed activities. As I have said any number of
times, if there are requirements on the books that do not
have to do with safety, we should remove them through the
well-established processes to make such changes. That is
important because it is untenable, as a regulatory agency,
to imply that regulatory requirements can be ignored.
I recognize that, as an agency with limited
resources and staff, we must make informed choices in
applying our resources to the most safety-significant
activities or challenges requiring our oversight. This
drives the importance of a risk-informed approach to
regulation. By focusing our resources on those significant
issues and maintaining high expectations for licensees'
adherence to existing requirements until and unless they
change, we will strengthen the quality of our oversight and
public confidence in it and we will enhance consistency and
objectivity in our evaluation and enforcement and thereby
help to ensure fairness to all.
Of course, an event like Millstone quite obviously
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suggests the need for change, change in the industry as well
as change at the NRC, and we should welcome the opportunity
that Millstone affords to correct and improve our
performance as a regulatory body responsible for protecting
public health and safety. I have concern, however, that
some of you may view any suggestion for change as a
criticism of both your personal performance and the agency's
overall performance.
I personally believe that such a view is mistaken,
for any organization must change over time and in response
to the challenges of the moment. We are, in fact, in
effect, learning as we go and Millstone provides a timely
lesson for us. In fact, change and learning are built on
the foundation of the past. That is what we have been doing
all the time.
I especially want to make it clear to you that I
recognize, and I have said it on many occasions, that NRC is
a highly competent technical agency that employs many
extraordinarily gifted and dedicated people. What we need
to do is to work together to continue to have a strong,
respected organization and an important part of working
together is communicating clearly with others and listening
carefully and attentively to what is being communicated to
us.
Communications and improvements in how we do
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business are also the key features of our strategic
assessment and rebaselining initiative at this stage of its
evolution. As you know, issue papers have been published
for comment and we will soon be holding a series of meetings
across the country to obtain comments from the general
public and other stakeholders. We are also especially
looking forward to hearing from each of you in that process.
I know many of you are concerned about the impact
of strategic assessment and rebaselining on your own
careers, on your own jobs but I want to assure you that, to
date, we have only made preliminary decisions on the issue
papers. We are counting, in fact, on your input to help
guide us in making final decisions and we want you to
identify any and all concerns that you may have. Be candid,
be straightforward, be thoughtful but, by all means, provide
us with your comments.
In that regard, I want to draw your particular
attention not just to those issue papers that may directly
impact your job but to Issue Paper Number 23 as well. It is
one entitled Enhancing Regulatory Excellence, which is
directly applicable to the issues I have discussed today and
to the general direction of the Agency. We welcome your
comments on what you see as the major problems affecting the
agency and any solutions you may care to offer.
Now, I would like to turn the meeting over to you
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and I would ask each of you who wishes to speak, to ask a
question, to use one of the microphones available so that
everyone can hear your question.
Please feel free to direct your question to me or
to any one of us and if your question is intended for all of
us, I will refer it to each of my colleagues in turn.
So, may we have the first question, please?
Is the meeting over?
VOICE: Good morning.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Good morning.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Who had a "good morning"
before I had a "good morning"?
[Laughter.]
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: I would like to direct
these two questions to the two new commissioners and welcome
you, obviously, to the Commission.
Also, do you have any particular areas of
expectations or areas of particular interest that you would
like to pass on to the staff here as coming new to this job?
And also, particularly, Commissioner McGaffigan,
coming up from the Senate, what was your view of how the
Agency was viewed by the Senate, which obviously is an
important body in giving oversight to the Agency? I would
be interested in those two.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
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COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I believe that my greatest
expectation is on me rather than on the staff. I would like
to be able to learn more about all the things that we do so
I can work effectively with you and that is what I am trying
to do right now. I am in a learning curve. All learning
curves are "S" and I am definitely away from curving over; I
am still curving at the very bottom of it.
But I would like to say that the -- my expectation
on the staff are to be able to communicate with you
frequently and openly and to know which directions you see
things going so I might be able to do my job better.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I come to you from the
defense world and that means that, perhaps initially, I am
going to pay some attention of these issues of tritium
production in commercial reactors. I have a strong
background in nonproliferation and I spent 20 years in
government and I am going to try to help my colleagues
understand how government institutions work. I think,
having been in government for 21 years, like many of you, I
think that will be a strength that I can bring to the
Commission in terms of processes, acquisition processes.
I was there when a lot of this legislature was
passed to make acquisitions systems more flexible for Pat
Norry and her people, make information systems work better.
I am in a learning mode as well. I have learned a
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lot in the last month from having 40 people come in and talk
to me about being TAs and it gave me a sense of just how
excellent this agency is and I think I could have thrown a
dart and ended up with good staff, but that is for all of
those of you who weren't chosen. But you are all -- they
were full of ideas and full of enthusiasm and full of ways
to make this a better institution. So I see that in the
staff.
In terms of how the Senate views the Agency, in
all honesty, it is like many institutions. I oversaw the
Defense Department and there are many parts of the Defense
Department that are relatively unknown except to the
specialists and the staff and the NRC is in that category.
I think you have a general reputation, as the
Chairman said, as an excellent technical agency with top-
notch people but you have not had an authorization bill
passed in 11 or 12 years. That is -- if you get focus in
the Congress, it is when members, all hundred of them, have
to vote on issues and that hasn't happened in a long time.
And the appropriations bill is handled relatively
straightforwardly with you buried in the energy and water
bill.
I think there are some very important issues for
the Agency in the Congress and our profile may well go up in
the coming years because of the nature of the issues that
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are going to come before us. But I think, in general, you
are thought of as a very competent technical agency that
they don't have to think about very much, which is good.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Next question.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Good morning.
Some statements were made regarding shrinking
budgets and streamlining of the inspection and licensing
program. In light of this, what does the Commission see in
terms of the future of the usage of regions in terms of the
administration of the overall purpose of the NRC?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think there are two answers
to that question. One is that the Commission has made no
specific decision one way or the other with respect to the
regions. Having said that, I think that the Commission
recognizes the strength of the regional system and the
importance of our inspection program, in terms of giving us
comfort that we, in fact, are carrying out our health and
safety mission effectively and that our licensees are living
within the regulatory framework. So there is no specific
plan, at this particular time, to do anything one way or the
other with the regions.
But our overall regulatory program including
reactor oversight is under discussion both as an outcome of
lessons learned from a number of issues we have been
grappling with lately as well as being specifically part of
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strategic assessment and rebaselining and you have, because
the papers are out, any and all preliminary views of the
Commission. But, as I have said, we also are going to be
looking for stakeholder input and some of our biggest
stakeholders are our own employees, obviously.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Thank you.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: This is primarily for
Commissioner Rogers but others may comment.
I would like to know the commissioner's impression
of the completeness of the documentation of the safety
adequacy of the existing nuclear power plants.
[Laughter.]
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I detect my fellow
commissioners departing.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: It's called the head-for-the-
hills effect.
[Laughter.]
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Well, you know, the question
I think could be viewed in a couple of ways. One is, if you
really want to focus on documentation as such, that is one
aspect. And the other is, safety as it relates to
documentation.
I think that we certainly have felt that more
attention has to be paid to make sure that plants indeed
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understand what their own documentation is and I have to say
that I think we have learned, through some studies recently
by the staff, that everybody's documentation has not been in
very good shape.
I can remember some years ago when I was at Public
Service Electric and Gas as a director and we ran into
trouble with the NRC and an oversight committee was created
and I was on that committee. One of the first things that
committee did was to ask that company to go and look back at
every commitment that it had made to NRC of any kind and to
see whether those commitments had been fulfilled or not and
to review all of the relevant documentation.
So I think that was a very healthy thing to do.
And I must say that I think plants have to understand what
their licensing basis is, they have to understand whether
they are in conformity with their alleged design which,
sometimes, what is on paper is not exactly what is in the
plant. And I think these loose ends just should be tied up.
It is a very important fundamental basis on which
to start to look at the future: Do you understand and have
good documentation for what exists in the plant right now?
It would seem to me it is just very fundamental, it is
elementary. The protests and objections to doing that from
licensees are understandable in some ways but I think it is
just a fundamental problem that has to be put to rest that
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the documentation is in place and that the people who run
the plants understand what is in that documentation.
So I think that that is the beginning of continued
safe operation, to know what you have and what its technical
basis is. To me, there is really no argument that makes
much sense that you shouldn't do that.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think that, in addition, a
number of our other initiatives such as PRA, and this came
out in the Commission briefing yesterday, rests on just that
knowledge and that ability to retrieve the licensing basis
and even, as Commissioner Rogers has stated in the past, it
is not just that you have it but that it is being
appropriately used as the plants are operating and in
operations and procedures and, particularly, as changes are
made to the plants.
Next question?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I might add a comment on that.
I don't know whether it is -- you know, it is a very short
time that I have been here. But I am trying to connect the
issues regarding the safety culture and what I have come up
with lately, and I am probably wrong, is that no safety
culture in this business can survive without a tracking
infrastructure and the tracking infrastructure is what
actually supports the activities that we do, whether it is
documentation or anything else. And that tracking
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infrastructure has to connect every single point in the
Agency and now I am going to throw out a word from my early
years in school, and there should not be any impedance
mismatch in between those points.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Is there another question?
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: I was wondering how our
efforts have improved the safety in nuclear power plants in
the former Soviet Union.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: It depends on your definition
of the former Soviet Union. I think if one looks at the
facilities in central and eastern Europe and countries that
were formerly part of the Soviet Union, I think the case can
be made that the safety has been improved in a number of
senses. I think that a number of plants have made changes
in operations that show improvements in those operations.
There are more robust safety assessments that are done in
those plants, including the use of PRA and those assessments
have been used to make both physical and operational
improvements at the plants.
We have been involved in international efforts
through both the G-7 and the G-24, specifically in making
safety upgrades at a number of plants of Soviet design.
Within the Russian Federation itself, we have made
some progress but the work continues. A big thrust of our
efforts as an agency has been in strengthening or bringing
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into existence where they didn't exist and strengthening the
regulatory bodies, particularly with respect to having those
bodies and their statutory authority firmly rooted in basic
nuclear legislation and having regulatory bodies that have
independence and the resources that they need.
We could say that there has been a lot of good
progress in that regard. If one wanted to be fair or
realistic, I would say there is no regulatory body that
looks like us anywhere in the world. Those bodies, then, in
those countries are a long way from where we are today.
However, in the sense that in certain instances there was no
regulatory structure and there now is, that there was no
independence and there now is more, that there have been
specific both physical and operational safety upgrades made
in those plants and that there have been a number of efforts
and successful ones in improving safety culture, I would say
that the record is a positive one.
I don't know if Commissioner Rogers, who has also
been here for a while, might wish to make a comment?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Yes. I think one thought
that occurs to me that might be of interest to you in this
regard is that NRC has been a training ground for regulators
from other countries over the years very effectively and
today we see people heading nuclear safety organizations in
countries that were part of the former Soviet Union who
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spent a year at NRC some time ago and were profoundly
influenced by that and the ability to stay in touch with us
and to be assisted by us through informal as well as formal
contacts, I think, has been very valuable.
So I would say that part of the success that has
come about has been through the sharing of expertise by NRC
staff members with staff members from other countries and
that has produced, I think, some very important
possibilities for the future, because they have been
oriented toward how we do things, how we think about safety
and they could sort of hit the ground running when they were
given opportunity to become a regulator in their own
countries.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I also think that one other
thing that is very important in this, in fact equally
critical, is that our government has been very focused on
the issue of safeguarding excess fissile materials and so
the NRC, together with other government agencies, has been
very involved in issues of material protection, control and
accounting, implementing such systems as well as the actual
physical protection in countries of the former Soviet Union
both through the Gore/Chernomyrdin Commission process, of
which I am a member, and my predecessor before me but also
at the staff level.
So on the nonproliferation side and the
27
safeguarding of materials side, we also have had a very
large impact and I don't know if Commissioner McGaffigan
wanted to make any comments since I know that the
nonproliferation issues are a focus of his.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I don't want to get off
track, since the question is originally about reactors. But
I think that is something that our government has done
extremely well and the Congress continues to provide very
adequate resources to pursue that and I think will continue
to do so even after Senator Nunn leaves the Senate in
January.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Is there another question?
Yes.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: I am asking this
question -- I am an administrative judge, by the way, and I
am asking this question. Does the Commission, either as a
whole or individually, Commissioners, realize that in the
past few years one of the major efforts of the Commission
seems to have been to cut down the opportunities for
meaningful -- and I would like to emphasize the word
"meaningful" -- public participation in various nuclear
regulation and the opportunity of members of the public to
participate.
There seems to be an effort to cut down the
opportunities for meaningful public participation such as in
28
hearings where I have participated. The Commission seems to
have attempted to cut down the opportunities for meaningful
public participation and I would like to get the current
Commissioners' views on the general subject.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, I think, and I will speak
first here, that the Commission is continually reviewing and
currently reviewing how it interfaces with the public, the
opportunities for the public to participate in our
regulatory processes at all levels, not just from the point
of view of hearings but in rulemakings and other fora.
I would take some degree of issue with that
perspective that we, in fact, are going the other way. I
think my understanding, and Commissioner Rogers, who has
been here longer, can speak to this more explicitly, but my
understanding is if you look at the question of how many
hearings we have versus not and use that as a metric of
public participation, I would argue first that is not the
only metric of public participation for the Commission and
there are any number of other ways that we involve the
public in our decisionmaking and continue to evaluate how we
can do a more effective job in that regard.
We are not as much of a licensing agency in terms
of major licensing activities as we were in the past when
there were a number of large nuclear facilities under
construction and being licensed and I think that there is a
29
natural trend in terms of that kind of a process that then
tracks with the case load, as it were.
Secondly, there are opportunities for hearing.
There are hearing rights afforded to any number of groups
with standing in many of our processes ranging from
licensing to decommissioning. So that is something that we
should take a look at.
But in the absence of taking a more detailed look,
I would say to you that our public participation has taken
different forms than just hearings but, in fact, my
perception is that the Agency is more open than it used to
be.
Commissioner Rogers, maybe you would like to make
a comment?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Yes. I think that that is a
very, very important point. I think, perhaps, from your
point of view of numbers of hearings and the number of times
the Commission has agreed to a hearing may be the basis for
your observation but I think that it does not reflect the
point of view of the Commission, should not be interpreted
as the view of the Commission as disinterested or interested
in reducing public participation.
I would say that meaningful public participation
can take place in many forms and certainly our efforts at
enhanced participatory rulemaking, for example, which
30
occupied a great deal of attention of the Commission and has
only been tested a little bit but seems to show some real
promise, I think that is a meaningful process. It may not
be exactly the same kind of participation as you might
observe in connection with hearings but I believe it to be
very meaningful in influencing how the Commission has come
to write its rules and I hope we will see much more of that.
I think this Commission is very committed to
openness and public participation in every way that we see
opportunities for meaningful participation to be exercised.
So I would hope your observation would not be that we do not
feel that way. I believe very strongly that this Commission
has gone on record a number of times of really being
interested in involving the public in new ways that go
beyond the ways of the past. I don't think that the
measures that you may be applying tell the whole story.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Dicus?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: I can't address specifically
what you are talking about with the hearing process; I have
not participated in that. But through the years that I
worked with this Agency in the various capacities that I
worked with the Agency prior to the time that I joined the
Commission, viewing it over that course of time, my
impression is that the Agency has become more open and has
attempted and honestly and sincerely attempted to involve
31
the public and other stakeholders in its decisionmaking
process far more than my view was some years ago.
So I see it trending to a better position of
communication between our agency, the people we serve, the
public, the licensees and the other stakeholders. If there
is room for improvement, and you are suggesting there is,
certainly, we should take a look at that. But my view is we
are doing a better job and we will continue in that trend.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: We are committed to public
participation, period. There is no need to elaborate; it is
a fact.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan?
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I can't quite be as
short as that.
[Laughter.]
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: But I agree. I come
here from an open institution, the Senate, and I have been
impressed in my first month-and-a-half here with just how
open this institution is, how open we are to public comment,
how public comment is taken seriously in every SECY paper
that comes to us, how open the staff is when they go out and
do inspections and have public meetings at the end of
inspections and convey to the public what it is that is our
view of the current plants and how we deal openly with the
32
events that occur.
So I think you have a remarkably open institution.
If there are -- I don't know the history of the hearings
process, but if there are improvements to be made, we can
look at it. But I think you are one of the most open
institutions, most open to public comment and public
participation that we have in the government.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I would also like to point out
that in laying out our strategic direction for the future,
as part of the strategic assessment, that is precisely why
we have rolled out all of these issue papers on what we feel
are the key issues for us, in terms of making decisions that
are going to affect our regulatory programs going forward
before the Commission even comes to a final decision and, in
fact, meeting with various stakeholders around the country
to solicit their input and, very importantly, getting input
from our own people.
Let me go on to the next question, please.
Yes.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Dr. Jackson and
Commissioner Rogers, I would like to indicate for myself a
personal concern that I have about the Commission's ability
to actually create a risk-informed basis for doing many
things in the Agency. There are approximately somewhere
between 70 and 80 systematic evaluations, mostly
33
probabilistic risk assessments that have been performed for
nuclear power plants primarily under Generic Letter 8820.
However, because of the costs and the resources
required to review these risk assessments, they have been
reviewed to a level that does not allow the staff to make
regulatory decisions based on these, it does not allow
people to make licensing decisions based on the PRAs and
every time an issue comes up, it has to be addressed
individually.
The staff is at a tremendous disadvantage because
it does not have the ability to effectively argue back
against the licensee who has put in a million, two million
dollars to do the review and performance of the PRA and we
have not, on our part, done a review that allows us to use
it.
Therefore, it seems to me that throughout the
agency, if we have all this information that is provided now
by licensees, and I know now that I am a project manager I
see that we can't effectively use it because the PRA
branches are overwhelmed and overburdened with the
possibility of reviewing every risk assessment issue that
comes up. Therefore, we can't really go forward, I believe,
until we do a much better job of reviewing these PRAs to
determine if they do do a good job of modeling the plant.
So I am interested in how the Commission sees this
34
and whether they have any plans to kind of break this box
that we have put ourselves in?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think that is an excellent
question. I think there are several pieces to the answer.
One thing that the staff has been urged to do on
an expedited basis is to develop certain key tools, among
them regulatory guidance as well as standard review plans.
One motivation of the Commission in asking that
these activities be undertaken on an expedited basis is for
us as an agency to lay out, both for the licensees as well
as for our own staff, what are appropriate minimal
requirements for the use of the kinds of risk assessments
that you described in regulatory decisionmaking and, in so
doing, then to be able to give guidance to the staff
including people in critical positions, such as yours, for
what a minimal submission should be and what level of review
is required for what regulatory action.
I would say to you that, having had a recent
Commission briefing on the PRA implementation plan, I would
say that we are not there yet. There are, I know, draft
documents under development and under review but, in the
end, those documents have to, in fact, address the points
that you raise in terms of how are we going to review these
submittals, how are we going to make regulatory decisions
without certain levels of review of the PRA submissions but,
35
more importantly, what are the base line requirements in
terms of what has to be in those.
Just as with everything else, everything is linked
to everything else. There was an earlier question about the
licensing basis of the plants. I think a big issue has to
deal with the fact of what is the base on which PRAs are
built and if we don't understand, if licensees don't
understand how their plants are built versus design, that
they haven't kept up with the licensing basis as the plants
have changed, it is not clear how, in fact, what the PRAs
mean relative to that.
That is part of what the Commission is trying to
get at with the 5054(f) letters that went out recently but
it is also part of what the Commission has asked the staff
to do and I have been pushing very hard on the staff to
accomplish with developing these guidance documents. Are
they end all and be all? Of course not. But I think we
have to come up to a certain threshold level in terms of
what minimally is required both of ourselves in terms of our
review of PRA submittals and of licensees in terms of what
has to be in them before we can move forward.
The concern that I have and I had when I got here
is that the train has left the station in the sense of our
licensees very actively using these techniques in making
their own decisions and, in a certain sense, we have to
36
catch the train and stabilize the situation.
So I thank you for your comment and if you have
any specific recommendations that you think we could do --
of things you think we can do to move this along in a more
focused way or at a better pace, the Commission, I think,
would appreciate hearing from you.
Commissioner Rogers?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Yes, I would just like to
remind you that we did not require all plants to do a PRA.
We required all plants to do an individual plant examination
that might involve a PRA but did not necessarily require a
PRA and, in the early days of that process, the Commission
was not either prepared or totally comfortable with using
PRA to make regulatory decisions, although it felt that PRA
was a useful tool for licensees to employ in examining their
own plants. I think what we have seen here is that that
tool has been taken up and used more extensively than we had
thought it would be five or six years ago.
We were never prepared to review every individual
plant PRA. I have been somewhat dismayed by that myself
because I think there is a great deal to be learned on our
part from examining PRAs. However, the Commission
recognized that it would not have the resources to review
every single plant PRA, nevertheless saw the value to the
licensees in understanding their own plants better by doing
37
a PRA. That certainly has proven to be the case.
Many licensees have found vulnerabilities that
they did not really fully appreciate in doing the PRA and we
have observed that. But, as the Chairman has said, I think
we are starting now to get to the point where we realized
that this is a very powerful regulatory tool and we have to
be able to use it effectively, more extensively.
We have committed enormous resources to our PRA
implementation program. But we are still not quite in a
position to be able to supply enough person power to review
every single plant PRA.
I think it would be a very good thing if we could
do that, so I appreciate your concerns and sense of
frustration here. But I would call to your attention the
history that has gotten us to this point. We didn't really
expect that every plant would necessarily do a full level
two PRA or even a level one PRA when we started the
individual plant examination program. That has sort of
caught fire and now we are trying to learn how to deal with
it.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: The question is where we go
from here. Commissioner Dicus?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: I leaned over and said
something to the Chairman so I get called on. That's okay.
[Laughter.]
38
COMMISSIONER DICUS: No, I was concerned about the
question and agree with the Chairman it is a very valid
question and it is a question the Commission needs to be
concerned about.
I have raised similar issues and approached them
in another direction in Commission meetings to the extent of
asking when we are developing these documents, when we are
going out with things, are they really being effective and
then, conversely, when these items come back in to us, are
we really able to handle them, what are we going to do with
them and how does this track? I am referring, in another
way, to what Commissioner Diaz said a little while about
about infrastructure and tracking.
So I appreciate your question. I think, as a
Commission, we are concerned about this and we need to
ensure, as the Chairman said, that we do get the key tools
in place to address this sort of thing and ensure that what
we are doing is the right course to take.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: Ditto.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan?
Okay, I didn't know who was there first. Maybe we
will take one from -- okay.
MS. SMITH: We have a number of different
39
questions from the regions but I will start with this one.
This is from Region IV.
The Information Technology Management Reform Act
requires agencies to appoint a chief information officer.
When do you anticipate a selection will be made and what do
you see is the most significant impact which the agency will
experience from the formation of a new CIO organization?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you.
I would say that we are tracking probably to the
end of the year to have a choice, a person, a choice made
and that come into effect.
I think the significant impact has to do with
creating an agencywide architecture for information
management that is both responsive to the user needs but
allows us more effectiveness and efficiency in carrying out
our program.
There are any number of issues related to how
information flows, how information is managed, how databases
are created, how they communicate, if they communicate, do
they streamline the administrative burden that our various
staff have to grapple with so that the focus can be on an
effective regulatory program. So acquisition of information
technology is linked to that but the role of the individual
in that position working with the EDO and CFO is to ensure
that the systems that are developed, that before technology
40
purchases are made, that we understand what they are to
accomplish and that we can do things appropriately on an
agencywide basis. It has some other things in terms of
acquisition, but that is a fundamental role.
So I personally am excited about the prospect and
I think we have a great opportunity and we just have to be
sure that it is implemented the right way.
MR. HECK: Okay, we have a question from Region
IV. The Agency has been --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Can you speak up? I can't hear
you too well.
MR. HECK: Okay. A question from Region IV. The
Agency has recently been using special team investigations
to review problem plants such as Dresden and Maine Yankee.
Would you anticipate this process would become a more
frequently used supplement to the inspection program for
problematic plants?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think there are two answers
to that. One is that there is always a responsiveness
aspect to what we decide is needed relative to an issue that
may arise with one of our licensees; in this case a power
reactor site. So I would say that as needed and as
appropriate, we would do that.
There is a larger issue relating back to the
design basis and licensing basis issues as to whether -- and
41
I spoke to that in my remarks, that in fact we have stepped
away from doing design basis based inspections and that is
something that we are looking at again.
Let me take a question here. Yes.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Chairman Jackson, in your
opening remarks you referred to your support for an
international regulators forum.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Correct.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: You are, of course, aware
that the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD has a committee
called the Committee on Nuclear Regulatory Activities which
is an informal forum for reactor regulators, usually at the
level of the head of the Office of Regulation, nuclear
reactor regulation. This group does meet from time to time
with regulators from the eastern European countries. In
addition, from time to time, there are senior regulators,
heads of regulatory committees, regulatory agencies, that
meet in Paris and I am wondering to what sense do you see
the proposed international regulatory forum differ from what
exists already.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, thank you for asking the
question. In fact, I introduced the idea of the
International Nuclear Regulators Forum at the Senior
Regulators Meeting at the NEA OECD in Paris just this fall
and it was very warmly and strongly endorsed.
42
The CNRA, the committee that you spoke of, is a
committee within the NEA that has had primarily a technical
focus and, as you point out, it is one that has had a focus
primarily on reactors and it has involved senior managers or
officials primarily at the level of someone that would be,
in our context, the director of NRR.
The forum that I am talking about is one that
would involve -- would be at a very high policy level and
involves a range of issues primarily focused on nuclear
safety and security and would involve the senior most,
politically accountable policy officials of those agencies.
It is meant to be complementary to but it is meant to
address a larger range of issues.
It is not going to be a forum where people sit and
present papers on PRA and how it is applied to nuclear power
plants. It really is looking at some of these issues about
regulatory regimes worldwide, some of the issues related to
creating regulatory bodies, legislative undergirding, any
number of issues. So it is meant to exist independently of
these existing structures but in harmony with them and to
latch onto them as appropriate.
In addition, the NEA membership is a very
restricted membership and a lot of the action in terms of
where there is need for regulatory discussion on the one
hand is in central and eastern Europe but, as far as where
43
there is major growth in nuclear programs, it's in Asia and
other than the membership of Japan and Korea, we don't have
certain major players in that forum.
Yes.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Chairman Jackson, you
mentioned that NRC will undergo some changes to survive.
Obviously, last year you discussed that extensively. At the
National Performance Review, where the government
performance was being reviewed actually on not the actual
mission but the way we perform, NRC was often cited as a
mature agency that had applied, relatively speaking, to
other regulatory agencies, common sense and judgment in
regulations.
Do you see that, more of that in the future or
less of that, given the problems that we have seen with
exemptions being given out --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do I see more of what?
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Of judgements used in
regulatory application, common sense approaches that --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, let me just say the
following. Judgment is always the basis of any decision
that is made. The question becomes what is the base on
which the judgment is made and do we have an infrastructure,
standards that we all understand and consistent tools that
we all use and understand and do we start from the same base
44
line of fundamental questions or ways of looking at whatever
the issue is or how we evaluate the performance of a
particular licensee.
I think what we are talking about here is ensuring
consistency, as much as possible, objectivity and the right
tools and common tools are used throughout our regulatory
programs and so that when our inspectors are in the field or
when we have region-based staff or headquarters staff that
everyone is reading from the same page.
You have heard me say, I have had it in a number
of speeches, that the way to regulate is not by exemption.
That if, in fact, one finds that there are circumstances
where there is somehow a need to issue blanket exemptions or
exemptions across some large base of licensees, that then
says that perhaps we need to take a look at why that
situation exists so that if, in fact, the regulation needs
to be eliminated or if it needs to be modified in a way so
that what I call the safety case is clearly there, then we
need to do that and that is why, in my opening remarks, I
said that it is very important that if we feel, if you feel,
if you know that our -- some regulation or regulatory
requirement does not have that safety case, then we need to
change it. But the solution for the regulator is not to say
that it is okay that we have these regulations, that it is
okay if they are ignored, because that is how we get
45
ourselves into the Millstone situation.
Over here?
MS. SMITH: This question comes from Region III
and it is for the new commissioners.
What are your opinions on the National Academy of
Sciences recommendations regarding NRC oversight of medical
facilities?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I am sure that Commissioner
Dicus would want to be considered a new commissioner in
this.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Therefore, I am going to put
her on the spot and put her in the group. So, Commissioner
Dicus?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: I am trying to figure out
what I have done here.
The -- of course, as you know, one of the DSIs
addresses this specific issue and, as we have said and the
Chairman has said, we are trying to back away and are
backing away.
Even in this case, as you will notice, from a
preliminary view of the Commission on this, we have heard
from the stakeholders and have that broader look at the
overall recommendation. I would go on and venture a little
bit of a comment toward this, however.
46
If the ultimate determination is that the NRC does
stay in the medical use of radioactive materials, that we do
need to take a look at the program and see if there are ways
that the program would need to be modified to make it a more
effective program and to raise some of the concerns that
were raised in the IOM report. We clearly did not even
reach a preliminary view on it because it is important to
hear from stakeholders.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I, as some of you might know,
actually was trained in nuclear medical physics and actually
practiced about six years in the field. I decided to go and
work with nuclear rockets because it was safer.
[Laughter.]
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Having said that, I do believe
that there are some issues that were raised that are
important but I do believe that the medical area needs to be
carefully regulated. And I think I would like to take
another look at it.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan?
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I agree with Dr. Diaz
that I am -- the bias that I come to this institution with
is that medical regulation will probably continue here at
the NRC, that it is appropriate. I think we do, based on my
conversations with those 40 people, we do a pretty darn good
47
job. There are some things we can change. The staff has
looked at that.
I think that the fundamental problem the medical
community has with us is that we actually do a responsible
job and some of their other self-regulation, as you can tell
by watching 60 Minutes, doesn't particularly work very well.
So the bias that I come to is that we are likely to stay in
this business for a while.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, you heard it here first.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Good morning.
We have seen some regulatory issues involving our
interactions with the Environmental Protection Agency over
the past five to six years as sometimes very frustrating and
time consuming, both for the staff and for the Commission.
The most recent issue of which was finally resolved by the
full Commission, which was the constraint rule which will
impose a 10 millirem constraint in Part 24 air emissions for
materials and fuel cycle facilities.
With the next large hurdle still ahead of us,
namely that of decommissioning or the cleanup rule, would
you please comment as to how the Commission or the Congress
can assist us and the EPA in resolving our differences in a
more timely manner, especially with respect to groundwater
48
protection and move ahead in this extremely important area.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me just say the following.
We have some decisions before us that, as decisions, you
know, the Commission has to formally take up. So I am not
going to specifically speak to those in the absence of our
having reached a formal decision on that.
I think what I would rather do is, in particular,
call on the left side, my left side, and see, and ask
Commissioner Dicus and Commissioner McGaffigan.
We will start with Commissioner McGaffigan.
[Laughter.]
COMMISSIONER DICUS: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: To speak to that issue because
it is an issue before us. But to try to stay away from the
decisions.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I think it is, again
from those 40 wise people who talked to me, the 14s and 15s
of the Agency, it is a very fundamental issue that you raise
and it is one that we are intending to tackle. I think the
Congress can play a role and probably will play a role. You
know, coming from the Congress, I can say this. When you
get the Congress playing a role, it is a roll of the dice as
to how it turns out.
There is inconsistency. It is a matter of great
frustration. This Agency prides itself on making rules
49
based on the scientific evidence and that is not always the
case with our -- with some other agencies, perhaps.
So I think it is a fundamental issue, it is one
that we intend to tackle in the context of the decisions
that the Chairman has referred to. Several of us, maybe all
of us, you know, the vote on the constraint rule I think is
public now and I think there was great frustration that we
had to do what we did and it was only based on the notion
that we really weren't adversely affecting our licensees.
But everything is a precedent for the next
decision and there was reluctance in that case that was
uniform. And I think the Chairman now wants to speak so I
will get out of the way.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think a fair statement to you
is that you will probably see more activism in this regard
in the next year, very direct activism.
Having said that, let me defer to Commissioner
Dicus.
COMMISSIONER DICUS: I still can't get off the
hook.
Having dealt with at least, well, two state
legislatures, one in Arkansas and one in Nebraska when I was
chair of the Commission there, the last place I like to try
to get something resolved is at the political level. So if
50
we can resolve it before we get there, it is probably much,
much better. As Commissioner McGaffigan said, it is a roll
of the dice.
Here recently, we asked that something get on the
agenda for a briefing and it really had to do with dual
regulation. But rather than spelling "dual" d-u-a-l, we
spelled it d-u-e-l and I said, never mind, leave it; it's
closer to the truth.
[Laughter.]
COMMISSIONER DICUS: It really had to do with
the -- and it has to do with competing standards and
standards with some of our sister agencies.
I am very concerned that we have such a wide range
of standards and what those standards are based on and we
need to definitely try to find a core idea and stick with
it. I think it is going to be easier for our licensees,
easier for the public to understand and accept. So the
issue with what we have just passed, in part we were trying
to get away from dual regulation and it was a way to
accomplish that, but we need to study this a little bit
more. I am very concerned about the number of standards and
how we decide that is the standard we should have.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Remember, you heard it here
first that not only are we going to study it more, we are
apt to take a more activist role.
51
Commissioner Diaz?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Yes, I would like to have the
40 wise people that talked to Commissioner McGaffigan to
come and talk to me.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Rogers.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I think everything has been
said that is going to be said.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let's hear if there is a
question from the regions.
MR. HECK: Region IV. Current inspection is to
reduce the inspection effort at plants with good self-
ratings. In light of the lessons learned from Millstone and
others, can the Agency continue to pursue this initiative
where, for superior performers, greater emphasis is placed
on licensee self-regulation as opposed to NRC oversight.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That is a good question.
I think we are looking at that. There is a review
underway of the whole resident inspection program, how
people spend their time and how that squares with what we
were assuming about what our licensees were doing versus
what we feel we have learned in terms of lessons from some
of our recent experiences. So my general answer to you is
that there will be some -- a relook and possible
renormalization.
52
A question here?
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Good morning. I have two
personnel type questions.
I heard a lot of issues being addressed, PRA,
Millstone. Does the Commission believe the NRC has the
appropriate level of human resources to deal with all the
issues we have heard this morning and, if not, are there any
thoughts about going to Congress to increase our level of
human resources?
My second question is, what is the opinion of the
Commission as to the current level of morale at the NRC and
are there any thoughts about conducting a survey to address
the issue?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, I will take your second
question as a suggestion which I think we will look at.
In terms of going to the Congress to request an
increase in our FTE, I think there are two answers to that
question. The chances of that, in the absence of major
growth in our regulatory program, I mean, are something that
is a slim opportunity.
However, having said that, I think the more
important and intelligent way that we have to do it, and it
is actually going to be an outcome, a follow-on of the
strategic assessment and rebaselining is that we have to
decide ourselves where we think that the regulatory program
53
is going and it hinges on decisions like some of what we
have been asked about today in the medical area, what we are
going to do in the inspection program, more broadly what we
are going to do in terms of our regulatory oversight.
We have to ask ourselves then what core
competencies does that imply for the agency and at what
level and then we have to look at the people we have, look
at fungibility of people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera
and until and unless we address those questions, then to
talk about going to Congress for an increase or decrease or
the status quo is premature.
So that is my answer to you.
Yes.
MS. SMITH: Question from Region IV.
NRC recently shifted the agency lead in standby
mode for incident response from the region to headquarters.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Could you repeat the question?
She was disturbing me.
COMMISSIONER DICUS: That means I am going to have
to answer another question.
[Laughter.]
MS. SMITH: Okay. This is from Region IV.
NRC recently shifted the agency lead in the
standby mode for incident response from the region to
headquarters. What additional changes do you foresee
54
regarding the NRC Emergency Response Program?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I don't think there is an
answer I can give you. That is being evaluated as part of a
number of relooks at a number of things so there is no
specific answer.
Any other questions?
Is this Region IV again?
MR. HECK: No, this is Region III this time.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think Mr. Callum made these
plants; he wanted us to know he was here.
[Laughter.]
MR. HECK: Is site experience as a resident
inspector a prerequisite for promotion for all reactor
program positions, particularly resident inspector
positions? Recently, it appears that site experience has
become a nonwritten prerequisite for promotions and,
unfortunately, highly qualified applicants with in-depth
technical knowledge can be passed over for specialized
positions in favor of someone with site experience but
without the in-depth knowledge required for the position.
Was this what the Commission intended?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, first of all, it is not
my understanding that there is either an actual or de facto
requirement in that regard for promotion, unless these
gentlemen sitting here apprise me of something different.
55
So that is something I will take a look at and we
will take a look at but it is not my understanding that that
linkage is there at all.
Yes?
MS. SMITH: Three questions from Region III.
First question, do you think we need dedicated design basis
inspections?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Probably, yes.
MS. SMITH: Question two. Based on the concerns
identified at Millstone, what areas of inspection need
increased attention?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, in order -- rather than
just to give an off-the-top-of-our-head answer, let me just
say the following. The design basis area is one, design
basis, licensing basis. We will never take our focus off of
operational safety.
But I think the larger answer to the question is
going to come out of the review of the resident inspection
program coupled with the lessons learned rolling out of the
Millstone and the other reviews that we have underway.
MS. SMITH: Finally, our guidance regarding
inspections of 10 CFR 5059 safety evaluations is in much
need of improvement. Do you share the same view and what is
being done about this?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes, and it is being worked as
56
we speak in terms of changing that guidance.
Yes?
MR. HECK: Okay, this is from Region IV.
[Laughter.]
MR. HECK: This is a long question, so bear with
me.
There appears to be a change in attitude as far as
how we will deal with the inspection mission post Millstone.
Inspectors have been cautioned numerous times that we are
expected to be regulators versus inspectors. Many
inspectors have expressed concern that aggressive inspection
activities will cause complaints from licensees. Regulators
are supposed to be able to accomplish this inspection
mission and have the licensee thank them for it.
No one to date has explained or trained inspectors
how to do this. After the Towers-Perrin report, licensees
have been more aggressive in complaining to NRC management.
This has caused inspectors to be very cautious, less
aggressive and less intrusive, thereby increasing the chance
of another Millstone.
The question is, what should the Agency do to
counter this growing apprehensive posture in the inspection
program?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay, thank you.
Well, I think we have to be very careful about
57
what I call the "versus" scenarios because I heard in there
an inspection versus regulation and, first of all,
inspection is a critical part of our regulation and our
regulatory oversight of our licensees. So that is the first
part.
The second one is there is this issue of having
the inspectors do their jobs and having licensees thank us
for it. That is an interesting statement in the following
sense in that I guess most of us don't necessarily want
people looking over our shoulders and telling us or finding
things that we are presumably doing in less than an optimal
fashion or doing wrong. So I don't know that we will ever
track to a point where one will have the profuse gratitude
expressed based on a licensing outcome -- I mean, an
inspection outcome.
But having said that, I think it is important and
I think this is the lesson that we have tried to promulgate
coming out of Towers-Perrin, it has to do with the
professionalism with which our licensees are treated and I
think that is the value that our various managers have been
trying to inculcate in our inspection staff.
Having said that, we still have our jobs to do and
we are going to do those jobs. That then may cause
discomfort at some level on the part of those who are being
regulated/inspected. I think the way we deal with that is
58
that we try to ensure that our inspectors have the right
training, the right tools, the right guidance, both in terms
of written guidance but guidance from their management
because that is why the managers are there, to ensure they
are looking at the right things, that they, you know,
understand our regulations and regulatory requirements, that
that is what they apply in doing their inspections, that
they are as objective as possible and when the results are
pulled together, that the assessments that are made all the
way up the line are objective and build on all of the bases
that flow into those judgments.
I think what happens is, and this is a big focus
of mine, that is someone asked earlier the issue of judgment
in regulation and, as I say, there was always an element of
judgment. But the important point is, and this is what
makes the regulator's job so hard, and that is one of the
principles of good regulation is independence and there is
kind of an arm's length relationship. It is a hard one to
maintain in the right way but it is something that we have
to continually strive for.
Otherwise, one can track into one of the following
two situations. One, where if one leans over too far one
way licensees can be very comfortable but we may miss
something or we let something go by or the public feels that
we are too close to those we regulate. If we lean too far
59
the other way, we run the danger of telling licensees how to
run their plants and that is not our job either.
So we have to be clear on what the requirements
are and what our role is as regulators and it is not just
our individual decision that licensee X can ignore a
regulation because he is a good guy. You know, we don't do
good guy regulation. Or that licensee Y we are going to
screw to the wall on a regulation because he's a bad guy.
We don't do bad guy regulation.
What we do is regulation based on what our
regulatory requirements are and we do not tell our people
not to expect people to live within those requirements.
There are judgments that may get made in terms of the safety
or risk significance of what has occurred and that will be
handled both in enforcement space and in terms of how the
overall nuclear operations are judged through our various
evaluation processes, whether it is the plant performance
reviews all the way up to the senior management meeting
process. But that is the important point.
So, again, let us not be confused by "versus".
There is no regulation "versus" inspection. The one is
inextricably part of the other.
One more region and then if there are some more
here.
MS. SMITH: Actually, we have asked all the
60
questions from the regions but this is from a headquarters
employee.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MS. SMITH: My husband and I commute from
Charlestown, West Virginia. The cost of commuting is not
getting any cheaper. Does the Agency have any plans to
subsidize employees for commuting costs?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Not at this time. I commute
also.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, yes, Mrs. Norry?
MRS. NORRY: I don't have a microphone anymore but
in spite of my facetious comments earlier about the weather,
I want to acknowledge the Office of Resources Management
without whose help on communications we couldn't do this.
[Applause.]
MRS. NORRY: My general policy on these things,
you should know is when I come to them I ask Ben if he's
happy and if he's happy then I'm happy. And also Dennis
Tarner in the back there, on my staff.
[Applause.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And let us give another round
of applause to Mrs. Norry and all who helped to put this
together.
[Applause.]
61
[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the meeting was
concluded.]
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