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POLICY ISSUE SECY-06-0201 September 22, 2006
The purpose of this memorandum is to provide the Commission with a periodic assessment of the activities of the Committee to Review Generic Requirements (CRGR or the Committee). This paper does not address any new commitments or resource implications. The CRGR consists of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) senior managers from the Offices of the General Counsel (OGC), Nuclear Regulatory Research (RES), Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR), Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards (NMSS), Nuclear Security and Incident Response (NSIR), and one of the regional offices on a rotating basis, currently Region IV. The CRGR reports to the Executive Director for Operations (EDO), who appoints the Committee chairman and members. The CRGR conducts its activities in accordance with the Committee's charter, Revision 7, dated November 7, 1999, which describes the Committee's mission, scope of activities, and operating procedures. RES provides technical and administrative support to the Committee. The CRGR mission is to ensure that proposed new or revised generic requirements applicable to agency-licensed power reactor and nuclear materials licensees are appropriately justified based on the backfit provisions of the applicable NRC regulations, the Commission's backfit guidance, and pertinent policy. The primary responsibilities of the CRGR are to recommend to the EDO either approval or disapproval of the staff's proposed generic actions and to assist the NRC program offices in ensuring consistency with the implementation of the Commission's backfit regulations, directives, and guidance. In addition, the CRGR participates in periodic meetings with stakeholders as part of its responsibility for monitoring the overall effectiveness of NRC's generic backfit management process. As part of its responsibility for regulatory effectiveness, the CRGR may conduct periodic audits of NRC's administrative controls for facility-specific backfitting to assess their effectiveness. In response to the Commission's direction, the CRGR proposed a process and criteria for periodic assessment of the Committee's activities in SECY-97-052, "Committee to Review Generic Requirement Scope of Review and Periodic Review of Activities," dated February 27, 1997. The Commission approved the recommended process and criteria in a staff requirements memorandum (SRM) dated April 18, 1997. Accordingly, since 1997, the CRGR has been evaluating its activities and reporting annually to the Commission. During this 12-month assessment period, from June 21, 2005, through May 31, 2006, the CRGR reviewed proposed new or revised generic actions and evaluated their potential for improper or unjustified backfits consistent with the Committee's charter. In doing so, the CRGR also identified pertinent technical, procedural, policy, and legal issues and continued to support NRC's move to less prescriptive and more performance-based and risk-informed regulations. The CRGR held eight meetings during this assessment period to review 12 proposed generic
actions, including 1 rulemaking, 5 generic letters, 4 regulatory guides (RGs), 1 interim staff
guidance, and 1 regulatory issue summary (RIS). Of these, NRR sponsored eight actions, and
RES sponsored four. A list of the proposed topics is provided in Enclosure 1 To gain efficiency in the review process, the CRGR chairman conducted a limited review of
several RISs and RGs to screen out any potential backfit. This limited review was conducted to
ensure that only a RIS or RG that had backfit potential or dealt with key issues was presented to
the Committee. The remaining RISs and RGs which did not have any of these concerns were
given either a deferral or a waiver from a formal CRGR review. A deferral from a CRGR review
required that the staff issued the document for public comment and later resubmitted for CRGR
consideration after addressing all the public comments. A document waived from a formal
review was issued final by the staff without further CRGR reviews. During this assessment
period, the CRGR chairman conducted 45 informal reviews. A list of the topics reviewed is
provided in Enclosure 2 As part of its efforts to meet the strategic goals of openness and effectiveness, the CRGR meets periodically with licensees and other stakeholders. Through these interactions, the CRGR has received feedback from stakeholders regarding a concern that generic communications and certain guidance documents are being used to establish new staff positions. In November 2005, the CRGR chairman and another CRGR member participated in the "Generic Communications and Backfitting" session at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) Licensing Forum held in Baltimore, Maryland. In a panel discussion during this session the CRGR chairman made a presentation on the Committee activities, solicited feedback from the Forum participants on NRC's generic backfit process, and addressed questions posed by audience members. Stakeholder comments mostly addressed the appropriateness of using generic communications, specifically RISs, to establish new staff requirements. Further, on August 9, 2006, the staff obtained comments, of a similar nature, on CRGR activities from Exelon through a slide presentation given at the 2006 Utility Working Conference held in Amelia Island, Florida. CRGR plans to review these comments at an upcoming committee meeting to determine if any action is warranted. Periodic Assessment of CRGR Performance The CRGR conducts a periodic assessment of the value added by its reviews of the proposed new or revised generic actions based on a self-assessment of its activities and feedback from the program offices as described below. Self-Assessment The CRGR assesses its value added in terms of the effectiveness in fulfilling the following three categories of chartered responsibilities:
The CRGR primary mission is to ensure that no inadvertent backfits are either imposed or implied by the proposed new or revised generic requirements for NRC-licensed power reactors and nuclear materials facilities and that staff-proposed actions are appropriately justified as required by NRC's regulations and Commission guidance and directives, as well as applicable legislative acts and executive orders. Appendices C and D to the CRGR charter require that the packages submitted for the Committee's review and endorsement include detailed backfit and regulatory analyses, as appropriate. During this assessment period, the NRC staff ensured that the proposals were consistent with the backfit provisions of applicable regulations and that any impact of these proposals on NRC and licensees were assessed and explained. The staff followed CRGR guidance as outlined in the CRGR charter and the associated regulatory requirements. The staff appropriately identified justifiable backfits and provided the required supporting documents for the CRGR reviews. Consequently, no additional backfits were identified by the Committee. In addition to technical expertise from the program offices and field experience from the regions, the CRGR membership includes a senior OGC manager to identify legal deficiencies or flaws in proposed staff actions with respect to the Commission's backfit rules, guidance, policies, and directives. The committee notes that the staff improved its proposals and benefitted from the CRGR reviews because CRGR members provided recommendations from a process perspective and ensured consistency with the Commission's backfit regulations, directives, and guidance. The CRGR continued to provide guidance and consultation to the NRC staff, when needed, to eliminate implications of potential backfits in proposed documents before they were issued for public comment and a formal CRGR review. To prevent unnecessary delays, the CRGR expeditiously scheduled the Committee meetings as requested by the NRC staff. The CRGR scheduled special meetings to meet the schedule demands and provided necessary assistance to the staff before the formal CRGR review. When necessary to expedite the endorsement process, the CRGR staff assisted the sponsoring office staff in satisfactorily resolving the Committee's comments. As a result, the sponsoring office staff generally required minimal effort to respond to the CRGR comments and recommendations. The results of its self-assessment revealed that CRGR reviews were timely, focused on the priority issues, and beneficial to the NRC staff. Interactions with the NRC staff have been positive and professional, resulting in constructive feedback and useful insights to ensure product completeness. Feedback from NRC Program Offices The CRGR continues to seek feedback from the sponsoring offices on the value added by the Committee's reviews. The CRGR solicited feedback from sponsoring offices, NRR and RES, in a memorandum dated June 14, 2005, (ADAMS Accession No. ML061650302) regarding (1) the value that the CRGR reviews added to the quality of the product, (2) staff efforts expended to address CRGR comments and recommendations, (3) impact on the staff's schedules, and (4) significance of the issues and associated costs in terms of overall impact on schedules and resources. The Committee did not receive any proposals for review from NMSS and NSIR during this assessment period. Regarding the value added, the program offices indicated that in most cases the independent reviews by CRGR were good, helpful and beneficial. The CRGR comments and recommendations helped improve the overall quality and completeness of the final products. The CRGR reviews helped focus the backfit section of the generic communications and assist in maintaining consistency with commission policies, rules and regulations, directives, and guidance. At least in two instances, the CRGR reviews were significant and resulted in more refined and much improved generic letters issued by the staff. In one case, the staff said that only a little value was added by the CRGR review as the product was a very routine rulemaking involving incorporation of ASME Code Cases by reference. The program offices stated that the staff efforts in responding to the CRGR's comments and recommendations were minimal, with no significant impact on the staff's schedule or resources. The offices also noted that the CRGR's comments were almost always focused and constructive and as such did not pose an undue burden to the staff. Both the CRGR staff and the Committee members were very responsive to the requests by the program offices staff when the staff needed the CRGR to clarify comments or recommendations. Furthermore, the staff said it could utilize a good part of the CRGR presentations when briefing another advisory committee (e.g., the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS)), thereby gaining efficiencies in preparing the briefing material for ACRS. The program offices reported that there was no significant impact on the staff's schedule or resources. In one instance, the Committee averted an adverse impact on the staff's schedule by agreeing to review the staff's product after (rather than before) the completion of the ACRS review, thereby avoiding several months of delay in the staff's schedule. In another instance, the publication of a rule was delayed as the CRGR process required an office-level concurrence on the review package which took longer that usual, and an ad-hoc CRGR meeting could not be scheduled because of insufficient quorum. The program offices indicated that the CRGR identified issues that did not significantly impact the associated costs in terms of overall schedule and resources. The program offices stated that the time required for CRGR reviews in most cases were already considered and factored in the schedule in planning stage. There were no associated costs in terms of overall schedule and resources other than those already expended in preparing the package for the CRGR review. The CRGR believes that it has successfully contributed the necessary staff and industry awareness of the applicable NRC regulations and Commission policy regarding backfits. The self-assessment and the program offices' feedback indicate that the Committee has provided its review and evaluation in an efficient and effective manner, added value to the regulatory process, and contributed to the accomplishment of NRC's mission by identifying technical, procedural, and legal issues. The Committee will continue to seek improvements in its workings.
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