<DOC>
[109 Senate Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:42272.wais]
S. Hrg. 109-1027
OVERSIGHT ON THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
=======================================================================
HEARING
Before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CLEAN AIR, CLIMATE CHANGE,
AND NUCLEAR SAFETY
of the
COMMITTEE ON
ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 9, 2006
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works
Available via the World Wide Web: http://access.gpo.gov/congress.senate
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
42-272 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2008
---------------------------------------------------------------------
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512ÿ091800
Fax: (202) 512ÿ092104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402ÿ090001
__________
COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma, Chairman
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia JAMES M. JEFFORDS, Vermont
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri MAX BAUCUS, Montana
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island BARBARA BOXER, California
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
JOHN THUNE, South Dakota HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York
JIM DeMINT, South Carolina FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia BARACK OBAMA, Illinois
DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
Andrew Wheeler, Majority Staff Director
Ken Connolly, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change, and Nuclear Safety
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio Chairman
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
JIM DeMINT, South Carolina JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
DAVID VITTER, Louisiana BARACK OBAMA, Illinois
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
MARCH 9, 2006
OPENING STATEMENTS
Carper, Hon. Thomas R., U.S. Senator from the State of Delaware.. 12
Inhofe, Hon. James M., U.S. Senator from the State of Oklahoma... 7
Isakson, Hon. Johnny, U.S. Senator from the State of Georgia..... 4
Jeffords, Hon. James M., U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont.. 5
Lautenberg, Hon. Frank, U.S. Senator from the State of New Jersey 11
Obama, Hon. Barack, U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois...... 9
Voinovich, Hon. George V., U.S. Senator from the State of Ohio... 1
WITNESSES
Diaz, Nils J., Chairman, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Accompanied by: Edward McGaffigan, Jr., Commissioner; Jeffrey
S. Merrifield, Commissioner; Gregory B. Jaczko, Commissioner;
and Peter B. Lyons, Commissioner............................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 47
Responses to additional questions were not submitted at the time
of print.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Addendum to NRC's Testimony for March 9, 2006 Oversight Hearing.. 54
Report, Details from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the
Safety
Culture Work Environment Special Inspection at Salem and Hope
Creek.......................................................... 59
Charts:
IG's NRC Culture Survey Results Overall Strengths and
Opportunities.............................................. 56
FY 2006 Technical Staff Hires and Losses..................... 57
Announced COL Applicants; Data Based on Received Letters as
of
March 7, 2006.............................................. 58
OVERSIGHT ON THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2006
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Environment and Public Works,
Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change and Nuclear
Safety,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m. in
room 628, Senate Dirksen Building, Hon. George V. Voinovich
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Senators Voinovich, Inhofe, Isakson, Carper,
Jeffords, Clinton, Lautenberg, and Obama.
Senator Voinovich. This meeting will come to order.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, U.S. SENATOR
FROM THE STATE OF OHIO
I was thinking, on the way over here this morning, that so
often what we do here in the Senate and what you do in the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometimes gets lost in the weeds
and we don't look at what the big picture is about. I think it
is important for us to understand that what you are doing and
our oversight here is so important to the American people in
terms of our fulfilling what I like to refer to as the second
declaration of independence, and that is become less reliant on
foreign sources of energy.
I think we all know, that nuclear power produces a great
deal of energy in this country, and that if we are going to get
away from the use of natural gas and move toward nuclear power
and clean coal technology and some of the other things that our
ability to do that is going to be very, very important to the
American people, who today are suffering with the highest
natural gas costs that we have ever had, that are impacting on
their respective budgets at home, that they are giving up
things in order to be able to pay their bills.
This Congress has increased dramatically the LIHEAP program
because of the fact that these folks are not able to pay their
gas bills. Businesses in this country that were very successful
are being negatively impacted and we are losing thousands of
jobs here in this country as businesses move overseas, because
the public doesn't understand that natural gas is part of the
feedstock that's so important to them.
So I think that it is important that we all understand that
what we are doing is very important and that what you do in the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a great deal to do with the
future of this country, including the environment. Because as
we know, nuclear energy doesn't get into the problems that
Senator Jeffords and I have been talking about for years in
terms of emissions from NOx, SOx, mercury and the one we have
debated a bit, and that is greenhouse gases.
So I am pleased to have all of you here today. I know it is
a busy week, the NRC's 18th Annual Regulatory Information
Conference is being held this week and a bunch of folks are in
for it. This hearing continues this committee's strong
oversight of the Commission. This is the eighth in a series of
oversight hearings that began in 1998, when Senator Inhofe was
chairman of this subcommittee. I thank the chairman for his
leadership on this issue, as strong oversight of the NRC is
critical to the welfare of the American public.
This is also the third hearing the Committee has held this
year on the important issue of energy. We held a hearing on
natural gas prices, and Chairman Inhofe held a hearing last
week, and I was unfortunately able to attend, on Yucca
Mountain, which is a part of all of this. The energy challenges
that we face today and into the future threaten our global
competitiveness. I have already talked about the impact that
this is having on our brothers and sisters throughout America.
Nuclear power provides about 6 percent of the electricity
consumed in my State and about 20 percent nationally. It is
emission free power. By increasing its use we can help meet our
energy needs, our economic needs and improve the quality of our
air. That is why this committee spent a great amount of time
last year on nuclear-related legislation. In addition to
holding an oversight hearing and a closed hearing on nuclear
security, several provisions to provide for the safe and secure
growth of nuclear power were enacted as part of the Energy
Policy Act of 2005. These include three bills that Chairman
Inhofe and I introduced. I will not go into the details of it,
but you asked for them and we got it done. We know that because
of the Energy bill's passage, we understand that in the next 2
to 3 years, you are going to have 11 applications for the
construction of new nuclear power plants in this country.
In addition to that, the Commission must continue to deal
with license renewals and increased generation capacity for
existing plants, something that a lot of folks do not know.
They upgrade their plants so they can become more efficient and
generate more electricity. And as your workload increases over
the next years, I become increasingly concerned about the
availability of personnel. That is another committee that I
chair, oversight of Government Management and the Federal
Workforce. You have to have the right people, with the right
skills and knowledge at the right place at the right time. If
we do not have them, we are in trouble.
I am particularly interested in hearing from the Commission
about the folks you have lost and what you are going to do
about bringing in some new people. I think that as an aside,
the Commission's needs are a prime example of why this Congress
should pass the PACE legislation, Protecting America's
Competitive Edge, which will be a Sputnik-like response, to
Sputnik 50 years ago, really doing something about math,
science and engineering, getting the people we need to get the
job done, not only for you, but for a lot of other governmental
agencies where we don't have folks on board because they are
not out there.
So we are going to focus on overseeing your work, and I
appreciate the private meetings that we have had, Chairman
Diaz. I look forward to hearing what you have to say here this
morning, and I'd like to then call upon Senator Inhofe for his
statement.
[The prepared statement of Senator Voinovich follows:]
Statement of Hon. George V. Voinovich, U.S. Senator from the
State of Ohio
The hearing will come to order. Good morning and thank you all for
coming.
I am pleased to have all five members of the Commission here today.
Chairman Diaz and Commissioners McGaffigan, Merrifield, Jaczko, and
Lyons--welcome. We appreciate all of you taking time out of your busy
schedules to be here this morning especially since NRC's 18th Annual
Regulatory Information Conference is being held this week.
Today's hearing continues this committee's strong oversight of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This is the eighth in a series of
oversight hearings that began in 1998 when Senator Inhofe was chairman
of this subcommittee. I thank the chairman for his leadership on this
issue, as strong oversight of the NRC is critical to the welfare of the
American public.
This is also the third hearing that the committee has held this
year on the important issue of energy. I held a hearing on natural gas
prices, and Chairman Inhofe held a hearing last week that I was
unfortunately unable to attend on Yucca Mountain. The energy challenges
that we face today and into the future threaten our global
competitiveness. High natural gas prices are having a devastating
impact on our constituents across the country, and we need to do
everything we can to bring these costs down. I am calling for a
``Second Declaration of Independence'' to make us less dependent on
foreign sources of energy, and nuclear power plays an integral role in
fulfilling our declaration.
Nuclear power provides about 6 percent of the electricity consumed
in my State and about 20 percent nationally. It is emission free power,
and by increasing its use, we can help meet our energy needs, be less
reliant on natural gas, and improve the quality of our air.
That is why this committee spent a considerable amount of time last
year on nuclear related legislation, in addition to holding an
oversight hearing and a closed hearing on nuclear security. Several
provisions to provide for the safe and secure growth of nuclear power
were enacted as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. These include
three bills that Chairman Inhofe and I introduced: Nuclear Safety and
Security Act (S.864), Price-Anderson Amendments Act (S.865), and
Nuclear Fees Reauthorization Act (S.858). We were also able to secure
$41 million above the President's request for the NRC through FY 2006
appropriations for security and human capital activities.
The bottom line is that we have provided every legislative and
funding provision that NRC requested and more. All of these provisions
have led the Commission to project that they will receive applications
for 11 or more new plants in the next 2 to 3 years. This is a huge
challenge for an Agency that has not seen this type of major licensing
actions in the last 25 years or so.
In addition to new reactors, the Commission must continue to deal
with license renewals and increased generation capacity for existing
plants, security assessments and regulations, licensing Yucca Mountain,
and the day-to-day regulatory activities for the Nation's 103 operating
plants. As the Commission's workload increases over the next few years,
I have become increasingly concerned about the availability of
qualified personnel especially when a significant number of experienced
employees will be lost due to retirement.
I am particularly interested in hearing from the Commission about
the number of employees they have lost over the past few years and
their retirement situation today. I understand that the NRC has a goal
of hiring 350 people annually for the next several years, and I would
like to know how the new Human Capital Provisions that we recently
passed are being utilized in this effort.
As an aside, the Commission's needs are a prime example of why
Congress must pass the Protecting America's Competitive Edge through
Energy Act of 2006 (S.2197). This legislation is aimed at implementing
the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences report,
``Rising Above the Gathering Storm''-- which focuses on improving our
Nation's competitiveness by increasing our Nation's research capacity,
emphasizing math and science education, and producing more scientists
and engineers.
Our subcommittee will focus even more this year on overseeing the
NRC due to the important role they play in our nation's energy future
and their increased workload and resource constraints. I look forward
to hearing from the Commissioners and spending some quality time this
morning fully exploring these important issues.
We invited only the Commissioners for today's hearing to
accommodate the subcommittee's examination of the Commission's progress
on a full spectrum of areas. I anticipate that there will be at least
one more NRC oversight hearing this year that will include other
witnesses. At the next hearing, I am specifically interested in getting
a status report on all of the issues that we discuss today.
Notwithstanding some of their high profile activities, NRC and the
industry must keep safety at the center of all that they do. Ensuring
safety and security of our nuclear power plants is absolutely essential
if we are to continue and hopefully increase our nation's use of
nuclear energy, which I believe is essential to meeting our
environmental, energy, and economic needs.
Thank you.
Senator Inhofe. I would defer to Senator Isakson. He has a
timing problem and I do not.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHNNY ISAKSON, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF GEORGIA
Senator Isakson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
Chairman of the Subcommittee, Senator Voinovich, I want to
thank you for the attention both of you have placed on
affordable energy and our needs in the 21st century. Chairman
Diaz, I welcome you and the members of the Commission here
today.
As you gentlemen are probably aware, my State is served by
Plant Vogel, operated by the Southern Company. That facility
was built during a time that I was in the Georgia legislature,
and on the industry committee that oversaw public utilities and
electric utility legislation. For the better part of two
decades, it has provided Georgia with safe, affordable,
reliable energy. Because of my experience with it, I am a big
supporter of nuclear energy, and I am delighted that we are on
the cusp of expanding nuclear energy and availability in the
United States.
My State is also served by the TVA's Plant Bellefonte,
which is in the State of Alabama, but TVA serves 10 of the
northern counties in the State of Georgia. Both TVA and
Southern Company have estimated by 2015 that their baseline
requirements will increase tremendously, and both are pursuing
licensing for additional reactors at those two facilities.
Which brings me to my point: I cannot stress enough the
importance for the NRC to effectively staff itself to handle
the upcoming permitting process. We have been in a rather
dormant situation for a while in this country, but that is not
going to be the case now.
As I understand it, the NRC has gotten a significant
increase in its budget, and we wait to make sure that you are
doing everything you can to upgrade the staffing to deal with
these additional demands. If you are slow out of the gate, it
could suppress what is one of the most important needs we have
in this country, to have safe, reliable nuclear energy. If you
need help, call us, but do not be slow out of the gate.
There is another issue which has come to my attention. I am
going to have to leave, because I am going to be required to
cast a vote here in a few minutes in another committee. But I
hope someone on the Commission during the course of your
testimony will address the issue of potassium iodine. It is my
understanding that HHS has made a recommendation to expand the
stockpiling of potassium iodine beyond what is currently now
the limit, which is a 5 mile radius around a nuclear facility.
They are recommending something in the order of a doubling of
that.
I am not aware of the reasons for that nor the scientific
information or data that they have that backs that up. But I
would certainly like someone on the board to address that
subject during the course of this hearing for the record.
I want to repeat again my deep appreciation to Chairman
Inhofe and Subcommittee Chairman Voinovich for all the work
that they are doing on nuclear energy. I particularly look
forward to working with you gentlemen in the years ahead, as we
have a second dawning of the nuclear energy era in the United
States of America, and produce reliable, effective and
efficient and affordable energy for the people of our country.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Senator Isakson follows:]
Statement of Hon. Johnny Isakson, U.S. Senator from the State of
Georgia
Thank you Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for calling this
oversight hearing. In the interest of time I will be brief as I have
another hearing to attend as well, except to say the following.
As you know in Georgia we have the Vogtle Electric Generating
Plant, located near Waynesboro in eastern Georgia near the South
Carolina border. I'm also sure you know that both Southern Company and
the TVA, who both estimate they will need additional baseload power
supplies by 2015, are looking at adding reactors at Vogtle, which is
operated by Southern, and at Bellefonte which also serves my
constituents and is jointly operated by TVA and Southern.
Which brings me to my point. I can not stress enough the need for
the NRC to efficiently staff itself to handle the upcoming permitting
processes. As I understand, the NRC has gotten a significant increase
in its budget, and we want to make sure you are doing everything you
can to ensure that you have enough staff and resources to handle the
workload. If the NRC is slow out of the gate on these permits, it could
have a negative effect on this growth. Let us know if you have
everything that you need. We can help if you don't, but you need to
reassure us one way or the other.
One other issue I would like someone to address during the course
of this hearing, and I am sorry I won't be around to ask the question,
is the issue surrounding an HHS rule regarding the stockpiling of
potassium iodine in communities within a certain radius of a nuclear
power plant. As I understand it HHS is proposing that radius be
increased, I believe from 5 miles to 10 miles. I would like to hear
from the witnesses here whether the NRC believes that is a necessary
change. I'll be looking forward to reading that in the record from this
hearing.
Thank you again Mr. Chairman. I'm sorry I won't be able to stay
longer through the hearing, but will look forward to reading the
transcript.
I yield back.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Jeffords.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. JEFFORDS, U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF VERMONT
Senator Jeffords. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Today's hearing continues our ongoing oversight of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Chairman Voinovich, you and
Ranking Member Carper deserve credit for continuing the
commitment to hold these hearings regularly in order to review
the NRC's activities. I appreciate that all the Commissioners
have made an effort to be here with us today. Thank you for
doing that.
While we intend to hold several other nuclear hearings this
Congress, this may be my last opportunity as Ranking Member to
address all the Commissioners as a group. During my time as
both chairman and ranking member, I have followed your careers.
I have supported your confirmations. Some of you, your first
term, some second and one of you, an unprecedented third term.
Four of you, you know the Senate well, having served as former
staffers. In fact, three of you served as staffers for this
very committee.
I know you all to be dedicated public servants and I want
to take this opportunity to thank you for your service to our
country. Your job is not easy. It takes you away from family
and friends and involves an area of great responsibility:
regulating the Nation's civilian use of nuclear materials.
I believe the mission you carry out is one of the most
vital roles of Federal Government, ensuring adequate protection
of public health and safety while nuclear materials are used to
produce power and are disposed of is a critically important
job.
In light of the NRC's mission, I want to share my views on
a few issues with you. The NRC has no greater responsibility
than safety. I want the people of Vermont and across the
country to be safe, and it is NRC's job to ensure that that
happens.
As much as it seems that the Commission and the nuclear
industry may be planning for an anticipated ``nuclear
renaissance'' with new plants, we must maintain continued
oversight over existing plants. I make this point because I am
concerned that we may lose track of how dependent we are on
existing and aging nuclear plants.
The real ``nuclear renaissance'' has been in our efforts to
extend the lives of existing plants by boosting their power
output and extending the terms of their licenses. We have not
built any new plants. Revitalizing old plants is where we have
truly grown our reliance upon nuclear power in the last few
years. The dependence will only grow in the near future.
I urge you to maintain the NRC's focus in ensuring these
plants continue to operate safely, even as we are asking them
to fulfill more of our Nation's energy demand.
I also feel that the NRC needs to redouble its efforts to
work with the public, to shore up the public confidence in your
regulatory efforts. I continue to hear from ordinary
constituents that the NRC regulatory processes are too complex,
too closed, too tentacled, that they stifle rather than promote
public participation. For people to embrace future use of
nuclear technology, they must feel that they are being heard by
the Agency.
Again, I thank Chairman Diaz and the rest of the
Commissioners for being here to discuss these issues. I look
forward to their testimony and to working with my colleagues.
[The prepared statement of Senator Jeffords follows:]
Statement of Hon. James M. Jeffords, U.S. Senator from the
State of Vermont
Thank you Mr. Chairman. Today's hearing continues our ongoing
oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Chairman
Voinovich, you and Ranking Member Carper deserve credit for continuing
the commitment to hold these hearings regularly in order to review the
NRC's activities.
I appreciate that all the Commissioners have made the effort to be
with us today. While we intend to hold several other nuclear hearings
this Congress, this may be my last opportunity as Ranking Member to
address all of the Commissioners as a group.
During my time as both chairman and ranking member, I have
followed your careers. I have supported your confirmations, some of you
to your first term, some to a second, and one of you to an
unprecedented third term. Four of you know the Senate well, having
served as former Senate staffers. In fact, three of you served as
staffers for this very committee. I know you all to be dedicated public
servants, and I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your
service to our country. Your job is not easy, it takes you away from
family and friends, and it involves an area of great responsibility-
regulating the Nation's civilian use of nuclear materials.
I believe the mission you carry out is one of the most vital roles
of the Federal Government. Ensuring adequate protection of public
health and safety when nuclear materials are used to produce power and
are disposed of is a critically important job.
In light of the NRC's mission, I want to share my views on a few
issues with you. The NRC has no greater responsibility than safety. I
want the people of Vermont and across the country to be safe and it is
the NRC's job to ensure that happens. And much as it seems that the
Commission and the nuclear industry may be planning for and
anticipating a ``nuclear renaissance'' with new plants, we must
maintain continued oversight over existing plants.
I make this point because I am concerned that we may lose track of
how dependent we are upon existing and aging nuclear plants. The real
``nuclear renaissance'' has been in our efforts to extend the lives of
our existing plants by boosting their power output and extending the
terms of their licenses. We haven't built any new plants. Revitalizing
old plants is where we've truly grown our reliance upon nuclear power
in the last few years. That dependence will only grow in the near
future. I urge you to maintain the NRC's focus on ensuring these plants
continue to operate safely even as we are asking them to fill more of
our Nation's energy demand.
I also feel the NRC needs to redouble its efforts to work with the
public, and to shore up public confidence in your regulatory efforts. I
continue to hear from ordinary constituents that the NRC regulatory
processes are too complex, too closed, too technical, and that they
stifle, rather than promote, public participation. For people to
embrace future use of nuclear technology, they must feel they are being
heard by the Agency.
Again, I thank Chairman Diaz and the rest of the Commissioners for
coming here to discuss these issues. I look forward to their testimony
and to working with my colleagues.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Inhofe.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. INHOFE, U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA
Senator Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, you
have already commented on so many things I was going to
mention, the three pieces of legislation that you folks were
good enough to get through, and some of the accomplishments.
You also mentioned the necessity for Yucca Mountain. It
concerns me a little bit. We had a hearing last week and there
are a lot of people who are trying to look at this reprocessing
as something in lieu of this permanent site. Let there be no
doubt in your minds that this committee is very strongly
saying, we are going to get that thing up and running. We have
to have Yucca Mountain, we have gone through the process, we
are there. There shouldn't be any doubt in the minds of any of
the Commissioners.
I am pleased with the progress we have made. There are some
things I think we have not quite lived up to. If you will
remember, back in 1998 when I held the chairmanship of this
subcommittee, the same as Senator Voinovich is holding now, we
actually had goals and deadlines and we got things done and got
things up and moving. There had not been an oversight hearing
in 12 years at that time.
So we have a lot of things that need to be--now I
understand that only one major regulatory change incorporating
risk has been completed, which was the Part 50.69 special
treatment rule, which the NRC began in 1999 and did not
complete until 2004. I am going to ask some questions, when it
comes time for questions, about why this is taking so long and
what we can do to improve this type of thing.
Another area of concern has been the recent attention to
the concept of potentially regulating safety culture. I do
agree on a prominence of safety and that the end result must be
safer facilities. I am greatly concerned that the methods to
achieve this buzz word might distract the NRC from implementing
risk informed decisions.
A simply dictionary definition of the word culture means a
set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that
characterize a company or corporation. My concern is that you
cannot regulate attitudes and values. If the NRC attempts this,
you will end up ignoring real risk and safety issues.
I understand that the definition the NRC is using includes
the word attitude in determining whether the facility is safe
for a culture. I am very wary of this effort.
In the 1980's and the 1990's, we saw the NRC inspectors
regulating in kind of a bean counting mentality where the
violations centered more on measurable items, such as having
the operating manuals in certain colored binders, instead of
focusing on real risk issues. I am concerned that if the NRC
charges its employees with examining attitudes and values, we
may actually move backwards on the progress we have already
made.
So while I am sure that the current slate of Commissioners
is not going to let this happen, let's keep in mind, we do not
know what is going to happen down the road 5 years from now, 10
years from now. Very likely some of you or maybe none of you
will be here as Commissioners, and very likely many of us at
this end of the table will not be here. So we want to set this
up for the future, so that we know that the progress we have
made is going to continue on into the future.
So we will be here to pay a lot of attention to this. I
agree with Senator Voinovich, the second most serious problem
facing America today is the energy crisis. I think we are going
to have to address it. You cannot address it without becoming
aggressive in nuclear energy. I think each one of you agrees
with that.
So we need to move, we need to stop all the traditional
barriers that are out there and get this thing done in a timely
manner.
[The prepared statement of Senator Inhofe follows:]
Statement of James M. Inhofe, U.S. Senator from the State of Oklahoma
I first want to thank Chairman Voinovich for holding this oversight
hearing and for his continued commitment to strong oversight of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
We have made a lot of progress since our first Oversight hearing in
1998, when I was the subcommittee chairman. The NRC's relicensing
reviews are being completed within 2 years, the NRC has moved to a
risk-informed reactor oversight process, and we have safely added
additional electric generating capacity through power uprates. The
total energy added through these uprates are equivalent to four nuclear
plants. The NRC has also done a tremendous job in responding to
security issues following the attacks of September 11. We all worked
hard to craft a good nuclear security law and I want to ensure that law
is implemented in the spirit in which it was crafted. These changes
were necessary, yet reasonable--so I expect the NRC to implement
security requirements in a manner that takes into account that
``necessary and reasonable'' standard.
I want to thank the Commission, and the Commission staff, for the
work they have done, and equally important, the work you are about to
do.
I commend the efforts of this committee for passing three pieces of
legislation that I authored with Chairman Voinovich in the Energy
Policy Act of 2005 to provide for the safe and secure growth of nuclear
power. These provisions--NRC reforms, security, liability insurance,
and human capital--combined with the Energy bill's sections on risk
insurance, production tax credits, and loan guarantees provide the
foundation for the construction of new nuclear plants.
You are faced with the continuing relicensing of the existing
reactors, you are still implementing new security requirements, you
have a new reactor license process to deal with, and of course there is
still Yucca Mountain which we have to get up and running as soon as
possible. In addition, we can not lose sight of the accomplishments
that have been made over the last few years, and we can't afford to
move backwards on the progress made.
Make no mistake, I am very pleased with the progress that we have
made under the leadership of this commission--you are to be
congratulated. But part of that success is due to us identifying issues
of concern as they come up, and to that end I do have a few issues that
I would like discuss.
While I appreciate the efforts the NRC has made on moving to a
risk-informed oversight process, particularly in regards to
inspections, I am troubled by the length of time it is taking to get
new regulations through the process, and I am concerned about how those
regulations are not incorporating risk.
I understand that only one major regulatory change incorporating
risk has been completed, which was the Part 50.69 Special Treatment
rule which the NRC began in 1999 and didn't complete until 2004. Other
risk related rule making efforts begun in 1999 such as Part 52 for
design certifications and Part 50.46a have yet to be completed. In
addition, we have heard concerns that some of these proposals have
moved further away from risk-based concerns than where they started.
Another area of concern is the recent attention to the concept of
potentially regulating ``safety culture.'' While I agree on the
prominence of safety, and that the end result must be safer facilities,
I am greatly concerned that the methods to achieve this buzzword might
distract the NRC from implementing risk-informed decisions.
A simple dictionary definition of the word culture means ``a set of
shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize a
company or corporation.'' My concern is that you can not regulate
``attitudes and values,'' and if the NRC attempts this you will end up
ignoring real risk and safety issues. I understand that the definition
the NRC is using includes the word attitude in determining whether a
facility has a safety culture. I am very wary of this effort.
In the 80's and 90's we saw the NRC inspectors regulating in a
bean-counting mentality where the violations centered more on
measurable items such as having the operating manuals in certain
colored binders instead of focusing on real risk issues. I am concerned
that if the NRC charges its employees with examining attitudes and
values, we may actually move backwards on the progress made.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Obama.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BARACK OBAMA, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF ILLINOIS
Senator Obama. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate your holding this hearing today and your leadership
on this issue. I appreciate the witnesses appearing before the
subcommittee and look forward to hearing their testimony.
As my colleagues know, nuclear power provides more than 50
percent of the electricity needs in Illinois. We have 6 plants,
11 reactors, more than any other State in the country. I have
said previously before this committee, to the chairman of EPW
as well as the chairman of this subcommittee, that as our
energy consumption continues to increase in the coming years,
we are going to need to meet this challenge. We are going to
have to determine how best to meet it without jeopardizing the
environment.
As Congress considers policies to address air quality and
the harmful effects of carbon emissions on the global
ecosystem, I believe that nuclear power should not be omitted
from the discussion. I think in our overall energy mix, nuclear
power is going to be a critical component. I would like to see
us develop a safe, clean, expanded nuclear capacity that allows
us to deal with some of the other environmental challenges that
we have.
However, as the NRC knows, the viability of nuclear power,
particularly expanding nuclear power to meet additional energy
needs, is going to rest in large part on the public having full
confidence in the health and safety precautions taken at these
facilities. When events occur that surprise the public, even if
the potential risks are within Federal health and safety
standards, it is understandable that people are skeptical and
concerned about nuclear power.
In Illinois, we have recently had an example of this
difficulty. Two months ago, it was announced by Exelon Nuclear
that over the past 6 to 8 years, there have been several
accidental leaks of tritiated water at the Braidwood, IL plant.
It is estimated that each leak resulted in the discharge of
approximately 3 million gallons of tritium into the surrounding
groundwater.
I was troubled to learn that community residents,
particularly State and local officials responsible for the
safety and health of their constituents, did not receive full
or immediate notification of this contamination, either from
Exelon or the NRC. I think that's wrong. Our constituents
deserve to be notified immediately and comprehensively when
substances of concern are released into the groundwater. That
is why I introduced a bill to require nuclear companies to
inform not just the NRC but also State and local officials if
there is an accidental or unintentional leak of a radioactive
substance.
Mr. Chairman, I think this is a simple, common sense bill.
It is good for public safety, it is good for the public's right
to know. Ultimately, I think it is going to be good for the
nuclear power industry. I think the more we know about nuclear
power, the better the public is informed, the better you are
going to be able to do your jobs, and the better we are going
to be able to expand, potentially, the use of nuclear power to
meet our energy needs.
So I am looking forward to getting the views of the
witnesses on this bill, as well as other issues facing the
industry. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Senator Obama follows:]
Statement of Hon. Barack Obama, U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing today. I
appreciate the witnesses appearing before the subcommittee, and I look
forward to hearing their testimony.
As my colleagues know, nuclear power provides more than 50 percent
of the electricity needs of Illinois. We have 6 plants and 11
reactors--more than any other State in the country.
I have said previously before this committee, as our energy
consumption continues to increase in the coming years, we will be
challenged in how best to meet this demand without jeopardizing the
environment. As Congress considers policies to address air quality and
the harmful effects of carbon emissions on the global ecosystem,
nuclear power should not be omitted from the discussion.
However, as the NRC knows, the viability of nuclear power rests in
large part on the public having full confidence in the health and
safety precautions taken at these facilities. When events occur that
surprise the public, even if the potential risks are within Federal
health and safety standards, it's understandable that people are
skeptical and concerned about nuclear power.
In Illinois, we've had a very real example of this recently. Two
months ago, it was announced by Exelon Nuclear that over the past 6 to
8 years, there have been several accidental leaks of tritiated water at
the Braidwood, IL plant. It's estimated that each leak resulted in the
discharge of approximately 3 million gallons of tritiated water into
the surrounding groundwater.
I was troubled to learn that community residents, particularly the
State and local officials responsible for the safety and health of
their constituents, did not receive full or immediate notification of
this contamination--either from Exelon, or the NRC.
I think that's wrong. Our constituents deserve to be notified
immediately and comprehensively when substances of concern are released
into the groundwater. That's why I introduced a bill to require nuclear
companies to inform not just the NRC, but also State and local
officials if there is an accidental or unintentional leak of a
radioactive substance.
This is a simple common-sense bill. It's good for public safety,
it's good for the public's right to know, and it's ultimately good for
the nuclear power industry. I look forward to getting the witnesses'
views on this bill, as well as other issues facing the industry.
I thank the Chair.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator Obama.
Senator Lautenberg.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, U.S. SENATOR
FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Senator Lautenberg. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I give my commendation to the chairman of the committee and
yourself, for getting us onto this subject. We have been
introduced to thoughts about nuclear energy by gas prices, by
the politics of oil, by prospective shortages. So we know that
we have to find alternative sources for energy creation. That
includes research, hybrids, you name it. It certainly includes
nuclear energy, as a distinct possibility. The work of the NRC
could not be more important. The stakes could not be higher.
Nuclear energy has enormous opportunities for our society.
Electricity can be generated, it is believed, without
contributing to global warming or the air pollution caused by
burning fossil fuels.
Now, my State, New Jersey, has four nuclear reactors. They
provide more than half of the electricity that we use. But as
we weigh the benefits of nuclear power, we must also be
realistic about the potential problems. When we look at nuclear
power, safety is always the first thing that pops into people's
minds. The Oyster Creek in New Jersey is the oldest operating
nuclear facility in the entire Nation. It came online in 1969.
It was planned to last 40 years. The current license expires in
2009 and the NRC is now in the process of determining whether
it should be relicensed for another 20 years, which would take
it until 2029.
As the oldest nuclear facility, Oyster Creek must have
special attention. The people who live near Oyster Creek are
justifiably worried. They also know that the NRC has never
denied a license extension for a commercial reactor. But they
want to make sure, and so do I, that this review process is not
a rubber stamp.
Now, I wrote in a February 21st letter to Chairman Diaz
that my top priority in the process is ensuring the safety of
the surrounding communities and the workers at Oyster Creek.
After I sent that letter, I was pleased that the judges of the
Atomic Safety and Licensing Board granted a hearing to
determine whether the steel radiation barrier at Oyster Creek
has been compromised by rust.
Other issues also have to be addressed in our four other
public hearings, including now the vulnerability of the site to
a terrorist attack and backup power to cool the reactor. This
is not only my opinion, it's the opinion of the New Jersey
Department of Environmental Protection.
So I hope the NRC is going to exercise its prerogative to
ensure that all of these issues get a full and open hearing. If
the NRC expects the citizens near Oyster Creek to accept a
final ruling as a result of a fair and open process, it can't
rush to judgment. You must allow everyone an opportunity to air
their concerns.
Mr. Chairman, one of the things that I would like to find
out is whether or not the NRC will engage in a field hearing to
make sure that there is an exchange of information between the
NRC and the nearby residents and public.
Thank you very much.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator Lautenberg.
I will now call on our ranking member, Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS R. CARPER, U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF DELAWARE
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Commissioners, welcome. I am delighted to see all of you. I
have been looking forward to this hearing. I hope you have as
well.
I think it is fair to say that a renaissance in nuclear
energy, nuclear power, is underway in this country. I welcome
that. Today I understand that there are nine companies or
groups of companies that are developing applications for new
nuclear power plants with the intention of filing those
applications with you in the next year or two.
In addition, as Senator Lautenberg and others have
suggested, many of the current nuclear plants throughout our
country renewed their license to continue to operate, and we
expect the rest of the current fleet to apply for renewal very
soon.
Although the Department of Energy continues to push back
its time line, we can assume that in the near future they will
apply for a license to operate a nuclear waste repository as
well. The future of the nuclear industry literally begins,
though, and ends with you, with the Commission. Your
responsibility is a big one, and I believe it is one that the
Commission manages quite well.
I am a believer, as you have heard me say before, in
nuclear power. I am heartened by its resurgence. I am ever
mindful of the need to ensure that the operations, that we be
vigilant and that we make sure that the operations are
conducted as safely as is humanly possible and then some.
Energy prices continue to drag down our economy. Our
dependence on foreign oil for energy continues to be a major
concern, I think for all of us. I think nuclear energy is an
answer, not the only answer, but an answer to both of those
concerns. It is important that the Commission perform your
duties and have the resources that you need to perform them
promptly and with a high degree of excellence.
I would also say, I have not heard all the opening
statements here this morning, but as Tip O'Neill used to say,
all politics is local. Just as Senator Lautenberg mentioned
Oyster Creek, we have three nuclear plants right across the
river from Delaware. When I was Governor of Delaware, I used to
say that they are closer to me than they were to the Governor
of New Jersey.
So we are always concerned about how well those facilities
are operated, and I am going to be talking with you and asking
you some questions about how we are doing over there, how they
are doing over there, now that Exelon is involved in the
operation of those facilities, not only in terms of operating
performance, but what is the, if you will, the commitment to
safety, the mind set, how is that changing and what are your
views of that.
The other thing I want to talk about is just to get an
update, and you will probably address this in your comments. I
would like to get an update on nuclear waste. The President has
proposed, I think in his State of the Union messages, some
different approaches on nuclear waste. I would like to hear
your take on that and an update on what's going on out in Yucca
Mountain and also what you make of the President's proposals.
With that having been said, again, we are delighted that
you are here. We look forward to your testimony. Thank you so
much for joining us.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator Carper.
Since all my colleagues have mentioned their favorite
nuclear facilities----
[Laughter.]
Senator Voinovich. I guess I am remiss in not mentioning
Davis-Besse and Perry Nuclear. I have spoken so much about that
to the Commissioner members and the chairman that it is
redundant. But publicly, the beginning of the whole issue in
terms of the work of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in
terms of looking at safety concerns, really was generated by
the situation that we had at Davis-Besse.
To Messrs. Jaczko, McGaffigan, Merrifield, Lyons, thank you
for being here. We gave all of you a chance to speak for 2
minutes and you decided that you would let the chairman take
the heat this morning. Because of that, Chairman Diaz, we would
like to hear from you. If you can limit your comments to 10
minutes, we would be most grateful.
STATEMENT OF NILS J. DIAZ, CHAIRMAN, U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY
COMMISSION ACCOMPANIED BY: EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR.,
COMMISSIONER; JEFFREY S. MERRIFIELD, COMMISSIONER; GREGORY B.
JACZKO, COMMISSIONER; AND PETER B. LYONS, COMMISSIONER
Mr. Diaz. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I certainly
would limit my comments to 10 minutes. It is a pleasure to be
here again and to appear before you with my fellow
Commissioners to discuss the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's
programs. I request that my written testimony on behalf of the
Commission be submitted for the record.
The NRC continues to discharge our responsibilities for
licensing and regulating civilian nuclear facilities and
materials in accordance with the congressional mandate in an
open, balanced, risk-informed and ever more effective manner.
Safety is our mission. Safety, security and emergency
preparedness and reliability are synergistically improving.
More than one-third of the United States' power reactor
fleet has applied for and received, after rigorous review, 20-
year extensions of their licenses. Risk-informed and
performance-based regulation is now ingrained in the Agency's
and the industry's operation of plants. A safety and security
framework for reactors and materials is in place, is being
tested and is being improved commensurate with the post 9/11
threat and potential consequences.
The Agency's research programs have been focused on the
Agency's defined needs, integrated with operational safety and
licensing priorities, leveraging resources and expertise with
international partners. Research is providing sound technical
leadership and results with a foothold in the future. Our many
international obligations are executed well. Our leadership is
now apparent and our comparative efforts continue to span and
serve our Nation and our international partnerships.
Our fiscal affairs are in order. Our financial needs have
been supported by the Congress, and we continue to manage and
prioritize resources including our human resource needs,
investing in the present and the near future while exercising
appropriate fiscal restraint.
Having said that, Mr. Chairman, the Commission and the
staff have a lot of work to do. We need to do that work well
and we need to do it timely.
The NRC continues its vigilant and strong safety focus on
operating nuclear power plants. We will not lose that focus. We
have continued to make improvements in the licensing and
regulatory processes with significant resources. For example,
over the past year, as the chairman mentioned, we have renewed
nine licenses at five sites and issued six power upgrades. On
the regulatory oversight front, we continue to exercise strong
oversight of nuclear power plants as we refine our risk-
informed process for inspecting and for assessing licensee
performance.
The reactor oversight process has matured and improved. But
it is still a work in progress.
The committee, and particular Senator Voinovich, has been
strong proponents of improving safety culture in the right
manner. The Commission is fully addressing this issue, and we
are addressing it with a focus on how we can support the
licensees, how we can improve and how we can exercise oversight
over the licensees' safety culture but not measure attitudes.
We are not going to measure attitudes.
The NRC realizes the need for nuclear power plants to
maintain a strong safety culture and the requisite safety-
conscious work environment. We have been working on this issue
both to ensure appropriate oversight of safety culture and to
ensure we have a healthy safety culture at the NRC itself. The
NRC has been working with stakeholders to further improve the
tools we have to assess safety cultures at nuclear power
plants, and is working to complete additional changes to the
reactor oversight process to address this issue, including the
use of independent assessments, if necessary.
We have also been working on improving the safety culture
and climate of the Agency's work force. In 2005, the Inspector
General conducted a survey of NRC employees to assess the
current safety culture and climate of the Agency work force.
The NRC safety culture and work climate, Mr. Chairman, has
improved significantly in virtually every area since 2002, as
reflected in the charts that we have displayed and that is
included in the testimony. Having said that, the survey also
revealed areas of opportunity for continued improvement.
[The referenced chart can be found on page 56.]
Today, Mr. Chairman, we are being asked to be ready to
license new reactors to meet the energy needs of the Nation. In
fact, the number of projected new plant license applications
has more than tripled since this time last year, and it
continues to increase. We presently have received intentions
for 11 combined construction and operating license applications
encompassing 17 units. Those poses a serious challenge to our
licensing and new construction inspection capabilities.
We anticipate the need to conduct simultaneous reviews of
multiple new plant license applications, design certifications
and early site permit applications, all of them bunched in a
small period of time. Having said that, we will not be
distracted. We will maintain strong oversight activities to
ensure the safety and security of the operating plants. We are
preparing for this with a new work structure.
In order to allow for efficient parallel review of
applications, the staff is considering a number of steps and is
planning to implement a design center approach which would use
a single technical evaluation to support review of multiple
combined license applications for each vendor design, meaning
that for AP1000, you will have one type of design that will be
focused only on the AP1000, how it is used from one applicant
to the other. The same thing for the ESBWR and the EPR. In the
same technical areas where possible, we will actually use the
same review.
In this regard, we are continuing to assess our personnel
and work space needs in light of the very substantial increase
in the number of anticipated new plant license applications. We
might need the support of the committee in some of these areas.
Mr. Chairman, we know we are accountable to the Congress
and to the people of this country. Throughout the Agency, we
perform our work under that premise. We have structured the
Agency to be true to our strategic objective. We accept and
discharge our responsibilities to contribute to the well-being
of our people by protecting the public, the environment and our
Nation's security. We understand the challenges we face in the
new reactor licensing and human capital areas, and will
continue to work with the committee as we move forward. With
your continued support, we will be ready to carry out our
responsibilities.
We will be pleased, sir, to answer your questions.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Chairman Diaz.
In that chart there, in the red, how many senior executive
folks have you lost?
Mr. Diaz. We have lost, sir, a significant number,
especially during the last few months, of senior executives. I
don't know the exact number, but we keep a significant number
of good people. We try to get some of them back. We normally
have a cycle that by the end of the year, the beginning of the
year, we lose more people than we can get. Then our hiring
picks up, as is shown on the chart. It is a continuous cycle.
I have been told by my staff we have lost five SESers in
the last few months. We intend to continue to renew our SES and
managers by a program that is a tremendous success.
Senator Voinovich. I know that you submitted an overall
plan and we have had a chance to review. However I am really
concerned about it. These are top managers and you do have the
authority, if you find yourself in a jam, that you can bring
back an annuitant without them losing their annuity, is that
correct?
Mr. Diaz. Yes, sir, and we are grateful for your support on
that. We have that authority and we are exercising it.
Senator Voinovich. You have already determined what you are
going to need in 2000 and 2008. One of the concerns that I have
is that the Department of Energy has a very good program that
has made money available to engineering schools, nuclear
engineering schools, and provided money for reactors in
Massachusetts and one other place, I think.
Mr. McGaffigan. All over the country.
Mr. Diaz. Twenty-eight places, yes.
Senator Voinovich. Twenty-eight places. And it is my
understanding that they have eliminated that funding. I would
like to know, what are you doing about it? Because unless that
money is restored, this effort to train up more of these
engineers is going to fall short. What are you doing about it?
Mr. Diaz. Well, sir, we of course cannot speak for the
Department of Energy. But I can tell you that the Commission
unanimously supported our request for additional funding for
universities and grant programs, as the Energy Policy Act
stated. The President's budget is supporting that request.
So the NRC will have, in 2007, additional funds to be able
to support the universities with grants, fellowships,
assistantships, summer programs. We did what we thought was
needed. I will assure you that personally, and I am sure my
fellow Commissioners will do likewise, we will try to bring the
fact that this is important, that although it might not have an
impact tomorrow, it will have an impact the day after tomorrow.
This is a critical infrastructure of the Nation and it needs to
be supported.
Mr. McGaffigan. Mr. Chairman, if I could just add, it is
out of our hands. I would personally urge you to fix that in
the appropriations process this year. That was a mistake, I
believe, on the part of the Department of Energy.
Senator Voinovich. Have you drafted a letter to the
Secretary?
Mr. McGaffigan. I think I would get in trouble. I probably
do just as much as I can possibly do without getting into too
much trouble.
Senator Voinovich. Well, then why don't you draft it for
the members of this committee, and we will get every member of
the committee to sign it? How's that?
Mr. McGaffigan. For you to Senator Domenici, sure.
Senator Voinovich. I think we need to get it to Mr. Bodman
and we need to get it to the White House and we need to get it
to the appropriators. But they are all talking about bringing
on new people and the new competitiveness agenda. By God, you
can't do it unless you have the people. You have to support it.
It costs money.
Mr. Merrifield. Senator, I agree with Commissioner
McGaffigan. I think this is vitally important. I am glad you
did bring this out.
Just to point out, I think it is not, it doesn't fall quite
evenly. It hurts, particularly the graduate members of those
programs, folks who are getting their masters degrees and
Ph.Ds, which is an area we have already been falling behind. So
this is a critically important program as you pointed out. It
is something I think we all should be concerned with.
Senator Voinovich. We ought to characterize it as
implementing the recommendations of the report of the National
Academy of Sciences, gathering above the rising storm,
something like that.
I have talked with you, Commissioner Diaz, a little bit
about total quality management. I hear complaints from a lot of
folks out there about the way the organization operates in
terms of customer service. I would like you to agree that you
will sit down with me and maybe some people that really know,
and talk about bringing total quality management to your
operation.
I did this when I was Governor of Ohio. We were a leader in
the country. I finished up as Governor with 17 percent less
employees. I had a much happier work force. We had continuing
improvement teams, we had facilitators. People were excited. We
found that too often, the people that worked in many of these
agencies were not even aware of the fact that people were
unhappy with the way that the operation was working. It really
made a big difference.
I don't know what your plans are. One of the challenges, I
think this committee should know, is that Chairman Diaz's term
is up, and I don't know yet whether he is going to tip his hat
and leave or not. We have two temporary appointees, Mr. Lyons
and Mr. Jaczko. So we may have some leadership changes here,
and it is real important that we get this thing taken care of
as soon as possible, so that if Chairman Diaz leaves, that
we're not just out there without some leadership at a time when
the NRC needs leadership more than they have ever needed it
before.
Mr. Diaz. Sir, I would be pleased to sit with you and
discuss and learn and improve the way that we manage our
people. I think we have really achieved great strides in the
last 3 years. We have really paid attention to our people. We
have taken our senior managers and the senior managers, their
managers, into retreats and we have hammered at the fact that
our work force is our best asset, that we need to make sure
that we communicate well with them, that the managers'
accountability and the staff accountability are one and only
one, that they need to integrate it.
We see great results. Having said that, I think we know we
have a way to go. I would be pleased to sit with you and work
the issue through.
Regarding the leadership of the Commission, no, sir, I am
not going to tip my hat. I can tell you that what I have done
and what my fellow commissioners are doing is, we are making
the institution strong. We are putting the changes in the right
places in the institution with the right management, so that
the institution will not only endure, but actually keep growing
and doing the job that it needs to do for the American people.
Senator Voinovich. I would just like to say this, that you
are going to have to be as efficient as you ever have been
before. Because you have a human capital challenge of getting
the people on board to get the job done.
One of the things that, you know, we are talking about the
applications, we need the energy now, and what I understand is
that it won't be until 2014 that we will see energy finally
produced as a result of these applications that have come in.
When I talk with folks that have filed applications, they're
just worried to beat the band that they may run into what they
ran into many, many years ago. In fact, one of the reluctances
of people going forward with new facilities is this whole era
of one impediment after another impediment after another
impediment. I think it's really important that you start
talking about how you are going to make sure this thing is
going to move along, at the same time, of course, doing the job
that you are supposed to do.
Mr. McGaffigan.
Mr. McGaffigan. Sir, I would only say that I think a lot of
what we have been able to accomplish the last few years really
reflects the TQM approach. We don't use that word at NRC, but
we do expect constant improvement. We have in our strategic
goals, we have continued to increase them. So a lot of TQM, I
remember I was working for Senator Bingaman and Motorola was
one of the first to embrace that. I think an awful lot of what
we've done and the success we have reflected in one of those
view graphs, the IG survey, comes from a TQM approach, although
we don't use that word.
Senator Voinovich. What I would like to do, Chairman Diaz,
is bring in Mr. McGaffigan and whoever else you want to bring
in. I have some experts in the country that I will have them
come in, talk about what you are doing, we will see what their
opinion is and maybe we will go from there.
Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I want to build off Senator Voinovich's question in just a
moment. But first, this morning I want to come back to the
issue of excellence, commitment to excellence, commitment to
safe operations. I remember when I was on active duty in the
Vietnam War, some guys in my squadron would talk about
Government work, they would say, they would do a job, they
didn't do it very well, and they would say, that's good enough
for Government work. I never liked that very much.
I remember when a guy named Bert Lance was OMB director in
Jimmy Carter's administration. He used to say, if it ain't
broke, don't fix it. That's what he used to say.
In my time, I was privileged to serve as Governor of
Delaware, we used to say, if it isn't perfect, make it better.
If it isn't perfect, make it better. I would just add to what
Senator Voinovich has said, that was the creed that we
attempted to live by every day. My hope is that you do, as
well, at the NRC.
We need safe, reliable nuclear energy in this country going
forward. The biggest threat against that is a lack of
confidence on behalf of Americans in terms of the safety of
nuclear operations, not just in their safe operations on a
daily basis of the plants across the country, but also to be
sure that as we dispose of the waste that we are safe in that
regard, too.
I want to come back to something I think Senator Voinovich
was getting to. I think you said 9, 10, applications, 15 or
plants, is that right?
Mr. Diaz. Eleven applications, 17 plants.
Senator Carper. Seventeen plants, OK.
Mr. McGaffigan. Sir, those are the ones that are announced.
There are still others working.
Senator Carper. OK. Just again quickly, the time to ramp
until we get the first of those online would be at the earliest
when?
Mr. Diaz. In 2015, sir.
Senator Carper. OK. How many nuclear power plants do we
have in the country, about 100, 103?
Mr. Diaz. One hundred and three and 104 probably next year.
Senator Carper. As I understand it, even though the number
of nuclear power plants has not increased in some time, we do
have a greater output of electricity from the plants that we
have, just take a moment or two and just explain how that has
happened and whether or not we can look for any further
increase in output for the next several years as we are waiting
for the new capacity to come online.
Mr. Diaz. Yes, sir. The most significant improvement has
been in the capacity factor, due to the reliability and safe
operations of the plants. What this essentially means is that
we have really increased generating capacity of the country by
about 18,000 megawatts over the last 15 years or so. So about
the capacity factor of 18 large nuclear power plants, just due
to the increased reliability of the plants. They stay operating
longer, they operate longer periods of time at full capacity.
The other addition is what we call power upgrades. All of
these plants have the capability to upgrade the power, some of
them a little bit and some of them a lot. There's almost 4,600
megawatts of added capacity that is being put online just
because of those power upgrades.
Senator Carper. Looking forward, over the next, this is
2006, looking forward over the next 8 or 9 years, as we
anticipate the bringing online of additional power plants, can
we expect further output from the 103 or 104 plants that exist,
or have we basically, are they basically peaked out?
Mr. Diaz. They have peaked out, sir. They have plateaued at
about a 90 percent capacity factor, I think. We think they can
go to 91 or 92. But because of the issue of refueling,
maintaining the equipment, that is about the best that they can
do. There will be additional power upgrades. But those will be
incremental and smaller increases.
Senator Carper. OK. Across the Delaware River from Delaware
City are a couple of, several nuclear power plants that you may
have heard of, Salem and Hope Creek are among the facilities
that are there. The record of operations reliability has not
been good over the years. Questions about the culture or the
commitment to safety have not been especially good, either.
There has been a change in ownership management, or there
is a change. I don't know if it has been consummated, ownership
and management, that would pass the management of those
facilities from PSE&G to Exelon. I would just ask you, give us
an update of your understanding of how they are doing. I
visited a couple of times. How is it coming?
Mr. Diaz. They are doing better, sir. Our region took some
very polite measures with the licensees. They took about three
2x4's and went into the area and let them know that the Agency
was going to be very, very strong in exercising the required
oversight. They actually took immediate measures regarding both
their safety culture, the safety culture work environment. They
revised their processes. They revised their corrective action.
I still think they are a work in progress. But progress has
been made.
Senator Carper. Good. Do any other commissioners want to
add to or take away from that, please?
Mr. McGaffigan. Just particularly, I think the advent of
Exelon, which I believe occurred about February of last year,
has been really good for the site. They've made safety
improvements, as the chairman said, they've made significant
security improvements as well. I think they're on the right
path.
Senator Carper. OK. I understand, just to follow up
briefly, I understand there were several shutdowns over the
last year. I presume that that's not uncommon in nuclear
facilities. But I think there were at least three, I think two
of those happened within maybe a week of each other.
Do you have any understanding of what those occurrences
were about, and how they were addressed?
Mr. Diaz. Yes. You are totally right, Senator. These events
do happen. We have now a process in which we look into each one
of these occurrences. The licensee needs to take prompt
corrective action to try to prevent recurrence.
I believe that the issues were properly addressed and
hopefully they have learned the lessons of how to carry out
some of this maintenance and maneuvers and will stay without
these incidents.
Senator Carper. I understand last year the NRC conducted,
as you suggested, a special inspection of the safety culture of
the Salem and Hope Creek reactors. According to the NRC's
annual assessment letter, I think it read, and I am going to
try to quote this, ``The inspection team noted some issue that
required additional action and focused attention.'' You may
have already addressed this in your comments. But if you want
to add anything to it, I would appreciate that.
Mr. Diaz. No, sir, I think the region is addressing the
entire licensees' capabilities to properly manage their plant.
I think we always notice some issues. We are very good at that,
especially when somebody has had some problems. We always take
our magnifying glass and crank it up a little bit.
I don't see any significant safety issues in these
facilities at the present time.
Senator Carper. Good. I am going to ask you to answer for
the record, if you will, just to elaborate on the earlier
assessment from that assessment letter, just elaborate on it.
And let us know what if any are the further NRC plans to follow
up and to ensure that those issues that were raised by that
inspection are being addressed.
It would be helpful if you could give us some specific time
line.
Mr. Diaz. I would be happy to provide you with that
information for the record.
[The referenced information can be found on page 59.]
Senator Carper. Good. Thanks.
In the minute and a half that I have left, I want to turn
to a pitch that I telegraphed earlier, and I mentioned in my
opening statement, the President has spoken during his State of
the Union Address, talked about the need to increase reliance
on nuclear energy as we try to reduce our reliance on foreign
sources of energy. He talked about the disposal of nuclear
waste. I would just ask you to take a minute or two to explain
what the President was suggesting and then just really, for the
commissioners, what's good about it, what concerns should we
keep in mind?
Mr. Diaz. Yes, sir. I believe that what the President and
the Department of Energy is chartered to conduct is a review of
how this Nation and really the world should actually handle the
front end and the back end of the fuel cycle. Because it's not
only the back end. Eventually what the President is proposing
is an integrated solution to the issue of fuel, fuel from the
beginning, fuel to the end, and how to do that in a manner that
allows the appropriate use of the fuel and the appropriate
disposition of the fuel. Rather than having just one end
option, I think the President is saying there are several
options and they need to be studied. They need to be analyzed.
We are not a direct part of this process. But we hope to be
able to provide expertise as requested to assist in the
potential licensing and safety issues that would arise with
this proposal of GNEP.
Senator Carper. Good. And I would love to hear from other
commissioners. Commissioner Lyons?
Mr. Lyons. At the moment, it is somewhat unclear when the
NRC will be involved in the processes being suggested by the
DOE. But as or if those move ahead, as they move into
commercial operation, there certainly will be a significant
challenge for the NRC. As Senator Voinovich and others have
spoken to the manpower challenges, this will present
significant additional manpower challenges because the NRC
would be asked to evaluate technologies that are well outside
the range of those that we are currently working with. If
recycling, if advanced burners are to be a part of this
process, there is no question that we will have to do
significant upgrading of staff capabilities to address that.
Senator Carper. Other comments, please.
Mr. McGaffigan. Senator Carper, you have to understand that
this proposal is in its infancy. It is decades away from being
implementable. As I understand, what Secretary Bodman has
proposed is a 3-year effort to see whether something might be
possible with a decision in 2008 on doing engineering scaled
facilities. But real facilities that would affect the fuel
cycle in a significant way are decades away.
My only concern, and there are all sorts of concerns with
regard to it, technical, economic regulatory, as my colleagues
have said. I don't want them to lose focus on the near term,
the nuclear renaissance, the issue that Senator Voinovich
raised, which may, the cut in education for the universities
may have been part of trying to find money for GNEP. I hope
not.
And Yucca Mountain, they have to continue to focus on
whether they can put together a license application that can
pass muster with us. So I wouldn't want them to lose focus on
things they have to do in the next few years. And even on the
nuclear renaissance, they have to have a new standard contract
with the licenses in order to get listed. That is something DOE
has to contribute here and now to the possibility of this
nuclear renaissance. GNEP is decades away.
Senator Carper. OK. Yes, sir, Mr. Jaczko.
Mr. Jaczko. If I could just add, one of the crucials for
the NRC in this whole process is to ensure that the NRC has the
appropriate regulatory and licensing authority for whatever
facilities will be constructed as part of this. That is, from
our perspective, one of the most immediate challenges, as
Commissioner Lyons mentioned, that could involve tremendous
changes to our regulations and other things.
So knowing that we have that role and establishing that
role early and clearly will be important.
Senator Carper. My time has expired. Mr. Merrifield, very
briefly.
Mr. Merrifield. I agree with the comments made by both
commissioners. Particularly, we have been waiting for the DOE
submission for Yucca Mountain application. That is something
Congress expects us to do in a period of 3 years. We put in
place a process, the procedures and the people in order to take
that. The delays in receiving that application are difficult
for us, because that's forced us to have to retrench a bit,
despite having been right on the edge, willing to accept that.
How GNEP affects that process is obviously an issue of
concern. I certainly would say I would agree with Commissioner
McGaffigan and hope this does not delay where we are going
relative to Yucca itself.
Senator Carper. Good, thank you. Thanks for your responses.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Inhofe.
Senator Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As you know, for years, since 1998, anyway, I have been
advocating a stable and predictable licensing process. I stress
predictable. That's the important thing. I think sometimes we
forget the massive amounts of investment that is necessary to,
it is all predicated on what you folks come out with. So I
think that predictability in the licensing process is an
absolute, if we are to proceed with the construction of new
nuclear power plants in this country.
Yet here we are in 2006, as all these utilities are in the
middle of developing their application for combined operating
licenses, the Commission is still updating the rule on the
licensing project. Now, we talked about this before, Mr.
Chairman, and I have to ask you the question, when is the
Commission going to finalize the rule?
Mr. Diaz. Sir, we are going to finalize this rule by next
year in time for it to be used by any of the applicants for a
COR license. The reason for this rule is the same reason that
you addressed at the beginning, this predictability. We really
wanted to have, in our books and for the benefit of the
licensees and stakeholders, a clear set of rules that can be
followed----
Senator Inhofe. See, that's what I'm getting at here. Now,
why, you say next year. Next year has 12 months. When?
Mr. Diaz. It's October of next year.
Senator Inhofe. October of next year you will finalize----
Mr. Merrifield. No, October of this year is I think the
goal, sir. We will get the proposed final rule in October.
Mr. Diaz. I'm sorry, it's January 2007, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Inhofe. No, it's October 2006.
Mr. Diaz. October 2006 when it comes to the Commission,
January 2007 when the final rule should be----
Senator Inhofe. OK, it will come to the Commission, you all
will be working prior to that in the process of this, I am
sure. Why can't you just go ahead as soon as it comes to the
Commission and act on it?
Mr. Diaz. Well, sir, the Commission is a deliberative body.
Senator Inhofe. So are we, and that is one of the problems.
Mr. Diaz. Yes. I fully understand that.
Once we get a document that is going to become an official
rule of the Agency, the Commission makes sure that everything
that should be there is in there. But I hear you, we should be
as expeditious as possible. I am sure my fellow Commissioners
will try to be as expeditious as possible on that issue.
Mr. Merrifield. Mr. Chairman, I would agree with the
chairman. We need to try to get that through the Commission as
quickly as we can. Some of the delay in that will be subject to
the Administrative Procedures Act, over which we have no
control.
Senator Inhofe. Well, OK, do you see any way it could be
done before that?
Mr. Merrifield. Any way it could be done before October of
this year?
Senator Inhofe. That it would come to you before October
2006?
Mr. Merrifield. I think we have already pushed the staff as
reasonably hard as we can push them. What the Commission can do
is follow very closely the staff proceedings as they go along
and the interactions between our staff, the regulated utility
and other interested stakeholders. From my own view, when I
voted in favor of moving forward with this proposal, it was
with the full knowledge that if we don't come up with something
that is workable by that October deadline, I will vote against
it. So I think the Commission is going to keep----
Senator Inhofe. Well, that is not going to help.
Mr. Merrifield. I'm sorry?
Senator Inhofe. That is not going to help things if you
vote against it. I just want to, it just seems to me, and let's
do this for the record. I would like to have you tell me what
steps you have to go through, and understanding the
administrative procedures problems that might be in there, as
to why we can't do it. Then if you couldn't have some guidance.
See, every day that's going by, these guys are spending, making
massive investments, at least I hope they are, because I am in
a bigger hurry than they are or you are, to get to that point
where we can have, expand our nuclear capabilities.
So I would like to know what that is. If you are all in
agreement right now that it can't happen prior to that time and
that it is going to take the deliberative process from October
all the way through, what, the middle of January?
Mr. Diaz. That is what is in the schedule, sir. Like
Commissioner Merrifield said, we have already pushed the staff
as much as we could. We actually pushed them almost----
Senator Inhofe. Commissioner McGaffigan?
Mr. McGaffigan. Chairman Inhofe, we had significant
negative comment on this 550-page rule before we issued it.
Because we put it out while we were contemplating whether to
put it out. I am the one commissioner who voted against it and
wanted it to be pared down.
I have some hope that, as I put it before the staff,
through the help of public stakeholders, we will find the
jewels that really need to be done in this dump truck of a
rule. But one problem we have is this is a 550-page monstrosity
that we put out for public comments. I personally think a vast
quantity of it doesn't need to be enacted and we would have
better regulatory stability if it were not enacted in final
form.
So we are just going to have to see how the staff interacts
with the stakeholders during this administrative procedure.
Senator Inhofe. But do you agree that it is realistic that
January we will have your rule?
Mr. McGaffigan. If the staff pares it down----
Senator Inhofe. Well, if you say that, then they won't.
Mr. McGaffigan. Well, sir, I'm delivering a message right
now----
Mr. Diaz. Sir, the staff is ready to deliver. The draft
rule is out. They know what the requirements of the
Commission----
Senator Inhofe. Well, OK, let me make a request of the
chairman here that if that isn't out, I request a meeting on
Wednesday, January 24, 2007. Does that sound reasonable to you,
so we can find out at that point if it's not, why it's not?
Mr. Jaczko. Mr. Chairman, if I could just add briefly. I
think the Commission is very much committed, if we do get a
rule from staff in October that we can act on that in a very
expeditious manner. I think it's something the Commission is
committed to acting on certainly before the January 2007 date.
Senator Inhofe. In my opening statement, and I will re-read
the one short paragraph, I said I understand that only one
major regulatory change incorporating risk has been completed,
which was Part 50.69, special treatment rule, which the NRC
began in 1999 and wasn't completed until 2004.
Now, we have probably five or six others that are out there
that were started around 1999, maybe addressing the Part 52 or
another part of this. I would ask you, the two-part question
here is, was that time that it took for that one, the 5 years,
was that reasonable? Is that what you thought in 1999 it would
take? And No. 2, what about the other pending applications that
were there at that time?
Mr. Diaz. Well, sir, first let me just say that personally
this is kind of music to my ears. I do like risk and
performance based regulation. I have been advocating it since
my very first days in the Commission.
No, it was not reasonable. It was a long period of time.
However, it was done in a very open way with the industry and
the stakeholders. It was a difficult rule, because from the----
Senator Inhofe. So is that reasonable, 5 years?
Mr. Diaz. No, it was not.
Senator Inhofe. OK. Let's, because we are operating on a
time schedule here, let me mention, I understand that it is,
and you have said this before, Mr. Chairman, that it is the
responsibility of each applicant to submit a complete and
quality application that meets all of the NRC's requirements
and guidance. I think the problem is that the guidance is a
moving target. I think that they in their minds are investing
their money, they are in a hurry, they want to comply with
everything. They are submitting a good application.
But then when things change here, then they have to go
back, and this is a, I am wondering if there isn't a way that
even though you can't finalize it, you can come up with a
definitive, prescriptive guidance document so that they would
not find themselves, so there are certain things with which
they could comply during this period of time where they
wouldn't have to go back and start a good deal of it over
again. Is that reasonable?
Mr. Diaz. That is very reasonable, sir, and we are working
both in the guidance document and in the standard review plans
to try to finalize them, upgrade them so that they will be
usable. It is not that they don't exist. It is that they don't
exist to do the work that they need to do now.
Senator Inhofe. Some of the problems, let me address a
couple of them in the 1970's and 1980's, one of them caused the
licensing process to bog down. That timeframe was that there
was no in to reopening issues during the licensing process.
Now, that's something I remember we talked about this some time
ago. Have you taken steps to address this problem of reopening
and having to go back, and if so, how have you done this?
Mr. Diaz. Sir, there are two aspects of this. One is the
technical reviews of issues and the other is the issues of the
hearing process. I really----
Senator Inhofe. That's great, I was going to get to the
hearing process next. Go ahead.
Mr. Diaz. OK. The issues on the technical reviews, I think
we have now in place a process that is sound, that will allow
us to in a timely manner conduct the reviews. Again, I will say
that this is a two-way street. Sometimes when we ask for
additional information, the information sometimes doesn't come
the way it is. That is why I keep insisting that we will stick
to schedules, but the licenses need to provide us with the
right quality and they need to provide us with the right
answers so we can keep the process on a timely manner.
Senator Inhofe. So you think you have taken steps to make
sure your licensing boards meet schedules and milestones for
completing hearings?
Mr. Diaz. Yes, sir. I think that Commissioner Merrifield
actually puts a significant amount of time in these, maybe he
would be able to answer that.
Mr. Merrifield. Mr. Chairman, we went ahead and we rewrote
part 2 of our regulations, which relates to how we manage these
hearing type proceedings. We recognize they did not have the
discipline in them and there were problems in the past. We
tried to inject in a system which is more effective, more
efficient, will resolve concerns of the parties at hand. We
have improved case management practices we put in, we have
expectations for our judges, depending on the type of legal
proceeding. We have told them how long we think that proceeding
should occur. If they fail to meet those time lines, they have
to come back to the Commission and where appropriate, the
Commission can intervene to tell them they need to move through
that process in a more disciplined way.
We have also changed it such that not all of our
proceedings are the old formal style proceedings. We have moved
to a more informal process. We think this too will allow the
issues to come to the fore in a quicker way and will allow the
parties to resolve those and move forward with a solid decision
by our boards.
Senator Inhofe. Well, Commissioner Merrifield, you were the
staff director for our former chairman up here. So you
understand where I am coming from.
Mr. Merrifield. I do.
Senator Inhofe. I will just make you my point man to make
sure that happens.
Mr. Merrifield. I will be happy to do that, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Inhofe. All right, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am
sorry I took so long.
Senator Voinovich. I understand from Senator Jeffords that
he is going to allow Senator Obama to ask his questions,
because apparently Senator Obama has another meeting that he
has to be at. Senator Obama.
Senator Obama. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you,
Senator Jeffords, for your gracious allowance.
I am going to focus a little bit on the situation with the
tritium discharges in the Exelon Braidwood Generating Station.
As you know, this has generated quite a bit of concern in my
State. I recognize that there are some broader issues that we
have been discussing here today, but as I mentioned in my
opening statement, I think that if we can't generate public
confidence about the safety and security of nuclear power, then
it is going to be hard for us to move in systematic ways to
utilize nuclear energy in the ways that I think it can be used
to relieve some of the energy problems that we have in this
country. So I think this is sort of a microcosm of some larger
issues that I would like to see raised.
My understanding is that in both 1998 and 2000, 3 million
gallons of tritiated water leaked into the groundwater from the
blowdown line at the nuclear plant in Braidwood, IL. I am
wondering, to your knowledge, did Exelon know at the time that
it was tritiated water? Does anybody know?
Mr. Diaz. It could very well be that Commonwealth Edison,
that was managing the plant, knew it was tritiated water.
Senator Clinton. Mr. Chairman, could we ask the witness to
speak into the microphone, please?
Mr. Diaz. I'm sorry. But it was really never treated as a
major issue. So the Commonwealth, which was operating the plant
at the time, they surely must have known that this water
contained traces of tritium. How the contamination was and the
extent of it, I am not sure that the Commonwealth knew, neither
did we know.
Senator Obama. OK. As I understand it, the NRC has a
representative onsite at every nuclear power plant, is that
correct?
Mr. Diaz. That is correct.
Senator Obama. So what are the obligations of this
representative? How quickly would your site representative know
of any unplanned discharge? How quickly would NRC officials at
headquarter be informed of the discharge?
Mr. Diaz. They should know immediately of every unplanned
discharge that poses any significant health risk to the public
to the public health and safety, or any significant hazard to
the public health and safety. So they are there, they should
know, they should be informed. The plant should be informed, we
should be informed. And to your point, if there is something
significant, that any radiological protection measures should
be considered, I think we would notify the local and the State
officials, sir.
Senator Obama. I want to get to the public reporting in a
second. But just to stay focused on the facility itself, since
this time, what has the NRC been doing to prevent these kinds
of leaks from occurring again in the future?
Mr. Diaz. Some of these leaks are really unplanned leaks.
In other words, it is not part of the procedures of the plant.
We have of course in all power plants and all industrial
complexes, two types of releases. Those are controlled and
those are uncontrolled. This goes into the uncontrolled release
category. Therefore, it received additional attention.
When a release of significant amounts of water takes place
in any power plant, that's obviously, you can see that that
certainly would be noticed. I think it was noticed. The fact
that tritium is in all these power plants is, I hate to use the
word, but it is a normal customer. It is always there. It is
always present. We might have tended to remove some of the
significance.
Let me just assure you that for the last 2 months, we have
been focusing on it. We have a new tritium task force. We have
put a web site that deals with the tritium issues. We are
interacting strongly with every one of our licensees, and we
are moving forward to take care of the potential radiological
protection issue that is associated with it.
Senator Obama. OK, I just want to make clear here, when you
say there are unplanned leaks, unplanned discharges versus
planned discharges, the general public thinks nothing should be
unplanned when it comes to a nuclear facility, right? So the
minute you say unplanned discharges, I am not an engineer, but
I like everything planned.
Mr. Diaz. But things do happen.
Senator Obama. So these are accidents that are occurring?
Mr. Diaz. These are, I would call them incidents, because
they are not an accident in the sense that they cause a
tremendous amount of problems.
But yes, they are incidents and they are unplanned.
Senator Obama. If I spill a cup of coffee, it is still an
accident. I mean, I didn't do it on purpose. I may be able to
clean it up, but--OK.
Mr. McGaffigan. Sir, we have performance indicators where
we look for things that are significant from a safety
perspective, and we follow those very, very, very carefully. On
safety system actuations, it shouldn't occur, scrams of a plant
that shouldn't occur. These things do, as the chairman said,
occur. The slight, the distinction with tritiated water is that
it doesn't rise to the level of a scram of safety system
actuation or of a significant safety system. Because the public
health and safety consequences are expected to be very, very
much smaller.
Senator Obama. I understand. Is there some mechanism
whereby you systematically look for signs of a public health
impact from repeated unplanned discharges or do you just sort
of estimate, well, here is the amount of leakage that took
place, we figure this is not going to be a big deal? Or do you
actively go and look, see what's happening with the
groundwater, have it tested?
Mr. Diaz. I believe that in the case of small amounts of
tritium that we have seen in different facilities, we take it
as what it is. Tritium is a normal component of water
everywhere. The EPA puts significant levels of tritium, 20
picocuries per liter of tritium can be in drinking water. If a
person drinks 20 picocuries per liter of tritium for a year,
that means that is all he consumes is this tritiated water, he
will get about 4 millirems of internal body dose, which is
about a 4 percent of the dose that will actually allow from a
member of the public, or 1 percent of the normal dose that they
would take from the environment.
So tritium is a bad customer in the sense that it shows
everywhere. It is not one of those isotopes that comes
immediately as one of the most threatening to public health and
safety. Therefore we deal with it in a safety significant
manner.
Mr. McGaffigan. Sir, just to give you a perspective, and I
always do these things to you, I am sorry, if one drinks two
liters of water a day for a year of 20,000 picocuries per liter
water, as the Chairman said, you get 4 millirems, which is
about one-twentieth of what you get working in the Capitol.
Because the Capitol has a lot of granite in it and a lot of
thorium and uranium and radium.
So these are very, very protective levels. This tritium is
about the most benign radioactive substance you can imagine.
Senator Obama. Look, I recognize, I read Exelon's talking
points before coming here, and they are identical to the ones
you just mentioned. I am not suggesting you saw them, I am just
saying, everybody is on the same page in terms of indicating
that, on the scale of potential hazardous substances, tritium
is not at the top of the list.
Mr. Jaczko. Senator, if I could just make a point, I think
you raise a good point about the importance of this with public
confidence. I think while these may not be planned incidents,
they are unplanned release. I think the NRC needs to take a
look at what we are doing to plan to respond to them and plan
to do cleanup activities and do that in a prompt way.
Senator Obama. Commissioner, I think that is an excellent
point, which brings me to just a couple, two final areas of
questioning.
It appears that the NRC knew about these problems several
years before it notified Illinois EPA. I am just wondering what
our policy is, why is that, what is the relationship between
NRC and EPA in these kinds of situations, just because they are
closer to the ground and may have information or interaction
with the general public that would help assure them that this
is not a major problem?
Mr. Diaz. Sir, we presently are looking at each and every
one of these issues in a holistic manner. The staff is
preparing to analyze them and brief the Commission. The
Commission will take a comprehensive look at it, and we will
be, when we finish this process, we will do it as soon as
possible to give you a complete look at both what the tritium
situation is, as well as the way that is monitored, the
environmental situation and also the communication situation.
We will be pleased to submit that to you for the record.
[The referenced information can be found on page 54.]
Senator Obama. Yes, sir.
Mr. Merrifield. If I may, I think, just to put it clear
from my standpoint, I think we take our environmental mission
very seriously. I think we are going to look at it through
these lessons learned panels and realize we made some mistakes,
we could have done things better in terms of communicating both
with the State, interactions between the NRC and the licensee,
I think there are areas where we can find enhancements.
We can talk all we want about the technical issues
associated with how dangerous these substances are. But the
point you are trying to make, and I understand it, is the
people who live around these plants are very concerned. We need
to recognize that. We need to explain what the facts are, we
need to improve the way that we provide that information to
people so they can get a greater sense of what is going on and
feel more confident.
Senator Obama. Mr. Commissioner, I agree with you. I know I
am running out of time or have run out of time. But if folks
would just bear with me for two more questions. One, currently
what is the trigger for reportable events? How severe does an
event have to be before you inform local and State officials?
Mr. Diaz. Sir, we have what we call our Part 20, which
establishes what releases are and what are the triggering
points. We normally do not wait, in many occasions, to have, to
reach what is called a permissible level before we interact
with local officials. I think it mostly depends on the
circumstances and how, whether there is a significant release
that has taken place that is actually not controlled versus
sometimes we have controlled release that are of a significant
nature, but they are way below the limits.
So there is a whole variety of circumstances. I think the
point that we're getting, and getting very clear, is that there
might be a need to increase our communications with local and
State officials on the seriousness of these issues. Your point
is duly noted.
Senator Obama. Good. I just will close by saying this, and
maybe, Commissioner, you can have the last word. I have
introduced legislation, I would like my colleagues on the
committee to know that I have introduced this legislation. It
is very simple. All it does is it simply says, when these
events occur, you need to inform the local and State officials.
Given the example that you are using right now, I think it
would be terrific if, let's say, the county board chairman in
Will County, who wrote me a letter saying, I am greatly
concerned with the revelation that radioactive wastewater has
been released. He had some sense that in fact this was
something that could potentially be dealt with.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Obama, your time is up.
Senator Obama. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman.
So I would just ask that those on this committee, as well
as the Commissioners, work carefully to try to see if we can
get this system, these systems approved. Thank you for your
forbearance, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Jeffords.
Senator Jeffords. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Diaz, on April 6, 2005, the National Academy of
Sciences released a report on the safety and security of
commercial spent fuel storage. About a third of the U.S.
nuclear facilities are designed with a spent fuel pool above
ground, including the Vermont Yankee facility in my State. I am
repeatedly asked by my constituents what NRC is doing to
implement the report recommendations.
Mr. Diaz. Thank you, Senator Jeffords. We have taken that
report to heart. We have implemented a majority of the
recommendations of the National Academies. However, in order to
do that well, we undertook a specific assessment of every site,
site by site. In other words, rather than look at it
generically and say, this is what we do, we actually conducted,
the licensees did, and we conducted independent assessments of
the spent fuel and the spent fuel situations and even the dry
cask situations, on all of our facilities. That study was
completed in December 2005. We are now putting together the
report recommendations.
In the meantime, we have been effecting what we call
mitigating strategies at each one of these facilities. I can
assure you that every one of the spent fuel pools in the
country has additional mitigating measures that makes them
safer and in many ways goes a long way or beyond where the
National Academies recommendation was.
Senator Jeffords. I know that the results are classified,
and I can't share them with my constituents. Will NRC
communicate the results of the assessments it has done to the
public in unclassified form?
Mr. Diaz. Sir, when we finish the final analysis and
discuss it fully with the licensees and it is vetted in the
Commission, we will make an effort to release to the public
those parts of the report that will not compromise the safety
and security of the people of the United States. So we will try
to extract from it whatever components should be in the public
domain and we will maintain secret and classified those that
could be an issue by terrorists or other malevolent types of
uses.
Senator Jeffords. Last week, the Commission voted to deny a
request to stay the power upgrade at Vermont Yankee until after
planned hearings were completed. In power upgrade cases, a
hearing may be requested but it's not required.
A hearing has been granted for Vermont Yankee, and it will
be the first extended power upgrade to have a hearing. In cases
of license extensions now under consideration at Vermont
Yankee, hearings are required. Generally, how often is it the
case, and in what circumstances does NRC issue a change to a
license before completing the hearing process?
Mr. Diaz. Senator, I am going to turn to Commissioner
Lyons, because he was just in Vermont Yankee. He is now our
resident expert on the issue.
Mr. Lyons. Senator Jeffords, I can address part of your
question, I believe. I was at Vermont Yankee within the last 10
days, and I went there specifically to better understand and
discuss not only the NRC's oversight of the power upgrades, but
also the licensees' preparation and to better understand the
license conditions. This isn't quite getting to your point, but
I can, I think you are aware that as part of those license
conditions, there was a requirement for a hold at each 5
percent increment for, and during and after that hold, the NRC
would analyze, along with the licensee, the results obtained
from the instrumentation on that upgrade.
At the moment, the process is working. After the first 5
percent operate, there was one indicator that was somewhat
outside of the anticipated range. Because of that, we are
analyzing, as is the licensee, and there will not be additional
upgrades until that indicator is well understood, and we can be
assured of safe operation.
In the meantime, as you indicated, we will be awaiting the
outcome of the licensing board review, and of course, we will
be the final appeal of that licensing board.
Mr. McGaffigan. Senator Jeffords, on your question, I could
just say that the vast majority of licensing actions that
appear before the Commission, the staff is able to make a so-
called no significant hazards determination, consideration
determination. The hearings are post hearings. In some cases,
such as the new plants, a prior hearing is required. But in the
vast majority of cases, normal licensing actions of the staff,
no significant hazards consideration is determined by the staff
and the hearing is a post hearing. In all previous power
upgrades, the staff has made a no significant hazards
determination.
Mr. Diaz. In other words, Senator, the Act requires that
the staff makes a no significant hazards determination and when
they have reached that point, they issue a license. Any
conditions will then be dealt after that license has been
issued. In this particular case, that is what happened.
Senator Jeffords. Let me clarify your response. Could the
license be extended another 20 years at Vermont Yankee before
the hearing process has concluded, as happened with the update?
Mr. Diaz. Yes, sir, it could.
Mr. McGaffigan. In that case, the hearing would almost
surely be completed before the period of extended operation
began, because that is still years away. But the license could
be issued. There is always the possibility under our process
that the board and ultimately the Commission could reach the
opposite determination, and the licensee at its own risk
proceeds because it might have to undo what was done.
But it is less of an issue in license renewal, because the
time periods are much longer.
Mr. Diaz. In other words, there is always several years
between the issue of a licensee renewal and the time that the
license renewal takes place. In this particular case, that is
absolutely still correct. There will be time in between the
issuance of the license and the time that the license renewal
will be effective.
Senator Jeffords. From a constituent perspective, when
changes to a license are made before hearings are completed, it
makes it appear that the hearings have no value and the outcome
doesn't matter. I know all of you believe that is not the case.
The Commission seeks to remain neutral, as you can implement
any changes to a license that result from the hearing process.
Chairman Diaz, will you commit to me to have the Commission
consider this issue, so that we can insure the constituents
have greater confidence?
Mr. Diaz. Sir, we can commit to you that we will deliberate
and fairly reach a decision that is unbiased and in no way
takes anything under consideration but the safety of the people
of Vermont.
Mr. Jaczko. Senator, if I could add on this point, the
provision that allows us, with a license amendment, to move
forward before the hearing is complete is a very unique
provision that applies just to license amendments. In this
case, it is something that I do not believe was applied
appropriately. It is something that I intend to address with my
fellow Commissioners as we work forward on this issue.
Senator Jeffords. As a part of the upgrade process at
Vermont Yankee, the NRC conducted an engineering assessment at
the State of Vermont's request. The delegation supported that
action. My State found this information helpful. The NRC used
the inspection results in its consideration of the upgrade.
This was the first time that the NRC's evaluation of an
extended power upgrade included a physical inspection. Is the
Commission considering revising its guidelines to make physical
inspections a normal part of the extended power upgrade
process? Or at least available for the States on request?
Mr. Diaz. Sir, we have now in place what we call risk-
informed or special engineering inspections that were used at
Vermont Yankee. It was a very good process. I think that we
will certainly consider in any similar type of occurrence to
conduct an engineering inspection that will assure that the
facility, especially the facility safety systems, are operating
and will continue to operate as designed.
Senator Jeffords. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Lautenberg, I want to say that I
appreciate your patience. You are one of the most conscientious
members that we have of this Committee. I am looking forward to
hearing your questions to the Commission.
Senator Lautenberg. I hope that the Commission is as well,
Mr. Chairman.
[Laughter.]
Senator Lautenberg. Thank you very much.
I want to just, Commissioner Diaz, just go back to
something that we kind of passed over before, and that relates
to the staffing. Are you presently short of staff? Is there
anything that perhaps could have been done more rapidly if your
staffing was more complete?
Mr. Diaz. Sir, we couldn't staff more rapidly, because we
did not have the resources to do so. We have been very well
supported, and I thank the committee for the support this last
year. But the reality was that we didn't--there is another
chart in here that shows what happens to the new nuclear power
plant licensing requests.
Senator Lautenberg. I saw that. But there is a lot of
anxiety for review where there is more than resolution in some
of the things. Particularly, Commissioner Merrifield----
Mr. McGaffigan. Senator Lautenberg, I would like to
supplement. Irrespective of the potential for new plant orders,
which has really increased the demand for our staff, we
recognized some years ago that we were going to have some aging
demographic issues, that we were going to have a number of our
staff who were going to retire. We needed to and we did
reestablish our connections to colleges and universities. So we
started our aggressive recruitment program actually 4 or 5
years ago.
Senator Carper asked a question about what are we doing
about SES retirements. We recognized as well we were going to
have a problem with this. So we, 5 years ago----
Senator Lautenberg. I don't mean to cut you off, but I am
concerned about this in the contemporary situation. In the
State of New Jersey, the ASL Board has denied hearing of the
contentions by the New Jersey DEP and some environmental groups
on the review for Oyster Creek. As you all know, we are going
through a major change in structure and ownership. Exelon comes
in and Public Service Electric and Gas gets merged into that
company.
We heard fairly crisp detail from Senator Obama about
tritium and there are safety concerns generally. Here we have
Oyster Creek, 40 years old. And questions of what would that
technology, I believe, would not be used today. It is out of
fashion. It has had some problems, incidents, accidents. I was
interested in that definition as well. But the fact it, it
worries the hell out of people, whether it's an I or an A. We
are concerned about it.
Now, is it possible that because of this concern and
because of these incidents, vulnerability, now the security
issues have become major issues confronting us, would you be
able to take your inherent capacity and review the ASLB's
decision on not to hear these petitions? I think that's an
important first step, because time is running out. We'd like to
know what's going to be done there.
I frankly am going to request that there be a field
hearing. I don't know what kind of supervision you have over
the ASLB. They are a integral part of the NRC. But does that
include management instruction?
Mr. Diaz. No, sir, it does not. We maintain a separation to
allow the boards to make their decisions. We can take review of
the Board's decision----
Senator Lautenberg. At your option?
Mr. Diaz. Right, it is our option. And we do that.
Senator Lautenberg. Well, in this situation, would you
consider exercising your inherent supervisory authority to
order additional public hearings on Oyster Creek?
Mr. Diaz. Sir, we will always consider, if there is an
issue of public health and safety or issue of adequate
protection, what the Commission would do. I don't see presently
that we have that issue. But I will let my fellow commissioners
answer.
Mr. McGaffigan. Sir, we are like an appellate court. We're
hamstrung in talking to you about this just as Judge Roberts
and Judge Alito, when they were recently before the Judiciary
Committee, this is an issue that is likely to be appealed to us
in the near term. We can't show our cards one way or the other
as to how we might rule on such an appeal.
Senator Lautenberg. You have the responsibility of, with
safety as the rule, of trying to move these things along. I'm
not encouraging rush at the expense of safety or good
management. But the fact of the matter is that I think there's
a legitimate reason to hear the contentions by our widely
respected DEP. I'm appealing now to get some expeditious
treatment to a hearing. I'm not asking for an outcome. I don't
want an outcome that would be contrary to good science or your
judgment. What do we do?
Mr. Diaz. Well, the Board is trying to set the hearing time
now. I believe that hearing will be held and will be held near
Oyster Creek, to make it available. I understand that the staff
has a public briefing set up for early summer to make sure that
the people are informed. So the processes are going. We hear
you, that there is an urgency. But these things do take a
tremendous amount of deliberation and discipline, because you
want to be fair to all parties involved.
So we stay away significantly from getting involved, not in
the management, but the Commission does ask the Board with
certain frequency to make sure they deliver with expediency
both the hearing process and the decisions. That we can do.
Mr. McGaffigan. Senator, if the State felt it was not being
treated fairly in its decision by the board, that is obviously
something they could appeal, they, the State, could appeal to
the Commission as well. So that is yet another opportunity if
they don't feel they are being heard in a decision of the
Board, then that is obviously something we could look at.
Senator Lautenberg. In response to an earlier question, it
was confirmed that a licensed decision can be made at the staff
level without involvement of the Commission. I heard that
correctly, I assume.
We are very concerned for the evacuation facility
available, the density of the population around Oyster Creek.
So I would like to know whether I can get a commitment that the
full Commission will engage itself in the review and sign off
on any staff decision regarding whether or not to renew Oyster
Creek's operating license.
Mr. Diaz. Sir, the way that our process is now set is for
the staff to make the final determination on the license
renewal and that authority has been delegated to the Director
of NOR. Having said that, the Commission can take review of any
one of those issues, any one Commissioner can ask for it and
any one Commissioner, after reviewing all of the documentation
and the decisions that have been made, could actually then take
additional review of the issue.
I don't think it is appropriate for, it is definitely not
for me, I don't know for my fellow Commissioners, to commit to
do that unless there is a significant health and safety issue
that pops out of this analysis.
Senator Lautenberg. There have been enough scares, let me
say, over the years, with the age of the plant and once again,
the technology and the rusting of some of the structure. I
would plead with you to satisfy the needs and the concerns of
the people that are dependent on Oyster Creek, but those who
are also worried about it. I would like to get an assurance
that as, I don't want to trivialize it and call it backstop,
but I would like to know that the Commission or a Commissioner
will look at this and review any decision made by the staff to
confirm that there shouldn't be any concerns about that.
Mr. Diaz. Well, sir, let me give you, I think I can do this
on behalf of the Commission, a commitment to ensure that we
continue very strong oversight over Oyster Creek, that we will
review issues, that we will make sure that they fix whatever
they have to fix, that they take appropriate corrective
actions, that they manage the facility with the safety
requirements that they have to.
Once it comes down to decisions that in many ways involve a
series of processes, I think the Commission will have to wait
until we get to that point to make additional commitments.
Mr. McGaffigan. Mr. Chairman, I would say this. The Oyster
Creek license renewal, the current license expires in April
2009. So there are 3 years ahead of this before there would be
the circumstance where that would lapse. The staff will be
conducting its review.
As the Act is set out, there are legal separations in order
to provide the protections for interested parties. If the staff
were to act in a way that New Jersey objected to, it would have
the opportunity to go before the Atomic Safety and Licensing
Board with contentions arguing why a license renewal should not
be conducted. If that board acted in a way that went against
the interest of New Jersey, the Commission would in fact be the
final level of appeal if the State of New Jersey wished to
continue through our process.
So in that regard, if the State felt it was not being
appropriately treated, we would in fact be the final review of
the staff decision.
Senator Lautenberg. Thanks. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman,
and I want your interest, as you see.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator Lautenberg.
Senator Clinton.
Senator Clinton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing. Thank you to Chairman Diaz and the other
Commissioners.
As you might expect, I want to talk to you about Indian
Point. I can't imagine that you would be surprised by that. I
want to thank Commissioner Jaczko for going to Indian Point and
meeting with a number of the local officials in the area.
But before I do, I want briefly to note that in your
testimony, you indicated you are in the process of implementing
the provisions of my Dirty Bomb bill. I really appreciate that,
because the Dirty Bomb Prevention bill that we've worked on, in
conjunction with Senators Voinovich, Inhofe, Jeffords, and
Carper are very important to us and we look forward to seeing
how you develop the implementation of that. I thank you for it.
I have asked my staff if they would to follow up and I
would really appreciate the NRC coming to brief my staff and
the other interested Senators' staff here on the committee if
we could set that up. Because with all of the debate about the
port, the Dirty Bomb Prevention bill is even more important.
Now back to Indian Point. Chairman Diaz, and Commissioners,
you and I have discussed Indian Point many times, both in
hearings like today and in private hearings and in private
meetings. I think we have made progress in some areas. Last
year with the help of Senators Inhofe, Jeffords and Voinovich,
I drafted legislation to require backup power for the Indian
Point emergency notification system, including its sirens. That
legislation was ultimately included in the Energy bill that
passed last summer. I know that the NRC has been working
closely with Entergy to see that the new system gets in place
by January of next year.
However, today in the newspaper, once again, glitch
silences Indian Point sirens. We are just snakebit. I am deeply
concerned that it is no accident or incident. It is a pattern
that we just can't seem to get problems resolved and be able to
take a deep breath here.
Shortly after the siren issue was addressed in the Energy
bill, other problems cropped up at the plant. Last fall we
received word there was a leak from the spent fuel pools at
Indian Point. When the leak was reported, we found out that
Entergy didn't tell the NRC about the leak for a number of
weeks. You and I met to discuss this issue last October, and as
I said at the time, it seems like for every step we take
forward at Indian Point we take at least one backwards.
During that meeting, you committed you would put enhanced
oversight in place and I appreciated that. But unfortunately,
the problems continue. In addition to the sirens still not
adequately working, we recently found out that the New York
Department of Environmental Conservation had withheld
information from the public about detecting Strontium 90 in
wells that had been drilled to determine the extent of
groundwater contamination associated in the first instance with
tritium. So now we've got tritium, we've got Strontium 90. I
know that Senator Obama raised these issues because he has
experienced a similar but at least so far as we know a far more
serious leak in the State of Illinois.
In response to that problem, he has introduced legislation
that would require plants to quickly disclose any such leaks to
the NRC and to the State and to the county in which the
facility is located. Now, to me that just makes common sense. I
hope that you will support Senator Obama's legislation. It
seems that it is something that NRC could even probably require
right now under current law which would perhaps obviate the
necessity for legislation. So I would like you to address that
issue as well.
Then I want to raise a larger question. That is, whether
there should be an independent safety assessment for Indian
Point. Now, as we all know, public confidence in the plant has
steadily eroded by a series of mishaps, misinformation and
failure to communicate. So when the NRC completes its annual
assessment, as happened recently, and gives the plant a clean
bill of health, it doesn't inspire public confidence because
local officials and the public pick up the newspaper a day or
two later and something else has happened.
A number of local and Federal officials, both Republicans
and Democrats, have recently called on the NRC to conduct the
independent safety assessment. Several House members, again,
both Republicans and Democrats, have introduced legislation to
require that the NRC conduct such an assessment. This would
result in extremely thorough review of the plant's operations,
as well as its evacuation plans, which as you know has been the
subject of intense concern in the area around the plant.
Now, I personally think this idea makes a lot of sense for
several reasons. I know that the NRC thinks that the plant is
being operated safely. I know that the operator, Entergy,
thinks that the plant is being operated safely. So I don't
understand why such a review would be resisted. I know it's
unusual, but the fact is that Indian Point is uniquely situated
among all of our country's reactors in its proximity to such a
heavily populated major urban center.
So I think the NRC ought to conduct such an assessment. I
for one would not prejudge the outcome. Going through the
process can only increase public confidence that the plant is
being run well, as the NRC says, and that it therefore holds up
to this extremely high level of scrutiny.
So I guess my questions come down to these. First, will you
support legislation such as that introduced by Senator Obama to
require disclosure of leaks and other releases, or will you
commit to implement such a requirement on your own? Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Diaz. Thank you, Senator Clinton. I think you and I
have talked several times about the fact that somehow the
licensee of Indian Point likes to be in the news and you and I
don't understand that very well. We also of course, we would
both like to have them more quiet or lower profile.
Having said that, let me address a couple of issues and
then I am going to turn to Commissioner Jaczko, who was just
there recently to talk about the issue of the sirens and the
tritium and so forth. We talk about the issue of the
independent safety assessment. You heard Senator Lautenberg,
what the NRC conducted for Vermont Yankee, which was a special
type of engineering assessment that is safety focused that we
had a small part in creating, a couple of years ago, and that
is working very well.
We are going to conduct that type of assessment early next
year in Indian Point. We will have people that are not the
typical NRCers that work in the plant and contractors that have
no relationship with Indian Point or any of the Entergy
operations, to actually conduct a safety assessment, an
engineering safety assessment of Indian Point. We call it an
independent safety assessment because we are an independent
Agency. It will be conducted completely thoroughly and
independent of any undue influences.
On the issue of the tritium and Senator Obama's
legislation, I would repeat what I told Senator Obama, we are
taking this very seriously. We think that it's a radiological
protection issue, not a significant public health issue,
because tritium is just a minimal hazard as a radiological
substance. However, it does have all of the connotations that
you and have talked about for some time, public confidence,
information. So the staff will review the issue, the Commission
will deliberate on it and we will deliver a product that will
address the issue, once we have had a chance to fully consider
all of the aspects of it.
Senator Clinton. Mr. Chairman, do you also consider
Strontium 90 to be in that category, the same category as
tritium?
Mr. Diaz. No.
Senator Clinton. We are now dealing with the Strontium 90
and that's a deeper concern.
Mr. Diaz. No, Strontium 90 means a totally different
category. We are not certain that there is a Strontium 90 and
there actually were, as I understand it, there were three
samples. One of the samples that the State took and went to a
special set of equipment showed a small, very small amount of
Strontium 90. We are trying to confirm that Strontium 90 exists
all over the eastern Seaboard from the weapons. It is
decreasing, as it should, with time. So is tritium.
The way the things are detected and the cleanness of the
sample and the labs have a lot to do with it. We are on top of
the issue, Senator. We will make sure that whatever it is, we
will find out and we will be very pleased to communicate with
you on that fact.
Senator Clinton. Let me just clarify the commitment, which
I very much appreciate, to the independent safety assessment.
Is that in accordance with the legislation that has been
introduced and also the request by Congresswoman Kelly?
Mr. Diaz. I don't know that it is exactly the same. This is
something that we believe we must have available to us as a
tool. I believe that what we call an engineering safety
assessment is a special program that was developed in the last
2 years to address the fact that there were engineering issues
showing up at different facilities and that we needed to pay
attention to the safety systems. So we developed this new type
of inspection that was used in Vermont Yankee and is now being
used in several places. We think it is an excellent set of
inspections, and we believe it is independent. I am not sure
that it matches exactly what the legislation was, but I can
tell you it is a very good set of inspections.
Mr. McGaffigan. Senator Clinton, if I could just add, the
last time we used the word independent safety assessment in NRC
parlance was when Chairman Diaz and I joined the Commission in
1996. It was used at Maine Yankee. What we meant at that time
by an independent safety assessment was to get a group of
people, independent of Region I, in to look at Maine Yankee. It
was headed by a man named Ed Jordan who is now long retired.
And he brought in contractors and NRC staff from the other
three regions. They did a very thorough review.
We have come a long way since 1996. We think we have a much
better core inspection process today than we had in 1996. And
as the Chairman said, and he is modest, this new engineering,
risk-informed engineering assessment that we piloted a couple
of years ago, and that he was the inventor of, is a very, very
thorough review. So I think the spirit of Congresswoman Kelly's
legislation is being followed in what the Chairman is talking
about. But if people are longing for Maine Yankee style
independent safety assessment, I think we do better today in
our baseline program than we did then with that ISA.
Senator Clinton. I would appreciate if I could get a letter
to that effect, because certainly the idea of an independent
safety assessment has a lot of credibility and support. I
really appreciate your commitment, No. 1, to do a thorough
safety assessment, whether we call it engineering safety or
independent safety. I just want to be assured that it is as
thorough and comprehensive and independent as we possibly can
make it.
If I could get a letter to that effect, perhaps explaining,
as both you and Commissioner McGaffigan have just done, that we
have come a long way, you have actually increased the
thoroughness and the comprehensiveness of the safety
assessments. Because I think that this is obviously very, very
much a personal issue to the people I represent, and even to my
neighbors. Because I live very close to Indian Point as well.
But I also think it's part of the larger series of
questions that are around the new push for nuclear power. I
think that getting it right at Indian Point is going to be
critical to the future of nuclear power for people asking for
licenses, very far from where we are, but who will be looking
at the entire country and the performance of the plants. So
restoring public confidence, helping to educate the public and
public officials, particularly at the local level, because I
think you heard from Senator Lautenberg and Senator Obama, as
well as myself, that they are the ones who are really on the
front lines. The sirens don't work, there's leaks of dangerous
sounding chemicals. It's very hard to know what to think.
So I appreciate this. I will look forward to the letter and
hope that we can work on this.
Mr. Diaz. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator Clinton.
I am going to make some comments and then ask some more
questions. Public relations are very important. I have got to
tell you that over the last several years, your PR has been
horrible. You are a public body and people are very interested
in what you are doing. Somebody ought to sit down and figure
out, we should have had this conversation today about Senator
Obama and that information getting out and then somebody
getting hold of it, and of course, always we will demagogue it.
Tritium is the worst thing that's ever happened, and boy, off
you go, and once the water is over the dam, guys, it's very
difficult to bring it back.
So somebody ought to sit down and think about what kind of
public relations in terms of reporting to the public, reporting
to the EPA, to the local county commissioners so you get the
information out there before they jump to conclusions about
something that may not be a problem. Maybe you don't think it
is, but by golly, it's a problem for those individuals. Because
we are the ones that hear about it, and the locals hear about
it. That's No. 1.
No. 2, in terms of where are we with safety in the country,
and I think you have made great progress, I can tell you did,
from what I can understand, at Davis-Besse, you really did a
job over there and you are staying on top of it. I saw you did,
over at Perry Nuclear, you got in there and did the job and
stopped some things. I think that the lessons learned have sunk
in.
But again, I think it's important that you report to the
public on a regional basis, where are we, how are we doing,
progress has been made, still some problems. Maybe some of the
companies may not like it that say there are still some
problems. But I think the public should know about it and not
be hiding out.
So I think that's an area where a lot of work has to be
done. If you don't, we will get legislation passed, then the
next thing is we will legislative something else and before you
know it, you will have no discretion left whatsoever. So that's
the one thing.
Second of all, this whole business about the process on
these new COL cases. There's got to be some confidence out
there that the process is going to be streamlined, that you're
going to be fastidious in terms of it, that there's a beginning
and an end. That's important to these people making
applications, it's going to be important to their getting the
financing they need. This is going to go on for 10 years. Some
type of commitment should be made that you're going to move
along in an expeditious fashion and get the job done.
I will let you comment on the public relations.
Mr. Diaz. All right. Sir, I almost, I'm not delighted, but
I am very happy you asked the question, because that's what I
have been doing for the last 3 years. Maybe too quietly. I
realize we have not been very good and we probably still are
far from being as good as we should be in the issue of public
relations. But we have come a long way.
We have changed not only the culture but the processes
inside the NRC. Every manager and every staffer knows they need
to communicate. Davis-Besse was a big lesson. But the reality
is that we have been moving forward in every one of these
issues, including, I established more than a year or so ago
meetings with congressional delegations in different parts of
the Nation. It got the process going. We have one major one
going next week in Florida.
Senator Voinovich. Let me ask you this question. Do you
have a tickler system for the people that operate that facility
for the NRC that come into the area to go see the chief
editorial writer of a paper on a regular basis to include them
in on what's going on, so they are aware of it? Because they
are real interested. There are reporters interested in it, so
that if you do it on a regular basis and develop a relationship
and communications, so if something goes wrong, they know
there's somebody they can talk to?
Mr. Diaz. Yes, sir. We have a new Office of Public Affairs
which is charged with maintaining this relationship, with not
only keeping the public informed directly, but having the
connections with the different organizations.
Senator Voinovich. Well, I'd like to see in writing what
the word is out there. The companies should be smart enough to
also----
Mr. McGaffigan. Sir, I would only say, I think the
management of public relations in an Agency as open as ours, I
think we are the most open regulatory body in the American
Government. People can look at our daily event reports, they
can look, Senator Clinton knew that yesterday there was a siren
problem when they tested the sirens. That is because it's
public.
I think something that goes with the degree of openness we
have is that we can't manage every piece of information that
emits from us. Sometimes other people interpret it for us. So
it's, you know, FAA does not tell you what the maintenance
records are of the various planes that people might use to go
home this weekend to their States. If they did, they would have
the same problems that we do.
We have chosen to make the information available. We make
some attempts to manage information when we know it's really
bad, we try to be ready with the public affairs officers, the
talking points, as to why this is or isn't significant and what
NRC is going to do about it. But we get caught by surprise,
because the amount of information that goes onto our web page
on a daily basis is enormous. There's a lot of people who read
it, and there's a lot of people who will interpret it for us.
So we do the best we can. I can never promise you it's going to
be perfect.
I do believe we should talk to the editorial boards. I
think that's something we should do. I think the bottom line of
your question is that we can do better. Your point is we can do
a better job. That's what I take from your point. I agree. I
think we can do better.
Senator Voinovich. The companies should do a better job.
Mr. McGaffigan. Yes, they should.
Mr. Diaz. We agree.
Senator Voinovich. In reviewing the NRC strategic human
capital plan, the Commission is focusing on hiring young recent
college graduates. How is the Commission working to fill in the
gaps of its succession plan in recruiting and retaining the
necessary cadre of mid-career employees, and how is the
Commission implementing the workforce flexibilities for the NRC
in last year's Energy bill, and is the Commission utilizing all
available flexibilities, including those authorized in the
Federal Workforce Flexibility Act? These would include
flexibilities such as categorical hiring and enhanced annual
leave.
You hired a bunch of new folks. But one of the problems
that I've observed from my other committee chairmanship is in
an area of middle management, we don't do a very good job of
bringing people in. They come in, they stay, but I'm sure in
middle management areas you need some people from the outside
to come in. How are you doing in regard to that?
Mr. Diaz. We are hiring at both sides of the spectrum. We
are hiring young people and we train them. But if I might ask
the staff, is it 40 percent?
Mr. Merrifield. Twenty-five percent of our hiring is
university graduates. So 75 percent of folks that we are hiring
are people who are in fact mid-career.
Mr. Diaz. We are having reasonable success in attracting
people from different areas of industries or the nuclear navy
and areas where we find the right expertise. So we are doing
well in the mix.
Senator Voinovich. OK. Getting back to the research and
test reactors. I understand that, well, they are very concerned
about the fact that the $27 million has been zeroed out. We
have to take care of that problem. The student enrollment in
nuclear engineering programs at universities has increased
substantially in the last 3 to 5 years, and you have shared
that with me, due in large part to DOE grants and assistance.
At MIT, student enrollment in nuclear engineering has more than
doubled in the last 5 years. But school officials fear that the
proposed cut, if not restored, will undo the progress they have
achieved in the last few years.
I just want to emphasize again how important that is in
terms of your future recruiting. I really would like to have a
letter drafted so that maybe all the members of this committee
could share it with the Administration and also with the
Appropriations Committee.
Mr. Jaczko. Mr. Chairman, if I can make a point on that,
too, one of the things that I think is important to keep in
mind is, we don't just hire nuclear engineers. We hire
electrical engineers, we hire mechanical engineers. They are in
fact a large portion of the kinds of people that we hire.
So this issue is broader than just what's happening with
nuclear engineering programs. But it goes in general to the
broader issues of engineering programs in colleges and
universities throughout the country.
Senator Voinovich. That's why Senator Carper and a bunch of
us, almost 50 of us now, have supported the PACE legislation.
Because we know how important it is that we get this thing
going.
Mr. McGaffigan. Senator Voinovich, there is a very good
draft already signed by a couple of Senators named Domenici and
Bingaman that dealt with issues other than just this. But
there's a letter from them to Secretary Bodman on the issue of
the zeroing of this nuclear engineering money.
Senator Voinovich. Great. You are undertaking licensing of
two uranium enrichment facilities, one located in New Mexico,
the other located in Ohio. This is a major undertaking by the
Agency. Both are at a critical juncture, and I want to know,
does this Commission have the resources to provide oversight in
order to ensure the goal of a timely review? Does he have the
resources? Can you meet the time table?
Mr. Diaz. Yes, sir. We have the resources and they are on
schedule right now.
Senator Voinovich. One of the questions that's been raised
is you've got two companies that are trying to beat each other
out in terms of who is going to open the door first. Is there a
market for two companies doing uranium enrichment?
Mr. Diaz. I believe they think there is. I think that's
what they are going into the business of. It will eventually
depend on the total demand. Right now the demand for enriched
uranium in the world is increasing. As you see from the numbers
we have shown it could increase in a year.
So I cannot judge what their marketing strategies are, but
we will do what we need to do, and that is, they gave us a good
application, we will put it through the process. If they comply
with the requirements, then the Commission will considering
issuing their license.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Lyons.
Mr. Lyons. Mr. Chairman, you pointed out the concerns that
industry has on whether the COL process will move forward in an
expeditious way. In my mind, and I think for the whole
Commission, we have been acutely conscious of the fact that our
performance on license applications like the enrichment plants,
like the upgrades, like the license renewals, are also being
judged by industry and contribute to their degree of confidence
that we can successfully carry through the COL process.
Mr. McGaffigan. Sir, we did an LES mandatory hearing for
the one in New Mexico earlier this week. It really went very,
very well. There are some issues still in play that are likely
to be appealed to the Commission in that case. I believe with
only a short delay of a few months, USEC is following along.
So our hearing process under the new rules in these two
instances has not been the horror story that we have had in the
past and that we--it was one of the reasons we amended Part 2
of our adjudicatory rules, so that we would have a better
process.
Mr. Merrifield. I think to put a finer point on it, the
hearing process appears to be working very well, exactly as we
had planned.
Senator Voinovich. Very well. Well, as I said in my remarks
at the beginning of my formal statement, I really believe that
the NRC is going to have to be the most efficient, innovative
that it's ever been in the history of the NRC. All these issues
today that people have raised have an impact on the future.
It's really important that you get the job done. Because we
have a real crisis in the United States of America that is
impacting on our ordinary citizens and on our economy. Part of
developing the infrastructure of competitiveness is that
regulatory agencies like yours have got to get a whole lot
better.
Chairman Diaz, in front of all your colleagues here, I want
to congratulate you on the progress that you have made. You
still have a long way to go. You and I are going to spend a lot
more time together. Because I am bound and determined that
you're going to get the job done, and I know Senator Carper and
I want to do everything we can as members of this committee to
help you.
Mr. Diaz. I am looking forward to it, sir.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. Thanks very much.
I'm going to ask you a couple of questions, I want to tell
you what the questions are and then I am going to make a
statement, so you will have a chance to think about your
answers to my questions.
One of my closing questions is just to reiterate for us,
what can we do to help you do your jobs better. That's No. 1.
Second, I want to ask you to comment on the ongoing
developments of lack of developments with respect to Iran and
their interest in developing a nuclear capability, some of us
think for building nuclear weapons. The idea of the enrichment
only in the Russia approach, the idea that the Iranians should
be able to, they want to be able to do at least a modest amount
of enrichment in Iran, it's sort of off the beaten track a
little bit, but if you have thoughts on that, I would welcome
your counsel.
The other thing, you may have gotten into this while I was
away, I have a couple other hearings going on right now. But
just looking over the next couple of years with respect to
disposal of nuclear waste, we continue to retain them onsite, a
lot of work, a lot of money has been spent on Yucca Mountain.
How do you see the next couple of years playing out there?
So those are the three I want to close with.
I want to go back, Senator Voinovich was talking about the
increase in nuclear engineering students. My oldest boy
Christopher is a senior in high school, he graduates this June.
He's gone to a math-science charter school in Wilmington, DE,
very good school. Only charter school in Wilmington, and they
produce a lot of not only good math and science students, but a
lot of engineers and scientists and researchers.
Senator Voinovich. I understand he's been accepted at
Harvard.
Senator Carper. I tell people, they say, where is he going
to go when he graduates? I tell people he's going to go to
Delaware Technical and Community College, and they say, he is?
Because it's a really good high school. But then I tell them
it's because he is going to take a summer course in auto
mechanics, so that he can fix his mom's old Ford Explorer and
take that to wherever he's going.
[Laughter.]
Senator Carper. We'll see where he ends up going. He's so
much smarter than his father, it's just amazing, and so much
more humble, too, I might add.
But there are, as we visited colleges of engineering around
the country, we have heard the very same thing, anecdotally,
that more people want to be nuclear engineers. So that is good.
I had my staff dig up some numbers for me last week on the
number of engineers that were training in this country compared
to some other countries. They came back and said that the last
numbers we had were for 2004. In 2004, the Chinese trained and
produced over 350,000 new engineers, we produced fewer than
150,000. While there may be a few more nuclear engineers coming
along, which is good, we still need, as some of our other
Commissioners have mentioned, we need those electrical
engineers (EEs) and those mechanical engineers and a variety of
others, as well.
I would just remind the Commission, if you will, several of
us have mentioned time lines, timeliness, I did and I know
Senator Inhofe did. I would just ask you to keep that in mind.
It is an important thing for us.
All right. Go back to my three questions. Just re-emphasize
for us a couple of things that we can do to help.
Mr. Diaz. Can I start with a small personal comment, sir? I
love nuclear engineers. I happen to be one. So I'm totally
biased regarding that issue. I think they make great overall
engineers because they get both of the nuclear, the mechanical,
the electrical, and I will put in a plug for nuclear
engineering.
Senator Carper. Jimmy Carter used to say the same thing.
Mr. Diaz. All right. What can you do? I think the committee
has been extremely helpful to us in two areas that are vital.
We will need to have the right resources, both the financial
resources. We had legislation last year that helped us along.
We might have a few pieces of legislation.
The support that we get, we really are going to need in the
area of hiring and space. We might have to use your influence
in different places to get the right time lines. Because we are
out of space. We don't just--we are flat out of space. We are
going to have a little bit of space outside, but eventually we
need to move. We don't have space, we can't put the computers,
we cannot have the infrastructure.
So Senator, I believe those areas will continue to be
important. We will continue to work with you in making sure
that you are aware of our financial needs, of our legislative
needs and our resource needs.
Senator Carper. All right, good enough.
Mr. McGaffigan. Senator, I am just going to hit on the
space issue. We were supposed to have our training center, our
headquarters training center moved to Bethesda by now, as a
temporary measure, in order for people who are working in
conference rooms and hallways currently could actually have a
decent space to work in. That is now August. The General
Services Administration had a contractor, the owner of the
building we were going to move into switched to another
building. The new owner tells us, oops, you're a training
facility, not an office building. We have to get another permit
from Montgomery County. And GSA has also told us--you can't fix
that, that's just the way the Federal Government works,
unfortunately.
But GSA has also told us that our ultimate goal of having
proximate office space to us in Rockville, so that we're not
spread all over the Maryland suburbs, they think there may be a
statutory problem, because they are supposed to have full and
open competition. If you go to Rockville, you'll see there's a
lot of stuff popping up around us, and we think we could have a
pretty good competition within a half mile of headquarters. But
you may have to legislate that. You may have to say,
competition in this case is good enough, we don't want NRC
stressed with people having to wander all over the Maryland
suburbs when they're trying to process 11 simultaneous
applications for new plants, trying to deal with Yucca
Mountain, trying to deal with the enrichment facilities, etc.
So that's Governmental Affairs. I look at Senator Voinovich
because he's the dual-hatted member here.
Senator Carper. Actually, there are two of us. We both----
Mr. McGaffigan. Oh, you're both on Governmental Affairs.
Well, we could use your help, I think.
Senator Carper. When you were responding, I was thinking,
from time to time, our delegation from Delaware will invite
folks from another Agency that we're looking for cooperation
from, maybe GSA, just literally to come and to meet with us.
We'll invite in whoever has an issue or concern to join us in
that meeting. I don't know if that might make some sense.
Senator Voinovich. This committee has jurisdiction of GSA.
Senator Carper. Yes.
Mr. Merrifield. To put a fine point on it, I completely
agree with my two fellow members. That is the most important
thing that this committee can do to support us.
Senator Carper. Well, we'll see what we can do. I don't
know if this committee or Homeland Security and Government
Affairs Committee.
Senator Voinovich. It's this committee, we've got GSA.
Senator Carper. The other thing I would ask, if you have
any comments on Iran. I know our time has escaped. But forget
Iran. Yucca Mountain and disposal of--we're out of time. It's a
lot easier. Please.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Diaz. Let me quickly say one thing. I just came back
from Russia last Sunday. I was able to meet with the,
essentially the chief negotiator of Russia for Iran. What I can
tell you is that it appears that Russia is aligned with the
interests of the United States in making sure that Iran does
not develop the capabilities to enrich uranium or proliferate.
I think in that area, the United States and Russia are well
aligned. We still are looking forward to a conclusion of those
negotiations.
Senator Carper. Good. I hope you're right. That's
encouraging.
Last one, on the disposal, we have all this nuclear waste
that is building up around facilities, nuclear facilities. And
progress out in Yucca Mountain goes slowly, as I understand it.
Just the next couple of years, what lies ahead?
Mr. Merrifield. I would like to, in a regulatory
information conference I spoke quite extensively, that was the
entirety of my speech yesterday, talking about waste. We have
in place right now a program where the fuel was placed in the
pools of the reactors or through the use of the dry cask
storage facilities, which will ensure the safe storage of that
fuel for years to come. So obviously, we spoke earlier this
morning about wanting to see the Yucca Mountain application at
some point, so our Nation's resolution to this issue can be
resolved one way or the other.
But in the interim, we do have the ability to safely store
this fuel, so that individuals in Delaware, New Jersey and
other parts of the country can be assured that we are dealing
with it in a way that makes sense and is protective of public
health, safety and the environment.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. McGaffigan. Mr. Chairman, there is one issue that is
hanging. Senator Isakson at the outset asked us to address
something, and we haven't had the opportunity. If you want, I
can spend 1 minute on that, or if this was the KI to 20 mile
issue or we can answer for the record.
Senator Voinovich. I would prefer that, because I have
somebody waiting in my office.
Mr. Diaz. We will answer it for the record, sir.
Senator Carper. If you could respond for the record, that
would be great, thank you.
[The referenced information can be found on page 54.]
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much.
Senator Carper. Yes, thanks to all of you, very much.
Senator Voinovich. We appreciate your being here today and
look forward to working with you.
[Whereupon, at 12:04 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional statements submitted for the record follow:]
----------
Statement of Nils J. Diaz, Chairman, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Accompanied by: Edward McGaffigan, Jr., Commissioner; Jeffrey S.
Merrifield, Commissioner; Gregory B. Jaczko, Commissioner; and Peter B.
Lyons, Commissioner
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, it is a pleasure to
appear before you today with my fellow Commissioners to discuss the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) programs. The Commission
appreciates the support of the Subcommittee and the Committee as a
whole, and we look forward to working with you in the future. We would
also like to take this opportunity to thank Congress for the additional
budgetary support that was provided last year.
I would like to highlight our key ongoing oversight and licensing
activities, including activities to implement the provisions of the
Energy Policy Act of 2005 (the Act), initiatives to meet the new
challenges posed by the dynamic nature of today's nuclear arena, and in
particular current and anticipated new reactor licensing activities and
human capital initiatives.
ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2005
The Commission is pleased that key legislative provisions to
augment the oversight of nuclear facilities and materials were enacted
in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The NRC has begun rulemaking
activities to implement the authorization of the possession and use of
certain firearms by security personnel, expanded fingerprinting and
criminal history checks, Federal criminal sanctions for the
unauthorized introduction of dangerous weapons at nuclear facilities,
and Federal criminal sanctions for the sabotage of additional classes
of nuclear facilities or designated materials.
The Commission has initiated and in some cases completed work to
implement the other provisions in the Act. These activities include the
following:
<bullet> The NRC is currently preparing a rulemaking to include
within the definition of byproduct material under our regulatory
authority accelerator-produced material, discrete sources of radium-
226, and certain discrete sources of naturally-occurring radioactive
material (NORM), other than source material, if these materials are
produced, extracted or converted for use in commercial, medical, or
research activities. In accordance with the statutory schedule, the NRC
plans to issue a final rule by February 2007. However, the need for
substantial stakeholder involvement is a challenge to meeting the
deadline. As authorized by the Act, the NRC issued a waiver of the
requirements to allow States to continue to regulate this material
under their existing programs until the Commission adopts regulations
and implements a plan for the orderly transition of the jurisdiction of
the material to NRC regulatory oversight.
<bullet> The NRC has been taking action to implement key provisions
of the Act that enhance our capabilities by authorizing the NRC to
recover its costs from other government agencies through user fees,
permanently extending the NRC's authority to collect 90 percent of its
budget authority through fees, eliminating NRC's antitrust reviews for
new utilization or production facility applications, and clarifying
that the existence of an organizational conflict of interest does not
bar the NRC from entering into a contract with a DOE laboratory under
certain circumstances.
<bullet> The NRC is taking action to implement all of the human
capital initiatives in the Act, such as the pension offset provision,
to enhance the NRC's ability to maintain and improve its regulatory
expertise.
<bullet> On January 31, 2006, the NRC issued a Confirmatory Order
to the licensee for the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant to implement
the provision concerning backup power for certain emergency
notification systems.
<bullet> The NRC issued a grant to the National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) in January 2006, to assess whether there are other processes
which either can replace radiation sources with economically and
technically appropriate alternatives or can use radiation sources that
pose a lower risk to the public. As provided by the Act, the NRC plans
to submit the results of this study to Congress in August 2007.
<bullet> The NRC continues to exercise strong oversight of security
at nuclear power plants, which includes force-on-force exercises for
reactor licensees at least once every 3 years as required by the Act,
and will provide its first annual report to Congress on the security
evaluations before the end of FY 2006.
<bullet> On November 7, 2005, the NRC issued for public comment a
proposed rule addressing the Design Basis Threat. Congress directed the
NRC to consider 12 factors in developing the DBT rule, and the
Commission has requested comments on those factors. A final rule is
expected by February 2007.
<bullet> In July 2005, the Commission published proposed
regulations that would establish a nationwide mandatory tracking system
(National Source Tracking System, or NSTS) for Category 1 and 2
radioactive sources. The final rule is expected to be issued in August
2006.
Several provisions of the Act relate to the export or import of
Atomic Energy Act material and equipment. Some of these provisions were
satisfied by a final rule that was issued on July 1, 2005, which
provided additional controls on the import and export of radioactive
sources. The NRC anticipates issuing in Spring 2006 a final rule to,
among other things, revise the regulations regarding the export of HEU
for medical isotope production. Additionally, the NRC expects to
publish in Spring 2006 a proposed rule addressing those classes of
individuals subject to background check requirements for import or
export shipments.
The new Task Force on Radiation Source Protection and Security
convened in the fall of 2005 and included two additional entities whose
participation was not mandated in the Act--the Department of Health and
Human Services and the White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy. On January 11, 2006, the NRC published a Federal Register
notice requesting public comment on major issues before the Task Force.
A Task Force report will be delivered to Congress and the President in
August 2006.
Those I mentioned are just a few of the activities we have
undertaken since the passage of the Energy Policy Act. Let me say a few
words about ongoing activities in the areas of new reactor licensing,
human capital, and other core Agency activities.
NEW REACTOR LICENSING
The Commission's Strategic Plan includes the Agency objective to:
Enable the use and management of radioactive materials and
nuclear fuels for beneficial civilian purposes in a manner that
protects public health and safety and the environment, promotes
the security of our nation, and provides for regulatory actions
that are open, effective, efficient, realistic, and timely.
Consistent with this objective and its statutory responsibility,
the NRC has been conducting reviews of new plant licensing related
applications, including early site permit and design certification
applications. Also consistent with this objective, the NRC is preparing
for the significant workload to review combined license (COL) and other
new plant licensing related applications that are currently being
projected by the nuclear industry.
To date, the NRC has received three early site permit applications
for sites in Virginia, Illinois, and Mississippi that currently have
operating reactors. The NRC staff has issued three safety evaluation
reports and three draft environmental impact statements for public
comment, although additional work is being performed in connection with
one application that has recently been significantly revised by the
applicant. The adjudicatory proceedings associated with the early site
permit applications are currently ongoing. These ESP reviews are first-
of-a-kind and have identified numerous lessons learned for both the NRC
and industry, which will be used to improve new reactor licensing
processes in the future. The NRC is expecting an additional ESP
application to be submitted during the summer of 2006. The NRC is also
currently reviewing the General Electric Economic Simplified Boiling
Water Reactor design certification application, is conducting pre-
application activities for Areva's U.S. Evolutionary Power Reactor
design, and is also conducting some activities for three additional
reactor designs.
The NRC is preparing for the increasing number of projected new
plant licensing applications. Last year at this time, the NRC had been
notified of three potential COL applications in the next few years.
Today, the number of expected COL applications is 11, and continues to
increase. Some of these applications are expected to reference designs
already certified, while others are expected to reference designs that
are still under NRC review for certifications. We continue to assess
our resource needs in light of the very substantial increase in the
number of anticipated COL applications and related work.
In order to allow for the review of multiple COL applications in
parallel, the staff is considering a number of steps and planning to
implement a design-centered approach. Using this approach, the NRC
staff would use a single technical evaluation to support multiple
combined license applications for the same technical area of review, as
long as the applications standardize the licensing basis to a level
that would make this approach viable. Standardization is key to success
of this approach.
In addition, the Commission recently approved a proposal to revise
10 CFR Part 52, which contains the requirements for Early Site Permits,
Standard Design Certifications, and Combined Licenses for nuclear power
plants, to clarify it and enhance its usability. The proposed rule
incorporates the lessons learned from previous regulatory reviews to
enhance regulatory predictability at the COL stage. Furthermore, in the
Part 52 rulemaking, the Commission is soliciting comments on an
approach that would facilitate amendments to design certification rules
after the initial certification. With such a provision, a detailed
standard certified design would be able to incorporate additional
features that are generic to the design and thereby encourage further
standardization. Also, changes to the limited work authorization
process will be considered. The NRC staff is working to provide a final
rule in October 2006 for Commission consideration.
The Commission and the NRC staff continue to prepare the Agency for
the significant workload in the area of new reactor licensing. The NRC
understands and accepts its share of this responsibility; however, a
successful outcome depends on many factors, including the quality of
the applications submitted. With the support of Congress, we will be
ready to carry out our responsibilities and meet the challenges we will
face.
HUMAN CAPITAL AND SPACE PLANNING
As you know, the NRC's ability to accomplish its mission depends on
the availability of a highly skilled and experienced work force. In a
recent ranking of the Top 10 Federal Work Places, by the Partnership
for Public Service and American University's Institute for the Study of
Public Policy Implementation, the NRC was designated the third best
place to work in the Federal government. In addition, the NRC was
ranked first among those surveyed who are under 40 years of age.
Nonetheless, the NRC continues to be challenged by the substantial
growth in new work at a time when experienced staff are increasingly
eligible to retire. To address these challenges, the Agency has human
capital strategies to find, attract, and retain critical-skill staff,
and a space acquisition plan to accommodate these additional employees.
The NRC is aggressively recruiting a mixture of recent college
graduates and experienced professionals to meet the Agency's hiring
challenges. The current projection is that over 400 additional FTEs
will be devoted to new work by FY 2008. The Commission is striving to
hire approximately 350 new employees in FY 2006 to cover the loss of
personnel and to support growth in new work. The Agency expects to have
a critical hiring need for the next five years.
The NRC closely monitors its voluntary attrition rate including
retirements, which has historically been below six percent, and will
continue to do so as the attrition rate could potentially increase as
industry competition for skilled individuals increases and as older
staff retire. The Agency uses a variety of recruitment and retention
incentives to remain competitive with the private sector. We continue
to experience success utilizing the provisions of the Federal Workforce
Flexibility Act of 2004 and the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The NRC has
budgeted for continued and increasing use of these recruitment and
retention tools in the coming years.
Our steady growth and accelerated hiring program has exhausted
available space at our Headquarters buildings. We have developed
strategies to obtain adequate space to accommodate our new hires. We
are creating additional workstations within our Headquarters buildings,
including temporarily building workstations in conference rooms, and we
are moving our Professional Development Center off-site to use the
space it currently occupies for new hires. We are also seeking
additional office space to support the expected growth of the Agency.
The NRC will be continually challenged to maintain adequate
infrastructure and the personnel needed. However, the Commission
believes the Agency is poised to meet these challenges successfully
through the ongoing human capital planning, implementation, and
assessment process, the space planning program, and the various tools
provided by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
NRC Safety Culture and Climate Surveys
An Agency's organizational culture is a key to the accomplishment
of its mission. In 2005, the Inspector General conducted a survey of
NRC employees to assess the current safety culture and climate of the
Agency's workforce. Approximately 70 percent of the NRC staff
participated in the survey. The NRC improved its scores in virtually
every category from the results of a similar survey conducted in 2002.
These significant accomplishments included the areas of Communication
and NRC Mission and Strategic Plan. Recruiting, Development & Retention
and Management Leadership also showed significant improvement since
2002. In addition, the survey results revealed areas for continuing
improvement, including workload and stress, knowledge transfer, and the
use of the Differing Professional Opinion program.
REACTOR SAFETY PROGRAMS
The Agency's overall reactor safety functions are executed in a
variety of ways, including licensing, inspection and oversight,
rulemaking, enforcement, and investigations. Reactor safety programs
ensure that safety of operating nuclear power plants is maintained, and
the NRC is continually evaluating and improving these programs. NRC
safety programs include evaluating past events, identifying lessons
learned from those events, and partnering with stakeholders to increase
their participation in the regulatory process.
Reactor Oversight Process
The Commission believes that the revised Reactor Oversight Process
(ROP), which was implemented in April 2000, has brought a more
disciplined and objective approach to oversight of nuclear power
plants. Plants continue to receive a level of oversight commensurate
with their performance. The results of NRC oversight activities,
including performance indicators, inspection findings, and the current
assessment of overall performance for each reactor are publicly
available on the NRC's web site. The NRC staff continues to enhance the
process through stakeholder participation and as a result of internal
reviews, feedback, and lessons learned. For example, the NRC has begun
conducting revised engineering inspections and continues to focus on
improving the timeliness of the significance determination of
inspection findings. In addition, the NRC is assessing the use of the
ROP for new reactor designs.
Safety Culture
Last year, I discussed an initiative to address the management of
safety and safety culture issues by licensees and to develop better
methods, tools, and training for the NRC's inspection staff. I would
like to update you on this initiative and on the NRC's recent
accomplishments.
The NRC issued generic guidance for establishing and maintaining a
safety conscious work environment, including guidance on effective
processes to encourage and address concerns and tools to assess the
work environment. This guidance reiterates the NRC's expectation that
senior licensee management will be involved in detecting and preventing
retaliation.
The NRC staff is also enhancing the ROP to address safety culture
more fully. The NRC staff continues to work with external stakeholders
and has developed an approach to enhance inspection and assessment
programs to better align the ROP with those aspects of plant
performance that are important to safety culture. The approach provides
a means for the NRC to evaluate licensee actions to address identified
performance issues which may be indicative of safety culture weaknesses
to use a graded approach for having a licensee perform an evaluation or
obtain an independent assessment of safety culture at the plant if
needed, and to follow up with an independent NRC evaluation of safety
culture for plants that have experienced a significant deterioration in
performance. The NRC staff plans to complete revisions to the
inspection and assessment programs in May 2006 and will be conducting
training over the next few months for NRC inspectors and managers in
order to support implementation of the safety culture-related
enhancements on July 1, 2006.
Radiological Protection
As part of NRC's requirements for operating a nuclear power plant,
licensees must keep releases of radioactive material to unrestricted
areas during normal operation as low as reasonably achievable and
comply with radiation dose limits for the public. In addition, NRC
regulations require licensees to have various effluent and
environmental monitoring programs to ensure that the impacts from plant
operations are minimized. The permitted effluent releases result in
very small doses to members of the public living around nuclear power
plants. The NRC oversees these licensee programs to ensure adequate
protection of public health and safety and the environment. Recently,
the NRC staff has been monitoring instances of, and licensee actions to
address, groundwater contamination involving tritium at operating and
shutdown power reactors undergoing decommissioning. In addition, the
NRC is in the process of establishing a tritium lessons learned task
force to review these incidents and identify lessons learned from them
to determine what, if any, changes are needed.
Operating Reactor Licensing Programs
The reactor licensing program, coupled with a strong oversight
program, ensures that operating nuclear power plants maintain adequate
protection of public health and safety. NRC licensing activities
include using state-of-the-art science, engineering, and risk
assessment methods and information from operating experience to
establish and refine reactor safety standards, to promulgate the
related rules, issue orders and generic communications as appropriate,
and to review applications consistent with these requirements. In FY
2005, NRC staff completed 1,609 licensing actions associated with the
104 licensed reactors.
In 2005, the NRC reviewed and approved license renewal applications
for 9 reactors, bringing the total number of renewed reactor licenses
to 39 since 2000. Twelve additional license renewal applications are
currently under review, five of which are on schedule to be completed
in this fiscal year. Approximately one-half of the reactors in the
United States have either received or are currently under review for a
reactor license renewal. The NRC anticipates that the remaining
reactors currently licensed to operate will apply for renewal of their
licenses and the NRC staff will continue to face a significant workload
in this area for the next several years.
To date, the NRC has completed reviews of and approved 108 power
uprate applications, which have safely added capacity equivalent to
more than four large nuclear power plants. Currently, the NRC staff is
reviewing 10 power uprate applications and expects to receive
approximately 7 additional applications through FY 2007.
An extended power uprate increases the reactor's power by up to 20
percent. In some Boiling Water Reactors that have been implemented
extended power uprates, the NRC has observed steam dryer cracking and
flow-induced vibration damage in the steam and feedwater systems. The
NRC staff has conducted extensive inspections at the affected plants
and has held technical meetings with the affected licensees to discuss
the causes of the adverse flow effects and to evaluate the corrective
actions. The NRC will continue to monitor plant-specific and industry
actions to resolve these issues and has factored this experience into
reviews of pending power uprate applications.
SECURITY
The NRC continues to evaluate and inspect security plans,
procedures, and systems to ensure that acceptable security measures
remain in place to protect the health and safety of the public. The NRC
also continues to conduct the force-on-force exercise inspection
program to evaluate licensee's defensive capabilities and identify
areas for improvement. In the materials arena, the NRC continues to
devote considerable effort to determine what additional actions should
be used to enhance the security of radioactive material of greatest
concern. In addition, the NRC maintains close communication and
coordination with the Department of Homeland Security and other
agencies in the intelligence and law enforcement communities. As
requested in your letter of January 10, 2006, attached as an addendum,
is NRC's report on research and test reactors.
The NRC has three important security rulemakings planned or under
way to codify security requirements for power reactors. The first is
the rulemaking on the design basis threat for radiological sabotage.
The comment period for the proposed rule ended recently and a final
rule will be issued later this year. The second rulemaking will amend
the power reactor security regulations to align them with the series of
orders the Commission issued following September 11, 2001, and to
ensure that safety-security interface issues are properly considered in
plant operations. The Commission intends to issue a final rule as early
in calendar year 2007 as possible. Finally, the Commission's
expectations on security design for new reactor licensing activities
are scheduled to be codified in a third rulemaking by September 2007.
The expectation of the Commission is that the lessons learned by the
Agency and reactor licensees pre- and post-9/11 should be considered by
the vendors at the design stage. We have learned much and I believe
improvements can be realized without major design or construction
modifications.
Reactor Security Assessments
As Congress is aware, shortly after the September 11 attacks, the
NRC required nuclear power plant licensees to implement mitigative
strategies using existing or readily available resources to address the
loss of large areas of any plants due to explosion or fire. At about
the same time, the NRC initiated the performance of detailed
engineering studies of representative nuclear power plants that
assessed the damage that could be caused to the plants if large
commercial aircraft were employed as weapons. Based on the differences
in plant designs and capabilities found by these studies, the NRC is
conducting evaluations at each U.S. nuclear power plant individually to
identify specific methods that could be used to prevent or delay fuel
damage, prevent or delay containment failure, or reduce or prevent
releases of fission products. To expedite the studies, the NRC
performed the spent fuel pool assessments completely independent of the
reactor core and containment assessments.
The NRC has completed site-specific spent fuel pool assessments
that addressed the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences'
study on spent fuel pools. Plant-specific reports were issued in
December 2005 to all licensees, listing mitigation strategies
identified during the assessments. As a result of these assessments,
the industry proposed steps to ensure that plants have specific
independent capabilities to mitigate spent fuel pool events. The NRC
staff is evaluating the industry proposal. The NRC will determine if
further actions are necessary after evaluating plant-specific details
concerning licensees' implementation of the proposal.
In addition, we continue to enhance mitigation strategy
capabilities by conducting plant-specific assessments of strategies for
core and containment events. The NRC's assessments include an audit of
each licensee's effort to identify mitigation strategies as well as an
independent evaluation performed by NRC staff and contractors. These
assessments began in September 2005, and will be completed in the
spring of 2006. To date, the results of these assessments have
validated the actions the NRC has taken to enhance the security and
safety of the plants and have confirmed the robustness of these
facilities. After all the assessments are completed and all strategies
have been identified, the Commission will consider lessons learned
across the Nation and determine if additional actions are warranted.
Materials Security
NRC continues to work with the DOE, DHS, Department of
Transportation, Department of State, and the IAEA to prevent the
malevolent use of radioactive materials. Actions the Commission has
taken in 2005 include the following: (1) issuance of additional
security measures for shipments of radioactive materials in quantities
of concern from power reactors, research and test reactors, and
materials licensees; (2) issuance, along with the Agreement States, of
additional security and material control enhancements for other
industrial, medical and research licensees; (3) publishing a proposed
rule to amend NRC's regulations to implement a National Source Tracking
System, to replace the interim database; and (4) revision of
regulations regarding the import and export of radioactive materials to
be consistent with the IAEA's Code of Conduct.
MATERIALS PROGRAM
The Agency's overall materials safety functions are executed in a
variety of ways, including licensing, inspection and oversight,
rulemaking, enforcement, and investigations. The NRC, in partnership
with the 34 Agreement States, conducts comprehensive programs to ensure
the safe use of radiological materials in a variety of medical,
industrial, and research settings. In 2005, the NRC had a number of
significant accomplishments.
On June 15, 2005, the NRC staff issued the safety evaluation report
and final environmental impact statement on the Louisiana Energy
Services license application for the National Enrichment Facility, a
gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility, proposed to be located in
Eunice, New Mexico.
In September 2005, the NRC published a proposed rule to amend its
Yucca Mountain regulations to reflect the new proposed Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) standards. The NRC staff has continued its
interactions with DOE on a variety of technical issues related to
recently announced design changes and quality assurance program issues.
During FY 2005, the NRC oversaw decommissioning activities at
numerous complex sites and power reactor sites. The NRC terminated six
complex materials licenses, two uranium mill licenses, and two
operating reactor licenses. In addition, the NRC approved the license
termination plans for the Big Rock Point and Yankee Rowe power reactor
sites. The NRC's review of the license termination plans ensures that
the procedures and practices proposed by the site operators will
protect the public health and safety and that the proposed
decommissioning activities will make the sites suitable for release and
license termination.
On September 9, 2005, the Commission concluded the Agency's
adjudication over the Private Fuel Storage LLC (PFS) application to
construct and operate an independent spent fuel storage installation
and authorized the Agency staff to issue a license upon resolution of
any outstanding issues. One matter that remained to be resolved was
completion of consultations with other Federal and state agencies
concerning the identification and protection of historic sites. After
coordinating with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP),
the NRC issued a license to PFS on February 21, 2006. The license
contains a condition requiring PFS to first arrange adequate funding
for the project. Additionally, PFS must obtain the requisite approvals
from other agencies.
INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM
The NRC also carries out an active international program of
cooperation and assistance involving 38 countries with which it
exchanges civilian nuclear safety information. This program provides
public and occupational health and safety information and assistance to
other countries to develop and improve regulatory organizations and
overall nuclear safety and security worldwide. The NRC continues to
strongly support multinational programs for enhancing the level of
nuclear safety worldwide and serves in leadership roles on technical
committees that develop and monitor best practices. In addition, the
NRC supports implementation of certain treaties and conventions that
encourage the wider adoption of safety standards and practices. It is
worth noting that the NRC proposed an initiative, the multinational
design approval program, that will allow several regulatory authorities
to work together in reviewing new reactor designs. In addition, the NRC
amended its regulations in 10 CFR Part 110 concerning the export and
import of radioactive materials to require certain licensees previously
operating under general licenses to file for specific export and import
licenses. In accordance with the revised regulations, licensees will
also have to provide advance notification to the NRC before shipment
and will need to verify the recipient facility's licensing status.
AGENCYWIDE LESSONS LEARNED PROGRAM
As previously reported, we have undertaken a critical review of our
programmatic and oversight activities to evaluate our own actions
associated with the reactor vessel head degradation at Davis-Besse. A
significant finding in the NRC Davis-Besse Lessons Learned Task Force
Report was that some of the issues identified were similar to problems
previously identified. The report recommended that the staff conduct an
effectiveness review of actions taken in response to past lessons
learned. NRC established an Effectiveness Review Lessons Learned Task
Force (ERLLTF) and the task force issued its report on August 2, 2004.
The ERLLTF found that some corrective actions from previous lessons
learned had not been effective and that the root causes of the
ineffective corrective actions were the lack of a lessons learned
program, the lack of effectiveness reviews, the lack of a centralized
tracking system, and weaknesses in closeout practices.
In response to the ERLLTF report, the Executive Director for
Operations chartered a team on January 24, 2005 to develop an
agencywide lessons learned program that would capture and address
significant Agency lessons learned reports and provide reasonable
assurance that the problems identified will not recur. The team has
completed development of a preliminary program and will be piloting the
program this spring.
BUDGET
In order to meet new challenges while at the same time continuing
to discharge our statutory responsibilities, the Agency's financial
needs have increased to meet the expanded workload for FY 2007. Again
we appreciate your support for the additional funding for FY 2006. The
FY 2006 appropriation provided $41 million in funds above the
President's budget request. Of this amount, $20 million will be used in
support of new reactor licensing and $21 million will be used
principally in support of nuclear security initiatives. Additional
funds have been allocated to the ongoing nuclear power plant security
assessments and other near term security-related activities. Funding is
being used for security initiatives such as site specific assessments
of spent fuel pools and core and containment analysis. Funds also
support the development of security rulemakings, regulatory guidance
for new reactor security licensing, workshops and policy position
documents to improve transportation regulations and support to the
Department of Homeland Security's Comprehensive Reviews.
The President's FY 2007 budget provides $777 million for the NRC,
which is an increase of $35 million (approximately 5 percent) above FY
2006. The budget request includes an increase of approximately $22
million for the Nuclear Reactor Safety program, which includes the new
reactor licensing work, $21 million for the Agency's infrastructure and
support activities, and $10 million to fund Federal pay raises and
other non-discretionary compensation and benefit increases. These
increases are offset by a decrease of approximately $18 million for the
Nuclear Materials and Waste Safety program due to the delay in the
Department of Energy's application for the high-level waste repository
at Yucca Mountain, and other program changes.
CONCLUSION
The Commission continues to be committed to ensuring adequate
protection of public health and safety, promoting the common defense
and security, and protecting the environment in the application of
nuclear technology for civilian use. We understand the challenges we
face in the new reactor licensing and human capital areas and will
continue to work with the committee as we move forward. We continue to
build on our work in the area of security to enhance the safety and
security of the American public. The Commission will ensure that the
Agency is discharging its responsibilities as mandated by Congress in
an effective, efficient, and timely manner.
______
Addendum to NRC's Testimony for March 9, 2006 Oversight Hearing
RESEARCH AND TEST REACTORS
The NRC has licensed 49 research and test reactors (RTRs), of which
33 are operating. These 33 RTRs are used to train the next generation
of nuclear professionals, and to perform research and development
activities in many fields of science. The NRC licenses RTRs under the
provisions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which directs the
Commission to impose only the minimum amount of regulation as the
Commission finds will permit the Commission to fulfill its obligations
under this Act to promote the common defense and security and to
protect the public health and safety and will permit the conduct of
widespread and diverse research and development.
The NRC has always required RTRs to have security plans or
procedures in place to detect, deter, assess, and respond to
unauthorized activities. These plans use a defense in-depth philosophy,
and reflect a graded approach that considers the attractiveness of the
reactor fuel as a target, and the risk of radiological release. The NRC
reviews and approves these plans.
Between 2002-2004, NRC issued Confirmatory Action letters (CALs) to
all but 7 RTRs to formalize the commitments made to implement previous
compensatory measures. Seven RTRs did not receive CALs because of the
very low radiological risk associated with these facilities. The
compensatory measures taken by the RTRs addressed vehicle threats,
insider threats, and external land-based threats. The NRC has verified
the implementation of these measures through on-site inspections and
evaluations.
The NRC conducted security assessments of most RTRs to evaluate the
facilities for theft or diversion of special nuclear material and
radiological sabotage. These assessments used a three-phase approach
which included screening of the threat scenarios, assessments of RTR
security measures and detailed consequence assessments. The results of
these security assessments indicate that no credible reactor sabotage
would result in a prompt fatality to a member of the public and that it
is highly unlikely that a formula quantity of highly enriched uranium
can be stolen or diverted for malevolent purposes. These security
assessments also found that theft of irradiated fuel for use as a
radiological dispersal device or as a radiological exposure device is
unlikely to result in prompt fatalities to members of the public. The
security assessments for RTRs concluded that no additional security
requirements are currently needed. From these security assessments, the
NRC identified generic best practices which were shared with all RTR
licensees and many of the licensees voluntarily incorporated some of
these best practices at their facilities. On October 7, 2005, the NRC
issued requests for additional information (RAIs) for licensees to
reevaluate implementation of post 9/11 security measures. The NRC will
continue to verify that security requirements and commitments continue
to be implemented and to work with DHS, DOE, and the National
Organization of Test Research and Training Reactors (TRTR) in a
Government Coordinating Council (GCC) sub-council on RTRs to assist
RTRs with security.
The NRC assessed the potential security issues raised in the ABC
``Prime Time'' telecast on October 13, 2005. All but one of the issues
raised by ABC were determined to be appropriately addressed by
applicable site security plans, procedures, and post 9/11 compensatory
measures. One violation of security requirements was identified and
processed in accordance with the NRC's Enforcement Policy and the
Licensee has implemented appropriate corrective actions. The NRC
determined that the conditions associated with the ABC identified
issues were previously evaluated in the NRC's review and approval of
RTR site security plans, procedures, and/or post 9/11 compensatory
measures.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2272.028
<all>