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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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ALL EMPLOYEES MEETING ON "THE GREEN" PLAZA
AREA BETWEEN BUILDINGS AT WHITE FLINT
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PUBLIC MEETING
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Nuclear Regulatory Commission
11555 Rockville Pike
Rockville, Maryland
Thursday, October 17, 1996
The Commission met in open session, pursuant to
notice, at 1:35 p.m., the Honorable SHIRLEY A. JACKSON,
Chairman of the Commission, presiding.
COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, Chairman of the Commission
KENNETH C. ROGERS, Member of the Commission
GRETA J. DICUS, Member of the Commission
NILS J. DIAZ, Member of the Commission
EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR., Member of the Commission
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P R O C E E D I N G S
[1:35 p.m.]
MRS. NORRY: Good afternoon, everyone.
Welcome to the second session of the sixth annual
meeting between the NRC commissioners and the NRC staff. We
have an opportunity, after the Chairman has finished her
remarks, for all of the people in this tent to ask
questions. There are microphones for that.
The regions will be asking questions from the
communications equipment back there and then we will be
relaying them to Sue Smith and James Heck who will state
their questions.
What?
VOICE: Take a step backwards.
MRS. NORRY: A step backwards? Okay, is this much
better?
VOICE: Take two more steps back.
[Laughter.]
MRS. NORRY: After we hear from the comedian up
front, we will be ready to go ahead.
I think I will just make one more remark and that
is that this meeting is open to the public but it is for the
NRC staff so if there are questions from the NRC staff,
those are the questions that would be appropriate.
Now, I would like to introduce Chairman Jackson.
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CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you very much,
Mrs. Norry. I would like to express my special thank you
for all of the hard efforts of you and your colleagues in
putting this together, especially in arranging the weather
which, I will point out, I note, is a little warmer now than
this morning.
And, as far as our comedian on the front row, he
is going to be given a little bit of dispensation since he
is sitting through this for the second time.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me begin by saying that, on
behalf of my Commission colleagues, I want to welcome you to
this special meeting of the Commission with the NRC staff.
These All Employee Meetings have been held annually since
1991 to facilitate communication between the Commission and
individual members of the staff and to enable employees to
become better acquainted with newly appointed commissioners.
Today's meeting serves both of these purposes.
Because this is the first All Employees Meeting in
some time where we have had a full five-member Commission
and since many of you may not have had the opportunity to
meet all the current commissioners, I would like to
introduce my colleagues to you.
On my immediate right is the dean of the
commissioners, Commissioner Kenneth C. Rogers, who is
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serving his second five-year term as a commissioner. He
previously served as president of the Stevens Institute of
Technology in New Jersey.
On my immediate left is Commissioner Greta Joy
Dicus, who previously was with the Department of Health in
the state of Arkansas and served that state as a
commissioner and as Chairman of the Central Interstate Low-
level Radioactive Waste Commission and was a member of the
board of directors of the U.S. Enrichment Corporation.
On my far right is Commissioner Nils J. Diaz.
Dr. Diaz came to the NRC from the University of Florida,
where he was a professor of nuclear engineering sciences and
director of the innovative Nuclear Space Power and
Propulsion Institute.
And, on my far left, is Commissioner Edward
McGaffigan, Jr., formally a senior advisor to U.S. Senator
Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Commissioner McGaffigan was
a member of the U.S. Foreign Service for seven years.
All of us have been looking forward to having this
meeting with you.
Our format today will be the same as that used for
our session last year. That is, following my opening
remarks -- it says here "brief" but some told me they
weren't so brief -- the Commission will entertain questions
from NRC employees here as well as from our regional and
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field offices, which are connected to us by open telephone
lines. This is your meeting and the agenda will be
determined by your questions. This is your opportunity to
ask us the questions that you would like to have answered.
I encourage each of you to participate actively
and to be candid in expressing your concerns. The
Commission needs to know what your concerns are if we are to
be effective in setting Agency policy and you need to hear
our responses so that you can be effective in carrying out
your responsibilities.
My Commission colleagues and I will respond to
your questions to the best of our abilities based on our
understanding of your concerns as well as our individual
perspectives. This informal exchange of views is the only
reason we are here.
Before I turn the microphones over to questions, I
would like to outline my assessment of what we have
accomplished this year since our last All Employees Meeting
and where I think we, as an agency, need to move in the
future.
As you will recall, shortly after becoming
Chairman, I described my early impression of the NRC as an
excellent technical organization that was finding itself
subject to an internal and external changes. In light of
the strong impact of this changing environment, I suggested
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that it seemed inevitable that the NRC would have to change
as well if we were to carry out our regulatory
responsibilities successfully.
In retrospect, I think the picture I drew last
year was reasonably accurate. The agents of change were
very busy. Competitive pressures and economic deregulation
did have a strong impact on the nuclear power industry and
that industry has begun to react, somewhat tentatively
initially, by consolidating its activities and merging to
form new, larger operating units.
One of the first such mergers took place right
here in our own backyard, so to speak, with the merger or
the announced merger of Baltimore Gas and Electric and
PEPCO. In the meantime, state public utility commissions
have begun to define rather precisely the responsibilities
that existing utilities and new entities in the business of
producing and distributing electric power will have in a new
competitive marketplace.
The U.S. Congress has had a fairly broad agenda of
energy-related legislative proposals to consider this year
and can be expected to maintain its strong interests in such
matters next year, no matter what the outcome of the
November elections.
At the NRC, we have been busy reacting to change
and to challenge over the past year and I think we can be
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proud of what we have accomplished. We have continued to
carry out our regulatory mission of protecting public health
and safety and to maintain our fundamental regulatory
activities despite continuing budget restrictions and the
national effort to reduce the size of government.
Sometimes, when we look at ourselves and our
budget, we think of ourselves as a small, not-so-important
agency. But if we look at the importance of our mandate,
namely adequate protection of public health and safety and
the environment and the common defense and security in the
use of nuclear materials in the United States, and if we
look at the scope of that responsibility, combined with the
net capital investment in the range of activities that we
regulate, we are not small at all; our importance is very
great.
Potential new activities will give even greater
weight to what we do at a time when significant changes are
occurring for those that we regulate. I believe that we
have taken significant steps to position ourselves for
future changes that are likely to impact us.
Last month, we issued a draft policy statement on
economic deregulation of nuclear power plants outlining our
concerns about the adequacy of decommissioning funds as well
as the potential of these changes to impact reactor
operational safety. Our relationship with the Department of
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Energy is being redefined rapidly. As you know, the
Department has requested NRC involvement in its pilot
project to develop a high-level radioactive waste
solidification system at Hanford, Washington, in order to
facilitate possible NRC licensing of a privatized Hanford
facility soon after the year 2000.
During fiscal year 1997, NRC will begin the
development of an overall review strategy to be made
available as guidance for potential DOE contractors at the
site. Also in fiscal year 1997, the NRC will begin
assisting the Department of Energy through a memorandum of
understanding in evaluating alternative approaches to
tritium production. One alternative under consideration by
DOE for evaluation is the production of tritium in
commercial light water reactors. The NRC will be evaluating
potential policy issues and licensing requirements to
implement such an approach.
Possibly even more farreaching, we are being
considered for a broader role in the oversight of DOE's
nuclear activities. Such an increase in our regulatory
responsibilities, if adopted by the Congress, would require
adequate resources and sufficient time to develop a sound
regulatory program but one that would not conflict with our
current program.
Finally, we intend to assume regulatory oversight
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of the operations of the U.S. Enrichment Corporation by
March 3 of next year.
On the international scene, the Convention on
Nuclear Safety negotiated over a three-year period by
representatives from over 65 nations will enter into force
on October 24, thereby helping to ensure a safer global
environment. In the United States, ratification of the
treaty which the U.S. and particularly the NRC had major
roles in developing, is currently before the Senate and we
hope to obtain early Senate approval in the next Congress.
We also are finding international support for my
proposal to establish an international nuclear regulators'
forum in which nuclear regulatory officials from all over
the world can exchange views, coordinate approaches and
harmonize arrangements for the safe and secure use of
nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Within the Agency, we have made significant
progress in our strategic assessment and rebaselining
initiative. I want to note here that the issue papers are
out for public and NRC staff comments and we intend to be in
a position to reach final decisions on them in the December
to January time frame.
While we have been busy preparing ourselves for
future change, we have also continued to improve our
existing major safety programs. In the reactor area, we are
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expanding our use of PRA, probabilistic risk assessment, to
ensure that the Agency's resources and activities are
focused on the issues that are most important to safety. We
have modified our processes for evaluating nuclear plant
performance and we are taking steps to improve our program
for protecting allegers against retaliation.
In the nuclear materials and waste area, we have
improved our cooperation with the states on regulation of
radioactive material. We have streamlined our materials
licensing and inspection processes. We have adopted a new,
performance-based licensing approach with respect to uranium
recovery facilities and we have started a process, initially
with respect to our medical program, to evaluate more
broadly whether our materials program standards and
regulations are appropriately focused on the health and
safety issues of significance for their licensees.
In research, we are focusing our efforts on PRA,
on reactor component aging and on consolidating our efforts
on thermal hydraulics into a comprehensive long-range plan.
Taken together, then, all of these efforts
represent a significant attempt to improve our performance
and to adjust to changing circumstances and we, as an
agency, then, have much to be proud of in our record over
the past year. I certainly am proud of all of our
accomplishments and our efforts to be ready to address the
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new responsibilities we may take on during the next twelve
months and beyond. And I think each of you should take
pride in the individual roles that you have played in this
overall effort.
Unfortunately, much of what we have accomplished
has been seriously overshadowed by events primarily in New
England. The Millstone, Connecticut Yankee and Maine Yankee
plants are likely to leave in many people's minds a more
permanent stamp on the record of the last twelve months and
to characterize the performance of the NRC more than any of
the accomplishments that I have described that have occurred
over the same period.
In part, this result is only to be expected. A
regulator lives a difficult life. Those of you who are
sports fans or have participated in a formal debate know how
much more difficult it is to maintain a defensive posture
than it is to mount an offense. An offense requires a
focus, a clear goal and some ability to move forward to
actually carry it out. A defensive posture requires
effective plans against all contingencies.
Regrettable as it may seem, it only takes one
event to call into question the ability or the willingness
of a regulator or, in the sports genre, an umpire or a
referee to accomplish his mission.
Having said that, it would be a serious mistake,
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however, on our part to dismiss the events at Millstone in
particular as presenting merely an interesting set of
technical problems that will ultimately be addressed and
resolved with time and increased attention by the NRC. As I
noted last March when I addressed all of you on the Time
Magazine article about Millstone, if we honestly assess the
performance of the utilities in question and our own
performance, we would agree that not all aspects of nuclear
operations and nuclear regulation are as they should be,
despite all of our efforts to the contrary. And although we
have much yet to learn about the situation at Millstone and
it would be premature to state final conclusions, we do know
enough about the conditions at those plants to begin to ask
ourselves some thought-provoking, probing questions about
whether we have succeeded in establishing the safety culture
we have been trying to establish throughout the nuclear
power industry, whether we are succeeding as well as we
should in anticipating problems in advance, and whether we
are asking ourselves the right questions about the way we
have done things in the past or are doing them now and
whether NRC personnel both in headquarters and on site, in
evaluating licensee activities are sufficiently familiar
with regulations and requirements that apply to the specific
activity being focused on.
When I look at the recent events at Millstone, I
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see two broad decisions that, if we could go back and
change, we would. We should have put more NRC resources on
discovering the problems at Millstone at an earlier stage
and possibly turned the facility around prior to its
reaching its current status. The other is that we stopped
doing design-basis inspections too early and relied on
industry to address the problem without maintaining an
appropriate regulatory focus to assess whether, in fact,
they were dealing with the issues in a timely manner.
Now, this is not to say that we cannot rely on the
industry because we have to rely on the industry and they
are the ones responsible for the safe operation of their
facilities. Our responsibility to regulate, to set
appropriate safety requirements and to insist upon
compliance with existing requirements. We cannot delegate
our regulatory responsibility to the industry.
Now, I want to address a few more remarks toward
our expectations of licensee performance and the emphasis of
our own regulatory oversight. I see a real danger in being
ensnared by false distinctions that I hear between safety
and compliance in our regulatory program. In fact, the
concepts are inextricably bound.
A licensee's compliance with our regulations and
safety conditions is, in fact, fundamental to our confidence
in the safety of licensed activities. As I have said any
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number of times, if there are requirements on our books that
have nothing to do with safety, we should remove them
through the well-established processes that we have to make
such changes. That is untenable, as a regulatory agency, to
imply that regulatory requirements can be ignored.
I recognize that, as an agency with limited
resources and staff, we must make informed choices in
applying our resources to the most safety-significant
activities or challenges requiring our oversight. This
drives the importance of risk-informed regulation. By
focusing our resources on those most significant issues and
maintaining high expectations for licensees' adherence to
existing requirements until and unless they change, we will
strengthen the quality of our oversight and public
confidence in it and we will enhance consistency and
objectivity in our evaluation and enforcement and thereby
help to ensure fairness for everybody.
Of course, an event like Millstone quite obviously
suggests a need for change, change in the industry as well
as change at the NRC, and we should welcome the opportunity
that Millstone affords to correct and to improve our
performance as a regulatory body responsible for protecting
public health and safety. I do have concern, however, that
some of you may view any suggestion for change as a
criticism of both your personal performance and the Agency's
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overall performance.
I personally believe that such a view is mistaken,
for any organization must change over time and in response
to the challenges that it faces. We are, in effect,
learning as we go and Millstone provides a timely lesson.
In fact, change and learning are built on the foundation of
the past, of what we have done and how we have built our
programs.
So let me say again, the NRC is a highly technical
but highly competent agency that employs many
extraordinarily gifted and dedicated people. What we need
to do is to work together to continue to have a strong,
respected organization, and we are strong and respected, and
an important part of working together is communicating
clearly with others and listening carefully and attentively
to what is being communicated to us.
Communication and improvements in how we do
business are also the key features of our strategic
assessment and rebaselining at this stage of its evolution.
As you know, issue papers have been published for comment
and we will soon be holding a series of meetings across the
country to obtain comments from the general public and other
stakeholders. We are also looking forward to hearing from
each of you in this process.
I know many of you are concerned about the impact
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of strategic assessment and rebaselining on your own
careers, on your own jobs, but I want to assure you that, to
date, we have only made preliminary decisions on the issue
papers. We are counting, in fact, on your input to help
guide us in making final decisions and we want you to
identify any and all concerns that you may have. Be candid,
be straightforward, be thoughtful but, by all means, please
provide us with your comments.
In that regard, I would like to draw your
attention not just to those issue papers that may directly
impact your individual jobs but to Issue Paper Number 23,
which is entitled Enhancing Regulatory Analysis, which is
directly applicable to the issues I have discussed today and
to the general direction of the Agency. We welcome your
comments on what you see as the major problems and issues
affecting the agency and any solutions you may care to
offer.
Now, let me turn the meeting over to you and I
would ask each of you who wishes to ask a question, to use
one of the microphones that have been placed around.
Please feel free to direct your question to me or
to any one of us and if your question is intended for all of
us, I will then refer it to each of my colleagues in turn.
So, may I have the first question, please?
MR. HECK: Good afternoon. This is a question
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from headquarters. It is an anonymous question.
What is the Commission's view on the role of
enforcement in the Commission's regulatory process,
especially civil penalties? Have we been using civil
penalties enough?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, I think that at any given
time one can't answer the question "enough". But let me
speak to what I think is the more fundamental issue which is
the role of enforcement in a regulatory program.
We are an oversight agency and we are an agency
that provides that oversight relative to standards that we
lay out that have, at their root, safety and protection of
public health. If you have an agency that lays out
standards and then oversees licensees' activities relative
to those standards then the enforcement function is part of
evaluating and assessing and taking appropriate action
relative to any difficulties relative to licensees living
within our regulatory requirements.
We are looking at -- the enforcement policy has
undergone some revision recently and it is continuing to be
evaluated both with respect to being sure that the risk and
safety significance of whatever occurs is clearly folded
into our evaluations as well as looking at the pervasiveness
of regulatory noncompliance. So it is very important in
sending clear messages about the importance of the licensees
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living within our regulatory regime and their own
responsibilities to operate their own facilities safely.
So enforcement and inspection and program
evaluation, they are critical elements of our overall
regulatory process and of our oversight function.
Yes?
MS. SMITH: This is another anonymous headquarters
question and this question is for the Chairman.
The opportunity for clerical and paraprofessional
staff within the NRC are limited. There has only been a
limited number of upward-mobility positions in the past two
years. Several positions were recently filled
noncompetitively within the Commission, the EDO and the
Office of Personnel.
What can be done to create more opportunities for
clerical or paraprofessional staff?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, I think that what
opportunities should exist for all of our people have to be
referenced to what the jobs require and the qualifications
of people to meet those jobs because of the particular
nature of the agency that we are. Having said that, I think
that we have to continually evaluate our ability to provide
a conducive work environment and opportunities for people to
move along in their careers and to improve their relative
job status.
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What that then requires is career planning,
appropriate appraisal and counseling on the part of the
management, clear advertisement of available opportunities.
But it also requires a proactiveness on the part of the
individuals who are interested in any different positions to
make themselves as competitive as they can be.
Each commissioner has the opportunity to build his
or her staff the way that commissioner feels will help
enhance his ability or her ability to carry out that role
and, in the process, interviews any number of people.
Commissioner McGaffigan I think went through 40 people I
think he said.
So I think all of us who are hiring people in our
offices at this level are trying to be as open as we can be
and I think -- but I think I will take the question as a
suggestion in terms of looking carefully at our personnel
policies and seeing what we might do in that regard to see
if there is an issue there.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: I would like to direct
this question to all the commissioners.
Last year, the Commission described the 17 million
high-level waste appropriation as the absolute minimum.
This year, Congress is appropriating 11 million for the
high-level waste program, making the program subminimal.
How do you see the situation, which I know you
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can't do anything about, affecting the waste confidence
rulemaking? The waste confidence rulemaking mentions
reasonable assurance of having a geologic repository by
2025.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, I think there are two
issues here and they are related but they are actually
distinct issues. One has to do with our ability to maintain
our technical competence to undergird any decisions that we
would make relative to the licensing of a high-level waste
repository. The linkage is if our ability to carry out such
a licensing process is compromised and it then redounds back
to whether a repository would come into existence, then it
affects the waste confidence decision.
But the bigger issue that affects the waste
confidence decision is the country reaching clarity on what
the overall comprehensive high-level waste management
program is tracking, you know, according to Commission
perspective to the construction and operation of a high-
level waste geologic repository.
But we have also said that an integrated waste
management program that has on-site storage, centralized
interim offsite storage and a geologic repository are all
components of a coherent national radioactive waste
management program. We still believe that the repository is
the end game and we are looking and monitoring what
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particularly may happen in the next Congress.
We are operating under the existing Nuclear Waste
Policy Act and its amendments which are focused and link the
nation's high-level waste program to the construction of a
high-level waste repository. If that is significantly
jeopardized in the large by budget considerations, then we
would have to look again at our waste confidence.
So what I am saying to you, the reason I say there
are two issues, one relates to our own specific technical
confidence, but the other relates to where the nation's
high-level waste program is going and, in the end, that is
what -- our fate and what happens to our budget, in fact, is
linked to what's happening to that. So that is what we are
focusing on and need to speak out on and have. I have been
and we have made those messages clear to the Congress.
Commissioner McGaffigan was recently on the Hill.
I don't know if he has some illuminating comments he wishes
to make.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: One point I will make to
you in addition to what the Chairman said, which I agree
with, is we have requested in our FY '98 request $17 million
so we are going to try to get back to that.
I think this year we were a casualty, that the
reduction to 11 million which happened -- I was doing
defense work at the time --
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CHAIRMAN JACKSON: We can't blame you, then.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: But I think it is very
regrettable and I can go into some detail, not in an open
session, as to what my theory is as to why that happened.
Because I think the signal the Chairman got at the time of
the House Appropriations Committee was a very positive
signal, give her everything she was asking for, but then
that got caught up in so much different politics both on
budget and Yucca Mountain.
The other point I will make is I hope it doesn't
affect our ability to do the rulemaking. I think we are
going to do the best we can with the resources we have. We
have some carryover funds and we have even some possibility,
which we will have to discuss in budgetary terms, to augment
that if it is necessary during the current fiscal year. But
it is a very important program, it is something we I think
uniformly support the $17 million and we will try to do a
better job persuading the entire Congress next year to get
us that amount of money.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: The point I want to make, the
real point of my remarks is that, individually, as an
Agency, we are going to be doing what we have to do to have
the money that we need. But at a certain level it won't
matter if we have $17 million for our high-level waste
effort if there is no national program and that is the point
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I really want to make.
Commissioner Dicus, did you have any comments?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: No.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: This is a follow-on
question to the first question on the enforcement program
and it is directed to the entire Commission.
Does the Commission believe that NRC regulatory
enforcement today is sufficiently aggressive?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think that the Commission is
examining that. I think we have already become within the
current context more aggressive and we have asked for
specific changes in the enforcement policy and they are
being developed through the Office of Enforcement as we
speak.
Commissioner Rogers?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Well, I think I totally
agree with the Chairman's comments that we are looking at
this.
I would say one aspect of enforcement that has
troubled me over the years is its timeliness, that sometimes
the enforcement action itself may be appropriate but it
comes at such a late date in the history of things that it
really doesn't produce very much effect at all because some
of the perpetrators of a misdeed, if they are misdeeds or
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whatever, have retired, left, died of old age, what have
you, and the best that we can accomplish is simply putting
the licensee in the newspaper.
I think that that is an issue, I know the Office
of Enforcement has always been concerned about trying to act
more rapidly. I think that is something that we just have
to keep aggressively pursuing because I think the timeliness
is related to the effectiveness. They are not totally
separable issues so that the size of the penalty, the way it
is administered, so on and so forth, are all important but
if they come -- if this all comes at a very late date, it
doesn't have very much effect.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Dicus?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: I think you are hearing that
we are in pretty much agreement up here at this table on
what some of the approaches might be and I certainly
underscore the timeliness together with the effectiveness.
It is not -- it may not be so much the quantity of
aggressiveness that is necessary as much as it is the type
and being able to appropriately being able to monitor the
effectiveness of what we do.
We must have in place those mechanisms that do
that and if we find that, perhaps, we are not being as
effective as we should be, then we have to have the
flexibility to quickly make a modification in what we do to
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ensure that we can meet our mission.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Yes, I think we are going to
see now one of the values of the Commission. First we used
the word timeliness, then effectiveness. I am going to add
another one, consistency. So you go from one to the other
to the other. They are all indispensable and we have
discussed the issue and we are very concerned about it.
I believe that you know regulation, regulatory
enforcement are just elements of what we tend to call a
safety culture and, as far as I am concerned, I have been
looking at it from all possible viewpoints and I believe the
underlying support structure is a tracking infrastructure
and that tracking infrastructure permeates every level at
which the Commission works and especially should apply to
the enforcement area.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan?
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I really don't have
anything further to add. We are serious about enforcement.
We are certainly looking at it, as Chairman Jackson said, in
terms of improving our enforcement policy and all the ways
all the other commissioners have already said.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You have heard effectiveness,
you have heard risk and safety significance, you have heard
pervasiveness, you have heard timeliness, you have heard
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consistency and you have heard the ability to be sure that
we are properly tracking things. I think that is your
message.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes.
MR. HECK: Okay, we have another question from
headquarters and it is once again anonymous.
In some of our support organizations, there
appears to be an increase in the hiring of contractors. It
is a two-part question.
Number one, will this lead to NRC staff without
assignments or an overage of Agency staff? And, number two,
why doesn't the NRC survey Agency staff to identify those
able to perform other duties before hiring more contractors?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: The EDO's responsibility in
overseeing the day-to-day management of the Agency is to
ensure that the tasks get done in the most effective way
possible. It is also important when that is done that our
policies are sensitive to people and what happens to them.
But, in the end, we want to have an agency that
operates the way it has to operate, in the most cost-
effective way that it has to and we try to be balanced, we
try to balance sensitivity with respect to employees with
what kinds of jobs really need to be done here.
Next question?
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MS. SMITH: This question came from Region III and
it was asked at this morning's session. It is to the new
commissioners.
What are your opinions of the National Academy of
Sciences' recommendations regarding NRC oversight of medical
facilities?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I introduced Commissioner Dicus
as a new commissioner this morning in that regard. I am not
going to put her on the spot. I am going to start in
inverse order and ask Commissioner McGaffigan.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: My reactions to the
Academy report frankly is that we do have to stay in the
medical regulation business. I don't think, as I said this
morning, the medical community does a very good job in the
areas where it self-regulates. If you watch 60 Minutes or
any of the other TV news shows, you can see no end of horror
stories where state medical boards don't discipline their
fellow physicians very rapidly.
One thing I will tell you, I heard several -- in
interviewing people, the 40 people that Chairman Jackson
referred to, I heard several horror stories about how some
other agencies in government and how some of our agreement
states who have a broader view of medical issues than we do
because they regulate X-rays, mammograms, other devices,
accelerators, some of the horror stories that we have of
28
physicians taking off their dosemeters in order to continue
to perform surgeries. That's a risk they are taking
themselves but it then can sometimes pervade their view of
the risks for everyone else around them.
So in answering the question for Region III, my
bias as I arrive at the Agency is that there is a role for
us to do, we do it responsibly and, because we do it
responsibly, we get a lot of grief. There are things we can
do to improve if we have overregulated in detail as some of
the allegations are. I think the staff has already got
ideas as to how to deal with some of that. But to give up
our fundamental role in the medical arena is not something I
come to this agency prepared to do.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Well, I agree that the NRC has
an important role to conduct and maintain regulation over
the medical area.
I had made a statement this morning that I would
like to have stricken from the record.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Don't repeat it.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Maybe that's a wise thing, but
I will go ahead and say it again. I spent six years, about
half time, as a nuclear medical physicist in three different
facilities and I had decided that I would have a safer job
29
by working in nuclear rockets, which I did.
[Laughter.]
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Besides that point, I think
there are some good points in the Academy report but I do
believe and I support the Commission on the issue of
maintaining NRC activities in that area.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Dicus?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: I notice we are all giving
the same answer this afternoon as we did this morning, so
that's good and I will try to remember what I said this
morning.
As you know, it is one of the issue papers and I
think it is one of the issue papers that we did not give, as
a Commission, a preliminary view. We are clearly very
interested in hearing the comments we get back from all of
the stakeholders to really look at what is the best thing to
do with the medical program.
I know from my familiarity with the states, both
the agreement states and the nonagreement states have
expressed a great deal of concern the NRC does get out of
the medical use program and I would think that is probably
unlikely. I think as you have heard we probably do need to
make some modifications in that program and what we will
look at and the comments we get back from our stakeholders,
hopefully in those will be a lot of thoughts on what we can
30
do to improve what is basically a good program, make
improvements in it.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. Any other questions?
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: The Commission gets a
number of pen pals that write frequently and in some cases
have an agenda. My question to you, we are hearing a lot
about how to protect allegers from the outside. My question
to you is, what is the Commission doing to protect its staff
from unwarranted and unjustified allegations?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, I think that when
allegations are made, we have created a new allegations
review process with an allegations review coordinator whose
job it is to see that allegations are dealt with and
allegers appropriately.
As you know, the Commission did issue policy
statements having to do with the freedom of employees in the
nuclear industry to raise safety concerns without fear of
retaliation as well as a policy statement having to do with
maintaining confidentiality relative to allegers.
I think we are well aware of the fact that most of
the correspondence that comes, comes into my office in that
regard, that there are those who are repetitive writers, who
have repetitive issues and the statement that I have made,
and I think this is what is guiding how we are trying to
respond is we try to deal as responsibly and in as timely a
31
manner as we can with allegations that we do a fair
assessment of whether or not there are any safety issues
involved and the issue then becomes how the alleger is dealt
with and dealt with professionally and how the issue is
dispositioned.
I think if there are allegations made about the
performance of any NRC staff that comes from a source in an
industry that we regulate, then we have a responsibility to
follow up on it, but in a way that is not a witch hunt
relative to our own people and that the assessments that are
done are fair and fair to our employees and that if an
allegation is substantiated, then we will deal with that by
our personnel system as appropriate and, if not
substantiated, then it is so stated.
I don't believe -- and if we are, then we need to
change -- that we should be on any witch hunting mode with
respect to our own people. I think, though, we all have to
recognize, I mean, it is something I deal with in my
position, the commissioners deal with and all of us, that
people feel in many ways as strongly about nuclear issues as
they feel about social issues and you might say, well, you
know, we need to be more protective of ourselves. I think
if one steps into these kinds of jobs, you have to kind of
accept that that is part of the game.
What I think is important is how, as I say, we
32
deal with those who bring concerns to us in a professional
way, not that we agree, you see, with everything that is
alleged but that we deal with it fairly and that we are fair
to our own people at the same time. That is all we can
really do and that we are timely in our response and
consistent. We are definitely on the consistency streak
here.
Yes.
MR. HECK: Question from Region III and this is a
subject you touched on earlier.
What functions currently being performed by the
regions are being considered for either elimination or
transfer to headquarters?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: There are no specific decisions
with respect to the regions and any transfer of functions.
We are looking at our overall oversight programs in the
reactor area and in other areas as part of the strategic
assessment.
That is, in fact, why I invited and asked that our
own employees give us their input to the issue papers and
the issues contained therein and any options that are
positive because that will form an important part of our
evaluation process coupled with the studies that are
underway relative to our resident inspection program and
other aspects of our oversight program. Until all that
33
evidence is in, you know, we are not making any precipitous
moves.
At the same time, I think we all recognize the
importance of the regional operations to our regulatory
program. Inspection and enforcement are key elements of how
we carry out our program and that we know, to use
Commissioner Diaz's term, that the right safety culture
exists and so I don't think you need feel that there is some
specific action or some specific activity that is going to
disappear tomorrow.
But I think it is fair to say that we are
definitely doing an overall assessment of various elements
of our oversight program, just as we are looking at the
enforcement area and we are looking at them both as part of
strategic assessment but also in terms of lessons learned
coming out of the various specific problem areas that we
have been dealing with over the course of the last year.
MS. SMITH: This is another question from
anonymous here at headquarters.
Over $20,000 from the NRC recycling program was
donated to the day care center, which also cares for
nongovernment employees' offspring. Shouldn't the money
from a program that all employees participate in go to
something that benefits all NRC employees instead of a self-
regulation few?
34
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I don't think I could really
specifically address that one. I will ask Mr. Thompson to
look into that.
Yes?
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Coming back, Chairman
Jackson, to soliciting staff comments on the issue papers,
there were three issue papers that weren't released for
stakeholder comment because, you know, they are regarding
internal organizational matters. However, they may not be
important to outside stakeholders but they are important to
staff.
Are there plans to release those at a future point
for staff comment?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Whatever decisions are made
that would end up affecting the NRC organization and
people's jobs, you know, are definitely going to be
discussed and we will have interactions with NRC staff on
those particular issues but we have not yet come to any
decisions in those regards at this particular time.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: I have two questions. I
would like to start with one, kind of the devil's advocate.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Can you speak a little closer
to the microphone?
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: Is this better?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes. Thank you.
35
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: I said I have two
questions I would like to ask. The first one is kind of a
devil's advocate position in what you said in your opening
remarks regarding compliance and safety. Don't you agree
that there are some regulations which are safety related but
are not as important, perhaps, as some others?
For example, we may have a requirement for some
sort of inspection or report to be done on an annual basis.
Whether it is done in 12 months or 13 months may not matter
that much.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, I think we do have
enforcement discretion properly applied that allows us to
have a valve, a gating valve, as appropriate. Having said
that, the whole point of having periodicity or having
certain time frames is to create regularity or periodicity
and if one then starts wandering all over the map, one loses
that.
You heard Commissioner Diaz speak about the need
and necessity to have appropriate tracking systems and part
of periodicity relates to that. And, as I say, we do have
valving mechanisms to allow us to make adjustments as
appropriate.
But the issue is not if there is a particular test
or whatever it is that we deem to be important and have
safety significance, then it is not something that we want
36
to be arbitrary about how it is done. I think that the
mechanisms we have in place allow flexibility but the
flexibility cannot be all over the board because, in the
end, then you can end up with a situation like the Millstone
situation.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: And my second question
is, do you know whether the NRC will be participating in the
buyout program?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I can't speak to that specific
personnel issue.
Yes?
MR. HECK: Another question from Region III.
It was Region IV this morning. What happened?
Mr. Callum is not here, that's what happened.
MR. HECK: We and our licensees seem to be getting
hauled into court more and more. Is there anything we can
or should do differently?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, one has to be careful
about putting things in baskets. If one wants to say we and
our licensees get called into court, if you are talking
about linked issues that's one thing but if you are talking
about the general trend, that is another. What licensees
get hauled into court for sometimes relates to us and
sometimes it does not relate to us.
I think we are trying in our regulatory program,
37
and it is an ever-evolving push to excellence, is to be as
clear, as consistent in what our requirements and standards
are with respect to our expectations of our licensees, with
respect to those standards. That is the kind of situation
that keeps us out of trouble. We are also talking about
having our licensees live within our requirements until and
unless they change.
Having said all of that, we also are moving to
having risk and safety significance more involved with how
we do things. It is very important in doing that that we
have the right kind of infrastructure in place within which
we make decisions.
But, having said all of that, you know, and having
greater objectivity, consistency, risk-informed, I have said
in response in another context to an earlier question that
people feel as strongly about nuclear issues as they feel
about some social issues and we do live in a litigious
society.
MR. CRANE: I am Peter Crane in OGC. I would like
to follow up on Dr. Howe's question of a few minutes ago.
I understood you to say that when allegations come
in from the outside against an NRC staff member that part of
the responsibility of public service is that you have to be
willing to have those allegations looked at and I doubt
anybody would disagree with that.
38
But sometimes what comes in from the licensee
crosses the line into abuse and vilification as the folks in
the medical section know from hard experience. And letter
after letter comes in accusing them of fraud, incompetence,
ignorance, mental instability. Letters come in saying
people should be sent off for psychiatric care and I think
there are people in the staff who would like to know that,
apart from the need to look at allegations responsibly, that
when staff members are abused by licensees that the
Commission will support them against that kind of behavior.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think, you know, that is what
we try to do and I think perhaps we need to give more
attention to that. I think we, again, have to be sure that
we have looked at where the safety issue is or is not in
something but I think we are not going to have our people
vilified.
But I think we have to -- it is a careful line
that one has to draw to be sure that we are appropriately
protecting our staff but also to be sure that we understand
that whether or not there is an issue that we have to deal
with and I think in my responses to letters that come in to
me in that regard that that, in fact, is what we try to do.
If you feel that, in fact, we are not sufficiently
doing that, then I think we need to look at that. But I
want to argue against our developing a siege mentality where
39
we feel that, you know, we are here and we know what we are
doing and we are going to circle the wagons. Because, if we
are not open, then we are not learning. But I think, at the
same time, we want to be sure that our people are not
abused.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I might just add that my
opinions about medical issues that I expressed earlier have
only been reinforced by some of the vilification of staff
that comes in on these incoming letters because we treat it
for what it's worth, I can tell you, at least this
commissioner does.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think we all do.
Yes.
QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: A question of the
Commission.
I was just wondering, New Hampshire has a pilot
program whereby you can select your energy as you would your
long distance carrier and I just wondered what impact you
feel this is going to have on the nuclear industry, what
impact it would have on our job here and, if you dare,
possibly put a time frame on these changes.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I certainly will not put a time
frame on these changes, I would not dare to do that.
You heard me say in my opening remarks that this
whole restructuring in the electric utility and electric
40
power generation and distribution business is a particular
concern to us and a particular concern from the point of
view of operational safety in nuclear plants but also from
the point of view of a specific responsibility that we have
to look out for and that has to do with decommissioning
funding.
So, in addition to issuing policy statements
which, you know, we can issue as many policy statements as
the day is long but we are doing certain specific things.
Namely, we are focusing on inspection in terms of what
effect economic stress might have on operational safety and
sensitizing our inspectors to be sensitive to that, being
able to document it but particularly looking at it as part
of our overall evaluation of plant performance.
Secondly, we are specifically strengthening our
own abilities to do certain kinds of financial reviews. As
these various changes in the industry occur, to look at
whether we need to have some concern about the financial
capacity of these plants to do what has to be done. We
primarily come at it from the operational safety side.
And, finally, we are probably moving along the
line of some kind of rulemaking in the space having to do
with certain reportability requirements but particularly as
they relate to decommissioning funding and decommissioning
funding assurance itself.
You are letting us off early. Are you sure you want to let us go? [Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You're sure? Thank you very much. [Applause.]
[Whereupon, at 2:40 p.m., the meeting was concluded.]
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