[Federal Register Volume 64, Number 78 (Friday, April 23, 1999)]
[Notices]
[Pages 20025-20026]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 99-10191]
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Regulatory Oversight Process Pilot Workshop
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Notice of meeting.
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SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will hold a public
workshop to provide information to the NRC, industry, and public
representatives of the participating pilot sites with the new PI
reporting, inspection, assessment, and enforcement processes. This
meeting is open to the public.
DATES: The workshop will be held May 17 through May 20, 1999.
Registration will be held on May 17, 1999 from 10 a.m to noon. The
hours of the workshop will be from 12 to 5 p.m. on May 17, 8 a.m. to 5
p.m. on May 18 and May 19, and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 20.
ADDRESSES: The workshop will be held at the Philadelphia Airport Ramada
Inn, 76 Industrial Highway (Rt. 291), Essington, PA 19029. The hotel
phone number is (610) 521-9600 or (800) 277-3900.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: August Spector at 301-415-2140 or Lee
Miller at 301-415-1361, Mail Stop: O-5H4, Inspection Program Branch,
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Background
On March 22, 1999, the staff issued SECY-99-007a Recommendations
for Reactor Oversight Process Improvements (Follow-Up to SECY-99-007),
forwarding the staff's recommendations for a new reactor oversight
process. This paper forwarded additional information and noteworthy
changes to the staff recommendations for improving the regulatory
oversight process initially provided by SECY-99-007 Recommendations for
Reactor Oversight Improvements. This paper also responds to the
Commission's comments from the January 20, 1999, briefing on SECY-99-
007 and provides the staff's responses to public comments.
The following issues represent a brief summary of the concepts
presented in SECY-99-007A.
Over the last 10 years, commercial nuclear power plants have been
operated safely and overall plant performance has improved. This
improvement in plant performance can be attributed, in part, to
successful regulatory oversight. Despite this success, the agency has
noted that the current reactor oversight process (1) is at times not
clearly focused on the most safety important issues, (2) consists of
redundant actions and outputs, and (3) is frequently subjective, with
NRC action taken in a manner that is at times neither scrutable nor
predictable.
In the new regulatory oversight process:
There will be a risk-informed baseline inspection program
that establishes the minimum regulatory interaction for all licensees.
Thresholds will be established for licensee safety
performance, below which increased NRC interaction would be warranted.
Adequate assurance of licensee performance will require
assessment of both performance indicators (PIs) and inspection
findings.
Inspection findings will be evaluated for significance and
integrated with PIs in timely manner to support overall assessment of
licensee performance.
Both PIs and inspection findings will be evaluated against
risk-informed thresholds, where feasible.
Crossing a PI threshold and an inspection threshold will
have the same meaning with respect to safety significance and required
NRC interaction.
The baseline inspection program will cover those risk-
significant attributes of licensee performance not adequately covered
by PIs.
The baseline inspection program will also verify the
accuracy of PI data collection and analysis and provide for event
response, as appropriate.
Enforcement actions will be focused on issues that are
risk significant.
Guidelines will be established for identifying and
responding to unacceptable licensee performance.
Additionally, the staff will pilot the new reactor oversight
process during a 6-month period beginning in June, 1999. The purpose of
the pilot program is to exercise the new processes (PI reporting,
inspection, assessment, and enforcement), to identify process and
procedure problems and make appropriate changes and, to the maximum
extent possible, evaluate the effectiveness of the new process. Full
implementation of the new oversight process will commence pending
successful completion of the pilot program, as measured against pre-
established success criteria. A notable feature of the pilot program is
the use of the Pilot Program Evaluation Panel, consisting of NRC, NEI,
industry, public, and State representatives, to aid in evaluating the
effectiveness of the pilot program.
Scope of the Public Workshop
The NRC will hold a four day workshop from May 17-20, 1999, to
review and familiarize NRC, industry, and public representatives of the
participating pilot sites with the new PI reporting, inspection,
assessment, and enforcement processes. However, representatives from
all plants are welcome to attend the workshop. The pilot plants are:
Hope Creek, Salem Units 1 and 2, FitzPatrick, Prairie Island Units 1
and 2, Quad Cities Units 1 and 2, Shearon Harris, Sequoyah Units 1 and
2, Ft. Calhoun, and Cooper.
Attendees should be familiar with the key attributes of the new
oversight processes and their associated program documents and
understand the key differences between the new processes and the
existing oversight processes. Copies of SECY-00-007 and SECY-99-007a
are available on the internet at http:/www.nrc.gov/NRC/COMMISSION/
SECYS/index.html#1999.
The agenda for the workshop will consist of the following:
Day 1: registration and check-in, background and concept
review, review of performance indicators (PIs), thresholds, and PI
manual.
Day 2: practical examples of PI data reporting, and
inspection procedure review and documentation.
[[Page 20026]]
Day 3: significance determination process (including
practical examples), and new enforcement policy.
Day 4: assessment process review (including practical
examples).
Workshop Pre-Registration
Workshop attendees are requested to pre-register with the NRC
approximately two weeks before the workshop. Attendees may pre-register
in either of the following ways:
1. Fax to Sun Hoon Kim at (301) 415-5106.
2. Mail to: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Attn: Sun Hoon Kim,
Office of Human Resources, Mailstop T3D45, Washington, DC 20555-0001.
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 19th day of April 1999.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Cornelius F. Holden,
Acting Chief, Inspection Program Branch, Division of Inspection Program
Management, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
Regulatory Oversight Process Pilot Workshop Registration, Philadelphia
Airport Ramada Inn, Essington, PA, May 17-20, 1999
(Please Print)
Name:------------------------------------------------------------------
(Last) (First)
Title:-----------------------------------------------------------------
Address:---------------------------------------------------------------
(department, division or unit)
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(organization/facility)
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(street or P.O. box)
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(city) (state) (zip code)
Pilot Plant (Yes/No)---------------------------------------------------
Telephone (business): __________ (ext)____
E-mail:----------------------------------------------------------------
Name (for name badge):-------------------------------------------------
Mail your registration form to: Sun Hoon Kim, Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, Office of Human Resources, Mail Stop T3D45, Washington,
DC 20555.
Fax your registration form to: 301-415-5106, Attention: Sun Hoon
Kim.
THIS REGISTRATION FORM IS FOR THE WORKSHOP ONLY.
PLEASE MAKE HOTEL RESERVATIONS SEPARATELY.
[FR Doc. 99-10191 Filed 4-22-99; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
