1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION DALE E. KLEIN, CHAIRMAN GREGORY B. JACZKO, COMMISSIONER PETER B. LYONS, COMMISSIONER KRISTINE L. SVINICKI, COMMISSIONER UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION BRIEFING ON MATERIALS LICENSING AND SECURITY +++++ WEDNESDAY APRIL 30, 2008 +++++ The Commission convened at 9:30 a.m., the Honorable Dale E. Klein, Chairman presiding.
2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 NRC STAFF: LUIS REYES, Executive Director for Operations MARTIN VIRGILIO, Deputy Executive Director for Materials, Waste, Research, State, Tribal and Compliance Programs CHARLES MILLER, Director, Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental Management Programs (FSME) ROBERT LEWIS, Director, Division of Materials Safety and State Agreements, FSME PATRICIA HOLAHAN, Director, Division of Security Policy, Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response (NSIR) JOSEPH HOLONICH, Director, Program Planning, Budgeting and Program Analysis Staff, FSME
3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Good morning. We're looking forward to hearing the update and the activities. I know this is an area that a lot of activity has occurred. What I'd like to comment on before we start is I thank the Agreement States for their participation. As we all know, they have a lot of activity and involvement in this. I think it's very important that we communicate through them as we go through all of these processes. Any comments from my fellow Commissioners? COMMISSIONER JACZKO: I would just say a few words. This is one of several briefings we've had on some of these topics. What I will certainly be looking for out of this is to hear -- especially as I reviewed the slides it wasn't exactly clear to me in some areas, exactly the actions we'll be taking to address these issues. I think we have spent a lot of time reviewing and studying. I think we're at the point now where we need to start engaging in actions. I think I continue to believe in particular on the cesium chloride issue that rulemaking is the only way we're going to resolve this issue for the very simple reason that rulemaking provides a forum to solicit the wide diversity of stakeholder comments that we will get on this issue. I do not think we can solve this issue any other way. I can't
4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 tell you right now what I think the solution is, but I firmly believe that that is the right process. The sooner we get involved in rulemaking, the sooner we will get all the views on the table to be able to make good informed decisions. So, I certainly hope to hear in particular on that issue how we will be moving forward. I saw a lot of discussion about reporting to the task force, the Radiation Security Task Force, but no real sense of how we take that and translate that into regulatory action. And I think that's the point at which we are. So, as I said, I hope to hear. If not, I'll probably explore that some more in questions. Thank you. COMMISSIONER LYONS: I guess I'd just comment that there's certainly no question that radioactive source material security and controls is one of the biggest challenges facing the agency. In looking through the slides, it's very impressive the amount of progress we have made and I'm looking forward to further discussion on that today. Major challenges, clearly here, including the cesium chloride that Commissioner Jaczko mentioned. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Luis? MR. REYES: Good morning, Chairman and Commissioners. The staff is ready to brief the Commission on materials licensing and
5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 security. You stole my thunder. I was going to say I know there's a lot of interest from the Commission. We're excited to be here this morning because there's been a lot of effort from the staff to be responsive to the challenge in front of us. Since we have a lot of material to cover, so I'm going to just turn it over to Marty. MR. VIRGILIO: Thank you. Good morning, Chairman. Good morning, Commissioners. I want to make sure that you knew the people at the table. I think you do. Rob Lewis, Trish Holahan, Charlie Miller, Joe Holonich will all be speaking to you today about the program. I just wanted to kick off with a few opening remarks if I could. We met with the Commission back in March on the state of the technical programs. Commissioner Svinicki, I recognize you weren't here for that briefing, but we did have a very good discussion about, I thought, radioactive materials security and what we've implemented since the events of 9/11. I'm quite proud of all the program activities and changes we've made around radioactive source materials since the September 11 events. With that being said, today you're going to hear more about initiatives and new initiatives that we have undertaken to advance and
6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 enhance where we are in the area of security. You're also going to be hearing about some of the challenges we face in the materials security area. I'd like to recognize as the Chairman did the close and very good cooperation we've had from our partners, both the Federal partners and our Agreement State partners. I really want to acknowledge their commitment to safety and security and the support that they've provided to us. I'd also like to support -- to recognize the support the Commission has provided us. We've had good policy, good direction and we've had resources to implement that policy, which we really very do much appreciate. One of the challenges that we talked about at the technical meeting on programs was the integration of all the various initiatives and recommendations that we have in front of us. This remains a major challenge for us and Charlie Miller in his presentation is going to talk about the integration of those initiatives. I'd also like to highlight one additional near-term challenge related to our safety programs. In parallel with making enhancements to our security programs, we still need to implement our safety programs. And balancing these two issues of safety and security has been a challenge and I expect
7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 much. MR. MILLER: Thank you, Marty. Good morning. I'd like to thank the Commissioners for the opportunity of this briefing. You're going it to be a more significant challenge as we move forward toward implementation of additional enhancements. At some point this may actually influence the priority and the speed of the security enhancements, but again, I feel like since 9/11 we've put a very good base of security program enhancements in place and now we're continuing to refine, but we do have very good base programs in place. So, we must continue to maintain safety as we develop these additional security enhancements and safety is a priority and we cannot afford to falter in any way in this area. So, as we think about the integration piece of this and as Charlie talks about how we're going to integrate all these various recommendations, I think about this like a deck of cards. If you split the deck, you've got safety and security. Shuffle the deck in the end and so as we prioritize and integrate we have to ensure that we continue to implement our safety programs. Again, it's an area where we cannot falter. With that, I'll turn it over to Charlie Miller. Thank you very
8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 to hear from both FSME and NSIR today. FSME and NSIR have worked very closely on these activities and I think you'll see the relationship from our collaboration in this discussion. As you did, Chairman, and as also Luis and Marty did, I'd like to acknowledge the Organization of Agreement States and the CRCPD as well as our Federal partners from Homeland Security and the National Security Administration, all of which are in the audience today. The leadership from the OAS and CRCPD are here. We've got representatives from our Federal partners here. I think it shows the interest and the coordination that we've been trying to do with all of those organizations. Our presentation this morning is going to cover a number of areas: security and control program activities, the actions that we've taken to respond to findings by the GAO's report which followed the 2007 sting, the status of the National Source Tracking System and associated rulemaking, the status of future developments for Web-Based Licensing and our plan for incorporating the recommendations of the Independent External Review Panel, which briefed you in March and getting that into our plan as we integrate all the activities together. After you hear about each of these individual activities, I'd like to take a few minutes at the end of the staff presentation to share my
9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 vision of what I see us doing in the next year or so to integrate these activities and to work toward long-term program stability and efficacy. Next slide, please. This has been a very busy and productive year in the material security area. We've had a lot of significant accomplishments including the issuance of fingerprinting orders and a continued successful implementation of the increased controls. Increased controls inspections continue to be on track with many completed ahead of schedule. Improved interagency coordination and communications has been accomplished with DNDO and NNSA. Significant progress has been made on the GAO Action Plan including the development of revised pre licensing guidance and appropriate short and long-term recommended actions for addressing identified potential vulnerabilities in the licensing process. NSTS is moving forward to completion of the first release and is on track to continue the development of the second phase. In close coordination with the Agreement States, staff has published in the Federal Register an approach for inclusion of sources down to one-tenth of Category 3 level for public comment. Staff has developed an aggressive but realistic plan for getting Web-Based Licensing back on track. Staff is also aggressively
10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 pursuing an approach for providing an automated means for verifying the authenticity of the licensee and for ensuring that licensees only obtain radioactive materials that they're authorized to receive. I'd be remiss if I didn't try to take a moment to try and talk about some of the Agreements States positions given our close interactions. The Agreement States believe strongly in the need to be actively involved in the multiple ongoing efforts towards materials security activities. Towards that end, many Agreements State representatives are serving on various working groups associated with 31 security activities. I'd just like to take a moment to give you some of those statistics and you'll hear more at the end of the presentation today. We've currently got 31 working groups on both safety and security activities in the materials area. The Agreement States have over 50 representatives supporting us on that. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Can you provide a list for us of what those 31 working groups are? MR. MILLER: We certainly can. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: We don't have it in the background material. MR. MILLER: We can certainly provide that. That's very
11 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 easily done. We have that list. The executive boards of both the Organization of Agreement States and the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors have been staying up-to-date on evolving issues and directly engaging the state radiation control programs when necessary and have provided comments on the report of the Independent External Review Panel. Secondly, with regard to Agreement State positions, additional future regulatory actions with regard to security should be prudently done in a timely manner, evaluated with respect to the impact on public health and safety and health and safety and security must be considered hand in hand. I think that their participation in all these working groups is evidence of their interest and willingness to work with us, but you'll hear more later with regard to as we've got this many, it's becoming somewhat of a challenge to make sure all the activities are integrated. In the next slide, I'd just like to use this as a little bit of a teaser for later in the presentation. What you see here is a chart that we've put together that shows the staff's concept of a life cycle of radioactive source components for security. This cycle displays the security approach beginning with source production all the way to disposal; sort of a cradle to grave
12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 approach. In the final chart of this presentation at the end of the briefing today, I'll demonstrate how each of the security activities fit into each stage of this life cycle and trying to integrate these activities together. Again, I'd like to emphasize the close coordination that NRC staff is doing on this, especially between FSME and NSIR. In that regard, I'd like to turn over the presentation at this time to Trish Holahan from NSIR. MS. HOLAHAN: Thank you, Charlie. Chairman, Commissioners, good morning. The next slide indicates what we've already been doing before 9/11. It was focused on mainly safety events. It wasn't focused on malevolent actions. We had regulations in place in Part 20, 20.18.01 and 18.02 to require licensees to secure from authorized removal of access licensed materials that are in controlled or restricted areas and in 18.02 they were required to maintain surveillance of those devices. As a result of the orphan sources program, we put in place a lost source enforcement policy. We implemented the general license registration database and licensees were required to perform an annual physical check to improve accountability. The terms RDD, radiological dispersal device or radiological exposure device weren't even considered. The IAEA code of conduct was
13 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 already in development well before 9/11 and it was actually published in March of 2001. And then in the Board of Governors meeting on September 10th of 2001 it was said to go on to be revised and it was finally revised in 2003. So, with that -- the next slide. We've applied a risk informed graded approach to enhance -- significantly enhance materials security. We believe that we have significantly enhanced security since 9/11. We issued -- right after 9/11 NRC and DOE got together and issued a report on radiological dispersal devices. In June 2002, the Secretary of Energy and the NRC Chairman met to discuss the adequate protection of inventories on nuclear materials that could be used in an RDD. The joint NRC/DOE report entitled "Radiological Dispersal Devices: An Initial Study to Identify Radioactive Materials of Greatest Concern and Approaches to their Tracking, Tagging and Disposition" was issued in May 2003. They were also dealing with revising the Code of Conduct and we were instrumental in the Code of Conduct being what it is today. And the U.S. has made a non-legally binding commitment to implement the code recommendations.
14 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 We issued a risk informed approach to issue orders. We issued orders to panoramic and underwater irradiators in June 2003. We issued them to manufacturers and distributors in January of '04. And we issued orders transporting radioactive materials quantities of concern which were category 1 quantities of material in July 2005. We also issued orders for access to safeguards for fingerprinting requirements for those licensees that had access to safeguards. We issued those orders in August of '06 and we issued orders to those licensees, basically the panoramic irradiators the M&D's and the RAM QC licensees, as well as others, for access to material in October of 2006. Then we're planning on issuing non-M&D orders to those licensees, but those will only be upon request. We haven't done any yet and the RIS will inform non-M&D service providers of this opportunity. We also have increased controls and fingerprinting for increased controls. Those will be dealt with in a later slide. Next slide. We have three major efforts on interagency coordination. We have the Radiation Source Security and Protection Task Force, which came out of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. I'll get into that more later. The Nuclear Government Coordinating Council. DHS leads the Nuclear Government Coordinating Council for critical infrastructure
15 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 among the nuclear sector. NRC routinely coordinates and updates its activities with its Federal partner through the GCC. NRC supports an integrated and coordinated approach to enhancing security. These activities are put in place through the GCC matrix. I think you've all seen the radioactive source matrix that has upwards of 41 actions on it. We are constantly updating that on a quarterly basis. We meet with our Federal partners. The GCC has now invited Agreement States and nonAgreement States. There are four members all currently from Agreement States, but they opened up the doors so that Agreements States and nonAgreement States can participate in that. NRC has also initiated periodic trilateral meetings with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration to coordinate on source security issues because we found out that when we coordinate we get a better product. The purpose of these trilateral meetings is to enhance coordination and awareness of each agency's activities. Most recent issues of that group include enhancing security of cesium chloride blood irradiators. And we had a meeting on Monday with the Nuclear Sector Coordinating Council, which includes industry about those efforts.
16 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 The Agreement States have been involved in the hardening efforts and it's really what we're putting on cesium chloride irradiators to delay adversaries getting in. Also, there's securing the city's initiative, which is focused on New York right now and the global threat reduction initiative, which is focused worldwide, but also domestically. And then NRC accompanies and participates in security assist visits by DNDO and NNSA. They recommend things above the increased controls. They're not doing anything to implement the increased controls, but it's above and beyond what the increased controls require and that's by request. The next slide. The Energy Policy Act established the Radiation Source Security and Protection Task Force. The Energy Policy Act specifically named the NRC Chairman or designee to be head of that group. Charlie Miller was designated by the previous Chairman to head up the Radiation Source Task Force. They also named 11 other agencies as members. Two additional Federal agencies were invited to participate. The agencies include the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, Department of Justice, Department of State, Department of National Intelligence, Central
17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Intelligence Agency, FEMA, the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency, HHS and OSTP as members. And then also OAS and CRCPD were included in the Energy Policy Act to be nonvoting members. So, we've included them as well. As I mentioned, Charlie Miller was designated by the Chairman to chair the task force and I'm a member of the task force. The Energy Policy Act also specified eight areas that the task force was to evaluate. The first report was provided in August of 2006 and the task force plans to systematically advance the information contained in the National Academy's report for decision making and identification of long-term issues. What we're planning on doing is putting everything through the interagency task force. So, the National Academy recommendations will be part of that. It's a primary vehicle for advancing issues across the government. There are currently four active subgroups, which include radiation sources, cesium chloride and alternative technologies. The other active subgroup is the public education subgroup, which is chaired by DHS and was tasked with developing an action plan for a coordinated public education campaign that could be geared to reduce fears of
18 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 radioactivity. Several parallel efforts, the Energy Policy Act also required the NAS study to be developed and that's being submitted and DOE had to submit a report on alternative technologies. The next slide. The Radiation Sources Subgroups was tasked with reevaluating the list of reflective sources that warrant enhanced security and protection to determine if any changes are necessary. The subgroups work will tier on DHS's National Infrastructure Protection Plans and the subgroup is tasked with two specific tasks at the moment. They're going to define a Federal definition of what constitutes a significant RDD and RED and report to the task force by May 2008. And they're also going to reevaluate the list of isotopes and threshold values that warrant enhanced security and protection and that report is due in November 2008 to the task force. One of the things that the GCC matrix identified, we don't have a Federal definition of a significant RDD or RED. So, that's the charge of the group and all parties are involved in that including an Agreement State representative. The definition may be based on various consequences of concern, which may include economic, physical, psychological and social consequences as well as health impacts. So, it's a broader definition than
19 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 what we routinely looked at an RDD with. Next slide. The cesium chloride subgroup was tasked with conducting a study to assess the feasibility of phasing out the use of cesium chloride in a highly dispersible form. This study was to consider the availability of alternative technologies for the scope of current uses, safe and secure disposal of existing material, international safety and security implications. So, they have a broad range of recommendations all the way from phasing out cesium chloride in its entirety to enhanced security of cesium chloride. The subgroups final report is due in August. In the next couple of months, we're working with the Government Coordinating Council to have a public workshop on the NAS recommendations as well as on the cesium chloride recommendations and that will feed into whether or not we need to do a rulemaking. Also, there are vendor site visits being conducted by an NRC and Agreement State working group to determine the physical and chemical forms of cesium chloride that are currently used. Next slide. The Alternative Technologies Subgroup was tasked with evaluating financial incentives, research needs for alternative technologies and designs and the cost benefits of potential alternatives for category one and two sources. The NAS study was being used as a starting point for that
20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 effort. They've had two meetings since the NAS report has come out and they've almost finalized a charter. Then they're going to have the report due by April of 2009. The National Academy Study significantly advanced the NRC's knowledge of alternative technologies to radiation sources and addresses the Congressional mandate in Section 651 of the Energy Policy Act. This effort started in July 2006 with a grant from NRC and the National Academy completed the study and issued the public report on February 20th. This report in combination with two other studies mandated by the Energy Policy Act -- I referred to them previously. The DOE report was specifically targeted to deliver a report to Congress in a year. That was delivered in August of 2006. Also, the Chairman's Task Force or the Interagency Task Force on Source Security and Protection was chartered to look at alternative technologies. There are five recommendations; four for the government and one for a professional society. We're looking to the Radiation Source Security and Protection Task Force Subgroups on cesium chloride, alternative technologies and radiation sources to deal with those recommendations.
21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Also, we're involving the ACMUI as the vehicle for getting medical community input on the NAS study. The NAS study deals with cesium chloride broader than just the medical community. Next slide. Can you go to the next slide, please? I wanted to touch on a number of materials security rulemakings and progress for a plan to enhance security in public health and safety. NSIR is developing the technical basis for three of the rulemakings and working with FSME to promulgate the rulemakings. So, we're chartered with developing the technical basis because we have the security expertise and working with FSME to implement the rule making. There are new regulatory requirements to replace existing orders. The accessibility and background checks including fingerprinting, the proposed rule is due in June of '09. Enhanced security at materials facilities. The proposed rule is due to the Commission in February '09. In the area transportation security, the technical basis for the radioactive materials quantities of concern -- I signed off on it today. So, it will go to FSME and public meetings have been conducted to solicit public comments already. So, that proposed rule is due in February of '09 as well. In addition, NSIR has provided technical support for the GL
22 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 restrictions rule making to limit the maximum activity allowed in a GL device and that's really based on the Code of Conduct where it's going and where it's headed. The Agreement States encourage rulemaking in future security activities because it provides the most effective way to obtain input from a broad base of stakeholders. I know you've heard that before, but the Agreement States feel very strongly that orders are fine, but we need to do rulemaking. And now I'd like to turn it over to Rob Lewis. MR. LEWIS: Good morning, Mr. Chairman and good morning Commissioners. Generally speaking, my part of our presentation moves from issues that are in the formative stage to issues that are in the implementation stage. Although as Commissioner Jaczko pointed out in his opening remark, it's sometimes a gray area in all these activities. And everything I will talk to you today about is really the work of the NRC staff, especially the regional staff and the Agreement State staff. On increased controls, as Trish mentioned, we have issued increased controls to all licensees authorized to possess a Category 1 and 2 materials as defined by the IAEA Code of Conduct. The States and NRC have issued increased controls
23 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 requirements at this point to 348 NRC licensees and over 1,700 licensees nationwide. The increased controls focus on things such as unescorted access and detecting or preventing unauthorized unescorted access. They also require coordination with local law enforcement, increased attention to transportation and increased accounting of material. They also focus on trustworthiness and reliability in determining who should have unescorted access to larger quantities of radioactive material. The orders were, as I mentioned, issued to all licensees possessing Category 2 or higher quantities as defined in their license and many of the licensees, of course, didn't actually possess those quantities, so that's the reason we issued over 1,000 orders and we only have about 350 licensees implementing them. The initial inspections for the increased controls have been completed for all of the high priority licensees. And the remaining inspections are scheduled to be completed by June 2009 in accordance with our inspection manual. The first round of inspections were done through a temporary instruction. The second and subsequent periodic inspections will be done through revisions to our manual chapter and inspection procedures, which are under way right now. Future security inspections are envisioned to be a
24 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 component of the routine safety inspections, so we won't need to have special inspections. I would note at this point on the issue of cesium chloride that the NRC regions have accelerated their inspections of the irradiators and expect to be done by the end of -- I believe its September. Those were originally would be due in June of 2009. That's one of the specific actions we took in recognition of the NAS findings being issued. We are also not only inspecting the increased controls, but we're also inspecting the higher priority orders that Trish mentioned about manufacturer and distributor and irradiators, panoramic irradiators and RAM QC transportation. Between NRC and Agreements States, approximately 1,100 increased controls inspections were completed in the first year. About 272 out of the -- about 272 licensees by NRC have been inspected. We have about 50 to go; a little more than 50 to go. We also have sponsored training. In addition to our efforts to train the Agreement States under the routine manual chapter for qualification we have had special increased controls training for NRC and Agreement State personnel. We have trained under our routine program for training have trained almost 200 Agreement State people since January. And under the
25 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 increased controls program we have trained a total of 353 individuals. We held sessions this year in Florida and in New Mexico on increased controls training. The performance of the regions and Agreement States in implementing the increased controls regulatory program is being reviewed through our IMPEP program. May I turn now to fingerprinting? As directed in SRM 2007-011, the NRC issued orders on December 5th imposing fingerprinting requirements and criminal history checks on anyone allowed unescorted access for Category 1 and 2 materials. So, essentially these supplemented the T&R, the trustworthiness and reliability aspects of the increased controls orders that had been previously issued about two years prior. About 1,000 fingerprinting orders were issued in December. Of these, about 350 NRC licensees will be required to implement fingerprinting and they're required to have it implemented by June 2nd, so, about a month from now. We're working with a very small set of licensees. We think the great majority of the 350 are on track to implement. We're having conversations with about 10 to 15 licensees that are having some implementation problems, but we think we can work through those before June.
26 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 New York. I'd like to acknowledge at this point the State's efforts to get the fingerprinting requirements in place. Several of them even had to pass emergency legislation. It was a great effort and we're on track due in part to their efforts. The 33 States and one late is a total of 34. And of course, we have 35 Agreement States. Pennsylvania was issued the fingerprinting orders by NRC before the transition. In December, all the nationwide licensees will have to have fingerprinting in place. As I mentioned under increased controls, there's The Agreement States have until June 5th to issue their compatible fingerprinting requirements. To date, 33 Agreement States have submitted packages for NRC to review their legally binding licensing conditions for fingerprinting. Twenty-one have been reviewed and approved by the NRC staff. One remains; one Agreement State has indicated they will be late, but they do have a plan to have fingerprinting in place by September. And actually, we have a briefing of the Commission technical assistants scheduled next week to update the Commission offices on that. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Which state is that? MR. LEWIS: The state that has told us they will be late is
27 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 approximately 1,800 licensees affected. If you take an average of 10 staff per licensee -- we heard yesterday from ACMUI some hospitals may have many more than that, but radiographers maybe have a lot less than 10. So, a rough guess of 10, you can imagine that we'll have 20,000 people fingerprinted by the end of the year and background checks nationwide. Those 20,000 people would be the only people with unescorted access to the radioactive sources. We've also done training on fingerprinting quite extensively. We held five workshops around the country in February. These workshops were focused for licensees. They were supported by NRC, all the offices at headquarters as well as the region's and Agreement State staff. The staff has also supported Agreement State workshops and we've offered the Agreement States that if they want to hold workshops after June when they have their implementation we'd be more than happy to support them in those workshops as well. All the issues regarding fingerprinting. There are several implementation issues; people asking questions about exactly how it would work. Many of them are simple, many of them are complex. It's a very large breadth of licensee's activities and licensee sophistication. That's resulting in a lot of questions and we have the
28 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 implementation of increased working group working, which includes NRC and Agreement State staff working on implementation, Qs&As. We have those Qs&As posted on the web site for everybody to see at any given time. You need a password to get on there. We seem to be on track. I'll turn now to the GAO investigation from last year and the NRC actions since then. In May 2007, the Government Accountability Office issued a report describing an investigation they did in which they applied for and obtained an NRC license. They subsequently altered that license and ordered material from one of the suppliers of portable gauges. They altered the license in such a way that they could order enough material, in their opinion, to be a consequence of concern. They also had a parallel investigation under way in an Agreement State that was aborted when the state asked to come out and visit the applicant's site. In July of 2007, there was a hearing in the Senate on this issue as well as the permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ report that was closely paralleled to the GAO investigation. Furthermore, the NRC Office of Inspector General had issued a report regarding this activity. Those reports were taken on by the staff in developing an action plan which was presented to the Commission
29 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 in SECY-07-0147 on August 25th of 2007 followed by a Commission briefing and all of the activities that I'll mention in the next several slides resulting from that action plan. Since the action plan was issued, the NRC and Agreement States have continued to pursue both short-term and long-term solutions and actions on these issues. Regarding our action plan, immediately after and actually even before the GAO report was issued we took several immediate actions to revoke the license that we had mistakenly issued as well as review all the existing licenses for an extent of condition and see if there were any other possibilities as well as several other actions, including, we began immediately doing pre licensing meetings and visits. The action plan itself was divided into three discrete activities: an independent external review panel, a pre licensing working group and a materials program working group. The NSTS, the National Source Tracking System, and Web-Based Licensing were also rolled into the action plan in a way because we viewed -- we revisioned those activities and kind of view those as the long-term solution to solving the issues that were identified by the GAO in the Senate and the IG. We have a staff identified issue as well as part of the action plan, which is general licensing rulemaking in which our current
30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 regulations would allow general licenses for sources that could be Category 2 sources even. That's a theoretical situation, but we don't believe there actually are any Category 2 general license sources, but nevertheless it's a gap in the Regs that someday needs to be fixed. The most pressing issue from the action plan was the trustworthiness of new applicants and interim actions necessary to stop that immediately. I'll mention some of the actions we have taken in that area. But first, the Independent External Review Panel has just briefed the Commission in March. The Independent External Review Panel provided us with eight multi part specific recommendations focused really around three themes. The first theme was that the good faith presumption must be suspended for new applicants and those without a record of performance. The second theme was that NSTS and Web-Based Licensing systems should be integrated to allow real-time and seamless tracking of risk significant radioactive materials. The third recommendation was that security culture must be fully integrated into our licensing program so that when we do licensing reviews we have a security mindset.
31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 For example, if someone has committed to implementing the increased controls, they would say we should go visit the place and see that the increased controls are implemented before we let them order the material. The staff has fully embraced all of these findings, although there are some of the findings that may be necessary to have as long-term solutions, such as the integration of Web-Based Licensing and NSTS. We have already revised the licensing guidance for pre-licensing. It requires pre-licensing site visits and background investigations. I'll mention that on the next slide, I believe. The Independent External Review Panel -- we'll go to the next slide; I'm sorry. The pre-licensing working group issued a report in January and it was endorsed by the NRC and the Agreement States in February for a three month trial period. That three months trial period ends next month. We have in place a process by which we do 100% pre-licensing visits for new applicants. Nationwide, we have done 108 pre-licensing visits under this procedure since February; 18 of which by NRC. I would supplement that by since last June when the GAO report, the immediate corrective actions were issued for that, we've done
32 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 57 more pre-licensing visits. The guidance also includes instructions for processing new applications to determine which applicants are unknown entities and require further checks, such as check through the web site or local business organizations. The pre-licensing guidance, as I mentioned, we have done many visits. It is being implemented by NRC and Agreement States and it will be reviewed through the IMPEP Program, the Integrated Material Performance Evaluation Program. The IMPEPs we have done in the last several weeks have already reviewed that for those states and as the states come due they'll be reviewed for their implementation of that program. The materials program working group is the sole remaining working group alive after the action plan. The material program working group is chaired by NRC and Agreement State representatives. It has three objectives in its charter. The first is to identify short-term solutions regarding transfer of radioactive material to unknown entities. The second is to consider the recommendations of the Independent External Review Panel explicitly. They have delivered their report on that to me last week.
33 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 The third is to review the materials program with an independent mind set to identify any additional gaps that may exist. These are people with quite a bit of licensing experience, both in NRC and Agreement States. They have made their initial recommendations. They delivered them to NRC and Agreement State management. They're currently under review. The initial recommendations involve regulatory approval prior to transfer of certain radioactive material to classes of licensees that may not be well known. For example, a new licensee, of course, but also a place that hasn't ordered anything in several years, the contact has changed. There's several conditions under which their proposal would require regulatory approval prior to transfer. The implementation of this -- oh, and the other aspect of their orders is to address the aggregation issue. They've gone below Category 2 sources into Category 3 sources and even some Category 4 sources. So, the policy issue would be whether to issue orders to licensees down to that level beyond which the NRC hasn't to date issued any security orders. The implementation of this has a lot of cost benefit issues, I
34 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 believe, that we need to work through within NRC management and also with the Agreement States. We owe, I think, the Commission -- we owe you a Commission paper to fully describe the issue and present all the options before you so you can make a fully informed decision. I will now turn it over to Joe Holonich. He's going to present NSTS and Web-Based Licensing. MR. HOLONICH: Thank you, Rob. If you would go to slide
24, please. The National Source Tracking System -- what it is a system that's designed and built to track transactions of IAEA Category 1 and 2 material between different licensees. The system has been designed and it's in development. We're nearing the operational phase getting ready for deployment of it. As we walked through the design and development of it we coordinated extensively with our stakeholders and our partners. This included licensees, the Department of Energy, other Federal agencies and, of course, the Agreement States. Our folks participated in different groups, for example, the Interagency Coordination Committee, which helped lay out the design requirements for the system; the NSTS Working Group which followed it development; and then NSTS Steering Committee. Because the system is nearing operation and is in fact
35 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 operational and can be operated, we've had seven demonstrations for the stake holders. Those demonstrations have been very successful. Am I missing the mic? Is that better? Okay. We've received seven demonstrations to the stake holders. As a result of those demonstrations we've got some good feedback of ways to enhance and improve the system, so we've had some good development and design work as we work with our stakeholders towards getting the system operational. If we could go to slide 25, please. The status of the system is essentially we're nearing completion and ready to deploy it looking towards the end of the year. Our expectation is that we'll deploy it in December of this year. The design and functionality of the system is done. We're currently in the testing phases. We're testing how well it works. We're testing its reliability and we're testing its security. In addition, the contractor has begun to set up the production environment or the operation environment for the system. That will be up at Hanford, Washington. They're installing the production environment right now and they're also hardening the production environment. We will have and OIS has a contractor who has gone out and done a preliminary look at their hardening, but when they're done with the hardening, we will go out and check the hardening of those servers
36 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 and of that system. We're also working with the Office of Information Services on the Managed Public Key Infrastructure Program. This is the program that will give stakeholders and individuals, the users, the credentials to be able to get in and use the NSTS system. This is the first large-scale MPKI effort at the NRC and this is working with a system that is one of the highest levels of user authentications that the NRC has. It's a very complicated process but again, we're in coordination with OIS and we're working with the OIS contract and contractors as they get that in place to be able to get the credentials to the individuals to be able to use the system. Slide 26. The next steps on NSTS. As you know, we have a draft rule that we published that was issued on April 11th. That rule would require the tracking of transactions for Category 3 and one tenth of Category 3 materials in the NSTS. The regulatory analysis for that was presented in SECY-08-0031, which was the rulemaking package. What we're trying to do with that rule is to try to get better control and accountability over those Category 3 and one tenth of Category 3 sources so that there's not a potential for people to aggregate those amounts and get them into quantities that would be Category 2 quantities.
37 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 In addition, we're working on the interface of NSTS and Web-Based Licensing to look at licensing verification activities. We're developing procedures on how to get individuals access to the information and then we're working with the interim inventory as a method for loading the NSTS originally informing the basis for the NSTS so that when it becomes operational in January of next year it's got the information in it. Going on to Web-Based Licensing. We can move to slide 28. Web-Based Licensing was originally envisioned as a system for use by the NRC and by the staff. It was built primarily to modernize legacy systems that the staff was using. That included the license or licensing tracking system, the reciprocity tracking system and the inspection integration system. When Web-Based Licensing was developed we did some coordination with the Agreement States, but because it was mainly an NRC system our coordination with Agreement States for that system wasn't as extensive as it was for National Source Tracking System. Right now, what we're doing is we're looking at changes to the Web-Based Licensing system to get it into -- have it perform functions that would respond to recommendations from the GAO study. Our plan is with the contract is to go forward with a sole source contract to use the system that was currently developed to 65% of
38 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 its capability, use the contractor who developed that to complete that system, make the system compliant with the Americans with Disability Act Section 508 and then be able to give access to other agencies as we release the first version of Web-Based Licensing. We've begun the procurement process for Web-Based Licensing by issuing the notice of intent to use a sole source contract in the Fed Biz Opps this Monday which says to people we plan to go with a sole source and use this contractor who helped us develop the system. Phase Two will give licensees the ability to apply for licenses and application to their licenses. That was the original intent of Web-Based Licensing, but now we've moved that back to the second release of the system. We'll also have the reciprocity tracking and inspection integration function moved into there and then tracking of import and export licenses will be done and released to the system. Going on to the next slide. Talking about the third component or system, the Automated License Verification Service or system. This entity was intended to be an automated way where individuals could check the legitimacy of licenses and determine whether licensees could receive the amount of material they wanted to get.
39 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 It was in response to both the GAO report and the IERP recommendations. What we're looking to do is develop the system and have it deployed hopefully in -- have it developed in fiscal year '10 and deployed in early fiscal year '11. Right now, we don't know what is the best way to do this. Our first phase of this approach is to ask a contractor to look at some design and give us a recommendation of is it better to have a third system that extracts the data from NSTS and Web-Based Licensing and tells you the answers to the questions? Or is it better to embed this into one of the two systems: Web-Based Licensing or NSTS. We don't know what the best approach is and so what we want to do is this year starting soon go to a contractor and ask them to look at some design and give us some recommendation of what's the best way to do it. The process in doing it then would be to go forward with the contract and get the system developed. It would rely on information of Web-Based Licensing. Because Web-Based Licensing was originally an NRC system, we would now have to look at adding Agreement State licensing information to be able to use the system for all Category 1 and 2 licensees -- or all licensees, not just Category 1 and 2 that were in NSTS. And so we would have to look at that.
40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 That's part of what we're doing with the working group pulling that together, getting input and having the Agreement States participate in the working group to help us with the design of that system. That's it for me. I'm going to now turn it over to Charlie who will give us a summary and wrap it up. MR. MILLER: Thank you, Joe. I believe as an agency we've made considerable progress in the past seven years to enhance the security and control of radioactive material usage without losing any focus on the safety issues that have been our primary consideration prior to 9/11. As we've just described, there are a number of efforts which have involved multiple offices within the agency: external working groups, independent panels and other Federal and State partners. In the past year alone, we've had an internal/external program audit by our own Inspector General and by GAO. Our response has required a huge amount of collaboration, which has been and continues to be an ongoing challenge. That said, I think we've been highly successful and have made considerable progress within my office, within the NRC and externally with our licensees, Agreement States and a number of Federal partners, as well as participating in trilateral activities with the Department
41 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 of Homeland Security and NNSA and the Government Coordinating Council. Over the next year, I think our biggest challenge will be to integrate these efforts and leverage each of them to enhance each other. Finally, I think it's worth noting that as I stated earlier in the presentation today, I noted the number of working groups that we have and the number of Agreement State participants that have working groups. This work has proliferated over the last number of years due to all the work that we have on our plate. I think it's time to take a step back and work with the Agreement States to try and determine and try to put some prioritization on all of these efforts because it's just getting to the point where resources are getting strained for both the Agreement States and for us in this regard. Within the next 12 to 18 months, I'd like to take a longer-term and more proactive look at the materials program as I said and integrate these security enhancements into our overall base program so that security and safety go hand in hand. I'd like to ensure that the safety and security interfaces are working as intended and as I stated reprioritize these efforts. I think that in many areas we need to consolidate our gains.
42 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 For example, many of our actions needed to be done through orders so that we did it very quickly. I think the time has come for the consideration of actually making sure that these are permanently put into rulemakings and codified in that way. For example, making several thousand materials licensing decisions, conducting regularly scheduled safety and security inspections and evaluating the adequacy and consistency of Agreement State programs in that regard continues to receive attention and the focus that it deserves. I think that we have to make sure that our program is integrated and make sure that we have a focus on all of these. If I could get the next slide, please. As I mentioned earlier, this slide shows the life cycle of sources. What we've attempted to do here is to try and show -- and I know it's hard to project up onto the screen -- but what we've tried to show here is how all of the activities that we focused on, both internally and externally with our Federal partners and with the Agreement States fits into each phase of the life cycle. If you look at the chart, what you will see is you will see what we've been able to do by today within the inner ring, what we hope to accomplish by the end of this calendar year and then what we hope to
43 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 accomplish in years after that and how each of these interface together in the total life cycle of materials. With an explanation for the colors to make it easier to read, the Energy Policy Act Task Force activities are outlined in blue. The GCC activities and the matrix activities that Trish talked about earlier are in green. The National Academy's recommendations are in red. The GCC activities themselves including the DHS and trilateral activities are in black and the white includes the NRC activities. If you look at some of the examples, you'll see irradiators hardening, source security design and manufacture, the cultural mindset for security, licensing and inspection, the National Source Tracking System, et cetera. I think by using this as a template it helps us to integrate the longer term vision and make sure that we're focused on the challenges ahead. Thank you. MR. REYES: That concludes our prepared remarks and we look forward to your questions. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Thank you very much for a comprehensive and integrated presentation, both on safety and security. In a comment to Commissioner Jaczko's question about the 31 working groups, I think when I look at slide 31, which happens to be 31 working
44 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 groups, I guess -- I'm surprised there's only 31 working groups after looking at that particular picture that you had. We'll begin our questions with Commissioner Jaczko today. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: I guess I would say that with 31 working groups, I'm surprised that anything has been accomplished. I think that certainly as we get that list, I think it would be useful to see if there isn't a way we can trim that down. I've got to believe that there's probably a lot of overlap or unnecessary groups that we're dealing with in the effort. That is a very involved program, I think, as the staff has described and a large number of coordinating groups, collaborative organizations, task forces. I think we do have to be very careful that we don't fall into a position of studying everything to the point that we never get to the decision-making. Certainly, looking at this slide that you've presented I would look at what I think would be the west northwest quadrant, I think, around there. Those are certainly areas that are of interest of me; the EPAct Task Force Cesium Chloride Subgroup, the definition of RDD, the identifying potential changes to the radio nuclides that may be of significance. I think it's great that we work with the task force to come up with those things, but the important point is going to be what we're going
45 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 to do with that information and how we're going to take that information and translate it into regulatory decision-making. That is what, as I said at the beginning, I was hoping to hear it and did not hear a lot about that. I heard a lot about the potential for reports to be issued by the end of this year, but again, this is not new information here. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We had a National Academy study report on cesium chloride. We're anticipating a Defense Safety Board study -- I'm sorry; Defense Science Board report on cesium chloride. I don't think there's that much more information that exists out there on cesium chloride that we don't already have. Issues of developing a methodology to look at how we deal with consequences and looking at a broader scope of consequences. Those are not new issues. Those are issues we simply need to get to the point of making a decision about. I don't think we need more study and I don't think we need more discussion. We need to put this in a process where we can get to decision-making. I do not see that in particular on the issue of cesium chloride. I think in some of the other areas we've made progress in doing that, but again, at this point talking about getting into rulemaking is,
46 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 of course, a long-term process. Just I think, Charlie, what you closed on with the issues of moving into rulemaking for some of the increased controls and those issues, I think, are certainly a lot of work that we will have in front of us to do that. I think it's the right thing to do, absolutely, but again, it is a long-term project. I think these are things at some point we need to get to a conclusion on and I still think we have a long way to go and I think that's unfortunate. I look at the GAO sting and the external review panel report. One of the things that came out of there was modifying the sense of the good faith assumption on the part of our staff. We should, in my view, have an immediate action plan for how we're intending to address that and incorporate that into our training. Maybe we do and maybe you didn't cover that, but again, I think that was a good recommendation. I think everyone here would agree that that is an important issue to address. So, moving forward in addressing those is the most important thing. I think we need to not be afraid to do that. I had a couple specific questions. Joe, I think you touched on it a little bit, but I think it perhaps was lost in what you said. It really gets to the heart of Web-Based Licensing. We talk about this as solving
47 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 some of the issues with license verification. I think that's very important; however, the real issue there is right now Web-Based Licensing system is only intended to cover NRC licenses, which by the day or the year become the smaller and smaller subset of all the licenses that are out there. You made, I think, a brief comment on the need to ultimately incorporate the Agreement States into that program. That is, I think, the biggest challenge right now with the technical challenges of actually developing the infrastructure side of how we're going to do that and I think we need to start thinking about that now so that when 2011 comes around and we have a system, we're not then addressing the issue of how are we going to incorporate Agreement State licensees into that system because it will not be useful if it only covers the very small percentage of licensees that are NRC licensees. So, we talk about that as a solution to that problem, but fundamentally the solution is going to be having a national licensing system that will be able to interface with National Source Tracking, not Web-Based Licensing because that will not cover all the licensees, nor even the majority of the licensees that are out there. So, I think that's going to be an important issue and maybe you can comment a little bit on what the thinking is right now about how
48 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 we're going to do that. MR. HOLONICH: Actually, Rob, I think you might be better in terms of talking about how we can accomplish that through the policy side. MR. LEWIS: Your point was right on. We need to involve the Agreement States now in Web-Based Licensing and in NSTS, but even more so in Web-Based Licensing while it's in its formative stages, rather than when we get too far along. I met with the Agreement States last week and I think we have a plan. The first part of that plan is to have a meeting with all the state people, a special session at the upcoming CRCPD meeting, which is in two weeks in North Carolina. At that meeting we will first of all explain to all the state people what exactly is Web-Based Licensing and how we think it would be used, both the initial release and the long-term vision of how it would be used because it is the -- as I mentioned in my talk the solution -- in the future, all the interim actions we're taking with the working groups and checking transfers and all those things can be done automatically and they should be done automatically through a system such as that. So, professional session at the CRCPD. We would follow that by a working group, a new working group --
49 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Maybe we could have an add shed process for the working groups -MR. LEWIS: -- to develop the ideas that come out of that special session and we would kind of tie the bow on it at the OAS meeting which is in August and we'll have another special session to have a joint -COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Will that ultimately require rulemaking in your view? Do we need to establish a rule that all licensees -- that we have a national regulatory policy that all licensees or all states and all Agreement States will use an electronic license -MR. LEWIS: I'm not sure we've concluded that yet. That's one of the issues we need to explore, especially how the states will use it comes into that question. I think that as we envision the first phase, it would not require rulemaking. MR. MILLER: Commissioner, if I can augment what Rob said. If you look at NSTS and you look at Web-Based Licensing, NSTS is a system that's reported by licensees, both NRC and Agreement States. The Web-Based Licensing aspects require Agreement State participation, our co-regulators, in that regard. One of the things that has become apparent to me in my discussions with the leadership from the Agreement States is that states have their own systems for storing their licensing information.
50 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 The one thing that they can't afford to have is us to stand up a system that we say, "Now here's another system that you've got to take your information and make it go into that system and not use the systems that you have." So, we have to explore with them how can we do this in a way that's not onerous on the individual states, but yet get the information that we need for the national system. That's why we need them right up front. That's why now is the time to get them engaged and we have the advantage of the CRCPD meeting and the state's willingness to make a special session in that meeting to be able to address this. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: I agree. I think that is the important point and I think this may be a more challenging task than it appears right now. I think it's one that we're going to have to really work through and work hard because we have been touting this as the solution to these issues. I think this will take a lot of work to get us there. I have some more questions if we have another round. Thank you CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Commissioner Lyons? COMMISSIONER LYONS: Well, that was an impressive set of briefings on an equally impressive set of challenges. If I were to pick
51 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 just a few areas to compliment, I'd probably start with the work that the staff and the states have done on the fingerprinting, the implementation of that. The status that Rob described, I think, is very, very impressive and that certainly is attributed to the state's involvement and to our staff. I think also the actions we've taken after the GAO sting -you can always wish we'd done them before the GAO sting, but I think a series of very important actions have taken place. Again, my compliments. Perhaps by way of a first question and it's to some extent following on the direction that Commissioner Jaczko was going. We heard about 31 working groups. We heard about 50 Agreement State participants and certainly the Agreement State participant numbers is very impressive, but we also heard about the challenge to integrate the outputs from all of these working groups. I can only imagine how many interfaces there must be as you start to look at the ways in which these working groups share many common aspects. I guess I'm very curious for suggestions on how we can try to seek efficiencies and identify those interfaces and perhaps even reduce
52 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 the number of working groups, which I think would be very positive. By way of one suggestion, I'd wonder about -- maybe of all things a working group on working groups involving the senior staff and the Agreement States to try and sort through this. I almost wonder if we've been adding a working group to solve each new problem when in fact the number of problems do have many commonalities. But Charlie, Marty, I don't know who would want to comment on this? MR. MILLER: I'll take it on. You're right. I think what's happened is if you look at the history of the Agreement State program and our interaction, we're at an all-time high with regard to Agreement State participation in these activities. If you go back many years, I think that during some of the cloudier days of our interactions, the NRC would plow forward, put something in place, impose it on the Agreement States and then they'd have the burden and that didn't cause the best in relations. I think in order to try and improve that a lot and try to have a continuous improvement in the program, the states have got ever increasing involvement in working groups. We stand those up by management directive, so that we make sure that we follow the process. So, we have taken what I'll admit is
53 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 probably -- if you take a step back, a stovepipe look at a lot of this and that was fine when we only had a few working groups going at any given time. But because of all the activities, both in safety and the security, that there's been so many working groups stood up. What we find is that we've really come to the realization that a lot of these working groups do overlap in their activities. And if you have a working group who's working diligently over here to get something done that isn't talking to this group over here, you're going to lose that integration. I think that that's something that's become a reality both for the staff, but it's really been brought to our attention by the Agreement States. That said, any individual member of any working group from any given state cannot necessarily speak for the whole 35 Agreement States at any given time. So, it's important that we try to make sure that there's an oversight and the leadership of the OAS does this all the time. They have their challenges with their constituencies trying to get alignment amongst the Agreement States. They do a wonderful job in that regard. All of that said, I think it's time to take a step back and see if there's a way that we maybe can have some kind of senior management
54 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Marty? MR. VIRGILIO: I think Charlie covered it. COMMISSIONER LYONS: I appreciate those comments, Charlie. I really think we should move ahead with something, whether you call it a working group on working groups or have a better name for it. You referred to senior management oversight. I think that's important, but I'm sure you included in that the senior management of the OAS. MR. MILLER: Absolutely. Whatever we call this would have the leadership, I think, of the OAS involved in this or their representative so that it truly is a group that reflects not only on NRC activities, but Agreement State activities. oversight so that we can maybe not only -- if it reduces the number of working groups, but get better interactions and decide if they can be merged, do we need that many. But more than that, I think there's going to be a need, Commissioner, to have to prioritize some of these activities. We simply can't just work on them all simultaneously. In that regard, we may be coming back to you for some guidance in that regard as we gel that. COMMISSIONER LYONS: Do you want to comment,
55 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Many of the activities, the Chairman knows this very well and he reminds me from his Agreement State times that a lot of the expertise in certain areas is in the Agreement States and in some cases it's more in the Agreement States than it is here. So, to seek their insights is extremely important as we go forward. COMMISSIONER LYONS: Well, I think it's very important that we establish -- exactly what we call it we can debate later. But some sort of entity that looks for efficiencies, looks for overlaps, looks for interfaces. I would hope it also looks for perhaps in the name of efficiency in reducing the number of working groups, but that's probably best left to the group as it works ahead as to how best to organize this. I think it is a situation that certainly has positive attributes because it demonstrates the amount of involvement of the Agreement States with the NRC. I think that's very, very positive, but it also is increasing the management challenge and that needs to be looked at, too. I'm over time and I have questions for a next round. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: I think we may have a second round. Commissioner Svinicki? COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and I want to thank all the presenters for a lot of wonderful information that they've provided this morning. I think being the rookie here my reaction
56 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 and my perspectives are a little different because I didn't live through the development of a lot of these plans with my fellow Commissioners. I am reflecting a little bit -- and this may be a theme. I don't know if this was part of what Commissioner Jaczko was expressing, but there is a lot of activity described and activity doesn't always translate one for one to progress. I think two of the really important statements I heard this morning were from Charlie and from Trish. Trish, you made a statement that we have significantly improved security and Charlie talked about we've made significant progress in the last seven years. I think it's really important not to lose that thread of communicating that. In the blizzard of activity and things yet to be implemented, I think it's important to communicate crisply what has been achieved; not what's planned to be done, but what has been done, what is being done. So, I appreciate that both of you -- it seems so obvious, but I think it's so important to state. That's something I bring with a more recent perspective to this that I think that that's important to communicate. So, the other thing I think about is that we all approach things with plans, but when we embark upon something, we begin to learn the hard lessons of doing it. And for each of you that have some piece of
57 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 this, I'd be curious if you would like to share anything. What are the hard lessons and the sticking points of moving forward from here on your pieces of it that you're working on? MR. LEWIS: I'll try to start. I think that -- that's a good question. The difficulty before us is as Marty started off with is integration and showing the effectiveness. There is, especially in the interagency working groups, there's different perceptions of what would be effective and the basis from which we're moving forward. A lot of those issues are being funneled now through the Energy Policy Act Task Force and we bring them to the table to all the different agencies. The pressures on cesium chloride, I think, will increase in the next year or so. I think that if we make progress on that particular nuclide we'll have to show somehow that that progress was effective and people may start to turn to the next nuclide. What's the next nuclide? It's important to be grounded in a firm basis across the government on what are our foundations? Is it public health and safety? Is it social economic issues? All of those questions and common definition of an RDD is a project that's going on that will be a fundamental piece of that. The EPActs have been issued now. I think that's another
58 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 fundamental piece of that. All the pieces are coming together, but keeping everybody on the same page moving toward is the challenge. COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: Since you raised that topic, I'll just add if anyone else wants to comment. Another question I had is on this notion of -- I like folksy sayings, so I have this saying that says, "If all you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail." If your only objective is risk elimination, as other agencies I think are very focused on eliminating risk, this agency uniquely is obligated not to unnecessarily obstruct or frustrate the beneficial uses of these materials. So, I think in your trilateral working group, in your intergovernmental work, that's something that I think you uniquely have to -- you're obligated to represent that. So, if that's another frustration that you want to throw into the mix with hard lessons, go ahead. MR. VIRGILIO: I would say that that was one of the biggest lessons learned for me. When we started into this, I always knew that we needed to partner with the Agreement States. There was no question about that and maybe it was an issue of implementation and how we could do it better, but what has struck me through the course of the last seven or so years is the need to partner with other Federal agencies; be it DNDO, be it DOE, be it whoever.
59 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 We have developed a network and we've developed strong partnerships today. So, I think we've learned the lessons, but it's come as hard lessons learned. I also would like to comment on your observation new to this. As we went through the presentation, I started writing a list because it is really imbedded and it's really subtle of all the things that we have done, but I think -- I looked at it and thought about the orders that we issued: the controlled access, the alarms, the ties to the local law enforcement authorities. These are very tangible things. The protection of information, the orders that we've issued around transportation, fingerprinting requirements, the interim database that we have today. We talked about the National Source Tracking System, but we didn't touch on the database that's in place today that's used by customs and border protection when they have questions about a source or the legitimacy of a source. We've conducted training. We've had workshops. We've implemented the new policy about pre-licensing guidance. And so we're actually conducting site visits and evaluations for every new license that comes before us. We've issued the rulemaking to expand the National Source
60 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Tracking System, just to name a few. So, you're right, it is very subtle and we need to do a better job of communicating about the things we have done while we talk about the things that are coming in the future. Thank you. MR. MILLER: Commissioner, if I could just add to that. Your comment about our unique role was very important and I think that that's something that the staff deals with every day. If you take cesium chloride, for example, everybody's got a view and the views can be very polarized. We have views all the way from we need to eliminate it right now, to you can't do this because you're going to really injure people. What we need to do as regulators is to make sure that we're fair and that we don't inhibit the safe use of this, but nevertheless have appropriate requirements in place to make sure it's safely and securely done. I think the Commission is in receipt of a letter recently from NSTS give some of their perspectives on the matter, which go to the other end of it. So, we have to make sure that we try to gather all the facts so that we present the Commission with information to allow you to make good decisions on this, but it is very important because we have to make
61 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 sure that we take a balanced approach so that all of our stakeholders are adequately represented. And they do have diverse views depending upon where they come from. MR. REYES: If I could add one more at a very high level. The lesson for me and as I depart to my new position is that the staff had a vision on Web-Based Licensing. Three times we cut that out of the budget. We would not be here talking about that today if we had approved it. So, now I have a mental flag in my head when we're doing the budget process what have we cut three times and the staff keeps saying, "This is going to be a problem. We need to do it." So, the staff has a lot of vision and I'm sorry that we did what we did three times in a row, but we would have had Web-based Licensing if we would have listened to the staff. So, just a comment for the future when you get your budget you may want ask why did we cut for the third time before it becomes a crisis. That's a hard lesson for me. MS. HOLAHAN: I'd like to echo what Charlie and Rob said is I think the important thing is we now have this trilateral initiative ongoing and they bring in different perspectives, but it's very strong and we can work well with our partners.
62 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Also, the interagency task force as you mentioned they come in with very different views; like the FBI and the CIA come in with an intelligence aspect and the NRC is looking at it from a public health and safety as well as common defense and security. COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: Thank you. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Marty, I think you started off with a comment about balancing safety and security. Luis, you talked about budget cuts. We have budget issues and having lived in a small Agreement State, I also understand that they also have budget constraints. So, I guess the question is in our safety, I think in general, we do a pretty good job of risk informed when we look at safety aspects because we've been doing that for a long time. We have a good understanding. I'm not sure we have a good understanding of how we do risk informed security. And so, as Commissioner Svinicki said, if you're in security and you have a hammer, then that's the most important thing and you basically -- you don't worry about other applications. So, I guess the question is when Commissioner Lyons indicated we needed to integrate a lot of our working groups we also need to integrate safety and security and prioritize those as well. Any thoughts
63 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 on how we can do that? MR. VIRGILIO: Yes. One of the tools we developed early on was a framework for looking at the best we could. It's mostly done qualitatively as opposed to quantitatively, but we can look at security issues using that framework. Looking at what we think about the likelihood of the attack or whatever to be, of the event to be, and the consequence of the event. We do have some tools that I think can be brought to bear to help in prioritizing some of these security issues. The challenge, again, as you've said is then making sure that as we move forward we don't lose our focus on safety; that we don't in any way detract from the safety that exists today or needs to be in place today. So, there's a challenge of integrating all of these security activities and then with a deck of cards making sure that we don't lose the safety focus. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Thank you. Well, Trish, what's going to be the next GAO sing? I should point out the only times we've gotten stung has been by GAO, not in those that have been using it, but there have been two. What's the third? MS. HOLAHAN: If I had to guess, it would be general
64 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 licenses. That's my speculation. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: So what that probably tells us is we should have our antennas up. MS. HOLAHAN: We're working on enhancing the security for general licenses. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Joe, since you escaped all the questions, I figure it's your turn. One of the -- and I know that our IT person is back here as well. It seems like we had a fairly significant increase in our National Source Tracking System from what our initial estimates were to what it's ultimately going to cost. Any lessons learned there that will prevent the same thing from happening with Web-Based Licensing? MR. HOLONICH: I think the big lesson learned was that as we were developing NSTS, FSME was also developing and NIST and OMB were developing their guidance and their requirements that these systems were supposed to have. That was probably the main driver that increased the costs. We spent a lot more on security than we ever anticipated so that we didn't do the design work that we were expecting to do and thus we had to get more funds to be able to complete the design work. So, I think the big lesson learned was know and understand
65 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 the security requirements and I think like the nuclear industry 25 years ago, we may be through all of the guidance that we're getting or through a majority of the guidance that we're getting so that we now know and have a better and more stable environment that allows us to understand the security requirements as we go forward to enhance and release Version 2 of NSTS and complete Web-Based Licensing. That was my big lesson learned. It took a lot -- we were changing almost constantly. We would do something and then all of a sudden NIST would have new guidance or there would be something new from OMB and so we were constantly going back and revisiting and changing work that we had done to get these security requirements met. MR. REYES: The first contract for National Source Tracking System did not have the dimensions of security that were being developed. So we got caught into a situation where we started a product and started a design and halfway through it additional requirements that were imposed from the IT security point of view and we have to, in the middle of the road, kind of change the whole process. It was a challenge. Perhaps we could have anticipated, but some things are hard to anticipate. We're still vulnerable. We have things going forward into automating a lot of things in the agency and we don't know -- we think we know all the IT security requirements, but there's always something in
66 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 the horizon that could be changed. We may face these, unfortunately, again. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: One of the things that Commissioner Jaczko had talked about is rulemaking on cesium chloride. I guess my view is sort of like some of the votes. I agree in part and I disagree in part. I think at some point we clearly need to do a rulemaking on cesium chloride. I just don't know if we know enough information yet to go down that path because I still believe that the form of cesium chloride if we do some research we can find some options that don't say just get rid of it. From a security standpoint, it's easy just to say eliminate it, but then that prevents the beneficial uses. So, I do think we still need some technical knowledge of what our real options are as well as better understanding of the alternatives that may be proposed. I think, clearly, at some point we do need to go for the rulemaking, but I think before we get there we still need some technical information. MR. REYES: As you know, there's only one form of -- one chemical form that's being used. There may be others that have the same benefits, not the same vulnerabilities, still being cesium chloride. You're right. I think we can't throw science out the door yet. I think we need to take a look at that as part of our broad look at this issue.
67 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 CHAIRMAN KLEIN: I think Charlie indicated that there are a lot of different views out there on cesium chloride. One aspect, though, is clear is that it is a risk concern from security. Therefore, how we approach it, I think, is what we have to look for in terms of minimizing that undue risk. Commissioner Jaczko? COMMISSIONER JACZKO: I would just follow up on that. I certainly appreciate the Chairman's comments and I would say that I think the beauty of rulemaking is it is a form and an opportunity to get all these pieces of information, all these views in a way and have a process to resolve them, rather than getting letters from NIST, getting letters from other groups, hearing from ACMUI that they have concerns. We should put out a proposal and let people comment on it. That is why I think it's something we can move forward on quickly. It doesn't mean we have the ultimate answer, but that's the whole point of rulemaking, though, is to propose something and get feedback on it. I think we have to be careful with this that we do not try and wait for all the information to come in until we have the perfect answer and then go on into a rulemaking. I think if we do that we will be here by for five or 10 years before we can get there. Part of this, I believe there will need to be motivation for people to look at alternative technologies. The only way we'll have that
68 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 motivation is if we put in requirements at some point that people need to consider alternate technologies. That is, I think, something that's doable and feasible in a rule. I think we could put together a rule that says within 10 years cesium chloride needs to be eliminated in a form that is dispersible unless there is a demonstrated health and safety reason why we can't do that. That's rule language that I could write today. You could put that out for comment and see what we get back. Ten years gives us time to develop the technological solutions. It gives us an opportunity to develop -- to really look at what the situation would be and furthermore it gives us a motivating factor for people to have to address this issue. As I said, my concern is that -- when I used to work on the hill, I remember one of my old bosses, Congressman Markey, used the phrase all the time and it was "paralysis by analysis". I worry that we're stepping a little bit into that realm, with all of our working groups, with all of our task forces, with all of our trilaterals now that we have in addition that we have gotten to the point where we don't want to make a decision, we just want to talk about it some more. I think that's a very real danger here. These are tough decisions and I'm not saying that they're not, but postponing them isn't
69 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 fall, I think. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: So, fall will be the next one? MR. MILLER: Yes. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Any significant changes that we anticipate this year with licensees were there responses from licensees in terms of their providing information from the database? going to make them any easier. In the end, we will still be faced with the same decision which is what is the appropriate use and the appropriate replacements for cesium chloride? I certainly appreciate the Chairman's interest. I think we can move faster, perhaps, than he believes we can and I think we sometimes sell rulemaking short. That's what it's for. It's to get all these views out there and to resolve them in someway. That what we have to do on the Administrative Procedures Act. I don't want to belabor that. I think I've hammered that one too much and I don't want everyone to feel like a nail. One question I had -- now, I understand we have the interim database. When was last update that we did to the interim database? MR. MILLER: We do it on an annual basis. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: When was the last --? MR. MILLER: We completed our activities on that early last
70 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 anything? MR. LEWIS: No. Normally, the states will submit their draft MR. MILLER: No, I think what we found is an ever increasing improvement in their supplying that information. The one thing some licensees are doing, of course, is taking a hard look at their inventories and determining if they can reduce their inventory to the point that they no longer possess Category 2 quantities and not possess them and so they would no longer be subject to the increased controls. So that's how I think they're using that interim inventory to really focus their attention. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: The question -- and I can't remember who talked about it -- Trish, maybe you did. The fingerprinting. Right now we have, I guess, 33 of the 34 have submitted their plans -MS. HOLAHAN: Rob did. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Rob, you had talked about it? Sorry. You said right now we've approved 21. The remaining, I guess, 12 that we have that we haven't -- is there a problem with those 12 or we just haven't gotten to the review of them yet? MR. LEWIS: No. Well, they're under review, so I don't know if there's a problem. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: We haven't rejected any or
71 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 regulations for our review of license conditions in this case and we have up to 60 days. Of course, we're not going to use 60 days in this case. We have been getting a lot. In fact, I got one last night. The final one came in last night. We will be on track with those all things being okay with them to get them out so the state's can start doing it by June. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: And the last question I have. I don't know if anyone here can answer this. DHS is also developing a database of sources. Maybe you can comment on what the latest is that the staff is aware of DHS's database. How that will interface with the things that we're doing and what the status is of that? MR. MILLER: Are you referring to the pilot program? COMMISSIONER JACZKO: I don't know. All I know is that there is some DHS database. MR. MILLER: Trish, do you want -- I can try. MS. HOLAHAN: I can address it. DHS is moving forward. They have three signed agreements with different Agreements States. They're waiting for one more to be signed and they're going out and they're getting information for all sources. The agreement is for all categories of material. And then they're going to keep that in place until we get the National Source
72 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Tracking System up and running. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Will that duplicate information we have in the interim database? MS. HOLAHAN: It will duplicate part of it. It's Category 1 and 2, but it's all other categories as well. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: So, it will add information? Is that compatible with our interim data base? Is there a way that we can leverage those two systems together so that if for potential Web-Based Licensing or other systems that we wanted to eventually deal with lower categories of sources? MS. HOLAHAN: Possibly. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: At this point we don't --? MS. HOLAHAN: No. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Is that a topic for discussion in the trilateral meetings? MS. HOLAHAN: Yes, it's a topic of discussion in the trilaterals and also we have DNDO coming up biweekly to brief us on the efforts. I can ask them next time they come up. Our detailees down at DNDO come up and brief us, not DNDO themselves. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: So, the latest right now -- they have three Agreement States that they're working with?
73 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 MS. HOLAHAN: They're going to have four. They've signed agreements with three Agreement States. They're still waiting for the fourth. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Thanks. MR. MILLER: But again, the idea here is that once NSTS is stood up, that program should get sunset. That's what we're trying to work with our Federal partners on. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: NSTS won't include category four and five sources? MR. MILLER: That's correct. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Will they maintain that piece of it that deals with the lower --? MR. MILLER: I'm not sure. We'd have to talk about that. That's a significant burden on states if that maintains that way. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Again, I don't -- my sense is -- I want to try to put the hammer away. Again, there continues to be despite all our working groups and our task forces and our trilaterals and our bilaterals, what I sense and I think certainly Commissioner Svinicki commented on the progress we've made, but I think there is a -- the reality is that there's a sense, I think, from others that we have not made progress.
74 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 I continue to see efforts that appear to duplicate things that we're doing from other Federal agencies and I'm not sure exactly what the cause of that is. I would certainly understand why that's a burden. But by the same token, someone feels that there's a need and someone has talked to Agreement States who feel that they want to provide that information. So, somewhere there is a need that people feel that they need to fill. In the end, I would hope that -- this agency does, I think, have the best people to do these kinds of things and I worry that if we do not act decisively enough, quickly enough, that others will fill that void. So, I certainly hope that we can continue to work with our Federal partners and have single systems. We don't need multiple systems to do this. There should be a way to coordinate all these efforts. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: I'm sure from your previous assignment that you never encountered any turf issues that might have come up. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: It never came across my desk. The issues were always easy. They were never issues. Everyone always understood their turf. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: There are some duplication efforts that is not a result of our inactivity. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: I would just certainly say that in
75 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 the end with all of these efforts, the Energy Policy Task Force was set up provide recommendations to Congress and the administration. It has no regulatory authority. The regulatory authority continues to reside with this agency. We are the source security agency in this country and I think part of the problem we find ourselves in right now is we have not come up with our own definition or understanding of how to look at consequences of dealing with land contamination issues. The Commission made a decision early on that we would focus only on the certain segment of consequences. I think that has turned out to be a decision that from a broader policy perspective others are questioning. So, again, we've had discussions about this in the past and I would encourage the staff to develop that methodology and develop something that we can then begin to make additional judgments about what changes we need to make, if any, from a regulatory perspective in this area. We continue to lag in that area and I think that is an unfortunate situation that does not allow us to be able to provide good information sometimes about some consequences that others may be looking at and investigating. Thank you.
76 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Commissioner Lyons? COMMISSIONER LYONS: Just to follow up on Commissioner Jaczko's last point. We did hear, and I'm not sure who said it, that economic consequences -- I think Marty said it -- that economic consequences are now being evaluated. I don't question the value -COMMISSIONER JACZKO: I think it's being discussed within the task force about what a methodology would look like. COMMISSIONER LYONS: At least I think there's -- I believe there's clear guidance from the Commission now at least that we do need to move in that direction. I'm personally very interested in that. Just to add a sentence or two on the cesium chloride, which has had a lot of discussion today. I certainly don't want to wait 10 years for whatever the rulemaking and/or solution on cesium chloride may turn out to be. But, I also tend to think that somewhat more research on alternative forms can go a long ways towards informing rulemaking. I think there's plenty of motivation right now. Rulemaking, as you said Greg, would certainly provide motivation, but I think there’s plenty of motivation which is being provided from any number of directions right now. I know there's strong efforts going on that we're involved with DOE in looking at alternative forms of cesium which may well not be
77 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 cesium chloride. In any case, in my mind having a little bit more knowledge on alternatives would probably lead to a better informed rulemaking process. Certainly, in my mind we're not waiting 10 years to do it. But a few months, perhaps a year -- I think to be better informed. The main question I wanted to get to, though, was we've heard a lot about the challenges that all of you are facing in this particular area. We heard about many, many accomplishments and many activities. Certainly, we're hearing from the management here today, as we should. But all of these accomplishments, activities, challenges derive from a strong staff base. I've heard comments from the Agreements States on the challenges they face with staffing within the Agreement States. I was curious if any of you would want to comment on the challenges that we face here at the agency on staffing in these areas. I'm curious where we stand in terms of recruitment, attrition, knowledge management in the key areas that under pin the areas we've discussed today. MR. MILLER: I think that we face a lot of challenges, Commissioner. Let me give you some of the information. With regard to budgeted resources, I think that my office has sufficient budgeted
78 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 resources as we move forward with the budget process and what we've had in years. The challenges that I've had in FSME are getting us to the budgeted resources. For example, we hired 29 people into FSME this year. I've lost 30. Now, I'm experiencing about a 14% attrition. If you look the historical attrition rate of the agency, that's about double. That's the bad news. The good news for the agency is most of the people aren't leaving the agency. We're kind of in an unprecedented time of opportunity within the agency and people are seeking those opportunities for promotional aspects to broaden themselves and are taking advantage of that. So, I've always been a proponent of people being able to run themselves through the agency and take advantage of those opportunities to enhance their careers within the agency. That's why I'm sitting at the table today. I had those opportunities. But at the same time it presents challenges because you can't just get people off the street immediately to fill those positions. What we're trying to do within FSME to address that is I'm having my Deputy Director George Pangburn, he meets biweekly with my Division Directors and with the Office of Human Resources to make sure that every posting gets up in a timely manner, that we're moving forward with rating panels
79 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 and trying to get the positions filled as fast as we can. But it is a continuing challenge. MR. REYES: On the high level, we're going to reach again this year the 400 number of new employees. We had some concerns at the beginning of the year. The housing market has thrown a challenge to us. Recruitment by other entities as businesses in this field has gone up is a challenge. We're going to hit 400 new employees again. But I think Charlie said it right. We have to invest in those individuals in training, not only in some technical training, but in training on how our processes work, et cetera, et cetera. The good news that we have unprecedented opportunities for a lot of people. Every week there's announcements where people can be promoted and seek other experiences within the agency. The challenge is to keep the pipeline going in and train them and develop them so they're successful in getting our mission going. So, we do have a challenge in that arena. COMMISSIONER LYONS: I appreciate what you're doing, but I also hope that to the extent you identify things that the Commission could be doing to help you in this, I'm not sure what it could be, but I trust you won't be shy. MR. REYES: We won't be shy.
80 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 cloning. COMMISSIONER LYONS: Thank you. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Commissioner Svinicki? COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: Thank you. I just wanted -- I neglected to say earlier that I appreciate that I think all of the presenters talked about the involvement of our Agreements State partners on all of these issues and I just wanted to second that. That is a key foundation for success, I think, in moving forward on any of this. I appreciate that you're keeping us, the Commission, apprised of those activities which are essential. Thank you. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Well, I'd like to thank you for a very comprehensive program. We look forward to continuous activities in this area. I think we do have to balance the safety and security, so I thank you for all you're activities and all the staff and certainly the Agreement States and others that have, obviously, mutual interest in this area. Just on a final note, since I have tenure I can irreverent. I noticed that Commissioner Jaczko made the comment that Representative Markey had made "paralysis by analysis". That must be why he sends us all these questions that we have to analyze so much. MR. REYES: That helps with paralysis. MR. MILLER: If we could promulgate a rulemaking for
81 1 2 3 4 (Whereupon meeting was adjourned.) adjourned. CHAIRMAN KLEIN: Thank you very much. Meeting is