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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 153 / Thursday, August 12, 2021 / Proposed Rules licensee has taken or is taking the appropriate compensatory measures to ensure the emergency plan can still be effectively implemented. The NRC may need to take immediate action in response to these events. For example, a major loss of assessment capability, without adequate compensatory measures put in place, could degrade or prevent a licensees ability to successfully implement its emergency response plan and negatively affect the NRCs reasonable assurance determination. The NRC needs to be able to quickly assess the impact of the loss of assessment capability as well as the adequacy of the compensatory measures put in place to address the loss, to allow for timely engagement with the licensee, if required.
The number of event reports under 50.72b3xiii dropped significantly after NRC endorsement of NEI 1301, Reportable Action Levels for Loss of Emergency Preparedness Capabilities, dated July 2014 in Supplement 1 to NUREG1022, Revision 3, dated September 2014. Prior to the endorsement of NEI 1301, the NRC
received on the order of hundreds of reports per year under this requirement.
After the endorsement of NEI 1301, the NRC now receives approximately 5060
reports per year. As explained in the statement of considerations for the 2000
final rule amending 50.72, Reporting Requirements for Nuclear Power Reactors and Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations at Power Reactor Sites; Final Rule 65 FR 63769, 63774;
October 25, 2000, the 8-hour reports, such as 50.72b3xii through xiii, are for events where there may be a need for the NRC to take an action within about a day, such as initiating a special inspection or investigation. If the NRC accepts the petitioners suggested changes and relies solely on licensees voluntary calls to the resident inspectors, then the NRC may not be able to take appropriate action in a timely manner. The current requirements in 50.72 establish timeliness requirements for notifying the NRC. If the NRC removed these requirements, then licensees would instead provide voluntary reports to resident inspectors based on each licensees procedures, which may or may not impose timeliness expectations for notification of the resident inspector.
For example, event response for nonemergency events could be delayed several days if an event, such as an actuation of the reactor protection system, occurs on a Friday night, and the resident inspector is not informed until Monday morning. Such a delay
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may impact the agencys ability to determine the appropriate response to an event in a timely manner. If, due to the delay in reporting, the NRC is delayed in this assessment and in potentially taking responsive action, public health and safety could be affected.
In addition, it may not be readily apparent to the public how the NRC
communicates and utilizes information received under these reporting requirements. The HOO communicates this information to all the interested internal NRC stakeholders when these reports are made. The reports in 50.72b2xi and b3xii are of particular interest to the agency in that they ensure that the NRC is aware of communications made to other agencies and is kept informed of situations that are of high public interest i.e., news releases and transport of contaminated personnel. An important factor for event notifications under 50.72b3xii is the potential for radioactive materials on the contaminated individual to be removed from the site and distributed outside of the radioactivity-controlled area.
The petitioner claims that reports made under 50.72b2xi and b3xii are essentially courtesy calls made to the NRC. The NRC notes that by the petitioners own admission, licensees expend minimal effort to notify the NRC if a news release or notification to another government agency is made. In these cases, the reportability of these events should be readily apparent to the licensee and, therefore, cause little administrative burden beyond that of a call to the NRC
HOO.
Regarding the claim that resident inspectors can handle these courtesy calls, in addition to the previous discussion regarding delayed communication, communicating these events only to the resident inspector could alter the direct and efficient communication structure via the HOO
and replace it with an indirect structure that is less efficient at disseminating information within the NRC. Moreover, licensee calls to the NRC HOC are recorded to ensure accuracy of information but, under the petitioners proposal, licensee conversations with resident inspectors would not be recorded. Since the NRC HOC
infrastructure for dissemination of this information currently exists, the resident inspectors could report the information to the NRC HOC. But this shifts the responsibility of contacting the HOC from the licensee to the resident inspectors. In addition, the NRC HOC procedures would need to be
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updated to address any issues associated with this change, and the NRC would need to develop guidance for the resident inspectors to communicate nonemergency events to the NRC HOC. These changes would incur additional costs for training and equipment and may result in inconsistencies in the quality and timeliness of information about these events being shared within the NRC.
This could potentially delay the NRC in the performance of its regulatory functions. The concerns with additional burden on resident inspectors if they are expected to communicate issues within the NRC are provided in the NRCs evaluation of Assertion 2.
The NRC needs to preserve the ability to respond effectively to events, maintain situational awareness, provide proper regulatory oversight, and maintain credibility with the public.
The NRC intends to gather additional stakeholder feedback on this topic in the rulemaking process.
Assertion 5: The public will continue to be notified of the event in accordance with 50.73.
The petitioner states that the fuller descriptions in LERs provided within 60 days, as required by 10 CFR 50.73, are available to the public. Given that these are nonemergency events, this is sufficient for transparency purposes.
NRC Evaluation: The NRC agrees, in part, with this assertion. The petitioners claim that the public will be notified of the event in accordance with 50.73 is correct, with the exception of the three reporting requirements in 50.72, as discussed in Assertion 4, that do not have a corresponding reporting requirement in 50.73: 50.72b2xi, b3xii, and b3xiii. For these reports, the NRC disagrees that the reporting requirements of 50.73 are sufficient for the purposes of public transparency.
The NRC agrees with the petitioners statement that LERs contain fuller, or more complete, descriptions of the reported event. The requirements of 50.73 contain more detail regarding required content than the event notification requirements in 50.72.
The LERs generally contain a much more descriptive narrative of the event and the failure mechanisms involved.
In addition, the NRC received several public comments regarding timeliness of LERs. Two private citizens expressed support for the petition with the caveat that 50.73 LERs should be moved to a 30-day reporting requirement to meet the needs of informing the public.
However, such a significant change to the timing of the reporting requirements in 50.73 may increase the burden on
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