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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 153 / Thursday, August 12, 2021 / Proposed Rules
licensees and result in the NRC
receiving less information regarding root causes of the events reported due to the more stringent time demand.
Furthermore, even a 30-day reporting requirement for 50.73 LERs would represent a significant reduction in timeliness for public notification compared to the current 50.72
notification requirements. As part of the rulemaking, the NRC will consider how it would continue to provide timely notification of events to the public if it also alters timing requirements for notifications by licensees. The NRC
intends to gather additional stakeholder feedback on this topic in the rulemaking process.
Assertion 6: The NRC has never taken any kind of action in response to prompt notifications.
The petitioner claims that the requirement to notify the NRC within 4
or 8 hours implies that the NRC would need to take action before the end of the 8-hour shift for a 4-hour report or soon after the shift turnover for an 8-hour report. The petitioner claims that in the almost 40 years that this regulation has been in place, the NRC has never taken any kind of action in this tight timeframe to protect the public for one of these nonemergency events. The petitioner claims that there is no need for this type of prompt action, and that the NRC rarely dispatches inspection teams. The petitioner claims that notification from the resident inspector is more than sufficient for this kind of prompt action.
NRC Evaluation: The NRC disagrees with this assertion. The petitioner claims that the requirement to notify the NRC within 4 or 8 hours implies that the NRC would need to take action before the end of the 8-hour shift for a 4-hour report or soon after the shift turnover for an 8-hour report. When the NRC receives these reports, the NRC
HOO adds the items to a database for communication in a regular morning email. If there are items of interest e.g., complicated reactor scrams, emergency core cooling system injection that indicate a need for prompt communication, the NRC HOO notifies interested NRC stakeholders via immediate phone calls as soon as the information from the event is put into the database. The NRC HOO may also issue to NRC management a HOO
Highlight email. These events are typically communicated to staff and management within an hour of receipt of the notification.
There are several other actions that the NRC could take in response to these notifications. In the statement of considerations for the 2000 final rule,
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the Commission analyzed the intent of the timeliness requirements in 50.72b, and noted that the final provisions required 4-hour reporting, if the event was not reported in 1 hour, for an event or situation, related to the health and safety of the public or onsite personnel, or protection of the environment, for which a news release is planned or notification to other government agencies has been or will be made. The Commission stated that such an event may include an onsite fatality or inadvertent release of radioactively contaminated materials, and that this is the same as previously required. The Commission concluded that these reports are needed promptly because they involve events where there may be a need for the NRC to respond to heightened public concern.
The 2000 final rule also required 4-hour reporting, if the event was not reported in 1 hour, for unplanned transients. The Commission explained that these are events where there may be a need for the NRC to take a reasonably prompt action, such as partially activating its response plan to monitor the course of the event. For the remaining events reportable under 50.72, the final rule required 8-hour reporting, if not reported in 1 hour or 4
hours; these are 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.
Since the implementation of the 2000
final rule, the NRC has taken various prompt actions in response to event notifications under 50.72b. For example, the nonemergency event notifications serve as a potential trigger for Management Directive MD 8.3, NRC Incident Investigation Program, evaluations, which may or may not result in a reactive inspection in response to the event.
The NRC performed a total of 140
reactive inspections from 2006 to 2018, an average of approximately 11 reactive inspections per year. In the period from 2006 to 2012, the NRC performed an average of approximately 14 reactive inspections per year. In the period from 2013 to 2018, the NRC performed an average of approximately 7 reactive inspections per year. In 2018, the NRC
performed 4 reactive inspections. Even though the total number of reactive inspections has declined over the past 12 years, the NRC still performs several reactive inspections per year. In addition to these reactive inspections, there are more events for which the agency performs an MD 8.3 evaluation.
For those evaluations where baseline inspection is recommended no reactive inspection, the regions occasionally
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dispatch additional inspectors to the site to respond to nonemergency events.
There are also cases, such as the dual unit trip at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in 2015 Event Notification 50961, where the NRC performed an MD 8.3 evaluation and decided to perform a reactive inspection within approximately 24 hours Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant Units 1 and 2
NRC Special Inspection Report 05000317/2015009 and 05000318/
2015009, dated May 27, 2015.
The NRC also routinely receives inquiries from reporters and members of the public regarding events at nuclear power stations. The nonemergency event notifications provide timely notification of events for those situations where the agency may need to respond to heightened public concern.
For example, the Calvert Cliffs dual unit trip resulted in local news media coverage. Wholesale removal of these reporting requirements could render the agency unable to respond effectively to public requests for information.
Finally, depending on the nature of the nonemergency event, the agency may need to activate its response plan.
At the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, winter storm Juno in January 2015
caused a loss-of-offsite power that caused a reactor trip see Event Notification 50769. Then, about 10
hours later, a second event notification, 50771, was made due to complications with the plant response and failed mitigating systems. At that point, the NRCs Incident Response Center entered into Monitoring mode for this complicated event even though emergency plan activation criteria were not met.
The petitioner claims that the NRC
dispatches inspection teams for only 1%
of nonemergency events. However, the petitioners statement does not recognize the actions taken by the NRC
prior to dispatching these inspection teams. As discussed earlier in this section, the NRC sends inspection teams to nuclear power plants several times a year. The notifications made under 50.72 serve as a potential trigger for the resident inspectors and regional staff to perform an MD 8.3 evaluation. The MD 8.3 evaluation assesses an event against several criteria to determine if the NRC should, in response to an event, 1 handle the issue in the baseline inspection program, 2
dispatch a special inspection team to investigate the event, or 3 dispatch an augmented inspection team to investigate the event in greater detail.
The NRC may initiate an MD 8.3
evaluation as soon as a report is received, depending on the event.

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