Nuclear Regulatory Commission September 3, 2009 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The NRC has recently submitted to OMB for review the following proposal for the collection of information under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. Chapter 35). The NRC hereby informs potential respondents that an agency may not conduct or sponsor, and that a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The NRC published a Federal Register Notice with a 60-day comment period on this information collection on June 9, 2009.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing significant revisions to its processes for overseeing the safety and security of fuel cycle facilities. The NRC plans to develop a revised oversight process for fuel cycle facilities that is more risk-informed, and performance-based, resulting in more objective, predictable, and transparent results of licensee or certificate holder assessments. (This notice will use ``licensees'' throughout, but in doing so the intent is also to include ``certificate holders.'') Current oversight consists mainly of inspections, enforcement and periodic assessments based on inspection findings. NRC staff intends that any revised oversight would not establish any new regulatory requirements. Rather, revised oversight would improve inspection and assessment so that NRC conclusions would be more closely based on risk and more understandable to members of the public. Revised oversight could potentially add objective measures of performance, called performance indicators, with criteria for measuring acceptable performance. However, development of performance indicators may not be part of the initial revision to the oversight process. Inspections would focus in areas of highest risk that are not well-measured by performance indicators and on validating performance indicator information. Assessments would be based on more objective criteria. Supplemental inspections (those above and beyond the number and type of inspections normal for a well-performing plant) of licensees whose performance shows indications of decline, would also be based on objective criteria. These principles are currently applied by the NRC in the oversight of power reactor safety and security and is outlined in ``Reactor Oversight Process,'' NUREG-1649, (Agencywide Documents Access and Management System [ADAMS] Accession No. ML070890365).