Up & Atom

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) issued a letter on April 14 to provide guidance on reactor operator licensing requirements during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a letter on April 7 to all NRC licensees authorized to possess byproduct, source, and special nuclear material – excluding operating power reactor and research test reactor licensees – outlining how those licensees might seek relief from certain regulatory requirements as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The NRC published notice of a draft Regulatory Issue Summary (RIS) (previously published in ADAMS) in the Federal Register on March 31. The draft RIS purports to “clarify” licensees’ requirements pursuant to 10 CFR § 73.56(d)(3) to verify the “true identity” of non-immigrant foreign nationals who are granted unescorted access to nuclear power plants.

The NRC recently hosted a public meeting—exclusively via teleconference—to discuss regulatory implications of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic for power reactor licensees. Of particular note, the NRC Staff is developing pandemic-related enforcement guidance. The first installment of this guidance is expected to be released early this week.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on March 11 issued a Notice of Violation to Avera St. Luke’s Hospital stemming from findings during an inspection of its Aberdeen, South Dakota facility in July 2019.

FERC and NERC issued a joint notice on Wednesday providing compliance flexibility on certain key reliability standard requirements during the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Although this guidance can allow utilities to avoid findings of noncompliance for certain requirements where timely compliance activities could be difficult due to personnel shortages and other limitations, this is not a blanket waiver. Instead, utilities must provide written notices of their intent to use this guidance. The content of those notices must be drafted carefully as they will be necessary to demonstrate compliance in future reviews.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Office of Investigations (OI) recently published its Office of Investigations Annual Report FY 2019, providing an overview of OI’s activities during the previous fiscal year. The report shows that OI opened 21% fewer cases in 2019 than in 2018, continuing the downward trend of the last 10 years.

The director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Office of Enforcement (OE) issued Enforcement Guidance Memorandum (EGM) 2020-001, “Enforcement Discretion Not to Cite Certain Violations of 10 CFR 73.56 Requirements” on February 13.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a final rule in the Federal Register on January 15 updating the maximum amounts of civil monetary penalties it can impose. The final rule revises 10 CFR 2.205(j) to increase the maximum penalty the NRC can issue from $298,211 to $303,471 per violation, per day, an increase of 1.764%.

The NRC’s Office of Enforcement (OE) recently issued an enforcement guidance memorandum (EGM) to reinforce the NRC’s Enforcement Policy (Policy) and earlier guidance on identifying and documenting findings and associated violations in inspection reports. The need for this EGM arose after OE became “aware that some inspection staff may be misinterpreting and misapplying” the Policy and guidance by documenting all issues of concern, regardless of significance.