[Federal Register Volume 65, Number 236 (Thursday, December 7, 2000)]
[Notices]
[Pages 76669-76670]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 00-31155]


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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION


Notice of Opportunity to Comment on the Proposed Information 
Collection Initiative

AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

ACTION: Notice of opportunity for public comment.

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SUMMARY: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff has 
prepared a proposed initiative for the voluntary submittal of 
information by external stakeholders about the impact that licensing 
actions and other regulatory activities have on maintaining safety and 
reducing unnecessary regulatory burden for commercial nuclear power 
plants. The purpose of this initiative is to obtain information to 
assist the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) staff in (1) 
allocating staff resources and (2) measuring how the work NRR staff 
completes contributes to the agency goals of maintaining safety and 
reducing unnecessary regulatory burden. The staff is requesting 
comments on this proposed information collection initiative.

DATES: The comment period expires January 22, 2001. Comments received 
after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but the 
Commission is able to ensure consideration only for comments received 
on or before this date.

ADDRESSES: Comments may be submitted in person or via U.S. mail.
    Submit written comments to: Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, 
Division of Administrative Services, U.S. NRC, Mail Stop T6-D59, 
Washington, DC 20555-0001.
    Hand deliver comments to: 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, 
Maryland, between 7:45 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. on Federal workdays.
    Copies of comments received may be examined at the NRC's Public 
Document Room, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first 
floor), Rockville, Maryland.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Pat Madden, Mail Stop O8E6, Division 
of Licensing Project Management, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, 
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, 
telephone 301-415-2854, email [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: As applicants submit requests for regulatory 
deliverables (e.g., license amendment approvals, topical report 
reviews, rulemaking petitions), they would voluntarily provide 
information

[[Page 76670]]

about the impact their request would have on maintaining safety and 
reducing unnecessary regulatory burden. Ideally, measures for safety 
impact would include changes in person-rem dose or changes in core 
damage frequency (CDF). Similarly, measures for regulatory burden 
reduction would include changes in licensee costs or power production 
capability. However, the staff recognizes that it may not be possible 
or practical to provide actual risk metrics or dollar savings, and that 
more qualitative measurements may be more realistic. The staff invites 
comments from our external stakeholders to ensure that the measures are 
uniform, practical, and meaningful, and provide the appropriate 
yardstick for measuring the impact that a proposed activity has on 
safety and regulatory burden. This information would be collected for 
many types of external stakeholder submittals including license 
amendments, topical reports, rulemaking petitions, and license renewal 
applications. The staff encourages suggestions on what other submittals 
such information should be collected for in response to this 
initiative. Recognizing that there are many factors that could inhibit 
licensees and other stakeholders from providing such information, we 
invite comments to obtain an understanding of what the factors are and 
how they may be overcome.
    The information described above would assist NRR in (1) allocating 
staff resources and (2) measuring how the work NRR staff completes 
contributes to the agency goals of maintaining safety and reducing 
unnecessary regulatory burden. The staff is requesting comments on this 
proposed information collection initiative.
    With respect to the first purpose, allocating staff resources, NRR 
would use the information collected to improve its effectiveness by 
pursuing those regulatory activities that maintain safety (or involve 
acceptable reductions in margin) but provide the highest return in 
reducing unnecessary regulatory burden. NRR is establishing a ``work 
planning center'' to centralize the planning and scheduling of NRR work 
activities, including the prioritization of specific work items. The 
priority factors include consideration of public health and safety, 
operational significance, statutory significance, and stakeholder 
standing and merit. Also factored into the work prioritization process 
is the required responsiveness (e.g., normal, increased, or immediate). 
The information collected through this initiative would become part of 
the input for this work planning and scheduling.
    This use of information provided by licensees in order to 
prioritize agency work is similar to a regulatory approach employed by 
the agency and licensees in the early 1990's for cost beneficial 
licensing actions (CBLAs). In this approach, licensees identified for 
the agency those licensing actions that had high economic benefits, 
minimal impact on safety, and required minimal agency review time. Such 
actions were termed CBLAs, and the agency afforded these actions higher 
priority treatment. One difference between this proposed information 
collection initiative and the CBLA approach is that the latter was 
limited in its scope to licensing actions meeting the above criteria. A 
second, more important distinction between the two is that this 
proposed initiative has another purpose, which we describe in the 
following paragraph.
    With respect to the second purpose, measuring how the work NRR 
staff completes contributes to the agency goals of maintaining safety 
and reducing unnecessary regulatory burden, the information collected 
would support the agency's efforts toward becoming a performance-based 
organization. This is consistent with the enactment of the Government 
Performance and Results Act (GPRA). The agency has established a 
framework for implementing the performance-based approach called the 
Planning, Budgeting, and Performance Management (PBPM) process. This 
PBPM process consists of setting the strategic direction, budgeting 
resources, and measuring and assessing performance. The agency reports 
the measures and assessment of performance in yearly reports to the 
President and the Congress. The information collected as described in 
this initiative would be used in these yearly reports to demonstrate to 
stakeholders that safety is being maintained even as the staff allows 
for unnecessary burden reduction. The staff would also use the 
information collected to demonstrate to stakeholders what the staff has 
accomplished with the resources that we have been given. This type of 
information would allow the staff to better align its outputs (e.g., 
license amendments) to NRR performance goals (e.g., maintain safety). 
By compiling this type of information over the fiscal year, instead of 
simply stating that the NRR staff completed 1500 licensing actions per 
year (outputs), the staff can also quantify such performance measures 
as direct cost savings to licensees, person-rem savings, and reduced 
shutdown risk that resulted from approval of those licensing actions 
(outcomes).
    The success of this voluntary initiative is dependent on industry's 
willingness to provide the information. The staff realizes that there 
may be concerns with how we will use the information collected to 
prioritize work within NRR. The staff invites comments and suggestions 
such that we may directly address such concerns. We also recognize that 
this information collection initiative should be as simple as possible 
while still providing meaningful information. We encourage comments on 
how to most simply characterize the safety and regulatory burden impact 
such that this information collection initiative does not become time-
consuming or resource-intensive.
    After receiving formal comments in response to this Federal 
Register notice, the staff plans to hold a public meeting to develop a 
consensus as to the type of voluntary information that could be used to 
measure impact on safety and reduction in unnecessary regulatory 
burden. This meeting is currently planned for February 2001. Finally, 
if reasonable and acceptable metrics can be developed and made 
available to all stakeholders, the staff expects to begin using 
voluntary information submitted under this initiative after October 1, 
2001.

    Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 1st day of December, 2000.

    For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
John A. Zwolinski,
Director, Division of Licensing and Project Management, Office of 
Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
[FR Doc. 00-31155 Filed 12-6-00; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7590-01-P