[Federal Register Volume 73, Number 52 (Monday, March 17, 2008)]
[Notices]
[Pages 14278-14279]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E8-5258]


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION


Criteria for Nominating Materials Licensees for the U. S. Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission's Agency Action Review Meeting

AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

ACTION: Request for comment.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY: It is the policy of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
(NRC) to have its senior managers conduct an annual Agency Action 
Review Meeting (AARM). The AARM is an integral part of the evaluative 
process used by the agency to ensure the operational safety performance 
of nuclear licensees. As a part of the AARM process, the NRC reviews 
the actions concerning fuel cycle facilities and other materials 
licensees (including Agreement State licensees) with significant 
performance problems. In 2002, the NRC developed criteria for 
determining materials licensees that will be discussed at the AARM. 
These criteria may be found in Table 1 of SECY-02-0216 (ADAMS Accession 
Number: ML022410435).
    The NRC is preparing to revise the criteria in Table 1 of SECY-02-
0216. The revised criteria (which can be found in ADAMS at Accession 
Number: ML080600165 or in the supplementary information below) provides 
additional definition of the criteria requirements to incorporate NRC's 
current policies and procedures. This notice provides the revised 
criteria for public comment.

DATES: Please submit comments regarding the proposed criteria, by May 
1, 2008. Comments received after this date will be considered if 
practical to do so, but the NRC staff is able to ensure consideration 
only for those comments received on or before this date.

ADDRESSES: Members of the public are invited and encouraged to submit 
written comments to Michael Lesar, Chief, Rulemaking, Directives, and 
Editing Branch, Office of Administration, Mail Stop T6-D59, U.S. 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. You may hand-
deliver comments attention to Michael Lesar, 11545 Rockville Pike, 
Rockville, MD between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. on Federal workdays. 
Comments may also be sent electronically to [email protected].
    Publicly available documents related to this notice, including 
public comments received, are available electronically through the 
NRC's Electronic Reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/reading-rm/adams.html. From this site, the public can gain entry into the NRC's 
Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), which 
provides text and image files of NRC's public documents. If there are 
problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, contact the (PDR) 
Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737 or be e-mail to 
[email protected].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Duane White by telephone at 301-415-
6272, e-mail: [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Background

    In 2002, NRC developed a process for providing information on 
significant nuclear materials issues and adverse licensee performance. 
This process was provided in SECY-02-0216, ``Proposed Process for 
Providing Information on Significant Nuclear Materials Issues and 
Adverse Licensee Performance,'' dated December 11, 2002. As part of 
this process, criteria were developed to determine nuclear material 
licensees with significant performance problems that will be discussed 
at the AARM.
    The AARM is an agency meeting that allows senior NRC managers (1) 
to review agency actions resulting from the performance of nuclear 
reactor licensees for those nuclear power plants with significant 
performance problems as determined by the reactor oversight process 
(ROP) action matrix, (2) to review results of the staff's assessment of 
ROP effectiveness, (3) to review industry performance trends, and (4) 
to review agency actions concerning fuel cycle facilities and other 
materials licensees (including Agreement State licensees) with 
significant performance problems.

Discussion

    NRC is preparing to revise the current criteria used to determine 
nuclear material licensees that will be discussed at the AARM. The 
agency currently identifies nuclear material licensees for AARM 
discussion based on operating performance, inspection results, and 
judgment of the severity of problems of safety performance. The 
proposed changes to the criteria will continue to be based on the same 
principles of the existing criteria. However, the new criteria provide 
additional definition of the criteria requirements and incorporate 
NRC's current policy and procedures.

Current Criteria for Determining Materials Licensees for the AARM

    The current criteria for determining materials licensees for the 
AARM, as described in Table 1 of SECY-02-0216, is as follows: (1) 
Licensee has an event

[[Page 14279]]

that results in the failure to meet a safety measure (e.g., a death, 
release with significant impact on the environment, etc.); (2) licensee 
has an event that results in an abnormal occurrence, or an event that 
qualifies for a severity level I or II violation, or multiple events 
that meet the agency strategic plan performance measure (e.g., 
reportable loss of material, breakdown of physical protection, etc.), 
and technical staff believes that there are unique or unusual aspects 
of the cases that are not adequately or appropriately handled within 
the normal inspection and enforcement process; or (3) licensee has 
significant breakdowns in its licensed program, where the breakdowns 
involve more than one compliance item (e.g., a dose monitoring 
breakdown and a widespread failure to implement and maintain required 
procedures), and technical staff believe that there are unique or 
unusual aspects of the cases that are not adequately or appropriately 
handled within the normal inspection and enforcement processes.

Proposed Criteria for Determining Materials Licensees for the AARM

    The NRC is proposing the following revision to the existing 
criteria for determining materials licensees with significant 
performance issues: (1) Strategic Plan--Licensee has an event that 
results in the failure to meet a strategic outcome for safety and 
security in the NRC strategic plan, which may be found in NUREG-1614; 
(2) Significant Issue--Licensee has an issue or event that results in 
an abnormal occurrence report to Congress, as described in NRC 
Management Directive 8.1, or a severity level I or II violation, as 
described in the NRC Enforcement Policy, or a level 3 or higher 
International Nuclear Scale Report to the International Atomic Energy 
Agency, as described in NRC Management Directive 5.12, and there are 
unique or unusual aspects of the licensee's performance that warrant 
additional NRC oversight (e.g., a significant event, which requires an 
incident investigation team (IIT) or augmented inspection team (AIT)); 
or (3) Performance Trend--Licensee has multiple and/or repetitive 
significant program issues identified over more than one inspection, or 
inspection period, and the issues are supported by escalated 
enforcement, which includes the Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) 
process, and there are unique or unusual aspects of the licensee's 
performance that warrant additional NRC oversight (e.g., oversight 
panel formed for order implementation).
    You can find NRC's strategic plan (NUREG-1614) and the referenced 
management directives and enforcement policy on NRC's public document 
collections Web page at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/.

    Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 11th day of March 2008.

    For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
George Pangburn,
Deputy Director, Office of Federal and State Materials,and 
Environmental Management Programs.
 [FR Doc. E8-5258 Filed 3-14-08; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7590-01-P