[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 141 (Friday, July 22, 2016)]
[Rules and Regulations]
[Pages 47689-47690]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-16476]
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
10 CFR Chapter I
[NRC-2016-0134]
NRC Enforcement Policy
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Policy revision; issuance.
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SUMMARY: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing a
revision to its Enforcement Policy (Enforcement Policy or Policy) to
reflect the new maximum civil penalty amount the agency can assess for
a violation of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (AEA), or any
regulation or order issued under the AEA. By interim final rule, the
NRC changed this amount from $140,000 to $280,469 per violation per
day, as mandated by the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment
Act Improvements Act of 2015 (the 2015 Improvements Act). This action
revises the Enforcement Policy so that dollar amounts in the policy
correspond to the agency's revised civil penalty amount, and also
provides guidance regarding instances where the NRC may exercise
discretion in mitigating the amount of a civil penalty.
DATES: This revision to the Enforcement Policy is effective on August
1, 2016. The Commission will apply the revised Enforcement Policy to
any penalties assessed on and after the effective date; the penalty is
not based on the date that the violation occurs.
ADDRESSES: Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2016-0134 when contacting the
NRC about the availability of information regarding this action. You
may obtain publicly-available information related to this document
using any of the following methods:
Federal Rulemaking Web site: Go to http://www.regulations.gov and search for Docket ID NRC-2016-0134. Address
questions about NRC dockets to Carol Gallagher; telephone: 301-415-
3463; email: [email protected]. For technical questions, contact
the individual listed in the FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT section of
this document.
NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System
(ADAMS): You may obtain publicly-available documents online in the
[[Page 47690]]
ADAMS Public Documents collection http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. To begin the search, select ``ADAMS Public Documents'' and
then select ``Begin Web-based ADAMS Search.'' For problems with ADAMS,
please contact the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR) reference staff at
1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by email to [email protected]. The
ADAMS accession number for each document referenced in this document
(if that document is available in ADAMS) is provided the first time
that a document is referenced. The revised Enforcement Policy is
available in ADAMS under Accession No. ML16197A561, and on the NRC's
public Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/enforcement/enforce-pol.html.
NRC's PDR: You may examine and purchase copies of public
documents at the NRC's PDR, Room O1-F21, One White Flint North, 11555
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Russell Arrighi, Office of
Enforcement, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-
0001, telephone: 301-415-0205, email: [email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Background
On November 2, 2015, the President signed into law the 2015
Improvements Act, which amended the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation
Adjustment Act of 1990 (FCPIAA) and required all agencies to adjust for
inflation their levels of civil monetary penalties via rulemaking by
July 1, 2016, to be effective no later than August 1, 2016. In an
interim final rule published in the Rules and Regulations section of
the Federal Register (81 FR 43019; July 1, 2016), the NRC is amending
its regulations to implement the 2015 Improvements Act by adjusting the
amount in Sec. 2.205(j) of title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations
(10 CFR), according to a statutory formula based on the Consumer Price
Index (CPI), from $140,000 to $280,469. This amount represents the new
maximum civil penalty that the NRC may impose for a violation of the
AEA, or any regulation or order issued under the AEA, per violation per
day. Starting in January 2017, the 2015 Improvements Act also requires
that the NRC make annual inflation adjustments to the maximum civil
penalty amount in 10 CFR 2.205, rounded to the nearest multiple of $1.
To incorporate the updated maximum civil penalty amount specified
in its regulations, the NRC is issuing a revision to its Enforcement
Policy (ADAMS Accession No. ML16197A561). Specifically, the NRC is
updating Table A in Section 8.0, ``Table of Base Civil Penalties,''
which currently lists $140,000 as the maximum civil penalty amount the
agency may assess for the most significant severity level of violation.
To promote regulatory certainty and save NRC staff resources by
lessening the chances that the Enforcement Policy will have to be
revised on an annual basis alongside 10 CFR 2.205 resulting from minor
increases in inflation (less than one half percent), the maximum civil
penalty amount in the revised Table A will be calculated by rounding
the maximum civil penalty amount in 10 CFR 2.205 down to the nearest
multiple of $10,000 (assuming the amount in 10 CFR 2.205 is not already
a multiple of $10,000). Therefore, the new maximum civil penalty in
Table A is now $280,000, rounded down from $280,469. The 2015
Improvements Act does not limit the Commission's authority to exercise
discretion and assess civil penalty levels below the statutory maximum,
and the gains to be realized from a more stable table of base civil
penalties outweighs any arguable loss of deterrent effect from rounding
this maximum figure down, at most, $9,999 in a given year. Additionally
(and as stated in the Preface to the Enforcement Policy), this is a
statement of policy, not regulation, and the Commission still reserves
the right to deviate from the Enforcement Policy where particular
circumstances warrant and assess the full statutory maximum.
The revised Table A in Section 8.0 of the Enforcement Policy also
now includes a note explaining how the table's maximum civil penalty
amount is generated as a result of rounding down from the number in 10
CFR 2.205. The note also explains that other amounts listed in the
table have been adjusted to maintain the same proportional relationship
between penalties. The revised table also now includes a footnote
explaining that the maximum civil penalty is adjusted on an annual
basis to put the regulated community on notice that the NRC may
periodically update the amount in 10 CFR 2.205 pursuant to the 2015
Improvements Act, which would necessitate a change to the amounts in
Table A in Section 8.0 of the Enforcement Policy. In the event of such
an update, the NRC may assess civil penalties consistent with the
updated amount in 10 CFR 2.205 even if it has not yet performed an
update to Table A (though the NRC will strive to provide timely updates
of the Enforcement Policy when necessitated by updates to 10 CFR
2.205). Additionally, as stated in Section 6 of the FCPIAA (28 U.S.C.
2461 note), when the NRC increases civil penalty amounts through
rulemaking pursuant to the 2015 Improvements Act, it will apply those
increased amounts when assessing any penalty after the effective date
of that rulemaking, regardless of whether the underlying violation
occurred before that effective date.
The NRC is not adjusting the civil penalty amounts in Table A for
the ``loss, abandonment, or improper transfer of disposal of regulated
material, regardless of the use or type of licensee,'' other than to
note that these values will be periodically reviewed and updated, since
these civil penalty amounts are determined by the estimated or actual
cost of authorized disposal.
Lastly, because the agency's authority to issue civil penalties for
violations of the AEA has more than doubled as a result of the 2015
Improvements Act, the NRC is also including new language in Section 3.6
of the Enforcement Policy, ``Use of Discretion in Determining the
Amount of a Civil Penalty,'' to confirm that, notwithstanding the
outcome of the normal civil penalty process, the agency may take into
account mitigating factors based on the merits of an individual case,
including the ability of various classes of licensees to pay. It is not
the NRC's intention that the economic impact of a civil penalty be so
severe that it adversely affects a licensee's ability to safely conduct
licensed activities or puts a licensee out of business. Section 3.6 now
allows NRC staff to consider enforcement discretion for cases where
there is a concern that imposition of a base civil penalty would be
overly punitive rather than a deterrent for the individual or licensee.
II. Congressional Review Act
This policy statement is a rule as defined in the Congressional
Review Act (5 U.S.C. 801-808). However, the Office of Management and
Budget has not found it to be a major rule as defined in the
Congressional Review Act.
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 6th day of July, 2016.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Andrew L. Bates,
Acting, Secretary of the Commission.
[FR Doc. 2016-16476 Filed 7-21-16; 8:45 a.m.]
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