- Digitization, risk assessment and big data insights fall under new plan
- NRC Chairman Svinicki: “Transformation” efforts central to NRC’s future
- Commissioners Baran and Burns say NRC rules must adapt to the times
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Regulatory Information Conference this year highlighted a new initiative to bring sweeping transformational change to the way the agency pursues its mission. This change comes as the agency begins to consider how to regulate existing reactors and license new and advanced reactors in more efficient and risk-informed ways and adapts to a host of modern challenges, from the digitization of control rooms to the advent of big data.
“The agency staff’s innovation and transformation efforts are central to chart the course to NRC’s future,” NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki said in her opening remarks.
As a member of our commission and as an NRC old-timer … I am fully committed to this process and to helping them be successful in any way that I can.
The transformation effort at the NRC is a broad drive to modernize the nuclear regulator’s culture and processes to align them with the 21st century, according to the NRC Executive Director for Operations Victor McCree.
“Many of the NRC’s processes and much of our regulatory framework were developed to serve mid-20th century nuclear technologies and needs. … We recognize that the changes occurring in the nuclear industry will challenge this framework and additional regulatory change is needed,” he said.
“Such proactive innovation is important and we remain committed to advancing change in this very meaningful way.”
The NRC staff has formed a “Transformation team” to recommend ways for the agency to fundamentally change the way it regulates the nuclear industry. The team is engaging stakeholders now and will produce a paper later this year to flesh out the Transformation strategy and vision, McCree added.
The NRC’s Transformation initiative encompasses a number of areas including:
- increasing the use of digital instrumentation and control (I&C) in nuclear power plant control rooms—which remain mostly analog—to enhance safety and efficiency
- using risk assessments to inform rules, advanced reactor licensing and other regulatory changes
- using insights from big data to make regulations and plant operations more efficient.
NRC Commissioner Jeff Baran said that he is glad that the NRC’s Transformation team is considering digital instrumentation and control.
“I encourage the Transformation team to look at this particular question because we, for a number of years, have been grinding away at gradual improvements in a number of areas,” Baran said. “We need to ask the bigger question: ‘Is there some kind of different way we should be looking at this?’”
The Transformation team has been talking to the U.S. Navy, the Federal Aviation Administration and international partners to learn how highly technical, mission-critical industries made the transition from analog to digital technologies, Baran added.
Svinicki, responding to a question about the long-term future of the agency, said that pursuing and understanding risk insights would remain important.
“As new technology is adopted you have to build a base of understanding, a risk understanding and safety understanding of that technology,” she said. “I can’t envision a future NRC 30 or 40 years from now that wouldn’t still be seeking out those risk understandings and insights.”
NRC Commissioner Stephen Burns reminded the audience that, despite continuous change, some things remain constant.
“While some of the technologies and processes behind advanced reactors, accident tolerant fuel or digital I&C might be new or novel, the challenge of appropriately regulating the technology is not,” Burns said.
Burns suggested a middle path between conservatism and overly rapid change in nuclear regulations.
“We can’t take shortcuts simply for the sake of expediency. … But then again our rules should not be viewed as infallible, unbending or unchanging,” Burns said.
Much like the technology we regulate, we, as the regulators, should constantly evolve.
Svinicki added that this is a period of change for private industry and regulator alike.
“Unless there are some kind of experimentations and pilots modeling new paradigms, I’m not sure that the old models will carry us through the next four to seven years,” Svinicki said.
“I think the whole business of nuclear, by my observation, has changed.”
Industry Mirrors NRC Efforts
The industry is mirroring the NRC’s efforts on the Transformation initiative by pressing for change in how the regulator conducts its business. NEI has formed its own Transformation team to provide an in-depth industry perspective on how the agency can change to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
As one its first activities, the NEI Transformation team is submitting a report to the agency this week, titled “A Framework for Regulatory Transformation.” The report will suggest how the NRC can increase its effectiveness, improve accountability and increase safety with reduced levels of effort and cost.
“There is an urgent need for change and adaptation in the U.S. nuclear power industry,” NEI Director of Life Extension and New Technology Jason Remer says. “However, this change cannot happen without first transforming the regulatory framework and initiating the necessary changes in NRC and industry behavior.”