Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
4/11/2014
The issue of Compatibility ‘B’ distinction between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s regulations and Agreement State regulations dominated the discussion during a Commission meeting held this week to discuss on-going efforts from the Organization of Agreement States (OAS) and the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors (CRCPD). Compatibility categories refer to the degree the Agreements States must adopt a rulemaking, and in the case of Compatibility ‘B,’ the second most stringent category, the states must adopt most of what the NRC directs. Representatives from the OAS argued, though, that the states need more flexibility in implementing regulations. “The states also support a performance based approach to determining compatibility of an Agreement State program,” said Alan Jacobson, Health Physicist Supervisor of the Radioactive Materials Inspection Section of Maryland’s Air and Radiation Management Administration. “Agreement State programs should be given the flexibility when addressing the majority of the program elements. State programs need to have the flexibility to impose regulations on facilities with specific risks, and the ability to govern without imposing an unnecessary regulatory burden. Our vision of a regulatory future consists of a framework where the compatibility B concept is understood by all, and compatibility B requirements are only implemented when actually necessary,” he said.
The compatibility discussion also included the Commission’s 10 CFR Part 61 rule update. In its latest Staff Related Memorandum, the Commission directed the rule update include a Compatibility ‘B’ designation, making it a national standard. “If we’re going to go down the road of a site-specific performance assessment here, that would mean you can’t do that,” said Earl Fordham, deputy director of Washington Department of Health’s Office of Radiation Protection, on the Part 61 compatibility ‘B’ distinction. “You would have to have flexibility there because the sites aren’t identical.” One of the major purposes for the rule update was to provide a risk-informed, performance-based criterion to siting a facility, so as to let the site’s unique characteristics determine acceptability, a goal that would seem counter to a compatibility ‘B’ distinction.
Member States Need to be in Compliance, Commissioner Says
From the Commission’s perspective, however, the concerns about compatibility compliance went in the opposite direction. Commissioner George Apostolakis raised the concern that some states lag behind in implementing some of the regulations, a sentiment echoed by Commissioner William Ostendorff, to which members of the OAG cited un-cooperative state legislatures as the source problem. “We understand that state legislative bodies have different priorities and so forth, but it doesn’t do the Agreement State program any good if the member states aren’t coming into compliance,” Ostendorff said. “As an analogy here, it’s not a very good one, but it’s the only one I have to offer, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and Nuclear Energy Institute provide pressure on their members on the nuclear power plant side of the house to get with the program, so to speak. I know that it sounds a little cliché of me to say that, but I think the OAS will benefit by providing, where you can, some nudges to address some concerns. It brings everyone down if other member states aren’t participating at the right level. I realize it’s not your counterparts. It’s the state’s legislative bodies in many cases, but the extent that you can re-enforce that will benefit of all of us,” he said.
Commissioner Kristine Svinicki said the discussion about compatibility between the federal government and state governments goes all the way back to the framing of the Constitution. “These issues are as old as the Republic because we sit here as the federal and the state talking about issues of the federal’s unique role in looking at commerce broadly as the Framers defined it, but looking at these trans-boundaries issues that we called up today and our unique role in being vigilant over that and states’ push and pull of whether state’s would like to be self-determining on,” Svinicki said.
