By John Stang
The members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are scheduled to be briefed later this month on the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The commission meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern time on Sept. 15. It will be webcast.
The agenda has not been set yet, but the meeting will include officials from the NRC Offices of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Nuclear Security and Incident Response, Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, and Enforcement, along with the agency’s internal COVID-19 Task Force.
Operations within the federal regulator in early September are little changed from midsummer, with most personnel continuing to work remotely to curb the spread of the viral disease within the workforce.
As of Tuesday, 94% of the agency’s roughly 3,000 full-time employees were telecommuting, the same percentage as recorded in late July. That is down from 95% at the beginning of July and 98% in March – when the NRC almost entirely closed its Rockville, Md., headquarters and other locations.
Meanwhile, the number of COVID cases among employees from nine in late July to 14 by Tuesday, wrote NRC Director of Public Affairs David Castelveter in an email. So far, the NRC has recorded no COVID 19-related deaths. The NRC declined to say where the 15 cases have occurred, citing privacy concerns.
The agency started Phase 1 of its remobilization strategy on June 15, which enabled workers to voluntarily return to their jobsites. On June 21, staff shifted from mandatory telework to maximum telework, which enabled them to continue working outside the office at their discretion. Phase 1 requires employees’ temperatures to be checked by other staffers as they enter the NRC offices.
Phase 2 would allow more workers to return to offices. It began on July 12 at NRC headquarters, along with Pennsylvania-based Region I and Illinois-based Region III. That phase allows employees to be responsible for monitoring their own temperatures.
Three other locations – Georgia-based Region II, Texas-based Region IV, and the Technical Training Center in Chattanooga, Tenn., remained in Phase 1 in July.
There has been no change in the status of those six offices as of this week, Castelveter wrote, because there has been no easing in the severity of coronavirus cases in their communities and states.
There is no set schedule for any of the locations to proceed to their next phase, nor any set target for the percentage of personnel working in-house within each phase, Castelveter said. The final step would be Phase 3, which would be a return to near-normal operations.
If a COVID case is found, people in that employee’s office are informed, but the infected person’s identity is kept confidential.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has emphasized its capacity to maintain its oversight mission of the U.S. nuclear industry amid the ongoing health crisis. For example, it notes that 130 resident inspectors at licensed facilities in 29 states remain on the job. Nearly 250 public meetings have also been conducted online over the course of the pandemic this year.
In-person monitoring of nuclear plants and fuel fabrication facilities was reduced earlier in the year, but is being ramped back up, accordingto the NRC website: “On a site-specific basis, the inspectors and related staff will increase visits while continuing remote monitoring of NRC-regulated plant data systems, meetings and other information, and remain in a ready status to respond immediately, if necessary.”
As of its latest update, exemptions to NRC regulations and other requirements had been issued to 98 licensees: 45 reactor licensees, five non-power reactor licensees, and 48 nuclear materials licensees.
The exemptions are generally intended to ensure licensees can maintain operations and avoid situations that could promote transmission of the virus. They include temporarily lifting work-hour limits to ensure sufficient staffing for power reactors and delaying certain security training that requires personnel to work at close proximities.
In an Aug. 27 Federal Register notice, the NRC cited 13 licensee exemptions at 12 nuclear power sites. All allow some slack in security training in order to maintain social distancing.
One of the 13 security exemptions covers the interim spent fuel storage facility at the Prairie Island nuclear power plant in Minnesota.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensees and other businesses in the nuclear power, waste, and cleanup industries have acknowledged impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. Shipments to waste treatment providers were reduced for much of the year, as one example. Two companies – Perma-Fix Environmental Services and International Isotopes – took out forgivable bank loans under the Paycheck Protection Program established by the CARES Act signed into law in March.
However, these companies have also skirted the devastation experienced in other sectors of the economy, as their operations have continued through the year under the federal designation as essential. They have also put their expertise to work in addressing the crisis, with US Ecology providing COVID-19 decontamination for schools and other buildings.
