By John Stang
Full security training for the nation’s commercial reactors probably won’t resume “until sometime next year,” Shana Helton, acting deputy director for the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said this week.
Helton spoke Tuesday at a staff briefing for NRC commissioners about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The NRC has granted numerous exemptions to reactor corporations conducting full-fledged security drills and training because of concerns about social distancing during various exercises. That includes 13 such exemptions granted in the past few weeks to allow facilities some slack in fully staffing mandatory security exercises.
However, Helton acknowledged that criteria has not been developed yet to govern when and how to crank security training back up to pre-COVID levels. The speed on developing such criteria will depend on the nation’s overall recovery from COVID-19, said NRC spokesman David McIntyre.
Very little has changed in NRC anti-COVID measures since July.
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. So far, 17 NRC employees scattered across several locations have contracted COVID-19. None have died.
The agency started Phase 1 of its re-mobilization strategy on June 15, which enabled workers to voluntarily return to their job sites. 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, which allows more workers to return to offices, began July 12 at NRC headquarters, and at Pennsylvania-based Region I and Illinois-based Region III. In Phase 2, employees can monitor their own temperatures.
Three other NRC locations, Georgia-based Region II, Texas-based Region IV, and the Technical Training Center in Chattanooga, Tenn., remained in Phase 1 as of Tuesday, Helton said.
Meanwhile, the NRC so far has completed 70 percent of the minimum requirements for 2020 inspection for the Reactor Oversight Program for power reactors, said Craig Erlanger, director of the NRC’s division of operating reactor licensing.
Also, the NRC has responded to 217 COVID-related requests for license changes. These include 167 exemptions, most related to security training and managing onsite work hours. These can be permanent or temporary exemptions.
Another 31 responses addressed requests for actual amendments to a reactor’s technical specifications and/or or operating license. Twelve responses addressed requests for relief from the applicable American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ codes, with the most common requests tackling inspection and testing requirements.
