The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday issued a new strategic plan outlining a long list of measures it will take to ensure the safe and secure use of radioactive materials in the United States.
The strategic plan, covering fiscal years 2018 to 2022, is largely in line with the goals from the agency’s prior strategic plan and its overall regulatory intent, NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki wrote in an introduction to the document.
The NRC is required to update its strategic plan on a four-year basis. The latest document replaces the fiscal 2014-2018 version.
“The biggest difference is the inclusion of the Principles of Good Regulation as the agency vision statement (independence, openness, efficiency, clarity and reliability),” NRC spokeswoman Holly Harrington said by email. “Overall changes were made to put more focus on the agency’s mission and safety and security strategic goals, which provide the basis for why the agency exists, as well as to simplify the content and provide avenues for more flexibility as the agency adapts to upcoming changes that may impact how we need to manage our resources.”
The agency, which on Monday proposed a $971 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year, regulates scores of nuclear facilities around the country, including 99 operational nuclear power reactors, 20 retired reactors that are at different points of decommissioning, and 78 independent spent fuel storage installations.
The plan lists one overarching safety objective: prevent, mitigate, and respond to accidents and ensure radiation safety; and two security objectives: ensure protection of nuclear facilities and radioactive materials, and ensure protection of classified and controlled unclassified information.
Those objectives are broken down into eight safety strategies and seven security strategies, each with a list of contributing activities. Among these:
- [M]aintain effective, stable, and predicable regulatory programs and policies.
- [E]nhance and implement nuclear reactor, material, spent nuclear fuel storage, and radioactive waste oversight programs to ensure the timely identification of safety issues and that licensees take the actions necessary to maintain acceptable safety performance.
- Participate with Agreement States, the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration in identifying, locating, and recovering unwanted and uncontrolled radioactive materials.
- Coordinate with licensees to reduce the risks from insides with access to systems or information that could assist in malevolent activity.
The NRC has already mostly established the contributing activities cited in the strategic plan, Harrington said, but it will study opportunities to conduct them with greater focus on its Principles of Good Regulation.