NRC Principles of Good Regulation:

Compliments and Critiques

This week was an eventful one in the nuclear field.  The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission held its annual Regulatory Information Conference (RIC) on March 8 through 10, and the 5th anniversary of the Fukushima-Daiichi accident fell on March 11.  Since I have already read some excellent blogs on 3-11, as the Japanese sometimes call it, I will focus my attention on the RIC, and in particular, on a session near and dear to my heart.  (All RIC sessions were recorded and should soon be available on the NRC webcast archive.)

As I have previously reported, this year marks the 25th anniversary of the promulgation of NRC's Principles of Good Regulation.  NRC started its celebration of this milestone with the internal seminar covered in my earlier blog.  They continued the celebration with a technical session at the RIC.  The session was chaired by Mike Weber, Director of the NRC Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, and included speakers addressing the PGR, as they have come to be called, from a variety of perspectives. 

The first two speakers were Tom Wellock, the NRC historian, and Kenneth Rogers, who was the Commissioner responsible for proposing that NRC develop a set of principles and for directing their development.  Tom Wellock put the PGR in historical context--noting events of the time and the evolving view of regulation, as well as how the concept of the PGR has spread.  Commissioner Rogers described some of the internal processes and debates behind the PGR, and also spotlighted some places where similar sets of principles have taken root.

The third speaker was Maria Korsnick, currently the COO of the Nuclear Energy Institute.  She gave the NRC high marks for independence and openness, but said that the principles of efficiency, clarity and reliability need more work.  Particular areas for improvement that she cited include better prioritization of regulatory actions and more accurate and transparent cost-benefit analysis.  She also had messages for the industry, saying they need to be more accountable in explaining how they would implement NRC requirements.  Overall, she concluded that NRC is "justifiably internationally renowned." 

The next speaker, Diane Curran, an attorney who has represented citizens groups against the NRC, had a different view.  She critiqued the implementation of the principles of openness and transparency.  On openness, she seemed to suggest that NRC may hold open meetings but is not necessarily making them easy for the public to attend, and is not necessarily listening to the public.  On the principle of independence, she seemed to suggest that it was wrong of the principles to equate licensees and the general public in this principle, as the interests of the public are paramount.  (The principle states:  "All available facts and opinions much be sought openly from licensees and other interested members of the public.  The many and possibly conflicting public interests much be considered.  Final decisions must be based on objective, unbiased assessments of all information, and must be documented with reasons explicitly stated.") 

The final speaker, Joseph Klinger, from the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, gave a state perspective.  He said that, 25 years ago, he saw isolation between the NRC and the states.  This isolation has largely disappeared.  He attributes the change to the PGR.  He felt the NRC really excelled in openness and transparency.  He also said that Illinois had embraced the same principles.  He noted that the 37 Agreement States are responsible for most of the regulation of radioactive materials, and thus collaboration between NRC and the states is critical.  He particularly cited the importance of collaboration to achieve efficiency, one of the five principles. 

References to the PGR were not confined to this session.  They were mentioned in Chairman Stephen Burns' welcoming letter on the first page of the RIC program, and again in a one-page summary of the NRC on the third page.  And they were raised repeatedly by Commissioners, NRC managers, and others throughout the conference.

Later, speaking to someone from NRC in the hallway between sessions, I learned that one of the non-US attendees in the audience at the session on the PGR (the RIC had attendees from 33 countries this year) noted that he thought that it was good to have something like the PGR, and he intended to bring the idea back to his country. 

It was interesting to see the mix of positive and negative comments.  While the compliments were, of course, good to hear, I think the criticism is also important to hear.  While we may individually debate whether we agree with the comments, positive and negative, they all reflect how the NRC and its action appear to the various stakeholders.  Like all lofty, aspirational goals, NRC will never be able to declare victory and rest on its laurels.  There will always be times when it didn't meet the goals perfectly, and even when it does, there will still be room for improvement in the future.  

I like to reflect back on the period, 25 years ago, when I worked in Commissioner Rogers office and helped develop the PGR.  Little did I know then what impact it would have.  It is nice to see that it thrives today, and if anything, its influence is growing.

***

Principles of Good Regulation--25th Anniversary:

NRC Celebrates 25 Years of the 

Principles of Good Regulation

On January 19, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission launched what they characterize as a year of celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Principles of Good Regulation.  The first event was an employee seminar on the history and evolution of the Principles.  I was very pleased and proud to have been asked to be a part of that event.

I had wanted to report on this seminar earlier, but Mother Nature (the Snowzilla that hit the Washington, DC area a few days later) caused me to move up my vacation plans.  I escaped the blizzard in time, but the things I'd planned to do the remainder of that week got put off until now.

I have previously discussed the thinking behind the NRC Principles of Good Regulation and will not repeat that here.  I will focus instead primarily on what was discussed at this event.

NRC dates the effective beginning of the Principles of Good Regulation to the publication of the Principles in the Agency's Five Year Plan for 1991-1995 and the dissemination of the Principles to all NRC staff in a memorandum from the Chairman of NRC at the time, Kenneth M. Carr, on January 17, 1991.  The Principles have become very important to the Agency in the last 25 years, and therefore, the NRC has apparently decided to do a number of things this year to recognize the role of the Principles and to set the scene for their future.

The first of these events was the January 19 staff seminar.  It was held in the Rockville, MD headquarters of the NRC, but was broadcast to all the NRC regional offices.  (I will also note that it was held on the 41th anniversary of the day NRC started--January 19, 1975.)   There are plans for several other events and initiatives to be held this year focusing on the Principles.  For example, at the upcoming NRC Regulatory Information Conference (RIC), there will be a panel discussion on the Principles.

The seminar brought together a number of people who had been at the NRC when the Principles were developed, as well as some who have been involved with the Principles in more recent years.  The current NRC Chairman, Steven Burns, the current head of the NRC Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, Michael Weber, and the current Executive Director for Operations, Victor McCree, were all on the NRC staff at the time the Principles were promulgated.  Mike Weber and Vic McCree each made opening remarks.  Mike had been a technical assistant in Chairman Carr's office in 1991, so was heavily involved in the "birth" of the Principles.  Vic McCree noted how the Principles later led to a staff-initiated statement of values a few years later.  Commissioner Ostendorff, who has been one of the more recent champions of the Principles, made opening remarks as well, focusing on how he has tried to promote this concept to regulators in other countries.

The main speakers were former Commissioner Kenneth C. Rogers, myself, and the current NRC historian, Thomas Wellock.  The three of us tried to detail how the concept for the Principles developed and evolved. 

The idea for the Principles came from Kenneth C. Rogers, who was a Commissioner at the time.  While many people contributed to the Principles, Commissioner Rogers had assigned me the task of gathering and synthesizing inputs to the document.  The two of us reconstructed for the NRC audience some of the details of that effort:  his discussions with the other Commissioners, my interactions with their assistants and with senior NRC management, initial skepticism in some quarters and our efforts to incorporate suggestions that helped bring everyone aboard, the attempt to draw from previous statements and documents, the process for identifying and narrowing the list of potential principles to a reasonable set, and the decisions on what order to put the principles in and what language to use to explain and clarify them.

Tom Wellock then tried to give some historical perspective to the Principles.  (He abbreviated them PGR, which is probably a good idea.  And while I'm mentioning good ideas, I noticed that, although I always painstakingly try to put them in the order we initially used--independence, openness, efficiency, clarity, and reliability--I have seen the acronym ICORE used, which probably makes them a whole lot easier to remember!)  He confirmed what we always thought--that as far as he has been able to find, NRC's Principles were the first of their kind.  However, he noted that he has found a number of other statements of regulatory principles that were created after NRC's, including in the UK, Ireland, the EU, and IAEA.  He also put the initiative in a broader historical perspective--pointing to the 1960s, when more regulation was often viewed as a good thing (he cited Nader's initiatives), to the deregulatory efforts of the 1980s.   Most interestingly, he pointed to antecedents for some of the principles we used--words like independent, open and reliable began popping up in NRC documents in the 1980s. 

Of course, the true measure of the value of something like the Principles is in their impact, and that is much harder to assess.  The explanation of several of the Principles suggests the difficulty.  Each of these Principles is important, but there is always a balance to be struck.  Independence should not mean isolation.  Efficiency should not force NRC staff to act so quickly that they miss something.  Therefore, the goal is to minimize delay as much as is reasonably possible.  Reliability should not mean that regulations must be cast in stone.  Rather, the goal should be to make sure that changes in regulations are justifiable.

I have certainly seen times when NRC has been criticized for falling short on its adherence to the Principles of Good Regulation.  Some of this criticism may have been colored by the viewpoints and positions of the critics.  But even someone without an ax to grind might find fault at times in some of NRC actions.  After all, the Principles are a very ambitious set of rules to follow, and require a continual balance between opposing objectives.  What I think is encouraging is that, after performing this balancing act for 25 years, the NRC has made a conscious decision that this is still a valid standard of behavior to set for themselves, and has committed to continuing to try to hold themselves to that standard. 

***