NRC NEWS

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200

Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov

Web Site: http://www.nrc.gov/OPA

No. 00-063 April 17, 2000

NRC REVISES ITS ENFORCEMENT POLICY TO

ADDRESS THE REVISED REACTOR OVERSIGHT PROCESS

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is revising the agency’s enforcement policy to support the

initial implementation of its revised reactor oversight process for all 103 commercial nuclear power

plants.

It is the fourth major revision of NRC’s enforcement policy since 1995, continuing the agency’s

efforts to use enforcement as a means of focusing licensee attention on identifying and correcting plant

problems that are the most safety significant.

The agency published its interim enforcement policy last August as part of the six-month pilot

plant study at 13 reactors at nine sites. The policy was developed as an integral part of the reactor

oversight process and is intended to provide a unified agency approach for determining and responding

to plant performance issues that: maintains a focus on safety and compliance; demonstrates more

consistency with predictable results; increases effectiveness and efficiency; is easily understandable;

and decreases unnecessary regulatory burden.

Based on the successful implementation of the pilot plant study, this policy revision

incorporates the interim policy into the permanent one and makes it applicable to all currently

operating commercial nuclear power plants. As described in the interim policy, the new assessment

process uses a risk-informed method to evaluate the significance of inspection findings. If violations

are involved, they are documented and may or may not be cited in a Notice of Violation, depending on

the significance of the inspection finding.

If inspection findings cannot be evaluated by this method, an enforcement approach would be

used where violations are assigned severity levels and are subject to civil penalties. Examples where

this approach would be used include: willful violations; discrimination against workers for raising

safety issues; actions that may adversely affect the NRC’s ability to monitor utility activities, including

failure to provide the NRC complete and accurate information; and incidents that involve actual

consequences such as radiation over-exposures above NRC limits.

In developing this policy revision, the NRC considered the comments of various internal and

external stakeholders submitted in response to SECY-99-007, “Recommendations for Reactor
Oversight,” the announcement of the interim enforcement policy last August, last July’s Federal

Register notice that requested public comment on the pilot program for the new regulatory oversight

program, and information provided during numerous meetings with representatives of the nuclear

industry and public interest groups as part of the revised reactor oversight process pilot program.

The new oversight process relies on the submittal of performance data in conjunction with NRC

inspections to measure nuclear plant performance. Because the submission and review of such data is

a new process, this policy revision includes a provision under which the NRC will refrain from taking

enforcement action for non-willful failures to provide complete and accurate performance indicator

data until January 31, 2001.

The revised policy will become effective upon publication in an upcoming edition of the

Federal Register. Comments will be accepted 30 days after publication and will be considered prior to

the next revision to the policy. Pertinent documents on this matter will be available shortly on NRC’s

web site and in the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS).

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