May 31, 2011

***FOR THE RECORD***

NRC CHAIRMAN GREGORY B. JACZKO’S STATEMENT ON

NRC’S COMMITMENT TO SAFETY

The tragic events in Japan have understandably shined a brighter spotlight on the safety 

of nuclear power in the United States and on the role and actions of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission. As public servants, we pride ourselves on our transparency and openness and 

welcome the constructive dialogue about ensuring the facilities we license are operated safely 

and securely. 

For more than six years I have served as a Commissioner and now Chairman of this 

independent federal government agency and I have personally seen the tremendous job the NRC 

staff does. Our employees are dedicated public servants who come to work every day to do one 

thing - ensure that nuclear power plants and nuclear materials are safe and secure. Most of our 

4,000 employees make this a lifetime endeavor.

In the last several weeks, however, a skewed picture of the NRC has been painted in 

some stories -- one of missed opportunities and delayed enforcement suggesting an ineffectual 

regulator. Nothing could be further from the reality. Here are examples that demonstrate why I 

strongly disagree with these recent accounts.

First, about 18 months ago the NRC staff acted to resolve a significant design concern 

they identified with the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design, proposed for construction in 

Georgia. This is a multi-billion dollar project, but the NRC’s effort and focus has been on 

determining if the design meets our stringent safety requirements and at one point our staff 

experts determined that it did not. Consistent with our focus on safety the NRC experts told the 

plant designer that changes were needed or the staff would not approve the design. It was as 

simple as that. Because of forceful NRC action, the vendor made significant improvements. This 

took place in full view of the public, including a dissenting opinion by one of our staff members. 

Despite this transparency, there was little public recognition that this highlighted the NRC’s 

commitment to safety.

Second, also little noticed was our work on the reactor vessel head, the lid of the metal 

structure that holds the nuclear fuel, of a plant in Ohio known as Davis Besse. Last year, the 

licensee identified problems with the interim replacement head. The NRC immediately studied 

the safety significance of this defective component and made certain the plant owner did the 

UNITED STATES

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20555-0001
right thing. Far from being a passive regulator, the agency demanded the plant owner accelerate 

replacement of the component years before the owner wanted to do so. Although this decision 

requires considerable cost on the part of plant owner, that had no bearing for the NRC safety 

experts. They simply put safety above all else, just as they had done in the case of the AP1000 

reactor design. This is another example of the agency doing the right thing - something routine 

for the NRC staff. But unfortunately this attracted limited media attention.

Third, during our Japan nuclear incident response, I approved a bold safety 

recommendation by our most senior, expert staffers. As we were monitoring the fluid situation in 

Japan, NRC staff became concerned that the situation could worsen and impact Americans living 

there. Using all of their training, the best available data, and centuries of combined nuclear safety 

experience, the staff recommended to me that we needed to advise American citizens to stay fifty

miles away from the troubled nuclear site, recommendations that differed from the advice of the 

Japanese government. The staff did not focus on what might be popular with the nuclear industry 

but instead recommended action in the best interest of safety.

These three examples are just a few of the many ways the NRC staff works day-in and 

day-out to make sure nuclear power plants and nuclear materials will not cause harm to the 

public. I could fill the entire newspaper with just a fraction of the proactive safety measures 

taken by the staff in the last year. Yet as with most of our safety actions, these examples received 

little public attention.

Of course, we are not perfect. There are things we can do better. Among them is the need 

to better enforce our regulations designed to protect against the risk of fires at nuclear power 

plants, something the Commission continues to publicly debate. We are always striving to learn 

lessons and we will look to the tragedy in Japan to improve our programs, even though this event 

involved no U.S. nuclear facilities. In fact, just 12 days into the Japan incident the Commission 

created a task force to look at improvements to our regulations and oversight programs. That task 

force has already participated in one public meeting and is working systematically and 

methodically to make recommendations by July.

Ensuring nuclear safety is always challenging. We cannot guarantee the prevention of 

every possible accident and we seem to only make news when there are issues. But that is 

precisely our job – to find problems and ensure they are resolved. The knowledge that the 

dedicated women and men of the NRC are there to advise me and my colleagues on the 

Commission leaves me confident in our ability to continue to successfully protect the health and 

safety of the American people.