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The
NRC assesses the safety of all 104 nuclear reactors in this country by
looking closely at seven different safety “cornerstones.” These are the
fundamentals of nuclear plant safety such as “public radiation safety,”
and “barrier integrity.” The severity of any performance issue is
assessed using a color-coded system as part of the NRC’s
Reactor Oversight Process (ROP).
However,
for the past 10 years or so, the NRC assessed nuclear plant security
using a separate oversight process. The NRC made the separation shortly
after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, to limit the
possibility that anyone could extrapolate potential protective-measure
vulnerabilities at its licensed facilities. The NRC has since enhanced
security requirements.
In
June, 2011, the staff submitted a paper, SECY-11-0073, to the
Commission seeking approval of a proposal to reintegrate nuclear plant
security into the existing ROP. This will achieve a more integrated
assessment of licensee performance. On July 20, 2011, the Commission
approved the staff’s proposal.
So
what does this mean? It means that experts in safety and experts in
security are working together now to implement this reintegration and
are updating the Inspection Manuals used by the staff. The goal is to
complete these by July 2012. The NRC will communicate the changes to
licensees, through a Regulatory Issue Summary, to provide them with the
implementation plan and effective date.
The
staff will continue to issue security inspection reports and letters
for security findings in the same manner as today, except instead of
separate assessment letters for safety and security, they will be
combined into a single letter issued every six months. As is already the
case, sensitive security-related information will not be contained in
the public version of the assessment letters.
The
public website
will be revised to include security cornerstone assessment inputs, but
with a different color scheme than used for safety violations. For
example, the color blue will signify a greater-than-green (white,
yellow, or red) security input.
When the website is updated to reflect reintegration, plants with pre-existing security issues will appear to shift in the
ROP Action Matrix.
In all cases, the NRC will have already identified the input under the
security assessment process and will be in various states of planning,
performing, or completing the NRC’s response and inspection for those
issues.
The
reintegration of security and safety is important because it will allow
the NRC to achieve a more integrated assessment of licensee performance
and make the integrated assessment information available to the public.
However, that does not mean that details about security will be made
publicly available. The NRC will continue to protect security-related
information so that it cannot be used by potential adversaries.
Kevin Roche
Reactor Operations Engineer
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