A Focus on NRC Annual Assessment Meetings

A Focus on NRC Annual Assessment Meetings

4 Comments Posted by Moderator on May 27, 2015

Prema Chandrathil
Public Affairs Officer
Region III
It’s Spring – and annual assessment meetings are popping up all over. The NRC holds these important meetings every year for every nuclear power plant to provide information about how the plant performed in the previous year.
What happens at these meetings? If you attend, you can expect to hear about NRC inspection activities, how the plant performed from a safety perspective, and how it met NRC requirements, including if there were any violations and, if so, what actions were taken to correct those issues. You would also hear directly from NRC resident inspectors, who are at the plant on a daily basis and know the plant inside and out. They and other specialists inspect the plant to help ensure protection of the public health and safety.
We just posted a short YouTube Video on the subject today. “Three Minutes with an NRC Expert on the Annual Assessment Meetings” can be found here.
As the video underscores, annual assessment meetings are not all the same. There are different types, including a formal meeting, an open house and community outreach event. The most common meeting is a formal meeting where the public is invited to observe the interactions between the NRC and plant staff. Open houses are informal and are designed to encourage one-on-one conversations. An example of a community outreach event is where the NRC would staff a booth at a local event in an effort to talk to more folks. The type of meeting will vary depending on the plant’s performance, community feedback and local interest.
No matter the format of the meeting, the public will have an opportunity to not only hear about the plant’s performance and NRC inspection efforts but also ask questions, make comments and talk to the NRC staff.
A common misconception is that these meetings are transcribed — they are not. The basis for the NRC’s discussion is the annual assessment letters issued by the NRC to individual plants. These letters are documented and publically available. You can find them on the NRC website.
The NRC continues to reach out in an effort to inform people about what the agency does, how we regulate and how a particular plant is doing in meeting NRC rules and regulations. We are committed to protecting public health and safety, and strive to be open and responsive in these annual assessment meetings.
If you are interested in any upcoming public meeting you can check out the public meeting schedule and review the meeting notice as well as the press release.
We hope you’ll check out the video to learn more.