NRC Blog Update: A Solemn Anniversary

New post on U.S. NRC Blog

A Solemn Anniversary by Moderator

Stephen Burns
Chairman

This Sunday marks the 15^th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As always, that day is a time for reflection, which the passing years do not diminish. The events of that day still seem as fresh and raw now as they did at the time.

That was certainly a pivotal day for us as a nation, for us as individuals and us as employees of the NRC. Here, staff went quickly into response mode even as the significance of the day was not yet clear. Senior managers gathered in the Operations Center and at the regional Incident Response Centers; other employees were sent home; security was heightened around the buildings; and licensee facilities were ordered to their highest level of security.

The NRC, like the rest of the country, pulled together and experienced a sense of renewed purpose and affirmation of our values as a democracy. As then Chairman Richard Meserve told employees: These are trying times, but we will persevere.

And we did. In the years since, the NRC increased its focus on security, revised its security inspection program, restructured and enhanced the force-on-force program, strengthened radioactive material controls, updated its Operations Center and exercised regularly for security events in addition to safety events. The NRC responded to the challenge in ways that also still reverberate today and affect nearly everything we do.

The NRC’s excellent publication Protecting our Nation goes into detail about actions the NRC has taken to strengthen security, emergency planning and incident response in the years since. On this anniversary, please take a few moments to read it while we reflect on the tragedy that day still represents for us all.