 Well, now it's with great pleasure that I introduce Victor M. McCree, Mr. McCree as NRC's Executive Director for Operations. In this role, he serves as the Chief Operating Officer of the Commission and is authorized and directed to discharge the operational and administrative functions necessary for the day-to-day operations of the agency. Mr. McCree joined the NRC in 1988 as an operations engineer in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. Over the years, he's held many leadership positions in the NRC, including most recently the Regional Administrator in NRC's Region II in Atlanta. Prior to joining the NRC, Mr. McCree was a nuclear-trained Submarine Officer and completed Nuclear Engineer Officer Certification. He also served on the staff of the Chief of the Naval Operations and retired from the Naval Reserve as a commander. Vick's a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds an executive MBA from Georgia State University. Join me in welcoming Vic McCree. Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. On behalf of the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it gives me great pleasure to add my welcome to this, the 30th NRC Regulatory Information Conference. What began as a small conference on nuclear safety regulation with about 500 attendees, I was actually in that photo, is now an international public meeting with more than 3,000 attendees from the United States and, as Brian mentioned, 32 other countries and international organizations. Those of you who attended last year will fondly recall the late season snow and ice that resulted in a shortened, albeit successful, conference. Some refer to it as the quick rick. Fortunately, we're experiencing much more normal March weather this year, so we'll be able to explore and discuss the full range of topics on our agenda as planned. Each year, we at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission look forward to the opportunity to host and share information at this unique event. I thank you all for being here, and I'm excited about the healthy dialogue bound to occur at this year's conference. Of most importance, thank you as well for your ongoing commitment to ensuring safety and security in the use of radioactive materials and technology. I would also like to acknowledge, in particular, the presence of our many international counterpart regulators. Welcome to Maryland, and thank you for your participation. Finally, I want to echo Brian Holien's thanks to the many people in the offices of Nuclear Reactor Regulation and Nuclear Regulatory Research, as well as other volunteers whose work in planning has set the stage for another successful conference. I will invest the bulk of my time this morning talking about the NRC's ongoing commitment to improving effectiveness, efficiency, and agility in accomplishing our safety and security mission. This remains a high priority for the NRC as both the agency and the regulated industry in the United States continue to operate in a very dynamic environment. My goal is to make you aware of our efforts and invite your participation to further inform our decision making and to clarify our shared expectations. A few years ago, Mary Bara, the CEO of General Motors, predicted that we would see more change in the next five years than we've seen in the previous 50. And in fact, when you consider camless engines, advanced electric vehicles, do not disturb while driving technology, and the prospect of driverless cars, she was right. The US energy industry is certainly also evidencing such accelerating change and dramatic technological evolution. Accident tolerant fuel, which was mentioned earlier, small modular reactors, and advanced non-lightwater reactors are examples of such dramatic change. As the Nuclear Safety Regulator, the question we're faced with is, why is change and why is managing change of significance to the NRC? As I indicated in my remarks at the RIC last year, I believe the answer is that times of change and transition introduce potential distractions, and we must always be mindful of this and remain principally focused on carrying out our safety and security mission. But we also see times of change as an opportunity for NRC to become even better by regulating with excellence in the 21st century. Let me begin by highlighting a number of accomplishments since we met last year that indicate our successful efforts to address the essential day-to-day work of the agency. Of most important, we have continued to successfully oversee the safe and secure operation of nuclear power plants and fuel cycle facilities, as well as the possession and use of radioactive materials. In this regard, I would briefly note two accomplishments shared by the industry and the NRC, given that operators have the primary responsibility for safety. NRC's operating experience reviews include every unplanned scram to determine the safety significance and to identify any generic implications or trends. In 2017, our review shows that operating reactors finished the year with 39 unplanned scrams. This reflects a new low, both in terms of the absolute number of scrams and the ratio of scrams per unit. It also represents a significant drop of 28% from the previous low of 54 scrams in 2016. In addition, as this slide indicates, 66 plants had zero scrams in 2016. That number increased to 72 in 2017. Included in the 72 are four units that have not experienced a scram in 10 years and two with no scrams since 2002. I included this information because, as you know, unplanned scrams can potentially challenge operators and safety equipment and thereby introduce unintended consequences. But also because this trend is illustrative of the nuclear power industry's ongoing efforts to identify and reduce the causes of scram initiators and in doing so contribute to safety. Another topic I would briefly mention relates to early insights from the planned use of flexible and diverse or flex strategies to mitigate outage risk. Based on preliminary discussions with several licensees who have incorporated flex strategies into their outage risk management plans, the plans would significantly reduce or eliminate altogether the number of outage days in which the plant would be in a heightened risk condition. In light of the NRCs and the industry's initiatives over the past three decades to reduce the risk associated with shutdown and low power operations, this is further indication of noteworthy progress. In the area of event response, we responded to a number of events in 2017, including providing support following the catastrophic hurricanes that caused widespread pain and suffering for people in the states of Texas, Florida, Georgia, as well as the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico. Approximately 20 NRC employees were deployed at various times to support the federal response to these tragic and destructive events. Regarding backfitting, we've completed our initial actions to improve our processes, our training, and our guidance and continue our efforts to update the associated guidance documents. Our efforts to improve the efficiency and consistency of our licensing reviews continue. We achieved significant improvement in the timeliness of operating reactor licensing reviews, reduced our backlog and enhanced our effectiveness in monitoring work and ensuring predictability. We also completed reviews of the remaining combined license workload, issuing combined licenses for North Ana Unit 3, the William State's Lee site, and Levy County sites, and completed the safety and environmental reviews for the Turkey Point units 6 and 7 application. Regarding design certifications, we completed phases 2 and 3 of the APR 1400 design certification review and are on schedule to complete this review in 42 months. We also achieved a number of significant milestones in the area of rulemaking, including developing the rulemaking regulatory basis for decommissioning reactors and emergency preparedness for small modular reactors. We also prepared a proposed rulemaking package and regulatory guide on cyber security for fuel cycle facilities. Finally, in the international area, we developed the U.S. Country Report and provided significant leadership that contributed to a successful seventh review meeting for the Convention on Nuclear Safety. We've also continued to look ahead at a number of other issues that, while perhaps no longer considered emerging, are nevertheless continuing to evolve. These include small modular reactors, advanced and non-light water reactors, accident-tolerant fuel, and effectiveness efficiency and agility initiatives. Regarding small modular reactors or SMRs, we're currently reviewing new scale powers application for an SMR design certification. We're also reviewing an application from the Tennessee Valley Authority for an early site permit at the Clinch River site to evaluate the suitability for potential new small modular reactors. Both of these reviews are proceeding on the established schedules. In the area of advanced non-light water reactors, we've already made significant progress in advancing the implementation of the near-term action items associated with the NRC's non-light water reactor vision and strategy. For example, we recently issued a regulatory review roadmap for advancing non-light water reactors, providing guidance for implementing a flexible and stage regulatory review process with developers that better aligns the NRC's activities with the developer's needs. Based on stakeholder and advisory committee on reactor safeguards feedback, we're giving a higher priority to the development of risk-informed and performance-based approaches, and are taking steps to resolve key policy issues. We've also engaged in some form or pre-application activities with five non-light water reactor designers, while a number of other potential pre-applicants have participated in various industry activities and could formally engage in pre-application activities at a later date. Another evolving issue is the use of accident-tolerant fuel for light water reactors. ATF is expected to exhibit improved safety margins under both normal and accident conditions when compared with fuel types used today. The NRC has two focus areas for ATF. In the near term, we will clarify the NRC's position on the regulatory requirements associated with the irradiation of lead test assemblies. And in the longer term, we'll develop and implement an agency-wide ATF project plan that is informed by the industry and the Department of Energy's timeline for introducing accident-tolerant fuel. Regarding our efficiency, effectiveness, and agility initiatives, since the last RIC, the NRC completed the major deliverables for each of the 19 discrete project-themed tasks which were approved by the Commission in June 2015. Those activities focused on improvements in our NRC's performance, rightsizing our workforce, commensurate with our workload, retaining employees with the skills necessary to accomplish our safety and security mission, and streamlining processes. The NRC remains committed to leveraging the innovation that began under project aim to identify new initiatives and enhance our regulatory processes. But we also recognize that continuing to deliver on our safety and security mission is enabled by better collaboration, improved planning, and more effective change management. Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, once said, the riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo. But I subscribe to the notion that there's no such thing as the status quo. You're either improving or declining. Each of these ongoing activities provides evidence of our focus on improvement and our commitment to regulate with excellence in the 21st century. To be clear, this commitment does not alter our reasonable assurance of adequate protection standard for public health and safety. It simply reaffirms our NRC value of excellence in all we do. The foundation for regulating with excellence is established in our just published strategic plan for 2018 through 2022. It provides the blueprint for the agency to plan, implement, and monitor the work needed to achieve our mission. And I want to thank those members of the NRC staff as well as our external stakeholders who contributed to its development. This latest strategic plan continues to emphasize our focus and commitment to the NRC's mission and strategic goals of safety and security. It also includes a new vision statement that highlights the agency's commitment to our principles of good regulation, independence, clarity, openness, reliability, and efficiency in performing our mission. With the strategic plan as our foundation, there are three new NRC organizational initiatives that I want to briefly introduce and were highlighted earlier by the chairman. First, development of an explicit NRC leadership model. Secondly, enhancing our process for strategic workforce planning. And thirdly, stimulating innovation and transformation at the NRC. I consider these three key initiatives to be pillars that will support and further institutionalize regulating with excellence in the 21st century and ensure continued success in meeting the NRC safety and security objectives. Early last fall, I directed the staff to begin to create an explicit NRC leadership model. The leadership model, the first pillar, will describe in a single document the organizational approaches, activities, and behaviors that the NRC uses individually and collectively to demonstrate leadership in fulfilling the NRC mission, achieving the NRC vision, and applying the NRC organizational values. The leadership model will describe who we are by describing why we do what we do, centered on our values, how we conduct ourselves, as demonstrated by our fundamental behaviors, what we do as reflected in our key programs and processes and what we aspire to be as shown in our vision and principles of good regulation. The leadership model will also recognize the fact that every NRC employee is a leader, and it will articulate the kind of leaders we aspire to be. For example, we seek to obtain tangible results while guided by our principles and our organizational values. Finally, the NRC leadership model will focus on behaviors recognizing that leaders are expected to apply effort across the three core areas of processes, partnerships, and people to execute the strategies supporting our safety and security goals. Although the NRC leadership model is an internal NRC organizational initiative, I wanted to discuss it today because this unique investment in institutionalizing our expectations and providing clarity through an explicit leadership model will not only contribute to our effort to fulfill our mission, but also strengthen our commitment to continuous improvement and sustaining high performance. In other words, it is an essential part of regulating with excellence in the 21st century. The second pillar supporting regulating with excellence in the 21st century is strategic workforce planning. Our ability to fulfill our safety and security mission requires having the right number of people with the right skills and competencies in the right time and place. While we're already performing workforce planning, fulfilling our mission in an environment where work and workload forecasts change, skills required of the workforce evolve and onboard skill inventory shift, it's imperative that we better integrate our human capital planning with broader agency operational strategies. To accomplish this, in January of last year, I formed a working group to develop a comprehensive, integrated and systematic strategic workforce planning process. Our objective is to enhance the existing process by developing a more clear, more coherent, and more comprehensive and consistent approach to implementing the agency's workload projection, skills identification, human capital management, individual development, and workforce management activities. With a strategic view of the future that provides us with data to perform a gap analysis to identify shortages and surpluses in the short and long term, we can develop strategies to align workload, competencies, and organizational structure to meet emerging needs and workload fluctuations. A pilot of our enhanced strategic workforce planning process is already underway in the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, our Region 2 Office, and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer. And if all goes as planned, we will deploy the enhanced strategic workforce planning process across the agency in 2019. The third and final pillar is innovation and transformation. Many of the NRC's processes and much of our regulatory framework were developed to serve mid 20th century nuclear technologies and needs. While they have and continue to serve us well and accomplishing our mission, as the Chairman alluded to, we recognize that the changes occurring in the nuclear industry will challenge this framework and additional regulatory change is needed. The staff believes that this can be best facilitated through a combination of innovative and transformative change. In my view, many of the activities that I discussed earlier in my remarks and other recent accomplishments represent innovative change initiatives. These include, for example, the creation of centers of expertise to more effectively and efficiently conduct work, improvements in the licensing process and requests for additional information or RAIs, and clarification of the guidance, training, and expectation for backfits. Again, these are innovative changes. Generally, I think of innovative change as those changes that improve regulatory efficiency and effectiveness through new or modified ways of conducting work within our existing regulatory framework. Such proactive innovation is important, and we remain committed to advancing change in this very meaningful way. However, we also recognize that innovation typically involves incremental change. We now believe we have to do even more to respond to the expected use of new and novel technologies in the nuclear industry. And in the regulation of areas such as digital instrumentation and control and safety-related applications and accident tolerant fuel reviews for new materials and new manufacturing approaches for big data as well as small modular reactors and advanced reactor designs. These new challenges compel us to consider making transformative changes, that is, change evidence by significantly different ways to regulate and that produces market enhancements in our effectiveness, efficiency, and agility. Now, we do recognize that transformative change is not new to the NRC. We showed our ability to transform when we developed and implemented the reactor oversight process, as well as when we developed and applied 10 CFR Part 52 regulation to license, certify, and approve new nuclear power plants. To advance transformational change at the NRC, at the end of January, I created a transformation team with members from across the agency and tasked it to gather information, gather innovation techniques, ideas, and methodologies to successfully implement transformation, including strategies to enhance and sustain a transformative organizational culture, to develop and recommend specific areas to initiate transformative change, and to create a strategy and change management plan to foster and sustain an innovative and transformative culture at NRC. Finally, I directed the team to submit a paper to me that will seek commission support to advance this important initiative. The team has already begun to engage a variety of stakeholders, both internal and external to the NRC, and a rick session will be held this afternoon to discuss this topic. In closing, when I think about excellence, I'm reminded of college football in the United States, and particularly the accomplishments of one of my favorite teams, the Crimson Tide or the University of Alabama. I was hoping for a roll tie. I got a roll tie. I got two roll ties. In response to a question about what he does to position his team to win, Nick Saban, the head coach, said that my job is to make sure we're ready for the next task, the next situation, anticipate what that's going to be, and make sure those responsible understand the responsibility to correct any errors made on the last play. All measures indicate that the NRC has continued to successfully achieve its safety and security mission. However, we recognize that nuclear technology and the industry we regulate are changing. The recent and ongoing activities that I've highlighted today are key parts of our proactive strategy to be ready for the next task, the next situation, to anticipate what's going to be and enable the NRC to continue to fulfill its safety and security mission with excellence in the 21st century. Thank you for listening, and I'd be happy to take a few questions. Thank you. Good. Thank you, Vic. Let's dive right in. There were four questions related to new reactors. Let me read a couple of them and see if they all resonate with you. What is your view to the idea that codes and standards for SMRs can be different from the so-called big reactors, 1,000 megawatts? Provide your assessment on the success or lack thereof of Part 52, what was envisioned in the planned benefits. What is NRC doing to support alternative technology or better technologies such as thorium, liquid salt, high temperature gas? And then finally, mainly a comment on our licensing approach to advanced reactors and the need for a funding model and the Nuke Industries statement that they need much clearer milestones for equity investors. I didn't hear that last one quickly enough, but I think there are four that I'll try to wait into, and if I need to throw a lifeline to Fred Brown, I will. So first of all, we do recognize that codes and standards for small modular reactors, certainly for advanced reactors is something that we need to look at. Our three-part strategy and our vision and strategy for advanced non-light-water reactors does include identifying the technical and regulatory requirements that would be different for those reactor designs. And I know that Office of New Reactors is partnering with the Office of Research to try to identify what, if any, different codes and standards would be needed to safely license those designs. I cannot recall if there are any different... Actually, there are a couple of examples where there are different standards that we're applying for the ongoing Small Modular Reactor Review that is new scale, and so we are making advances in that area. As for the success or lack of success of Part 52, I think at the highest level the jury is still out. Again, it was one of those two examples of transformative change that I alluded to. When Part 52 was envisioned, it was obviously envisioned with the ability for a licensee to seek an early site permit, acquire a vendor, gaining a design certification, and then submitting a license for a combined operating license application. Each of those parts of Part 52 have been exercised successfully. So, again, at the highest level, I believe Part 52 has been tried and true. But like with any other initiative, there are opportunities to improve. And we've conducted lessons learned already for the design certification as well as in our application of the combined operating license or issuing combined operating licenses for both summer as well as for Vogel. But again, I think the jury is still out in the long term on the success of Part 52. We remain committed to improvements in each of those areas. As far as licensing approaches for advanced reactors, we did issue our road map for a flexible stage review for advanced non-light-water reactors in December. I believe that's one of the, one of about a half a dozen strategies that are part of our near-term efforts. As part of our vision and strategy for advanced non-light-water reactors, we identified a three-part strategy, a near-term strategy, a mid-term and a long-term strategy, the near-term strategy items, action items. We made a lot of significant progress in those. And again, our roadmap for licensing in a flexible stage review is just one element of that. Good. Thank you, Vic. There's three or four questions all related to risk and risk-informed thinking and I'll just summarize them. But transformation will require cultural change to achieve a paradigm shift and it's difficult to change culture often at the NRC. What are we doing to ensure the leadership is strong and behind cultural transformation? Risk thinking has been cited as a priority, yet training seems to come out as the main focus. Do you think more policy and process changes are needed? Those summarize them, Vic. So I think at the highest level, we've been on a journey on becoming more risk-informed for over four decades. The commission issued, we just recognized the 42nd anniversary of the safety goal policy statement. And of course, that was followed by the PRA policy statement and just a significant amount of guidance that we have employed, certainly successfully in the React oversight process to risk-inform, the React oversight process, there are a number of other complementary regulatory guides. But again, we recognize that we're on a journey. The commission directed us in 2016 to take another look at what we're doing in the area of risk-informing our activities. And you, Brian, are leading us in that area to, again, further risk-informed our licensing process. And we recognize that part of that is cultural and culture. It's people processes, procedures, et cetera, and an atmosphere for making decisions that consider risk. So we're on a journey. I know the leadership team embraces risk in our decision-making process, and we just have to continue to focus on that area. Good. Thank you, Vic. Thank you. A last question, Vic, in light of time. Have the goals of AIM 2020 been achieved? If not, does the new strategic plan, plan a further AIM 2020, or will it supersede it? Thanks, Brian. As I indicated in my remarks, the staff did complete the 19 specific tasks that the commission directed in the in Project AIM. We also have completed 149 of the 150 tasks. But the essence of Project AIM is enduring, and it will continue, as I mentioned and the chairman mentioned. And that is, for the NRC, to be more effective, more efficient, and agile. Last fall, as the senior leadership team and I met to talk about where we were, because we had briefed the commission on the status of Project AIM, again having achieved complete of the 19 items, and at that point, 148 of the 150, and we asked ourselves, well, where do we go from here? And we reminded ourselves, again, that the ethos is to continue to improve. We're talking excellence. And with excellence, you don't, excellence isn't a destination. It's an aspiration. So we've not completed Project AIM because it's enduring. Our focus on innovation and transformation is really a natural continuation of what we learned because of our refocus on Project AIM. So it's one of those goals that you never reach, but you're always aspiring to. Thank you, Rick. We have several other questions. I'll remain up at the front podium for some specific