 Hello, I'm Chris Hansen, Chairman of the NRC. 20 years ago, on September 11th, our nation was attacked by air, and life as we knew it changed forever. Few words can explain our range of emotions, especially for those of you who worked in or near the World Trade Center, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon. The loss of life was enormous, and we all felt the agony and disbelief as our nation was under attack. Despite the uncertainty, the NRC jumped into action, activating our emergency responders, and ordering nuclear power plant licensees to increase their security posture. We staffed our operation center 24-7, and monitored law enforcement activities, while communicating with the intelligence community to stay current on developments. Our Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response was an outgrowth of this important work. Later, we implemented measures boosting the NRC's already strong security requirements to include more frequent and challenging force-on-force inspections, enhanced information monitoring, and stricter physical security, even at our own facilities. It is my great privilege to acknowledge the women and men of the NRC for their outstanding work in maintaining and enhancing the security of nuclear power facilities and materials. I also want to recognize those we lost that terrible day. Family, friends, colleagues, and most notably the courageous first responders who rushed to save lives while in harm's way. The NRC is honoring this anniversary with an internal discussion with some of those involved in the NRC's response. They'll share their thoughts on 9-11 and their work since. The video you were about to see was first unveiled 10 years ago. It helps us remember that day and how the NRC rose to the challenge. 9-11, I was preparing along with two other response coordinators an exercise that we were going to have on 9-12. And in preparing the room, we do what coordinators always do. And another coordinator, Doug Weber, came in and he said, are you watching what's going on in New York? We turned on a TV monitor and saw what was going on at the World Trade Center. We immediately, all the four of us knew it was time to do what we do. The problem is there was no plan for this. I got to thinking about Dwight Eisenhower talking about plans are useless, but planning is essential. And that's what we do in an emergency response. You never get the emergency that you plan for. I was up to Karen Jackson and myself and other responders there to activate the center, asked people to come back in because the government had just closed itself. People were evacuating the buildings for their own safety. But the professionalism of our folks, they all came back in, did their duty without any plans. We found the right thing to do. Common sense, good training, good management. We got through it and I was very proud to be a member of the NRC that day. I was on my first recruitment trip. I found myself in the airplane. And all of a sudden, the pilot came over the loudspeaker and he said, I'm sorry, you all have to go back inside of the terminal because a plane just went into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. And of course the people in the plane, we were looking at each other, but we got up and did what he said. When I got back into the airport, people were running, a voice over the loudspeaker was saying, evacuate, evacuate. And by the time I got outside of the front of the airport and I looked to my right toward the Pentagon and the smoke was just building out of the, up in the sky. It was terrible, it was terrible. But they said, keep walking, keep walking. So I walked over to Crystal City. There were thousands of people in the airport that day. The news said it was 45,000 people in Reagan National. Well, on 9-11, interesting enough, it was the one day in 23-year career here at the NRC that all our management was on a retreat and they were away from the office and they had delegated me as the regional administrator. So I came in the morning, did my normal duties as regional administrator and by about 10 o'clock things just got crazy here in the region. There was two of us who responded down right where we're sitting now to the IRC, Greg Smith and myself. And we were immediately on the phone with NORAD and the FAA with the primary focus on Flight 93 which was actually crossing Pennsylvania quite near Beaver Valley and there was a concern with Three Mile Island. Well, during 9-11 when we found out about the strikes we were at an annual staff meeting in Austin, Texas. At the time I worked for the Texas Department of Health and someone had came in and said that there was a rumor that a plane had run into one of the towers so I got home and called my recruiter I was going to try to re-enlist in the military and I didn't know that there was an age limit on that so I did not get to re-enlist in the military so I started looking for ways to redirect that anger into something a little more beneficial, a little more productive and two months later I joined the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and ever since then I have been performing nuclear material safety and security inspections out of the Region 4 office in Arlington, Texas. So that morning I was getting ready to go downtown with senior managers to meet with senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As we came into Washington DC and crossed over near the Washington Monument I looked over and I saw this big billowing cloud of black smoke we got up to the FBI building they opened up the door and being the least senior person in the car they said, Bobby why don't you go out and see what's going on they evacuated their building and I made the decision at that point I'm not waiting to see what's going to happen I got on the Metro, actually beat the officials back to NRC went directly into the operation center started making phone calls and that was the beginning of a two and a half month period of working 12 hour shifts 24 hours a day with our staff to make sure that our senior officials had the best information possible from the intelligence that we were receiving which was quite a bit. I just finished up a night shift for our division deployment down at Fort Polk, Louisiana I went off to get breakfast I was sitting there eating breakfast enjoying my meal when someone came running in and was looking for me in particular I said, hey a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center Sergeant Heater we need to get back to headquarters immediately well I got back there and on our TVs we had there they had CNN displayed and I showed the smoke pouring out of the north tower of the World Trade Center it was a lot of smoke and I knew at that time that my cousin worked in that tower on the 97th floor with Marsh McClain, a company there so I watched kind of in a little bit of shock and then while we were watching the second plane hit the south tower soon after when the south tower collapsed and then the north tower collapsed I knew my cousin who had worked there most likely perished because I knew he was up on the high floor and later on I was confirmed that he did die my cousin Dennis Taramina who was the only volunteer firefighter and EMT to perish the World Trade Center versus the other professional responders we saw the casualty list we saw other friends I knew at the Pentagon who had perished and every year at 9-11 is definitely a sad time for us I'll never forget it on 9-11 I was providing a workshop on license renewal in Moscow, Russia during one of the breaks one of the translators came to me and asked had I heard about the airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon my initial impression was I can't believe this I can't believe that a plane could even get near our Pentagon my most memorable impression however was as I was going into the U.S. Embassy to extend my visa there were flowers everywhere over the gates over the grounds and I was told that it was from the Russian people who were sympathetic to our nation's tragedy I was a manager in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation we were having a management trade-off site at the time I had actually a security branch that worked for me it was about 10 or 11 people and who knew that within several years this organization would come from a small branch to a large office the Office of Nuclear Security Incident Response and that me personally were asked to report to the Operations Center and be part of the shift not unlike what we've done recently post Fukushima where you had the Operations Center around the clock we did that for months after the events of 9-11 I think it's probably the most significant event I will see and experience in my lifetime people lost their brothers and sisters grandparents I mean people lost a lot they lost a lot of people and I didn't have anyone personally die to me but I thought like someone did because you're seeing all these people die you care about the families and they're looking for the loved ones you feel connected to them because of what happened