 Okay, welcome back everybody. Good to have everybody back. Looks like we got at least 95% of the people to come back It's a great pleasure. I have the opportunity now to introduce Commissioner Saviniki Commissioner Saviniki was sworn in for a second term as a commissioner of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on June 29th 2012 her first term began in March of 2008 She came to the Commission from a position on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee Where she worked on issues such as nuclear defense programs nuclear security and environmental management Prior to her work in the Senate Commissioner Saviniki worked as a nuclear engineer in various positions with the US Department of Energy Both in Washington DC and in Idaho Before that she was an energy engineer for the Wisconsin Public Service Commission And as many of you know Commissioner Saviniki has a quick and dry wit and she has demonstrated as many times in these rick speeches I'm sure she won't mind me sharing this anecdote with you. The commissioner has been very supportive of me Both as a regional administrator and then in the past six months as the director of the office of NLR But she gave me some advice when I started with the job in NLR when we talked about some of the challenges that they were facing And she told me if I was not going to be part of the solution. I was the precipitate. So with that I give you Commissioner Saviniki Good morning Thank you, Bill for that introduction and for warming up the crowd with a bad joke. There might be more of those to come I'm very pleased to take part in this year's regulatory information conference Thank you to each of you for attending this session and also for all of you tuning in We have a number of remote broadcast locations so that our regional staff and other offices can tune in Without having to travel to this particular location also I think we're live webcasting or if not it will be archived. So to those of you who tune in later Thank you for tuning in. I want to add my thanks to those of others to all of the many NRC employees who both work on this conference in its preparation and then volunteer to do a lot of the important logistical tasks throughout the week It is their efforts that make the conference a success each year and so I want to thank them I'd like to acknowledge as well our many colleagues in attendance joining us from across the country and from around the world Thank you for traveling the distances that are required to be here to those of you who have welcomed me into your power plants and Facilities and academic institutions throughout the course of the year I want to thank you for sharing my journey of continuous learning as an NRC commissioner and For communicating your experiences to me firsthand. I think it's a very important part of Regulating with true comprehension. I'd also like to acknowledge the presence of important Partners from other federal and state agencies who are here today The NRC's many critical relationships with other government entities are essential to the achievement of our mission Thank you for taking the time to be here and in many cases for agreeing to be presenters at one of our technical sessions Finally, thank you also to my own staff for your assistance and support throughout the year So I am grateful to all of you. I've expressed a lot of gratitude I'm also really grateful for the opportunity to be standing here today. I recently read. I've been maybe focused on the concept of gratitude I read last October November the most wonderful expression a Definition of gratitude. It said it was from Melody Bady And she's written a book called the language of letting go but she wrote gratitude unlocks the fullness of life It turns what we have into enough Speaking of enough this is my seventh Rick speech. I was sworn in on March 28th So when the Rick rolls around for me in mid-March, it's kind of the we have fiscal years and calendar years for me This is the end of my NRC year. It's kind of the the turnover and each time I approach the Rick I try to come at it a fresh and a new because we have many folks who come every year I'm sure we have new participants as well But at the end of the day, I have to confess to you I try to come at it a fresh, but this is the raw material. It doesn't change. I'm kind of you know This is what I have to work with is me. So the pattern is set so for those of you who Enjoy what I do. It's unlikely that you'll see a departure from that today I'm always working at the last minute to prepare for the Rick as if I didn't know it was coming or something Which is kind of crazy But that was true again this year and this is a phenomenon that my sister Was charitable enough to call your process. It was we were talking on Sunday and she asked me Well, you know what constitutes the rest of your Sunday and your Sunday evening just as family members do and I said Well, I need to get started on a speech that I am going to be delivering on Tuesday and I expected her to be have a very close and she's my older sister So she's not she's very free with her feedback and criticism and advice. I expected her to be critical of me and so was it was Refreshing that she said but that's your your process Christine. That's how you do things So, you know, I just say bless our families, right because they can take What we don't find a strength about ourselves and they turn it into this winsome, you know quirk that we have That is a good thing. So that's my process. I guess Now Eric Leeds is not up here with me. I've done a lot of ricks and I'm accustomed to having Eric here Eric is gone like so many others We have the very capable Bill Dean and he's showing himself to be very capable today I told Bill before we got started I said the buzz in the room is that this appears to come quite naturally to you But I don't you know, I don't always do well with change, but Bill It's all right because I'm on my fourth chairman my third EDO and so I can deal with a change in moderator That's hardly the biggest change I've seen in my service as an NRC commissioner But the curious thing is I I find that I'm becoming More sentimental about things as I the years go by I don't know if this is something about moving through life No one warned me about it. I Seem to notice all this change Maybe it's kind of staying in one place for a while and you you become an observer a first-hand Witness to the kind of the river of change that goes on and flows into the vast sea of change That is life that is constantly Moving on in this past New Year's which is also a time to be melancholy and reflective Or to go to a big poker party, which I also did But I had time to be melancholy partly because I went all in and I blew it I have a very Forward leaning betting strategy that I did not commensurate with what's in my hand though I figured oh just you know through posture. I can pull it off, but I had more experienced people at the table with me anyway, we all had fun, but The song old Lang Syne I Started to dwell on this because partly I've always been amused by this song which is not an American invention by any Stretch it's Robert Burns. I don't know if that's any relation distant or other Steve is our chairman Burns is Shaking his head, but perhaps distantly he is related to Robert Burns, but it's very very old song Of course, it's a drinking it's a drinking song. So that's why it's Gone in and out of fashion or stayed certainly stayed around for a long period of time I just can you still hear me? My mic's gone a little strange. No Okay, I don't know it changed on me Is it not are the people like someone in the back raised their hand if it's amplifying to the back? Oh They're not working. Well, what are we gonna do? Should I just your might does your mic work? Should I do it from the table? Oh? Well, this is very interesting. Can anyone hear me at all? Okay, some people just so I'm gonna have to give the speech like this This is gonna be really not very fun for me So because I have a lot of pages to go so brace yourself You know it was interesting. I'm gonna. I don't know. Maybe we won't get through this So my mic went off so that's new Dean if you've provided for that. That was a new thing that you've done You know, it's kind of like operator training or something You've got to throw scenarios at them and and okay. Thank you for that But nice try this isn't as if anyone watched Saturday night live in the opening skit Was that wonderful actress who impersonates Hillary Clinton? But she said you know for those of you who think I'm gonna go down over Scandal acts she goes nice try that isn't how Hillary Clinton goes down so So you cutting off my mic is not gonna stop me mr. Dean But you know, I was Okay, I've gotten a sign that they're working on I'll just continue to have this awkward posture of looking like I'm about to you know in the football line and give that the scrimmage I Was told once and this was in some times when the interesting times on the commission Chairman Yatsco's chief of staff came to my chief of staff just sharky and said I want you to know that we're aware that commissioner so many keys picture fell off the wall in the lobby and Only her picture by the way But we're having it rehung and I Jeff told me that I hadn't been aware that my picture fell off the wall But I said great the vid the the actual atoms of the building are rejecting me now They're just shoving my picture off the wall What was I time just talking about old Langzine, okay, I was sentimental yes and talking about that I will remember this very fondly this moment of having the mics not working well So people sing this song and the most interesting thing about it is that nobody remembers the words and We don't know the verses by the way It's a very beautiful lyrics and a beautiful song if you ever hear like an Acoustical rendition and all the stanzas that nobody sings because nobody knows the words to our wonderful Reflection on journeying through life with friends, you know throughout the course of life and then remembering them But the funniest thing about that is that confusion about what the song means is captured so perfectly in that bit of Dialogue between that movie when Harry met Sally. Does anybody remember this because the big romantic culmination is at a New Year's party but it's kind of to break the tension and is because it's a Romantic comedy so in case I needed to find that that mixes romantic elements and comedic elements So the comedic element there is that Harry looks at Sally because the song is on and he goes What does this song mean my whole life? I don't know what this song means. I mean So he goes on to say and my mic is working. Yay Should old acquaintance be forgot does that mean we should forget old acquaintances or does it mean if we happen to forget them? We should remember them which is not possible because we already forgot them But I like Sally's response that because she says well Maybe it means that we should remember that we forgot them or something and then she goes on to say the most beautiful part She goes anyway, it's about old friends. So Although it has absolutely nothing to do with the Rick. I started talking about Eric We had the thing with the mics. This is a little recap and I lost my train of thought But the point is that I have made a lot of friends at NRC in this many years That I've been there and and that isn't something that I took for granted. I'm sure I hoped for it I don't know that I expected it, but I I'm very very grateful for it and But so we do as Bill said we see a lot of the people who have moved on to other opportunities here at the Rick That's a kind of special element for those of us here at NRC It's it is a bit of a reunion and I'm grateful to see many of you And for all you've done to contribute to my learning in my time as an NRC commissioner There have been a lot of changes as I noted, but some things change and some things don't One of which is that there is an expectation among some of you that I will Give you a joke I've given this advice to others and I will look I think expressly at Commissioner Barron and if you're gonna tell a joke Tomorrow morning you will have to tell a joke forever So I hope that you will think long and hard about that by the way You're you're a second-day commissioner and I feel you know, I was a second-day commissioner at the Rick for a long time and You know the good thing about it is like you should just claim tomorrow as yours It's like that the field is yours alone to occupy It's your territory and I really look forward to your remarks tomorrow morning So and I would like to as I stand I stood at the Rick It's been the practice more often than not that I am Publicly welcoming and expressing my pleasure at serving with new members of our Commission So I will do that right now and say I have been very pleased to work with first commissioner Burns And then Chairman Burns and Commissioner Barron. I really welcome them both to our Commission I look forward to our continued work together on the important issues in before us in in Concert with our colleague Commissioner Ostendorf. So So now on to the joke Okay Now not everyone wants to hear this joke But those of you who don't can get on your smartphones if that's what you desire to do But the narrow part of the audience that wants this and encourages me slavishly and you shouldn't do that because you get What you want? Okay, so helium walks into a bar and orders a beer The bartender says sorry, we don't serve noble gases He doesn't react get it he he and then the he doesn't react Now the only the only thing better The only thing better than over explaining a bad joke, which is what I just did is telling a second bad joke Have you heard about the new band called? 1,023 megabytes they haven't had any gigs Okay, so we've dispensed with that I Have this you know I'm fussing with my hair and I heard Georgia pasta lacus is here Although I have not been able to see him and say hello to him He used to go after me and then talk about fussing with his hair and it was so fun But I have a piece of hair that won't fall where it should women and others maybe men who are Have long hair. I don't know there's some that do we'll have some sympathy with this But it is it did that clump of hair Decided to be the bane of my existence today. Is that why you shut my mic off is so that I wouldn't say that Okay, I Have I generally share with you some thoughts that have been on my mind as my sister was kind enough to describe as as my process I will also note that I Collected these thoughts for you at a time when I had given up caffeine For three weeks after a 30-year love affair with coffee I'd never given it up for that long. So I'm gonna look at work product now and go What did I produce in that three weeks and what did it look like I broke down this morning? I shouldn't admit that but woohoo after you don't have it for three weeks and you have a cup of coffee boy You're ready to go So on Sunday night as I told my sister according to my process I'm working on this I'm watching the walking dead I'm on my work email on the commercial breaks. I'm chatting jotting down things. I wanted to just talk about Looking through a file of ideas that I just gather over the course of the year. That's also part of my process I'm doing laundry. I'm preparing lunches for the week and it occurs to me That that fits perfectly because one of the things I wanted to talk about is a concept I've heard referred to as the too much-ness of our lives Last June a Swiss born philosopher Alain de Bottin She shocked the world or at least his nearly half million Twitter followers When he tweeted that everyone should delete Twitter from their cell phones now He was contacted by the Washington Post to elaborate in more than 140 characters on his particular Social media philosophy and he responded as follows Twitter is of course a wonderful thing But it is also the most appalling distraction ever invented it sounds so harmless But it wants you never to be in touch with yourself again And never to have time to catch up on the updates from the person you really need to keep close to you yourself He went on to say we need relief from the Twitter fueled impression that we are living in an age of Unparalleled importance we need on occasion to be able to go to a quieter place Where that particular conference in this particular? Epidemic that new phone and this shocking wildfire will lose a little bit of their power to affect us a Flourishing life requires a capacity to recognize the times when Twitter no longer has anything original or important to teach us periods when we should refuse imaginative connections with strangers and hashtags when we must leave the business of Complaining insulting haranguing exclaiming to others in the knowledge that we have our own priorities to honor in the brief time still allotted to us Taking this concept even further the author Carl Greenfeld in a New York Times piece entitled faking cultural literacy Comments on the superficial nature resulting from our attempts at following so many topics at once He writes it has never been so easy to pretend to know so much without actually knowing anything We pick topical relevant bits from Facebook Twitter or emailed news alerts and then regurgitate them Instead of watching mad men or the Super Bowl or the Oscars or presidential debate You can simply scroll through someone else's live retweeting of it or read the recaps the next day Our cultural canon is becoming determined by whatever gets the most clicks What we feel now is the constant pressure to know enough at all times Lest we be revealed as culturally illiterate So that we can survive an elevator pitch a business meeting a cocktail party the visit a visit to the office Kitchenette so that we can post tweet chat comment text as if we have seen read watched listened What matters to us a wash in petabytes of data is not necessarily having actually consumed this content firsthand But simply knowing that it exists having a position on it being able to engage in the chatter about it He notes that a recent survey by the American Press Institute Reveals that six in ten Americans acknowledge that they do nothing more than read the headlines of the news And in a crushing moment of honesty in his own piece He notes parenthetically that he knows this only because he skimmed the Washington Post headline about the survey He continues as follows It's understandable that one party or even both parties in a conversation may not have the faintest idea of what is being talked about We're all very busy Busy or if I believe the harried responses when there are any at all to most emails I send than any previous generation and because we spend so much time staring at our phones and screens Texting and tweeting about how busy we are we no longer have the time to consume any primary material We rely instead on the cab casual observations of our Facebook friends or the people we follow Or well who actually? Who decides what we know what opinions we see what ideas we are representing as our own observations? At the end of the day, I suppose It's it's hard not to feel a little bit kind of pushed around by the system by all this Business by the tyranny of it by the weight of it and the in the Commission's vote this year on the use of qualitative factors In regulatory decision-making I quoted from an essay by commentator and author Margaret Wenta entitled I'm an adult stop nudging me She observes the following the idea that public officials have a duty to help you do what's in your own interest has taken off with a vengeance Thanks in no small part to something known as nudge theory nudge theory Which was invented by two guys named Robert Taylor and Cass Sunstein is the eyes on the face of it quite benign She writes it recognizes that we are flawed Irrational and occasionally foolish creatures who left to our own devices cannot be relied upon to save retirement Save for retirement eat our vegetables or floss The idea behind nudge theory also known as soft paternalism is to design public policies that make the right choices much easier The most obvious problem with nudge theory. She writes is that it divides the world into we and they We are the informed the dispassionate the rational ones who happen to be in charge They the poor schlubs are myopic lazy poorly informed and poorly controlled. They need to be saved from themselves The other problem is that regulators and governments are people too. She writes they have their own fall abilities A third problem is that soft paternalism can morph pretty quickly into soft authoritarianism That's the problem in a nutshell. She writes. It's a short step from nudging people to terrorizing them and pushing them around Many fields, especially public health are full of people who think they have a corner on the truth These people often bemoan the fact that the public doesn't trust them But the reason we don't trust them. She writes is quite simply that they are simply imposing their own preferences on the rest of us Now in an exaggerated in sense our incessant busyness has now become Its own competition its own tyranny But it's also become a kind of a prestige and a status symbol and in essay entitled You're probably too busy to read this the Washington Post staff writer Bridget Schulte builds on the subject her essay begins as follows One man says he works 72 hours a week because everyone in his office does He's thinking about cutting back on sleep so that he can become more productive a Woman says the last time she had a moment for herself was when she went for her annual mammogram Then another woman bursts in Apologizing for being late to the focus group convened precisely to discuss the fast pace of modern life She got stuck in traffic. I look at the author writes I look out the window from our perch at the bar of the 18th story Radisson hotel and see a handful of cars at a stoplight Beyond that acres of cornfields. We are not in Washington, New York, Los Angeles or some other type a city We're in Fargo, North Dakota She writes somewhere around the end of the 20th century business business became not just a way of life But a badge of honor and life sociologist say became an exhausting every day a thong People compete over being busy. It's about showing status We do this even as neuroscience is increasingly showing that at our most idol our brains are most open to inspiration and creativity She points out that our views on Leisure have changed very dramatically in a short period of time. She uses these statistics She says during the 1950s the post-World War two boom in productivity Along with rising incomes and standards of living led economists and politicians to predict that by 1990 Americans would work 22 hours a week six months a year and retire before age 40 and In a kind of another cultural theme She said she writes that while accepting the Republican Party's nomination for president in 1956 Dwight Eisenhower envisioned a world where quote Leisure will be abundant so that all can develop the life of the spirit of reflection of religion of the arts of the full realization of the good things of the world Think about that statement from a presidential candidate accepting as party's nomination And if you reflect on it for a moment our current thinking Diverges so strongly from that sentiment that when I try to picture any of the potential candidates for president in night in 2016 Campaigning and espousing any similar theme that seems like preposterous to me. Nobody would say that now You know Ellen Ellen DeGeneres is if I really enjoy her comedy and she had a bit She was reflecting on the show Mayberry RFD. Does anybody remember that show? It's just I'm the only person I grew up at a time before there before there was cable and Networks broadcasters needed to fill content and so they rebroadcast a lot of old shows But she talked about how that show begins with you know Andy and opi walking down the street and it's just whistling and she this was her comment I never forgot that she goes when there's time for whistling There's a lot of time in a show when there's time for whistling and So we've come really rather far from that concept now I don't preach about all of this from some lofty perch myself some state of Perfect alignment and inner harmony and peace. I'm I struggle like everyone else in this room On top of that some of you right now are smirking because I'm known to be a What should we say a rather? focused Individual and it's true that I care a lot about what I do I consider being a commissioner a real honor and a privilege and it's a very very solemn Responsibility to have laid on your shoulders even though it's an honor and a privilege But I also care about it, you know because life is finite and precious and uncertain and we all know that so consequently I Would say that I'm sure I you know some will take exception to this But I think sometimes that putting all of yourself into the things that you care about Is all you really have you know to contribute to bring sometimes you bring all of yourself Into an issue. I guess I share there's many management philosophies different things work for different people But I I read something written by Admiral Rick over that I Agree with him me he while he was repeating that the devil's in the details. He didn't invent that But he may have said that he invented it, but he didn't invent that phrase, but But he said it this way he said The man in charge must concern himself with details If he does not consider them important neither will his subordinates It's hard and monotonous It's hard and monotonous to pay attention to seemingly minor matters in my work He said I probably spend about 99% of my time on what others may call petty details Most managers would rather focus on lofty policy matters and this is the part that resonates with me He said I've because I've observed this but when the details are ignored the project fails No infusion of policy or lofty ideals can then correct the situation still in those disquieting moments when I'm fatigued with doing the hard and monotonous work and I'm still plagued By doubt that you know the permanent stench of failure is going to hang over everything I do It would seem that stepping back and having Reasoned and perhaps more elevated approach to the concept of what we care about and why we attempt anything is called for In this vein I found insight in the writing of author Anthony door. He wrote a piece Entitled costume drama. It was about a tragically bad homemade Halloween costume He had made when he was seven and it was really an amusing piece But more broadly he's commenting on the themes of you know a trying and failing He writes about it this way. He says I'm a novelist every day. I fail My drafts when I complete them, which is not often are inevitably Shadows of what I had hoped they would be I can't ever fully execute the glorious and inarticulable dreams in my head It has taken me 30 years to appreciate the wisdom of my mother that the beauty is not in the result But in the attempt to build our castles in the clouds We need to live with the fear that we will stink that no one will pay attention That we will fall like trees in the empty rainforest The fear that we are going to take our glorious flawless nebulous ideas and butcher them on the altar of reality Or as Flo Baer put it in Madame Bovery None of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows and Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bares to dance to While we long to make music that will melt the stars So although I work very hard. I'm preparing my votes Some days I come closer to expressing that exact measure as it was called of my thoughts than others The Commission's current deliberation on the integration of the staff mitigating strategies work And it's a deliberation that's still ongoing Work is still ongoing, but it was a unique voting opportunity for me And my vote will be made public when the Commission finishes its work on this matter But it allowed me to step back Because this issue on mid on the integration of mitigating strategies work and flooding work became to me kind of Ablimatic of taking stock of where we are since Fukushima what we've done what we've looked Looked at and so I did want to express one piece of that was that larger reflection of stepping back and saying Where are we now? We're nearly four years out at the time. I wrote this vote From that tragic occurrence and I wrote the following based on this broader reflection I said I respect the work of the near-term task force whose members did yeoman's work in 90 short days And whose final report stands out among those of other nations in Erudition and thoughtfulness But it is time to speak plainly to the fact that no one has the whole answer in 90 days In the intervening years since the task forces report the Commission has Deliberated and closed their recommendation one and the Commission staff as a body made up of Hundreds of experts has taken the task forces good efforts and advanced the agency's thinking Significantly beyond it all of the agency's contributors are to be commended for their long labors to this end To the extent that this paper advances merely merely one in a whole series of informed Refinements to our regulatory response to Fukushima the Commission should continue to foster this NRC culture of continuous evaluation feedback and improvement To do otherwise would be inconsistent with the NRC principles of good regulation and Detrimental to the cause of safety My vote continues and concludes by saying US nuclear power plants are operating safely From statements made by an agency former chairman as he stood in the Rose Garden with President Obama in the earliest days After the Fukushima accident to testimony given last December before the US Congress by our most recent former chairman NRC has given and repeated this assurance in Responding to the Fukushima event therefore the NRC's obligation to the American people is fulfilled Not through an elusive search for a state of perfect knowledge of risk The adding of decimal places to analyses of high consequences high consequence events of small probability It is fulfilled through the achievement of tangible real-world safety improvement In the United States this approach has yielded significant regulatory action and industry response thus far the staff asks us to reaffirm that we intend to stay this course and Pursue this goal for the reassessed flooding hazard and presents the staff's Step-wise implementation actions for a rational means to its achievement. I Affirm this goal and provide my support to the staff's intended actions. I wanted to share that with you again Chairman Burns talked about this earlier One of the pitfalls I think of being a commissioner is that we look the least Holistically at issues before the agency the nature of our process and it's a good process because it leaves it's very structured and disciplined It's screwtable. It's transparent It yields a public voting record a decision record so people know not just what the commission did but why we did it But the unfortunate nature of it is like the candy processing line for you know, Lucy Things go past. We don't get to look across to actions. We're very focused on what's in front of us now I wanted to share that because it was something I'd written in a contemporary sense that reflects on all of what we've done since Fukushima And as my first chief of staff Jeff Sharkey told me said nobody reads your votes. So I mean you talk about So I've done that now, but I the things we care most about are gonna manifest themselves in our actions The in a manner though, that's unique and individual to each of us The key is in conquering the tyranny of our busyness our too muchness our every day a thong and Doing so as the philosopher Alan de Botan that I quoted at the beginning said In the knowledge that we have our own priorities to honor in the brief time still allotted to us and I think I'll finish. I don't know what my time check is am I leaving time Okay, so I think one of the most poignant articulations about this came in President Ronald Reagan's 1981 inaugural dress, which he was known as being a really eloquent speaker And I'm a real fan of that particular inaugural address for the first time The ceremony had been the swearing-in ceremony if the first time in modern history Let me say the swearing-in ceremony had been moved to the west front of the Capitol if you're not familiar with the DC Geography that provides the most sweeping vista of the District of Columbia and all of our National monuments, so when he said this the audience would have been able to kind of pivot their head around and see that but He said beyond those monuments to heroism and he was talking about the various the Washington the Jefferson He said is the Potomac River and on the far shore the sloping hills of Arlington National Cemetery with its row upon row of simple White markers bearing crosses or stars of David They add up to only a tiny fraction of the price that has been paid for our freedom Under one such marker lies a young man Martin Treptow who left his job in a small town barbershop in 1917 to go to France with the framed rainbow division There on the western front. He was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire We're told that on his body was found a diary on the fly leaf under the heading my pledge. He had written these words America must win this war. Therefore. I will work. I will save I will sacrifice I will endure I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost as If the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone Admiral Rickover expressed the same idea when he stated act as if you were going to live forever and cast your plans Way ahead You must feel Responsible without time limitation and the consideration of whether you may or may not be around to see the results should never enter your thoughts I believe it is the duty of each of us. He said to act as if the fate of the world depended on him Thank you. You need to know that mr. Dean just did a little theatrical ploy with me He wanted me to finish my speech so I don't actually have as much time as he said It was a good ploy All right, you're tricky man learning that about you. Yes, ma'am So these questions actually are kind of grouped together, but basically they orient around what would your priorities be? In your remaining time as a commissioner or what things would you want to change at the NRC if you could? It's funny when I first started at NRC people said, you know, what do you want to achieve? What's your agenda? I really honor the work of the the agency's mission is so important and the people are working there that I feel Serving in this type of position is like stepping into a river and there will be Papers that were ongoing when you stepped in and you'll join those deliberations and not everything will be completed But at the time you leave you're going to leave some issues open that you didn't have a chance to see through to conclusion But I think that Turnover on the Commission is a matter of law. It's intentional and so you will step in and out and I Don't bring a personal to-do list or a set of of checked boxes. I Think in terms of what I would like to see changed. I wouldn't frame the question that way I would stay I've become impressed that NRC is capable of So much I think that I want to see NRC be as great as it can be and I think that that's Embedded in project aim. I think that's a lot of our Which here Ben Burns called a midlife crisis, but I got to tell you honey, you don't have a midlife crisis at 40 Okay, 40 is the new 30 and we don't have a midlife crisis of 40 But you can you can think that if you want You know, I think we want to to have the the fullest expression of what we're capable of and I look forward to Watching the staff do that. I think that's an organic thing that happen happens within the organization Politicles kind of come and go we're part of that Part of that constant change, but I look forward to seeing NRC on this journey of further improvement And I think they have everything They have everything at at their hand that they need to be not just successful But I think stunningly successful at that they need to dig deep and do that and want it and own it for themselves I have a handful of questions here that are oriented around the same thing and that is The part 52 and design certification review process and your views on on the timeliness of that process I Don't make a lot of forecasts. What I do is I look at you know, what has happened? And so I try to be very fact-based as is NRC's culture We have seen that Some of the design certifications And again there for large light water reactors, which is something that we have a lot of experience in regulating They've taken longer I think than the crafters of part 52 would have predicted the COL's same thing So I know that we are in the process of always looking at part 52 lessons We've not exercised the entirety of part 52. Is that my mic again? Maybe that's how they'll get me off the stage in any event I think there's a lot there's a tremendous amount of wisdom embedded in those who crafted part 52 It wasn't me so I'm not being self-congratulatory I think it's got a lot of wisdom embedded in it And we just need to be sure that we're executing it true to the core of those who generated it They felt it was an improvement on the way things had been done and they created it But we need to execute it consistent with that Okay The last the last question I have repeated right closely into my microphone like I can do I can go back But basically involves multi-generational work issues with basically four generations of people Isn't that great though? I think of that is it that the question suggests that having four generations of people overlapping in a workplace or on a team Well, I didn't say that in the question, but I interpret it to be like that's a challenge. I Mr. Austin dwarf you're gonna have fun up here. I Think that that's a real strength to have that I am so enthused in dealing with Young generation in nuclear with you know whether or not people are members of that just the incoming professionals into nuclear Because this is a generation of people coming in they're not going to be content to just take what is the bequeath to them and say This is the technology, you know, it's your dad's Cadillac or Oldsmobile or whatever that tagline was they want to take The nuclear sciences in these technologies and make their own imprint over the course of a 30 40 50 year career Whatever it's going to be and I love the fact that I come in there and they want to change more than the carpets in the drapes They want to you know, that's why they're excited about SMR But they're just they're excited about the promise of this technology applied to the issues that their generation and future Generations as they see it will have to solve and so I think it's tremendous strength to have Different generations all Collaborating together. I think I think in the absence of that. I think we'd be much weaker than we are Okay, and there's a question that I would have liked to ask but you don't have to answer it Which is does your poker betting strategy somehow apply to how you do your votes? Oh my gosh, there's ton of strategy and being an NRC commissioner. Are you kidding me? It's fun A poker hand actually I'm probably too forthcoming. I maybe that's why I lost all the money It's interesting It was such a great group because at more than one time the person with the most just said they didn't want me to leave The table maybe they just found it amusing to watch me lose like all my bank after bank my bankroll So they would just shove chips over at me and so I lost not only my own Bankroll but like all kinds of other people's but they kept winning it back for me So maybe they didn't really care But yeah, yeah, their strategy it's been interesting because I you know I'm not always have much of a prospect of success success being of course, you know wanting to win Wanting to be on the prevailing side of a question So you do work within the art of the possible you look at how you might shape Really essential elements as opposed to just being a part of being the prevailing view that carries the day I've tried to communicate this In terms of the agency's own non-concurrents and differing views process is You know, I know what it is not to be on the prevailing side of a question There's just so amusing to me that the commission itself really models the notion of there's different views and somebody prevails And somebody doesn't so I thought Really the notion of non-concurrents and differing views is so organic to the whole commission structure the way our agency is You know top to buy a commission our structure gives the perfect role model You know that at the end of the day a decision has to be made. There are those whose views carried the day There are those and you know from personal experience. I know it's not fun You know being in this category, but if you went out there and expressed it on Honestly and candidly and it didn't carry the day There's no dishonor in that and that doesn't mean that somebody was good or bad or anything else. So I You know, I think that that's a real strength of the Commission, but there is true their strategy in it Of course, it's got nothing to do with poker I'd like to think if however many years I met in our sea I reflect back on that I will reflect on a record of greater success than my poker playing And unfortunately, that's all the time we have what to see the stage the commissioner Austin doors You