 Thank you. Thank you all. I know I sort of spoke quite at length. Just recently it was a bit of the kitchen sink, a little bit of everything, but we have a lot going on at the NRC and I wanted to be able to touch on a number of those issues. As you all are very well aware I'm certain that yesterday was the second anniversary of the Fukushima accident and I just want to let you know that we're making good progress on our Fukushima recommendations and that we expect to hear from industry for instance very soon this month on their flex approach to the mitigating strategies for beyond design basis accidents order that we issued among other things that we will be hearing from the industry on this coming year. On sequestration I think our EDO talked at length about this both in his talk and during questions. I just want to reemphasize that we will certainly always maintain our central safety mission and and reemphasize that we are not expecting furloughs at the agency but of course after time there will be a price to sequestration as there is for for every government agency and finally I know that many of you have probably been asking I know a number of you have been asking about the San Anufri plant in Southern California and I just want to repeat that we will not let any plant operate until we are assured that they can operate safely. So with that let me not take up any more of your question time and offer it over to you. Chairman good morning Steven Dolly with Plaths you mentioned during your plenary just now your visit to your visit to Fukushima and the devastation that you saw there can you tell us a little update us a little bit on the the commissions and the staff's activities on actions to address in the future potential economic consequences and land contamination that might result from severe accidents. Yeah we're right in the middle of finalizing the vote on economic consequences potential economic consequences so I can't give you more details than that but you know stay tuned and within the next week or two you'll we'll have more to say. Okay thank you and just real quickly you last week we heard there would be no furloughs today we're hearing you don't expect any furloughs is there am I being too criminological yes there are possibility that you're saying there will definitely not be any furloughs as a result of sequestration. Thank you. Emily from Nuclear Intelligence Weekly and my question is on the filtered hard events the Japanese regulator as I understand it is also considering whether or not to go forward with the filtered hard events and you all are still in the middle of your decision right and so my question was are you at all concerned about public perceptions if the NRC decides not to require them at all BWRs and then the Japanese regulator does decide to do that. You know certainly it's important to for us to understand what is going on in the international community with a variety of the Fukushima recommendations that we've made it's it's important for us to understand what others are making I think in general we are all generally on the same page with lessons learned from Fukushima and what we're requiring of our licensees so far but I can say more about the filtered filtering issue once we have our vote finalized again it's a similar time frame to the economic consequences vote. I'm Brian Wingfield with Newside the Mitsubishi report that was made public by the NRC last week seemed to indicate that there was potentially some concern about the generator tubes before they were installed like to know what the NRC thinks about that and should anything be done. You know that report is something that we are considering in our analysis of what's going on at songs but we're also trying to understand a number of other issues as well in general we are trying to make sure that the the licensee understands and we understand the root cause of the problem and we want to make sure that we understand and the licensee understands that the plant can operate safely with the given proposals by the licensee and we're in still in the process of evaluating that. Were you satisfied with Mitsubishi's report though? Was I satisfied with it I don't I don't know that we were you know particularly satisfied or dissatisfied it's it's just another piece of information in our overall process of evaluating the the the reactors and the steam generators at in particular at songs. Thanks. Hi my name is Shiro Namekata from Asahi Shimpun Japanese daily news paper. So my question is also about filter band. There seemed to be a tremendous pressure from Congress members saying that it is not cost-effective while some others argued that you should install as quickly as possible. So how do you feel that the pressure from Congress members Congress members argument and what are you going to deal with the situation. Thank you. Well I think it's important for us to take into account all views as I said during my speech. I think it's important for us to hear the views of a wide variety of people who are interested in that includes Congress. So certainly we're I'm interested in what they have to say and we've been hearing from both sides of the aisle and both sides of the issue here and and we've been hearing from a variety of others as well on this issue. So we've all take we've taken it into account and we're in the voting process. So I can't I can't really go into more detail than that. Hello my name is Kousuke Ito I'm a reporter from the G.G. Press. It's a Japanese news wire company. My question is US regulatory actually NRC and the Japan's regulatory body in our way has agreed to establish the steering committee last December and is there any specific area or specific issue coming to your mind how to cooperate how to collaborate. Yeah not no specific issues. We had a good meeting last December in Japan just before the Fukushima ministerial and and our staffs have been talking since and and working together since and we will continue to maintain a close relationship with the new Japanese regulator. Hi Chairwoman Hannah nor do we find wire. You talked a little bit in your speech about concerns with renewing the lease for the headquarters or the campus. Can you is that because of budgetary constraints and you know what is what's causing that and what might work in via satellite entail. Well we already work via satellites right. We have we've had four I think we're down to three satellite offices around Rockville and Bethesda and in fact the NRC has been in satellite offices for decades and decades and we're trying to consolidate to one campus so that for instance our research staff doesn't have to spend 20 minutes or 30 minutes on the metro coming down to a meeting and then going back and then coming down and in terms of the the issues with two white Flint this has to do with the overall general requirement that GSA and has of reducing the footprint of federal agencies and so it's it's a matter of working it out with that but we've we've developed a very good working relationship with GSA. Matt Walden New York Times is the NRC avoiding furloughs because so much of its budget comes from user fees or is there some other reason and if you do end up in an extended sequester what will the difference be say five years from now. Well that's a good question I'm not sure what the difference will be five years from now I mean certainly there will be there will be longer-term impacts on the longer-term programs as you as the EDL mentioned the reason that we've been able to avoid furloughs I think it's twofold and partly it's that the folks here are very careful they're very conservative and they plan very carefully but the other part is that we are a single line item in the budget unlike the Department of Defense which has twenty five hundred line items and each of those has to take that five percent cut we have to take a five percent cut just on our total budget so that gives us the the ability to to basically decide where to cut gives you flexibility yes but could you give an example obviously you're not looking forward to the sequester but could you could you give an example of a specific program that we might feel sorry about later for having defunded well personally I'll feel sorry about the elimination of grants to universities and what are those used for they're used for research they're used for faculty development they're used for course development they're used for graduate and undergraduate support Hiroto Fuseya NHK Japanese broadcast company my question is a broad broader one two years just has passed since from the severe accident and what evaluation do you have current Japanese regulation action or recovery from the accident especially nuclear you have to so you know I would I let me say a couple things I had the opportunity as I mentioned to visit Fukushima in December and I was very impressed with the amount of work going on at the site you know they had over 2,000 workers and they'd already taken off the top sort of destroyed bit of the unit for reactor they were preparing a roof to put on a new roof to put on the unit for reactors so they could begin to move the spent fuel at the end of this year that was all very impressive at the same time there's clearly a huge amount of work that needs to be done there you know they've got four reactors that are damaged they still got clean up from the tsunami they have a lot of contaminated water so there's there a lot of challenges that remain and you know we as I said earlier we'd have the opportunity to meet with the new Japanese regulation authority and they are seem to be operating well and we look forward to working with them Hanna norther with Greenwire chairman just one more question can you give us an update you said you had some months ago tasked the staff with looking at the effects of climate change on the nuclear fleet can you tell us anything about that review or I haven't formally tasked the staff with that not okay but you said you had asked the staff to the staff are including that in their analyses I think in general but but this not there's no specific task in there and any lessons learned there we're still in the process hi chairman Lynn Garner with Bloomberg BNA when you were talking about more emphasis you wanted to see Congress and the White House put more emphasis on the back end of the fuel cycle have you had conversations or discussions yourself with members of Congress or people in administration or do you plan to sort of push this yourself as a way to get some action on this well I think I've been pushing it for years now this has been an issue that's been very important to me for many years you know before I was on the Blue Ribbon Commission and during during my time on the Blue Ribbon Commission and I'll talk to anybody who wants to listen about how we really need to resolve this problem and how we actually already have a really good model in this country in the form of the waste isolation pilot project there been any recent conversations with members of Congress or the White House or the administration about about this issue that you've had about this particular issue I've had conversations with members of Congress and and and some folks from the White House about a variety of issues okay thank you time for one more again from Nuclear Intelligence Weekly are you concerned at all about the higher fuel burn-up rate as utilities are seeking to extend the length of time that they leave the fuel in the reaction excuse me just getting over a cold here sorry trying to pour water on you yes I think that's a very important issue I think we do have to pay attention to higher higher fuel burn-ups and not only in reactor performance but also again here's my back-end focus on the spent fuel pool performance on dry cask performance and this is an issue that we are already actively doing research on thank you very much