 Good morning, afternoon, evening, depending on where you are, and welcome to the 34th Regulatory Information Conference. I'm also happy to announce it's happy International Women's Day, so congratulations to all the women who make the world go around. I'm Andrea Vale, Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, and it is a great honor to be here today and to have this opportunity to welcome everyone on behalf of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And our co-sponsors the RIC with our partners in the Office of Nuclear Reactor, excuse me, Nuclear Regulatory Research led by Mr. Raymond First now. We partner with the entire agency to bring to you an engaging conference that addresses how the agency is preparing for tomorrow, right? Thanks Andrea. It's an honor to be here and to once again co-sponsor the RIC with you and your office. As of this morning, we've got over 3,600 participants registered, and I know I'm really looking forward to the next two and a half days. Next I'd like to welcome Joseph Goodridge from our Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response, who will sing our national anthem. Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming, And the rocket's red bombs bursting in air Gave proof through the night that a flag was still there, Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land the home of the brave. Joseph, for his outstanding performance of the national anthem, and thanks to all of you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to engage with us this week. I also wanted to recognize former chairman and commissioners that are joining us virtually this week. That includes former chairman Missouri, McFarland, and Burns, and former commissioners Merrifield, Apostolakis, and Magwood. We thank you for your prior service to the NRC and your continued involvement in nuclear reactor regulation. Andrea, back to you. This year's program is comprised of two and a half days which feature morning keynote plenary sessions followed by sets of concurrent technical sessions. We open this year's RIC with an opportunity to hear from our chairman, the Honorable Christopher Hansen. The plenary sessions this morning will feature remarks from our commissioners, the Honorable Jeff Baron, and the Honorable David Ray. Plenary sessions tomorrow will include the introduction of our new executive director for operations, Mr. Dan Dorman, and remarks from special guest speaker, the Honorable Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of Energy. Tomorrow, two plenary sessions will be focused on key topics. As this week marks the 11th anniversary of the Fukushima accident, one of our special plenaries will provide an update on decommissioning efforts. The other special plenary session tomorrow is titled, Women Belong in All Places Where Nuclear Safety Decisions Are Being Made. Amen. This session will be introduced by our chairman, Christopher Hansen, and will feature an interview with Ms. Romina Velshey, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The interview will be conducted by Ms. Brooke Clark, the NRC's next Secretary of the Commission, and congratulations to Brooke. We have 30 technical sessions between the afternoons of today and tomorrow and Thursday morning, and thanks to our virtual platform, you're free to move from session to session should you desire. In addition, all of this year's sessions are being recorded and will be made available for viewing on our website after the conference. Some of those technical sessions will be chaired by our commissioners. For example, today at 1 o'clock Eastern, Chairman Hansen will chair the session on pre-application engagements for new and advanced reactors. Today at 3 p.m. Eastern, Commissioner Wright will chair the session on reimagining the role of nuclear and energy and the electric grid. Tomorrow at 1 p.m. Eastern, Commissioner Barron will chair the regional session on reactor inspection program, Leaving Tomorrow Behind. Also on this year's virtual conference platform, we have 13 very engaging digital exhibits and a virtual tour of the NRC Incident Response Center. I encourage everyone to check out the wide range of exhibit topics at your leisure before or after our technical sessions. Just like last year, you the attendees will be able to submit questions electronically to the session moderator for consideration during the session's question and answer period. Attendees will also have the opportunity to contribute to the discussion by participating in live polling in some of our sessions. Our digital exhibits will have contact information, situations of questions or feedback for the staff. Each year, the planning and execution of a conference of this magnitude would not happen without the hard work and dedication of so many, including our NRC staff, our contractor partners, and a wide array of panelists and speakers. So I want to take this first opportunity to thank everyone involved in the RIC this year. Now I have the distinct honor of introducing our chairman. The honorable Christopher T. Hansen was designated chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by President Joe Biden, effective January 20, 2021. He was sworn in as a commissioner on June 8, 2020. Chairman Hansen has more than two decades of government and private sector experience in the field of nuclear energy. Prior to joining the NRC, he served in various roles, including staff member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, senior advisor in the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, and the Office of the T. Financial Officer and consultant at Bulls Allen Hamilton. Chairman Hansen earned master's degrees from Yale Divinity School and Yale School of Forestry Environmental Studies, where he focused on ethics and natural resource economics. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in religious studies from Valprasal University and Valprasal, Indiana. Welcome, Chairman Hansen. We're looking forward to your remarks. Thank you, Andrea, for that introduction. Thank you, Joseph, for that beautiful rendition of our national anthem, and I'll start with a few more thank yous. First, thank you all for attending the RIC virtually this year. Welcome to everyone who's tuning in from their homes, offices, coffee shops, public parks across the U.S. and around the world. I might have said this last year, but I really am optimistic that we'll get to do this in person next year. This is our second virtual RIC, and once again, I'm incredibly impressed by the dedication of the NRC staff in putting on what will be an interesting and informative three days of panel discussions, speeches, and other virtual events. I hope you all take advantage of the virtual platform to learn new things and join conversations. To Andrea, Ray, their teams, the clever CIO crew, and the many others who make the RIC possible, a heartfelt thank you. As Andrea mentioned, the RIC this year, again, begins on International Women's Day. This year, we have two sessions dedicated to highlighting the incredible contributions that women continue to make to nuclear regulation and global policy. I particularly want to thank the women whose talents continue to make the NRC the gold standard around the world. Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to a discussion with President Ramina Velshi of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, where you will hear me reaffirm my commitment to gender equity and an inclusive NRC. I'd also like to thank my colleagues on the commission. We've accomplished a lot in the last year, even though we didn't always agree. Having different perspectives while continuing to work together is imperative to the health of our institution. Finally, I'd like to say thank you to my staff, both my permanent staff and those who joined me on rotation, not only for their efforts to prepare me for the RIC this year, no small task, but also for their hard work over the past year. We've kept up a remarkable pace, and they have not let up. So thank you to Kathleen Blake and Patty Amenez, Molly Marsh, Cynthia Roman, Tony Nakanishi, Olivia Makula, Mandy Mauer, Lisa Demek, Hippo Gonzalez, Mike Clark, and Margaret Severa, who I forgot to thank last year. Like all of you, I've been monitoring the situation in Ukraine with grave concern. My heart goes out to the people of Ukraine in this desperate time. The Russian Federation's violation of Ukraine's sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity is a tragedy with wide-ranging impacts. The unprecedented nature of Russia's actions on Ukrainian nuclear safety, security, and safeguards hits especially close to home for the NRC. At the NRC, and across the U.S. government, we share IAEA Director General Grossi's concerns about Russia's actions and echo his call to refrain from any measures that could jeopardize the security of nuclear materials or the safe operation of Ukraine's nuclear facilities. I'd like to commend our partners at the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine for their continuous updates to the IAEA and the international community, despite the obvious challenges they're facing. I also want to highlight the bravery and dedication of Ukrainian regulatory and operational staff in carrying out their essential duties in the face of extraordinarily trying and dangerous circumstances. The NRC will continue to remain engaged with its U.S. government colleagues to monitor the situation, and we will stand in solidarity with our Ukrainian regulatory partners. We will continue our long-standing support to Ukraine as it works to protect, sustain, and, if necessary, restore the safe and secure operation of its nuclear facilities. Last year, I spoke about my initial approach to my tenure at the NRC, and I painted a picture of the NRC as an institution with three related efforts in the form of a triangle, with risk-informed regulation, agency transformation, and diversity inclusion at each vertex. Undergirding that triangle are three pillars, regulatory independence, data, and the people who form the agency. This year, I want to build on that foundation and talk about the NRC's role as an effective trusted regulator by highlighting three concepts, process, accountability, and legitimacy. You've heard many people, myself included, say that the NRC must not be an impediment to the safe use of nuclear power and materials, new or existing. But what does that mean? And what happens if the NRC doesn't get it right? I'm talking about this from two perspectives. First, what is most often talked about, having a regulatory framework that applicants and licensees, as well as the general public, can successfully understand and navigate, tailored to the risk profiles associated with the reactors and materials in question. And second, licensing an oversight that does not miss any safety significant issues, thus calling into question our framework. As I see it, the NRC is an integral part of deploying new nuclear, even if we're not building or promoting it. Without a license from a credible trusted regulator, society simply will not accept it. As a federal agency, we are ultimately accountable to the American people. I fully understand that we don't regulate to assuage the public's fears. But we must acknowledge that there are fears around nuclear and consider how those fears affect deployment. This is particularly relevant considering the recent seizure of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, resulting in an attack and fire at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Such recent events have understandably been very alarming to the general public. And to understand the public's concerns, we have to look at what information, misinformation and disinformation is being received and how that information, or misinformation or disinformation is being used by the public to assess risk. Domestically, we find ourselves in a time of what the RAND Corporation cleverly calls truth decay and what the writer Jonathan Rausch has called an epistemic crisis. Folks are just having a hard time telling truth from fiction. Truth decay has also contributed to a decline in the trust of government. I don't want to get sidetracked by talking about the pandemic, but I think it's really highlighted individuals ability to sift through information and assess risk. And it has shown the wide spectrum of risk tolerance among individuals and the general distrust of government. I try to keep this in mind when I shape my decisions. In the past few years, as climate change and energy security have come to the fore as existential threats, many have rallied around nuclear as the solution for clean power, including many you would not expect. There's a wave of excitement around getting new reactors online quickly. And the NRC is necessarily caught up in that wave. But a note of caution. Let me quote former NRC chairman, Dale Klein, whose advice I've greatly appreciated during my tenure at the agency. In a speech in 2007, he said, and I quote, if the nuclear power business is treated with less than the seriousness it deserves, and people begin to think that anyone can just jump on the nuclear bandwagon, it opens up the very real danger of making the wave of a nuclear resurgence look more like a bubble. And bubbles have a tendency to pop unquote. The NRC has an obligation to remain independent of the excitement and hold on to our objectivity, rather than let ourselves be pushed by the wave or caught in a bubble. We're independent but not isolated. Independence is an imperative for effectiveness and public trust. Yet we must also transform how we work so we can meet new demands while never losing sight of our core responsibilities overseeing existing uses of nuclear power and materials. Everyone, industry, and the public benefits from a trusted independent regulator. One of the most important characteristics of an effective regulator is having a clear and transparent processes in place to ensure objective decision making. Licensing a nuclear reactor is necessarily a meticulous process. And while flexibility will be important for new designs, the process and guardrails must be sufficiently predictable for applicants and transparent and understandable for the public. Some people will roll their eyes and say, leave it to a government bureaucrat to give a speech defending the process. But hear me out. I've said that nuclear safety is an epistemological question. What do we know? How do we know it? And what difference does it make? The how is just as important as the other pieces of that formulation. As we further risk inform our approaches to implementing our regulations and even as we further develop more performance-based approaches, process oftentimes gains greater importance. Novel concepts continue to emerge and the agency must meet these challenges with flexibility. However, maintaining process as an integral part of our regulatory framework is one way we can continue to ensure adequate protection in all that we do. We ask our kids to show their work in math class so they and we can see the process from point A to point B. If the answer is wrong, then we can help them go back through and find the error. Similarly, when applicants come to us with new reactor designs, we look not only at their claims of performance or safety, but importantly at their methodology for reaching those conclusions. The old adage applies here, too. Show your work. And finally, there's the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a law often misunderstood and frequently maligned by both supporters and detractors. What does NEPA require? It requires the evaluation of environmental impacts of a federal action or decision, and it allows the public to review and comment on that evaluation. It's rightly understood or thought of as a process law. People understandably look to NEPA to give them a voice in government decision making. In short, process matters. And this brings us to the next two concepts I want to highlight, accountability and legitimacy. All that process provides accountability. We're accountable to the public, applicants and licensees, other federal agencies, states and tribes, and we're accountable to ourselves. When done correctly, the process determines objectivity in the outcome. Outside parties can look at our processes and validate whether we did what we said we were going to do. We expect the same of our licensees. Indeed, some of our most significant enforcement actions involve falsification of documentation, that is, a violation of the process, which is significant because it calls into question conclusions about safety or security. It undermines the how we know what we know. A big part of accountability is maintaining a safety culture where everyone in the organization is willing to raise concerns and in turn make corrections if they're warranted. As President Biden says, when you mess up, fess up. And I would add, fix it. That goes for the commission as well as the staff. Finally, process confers legitimacy and credibility on our decisions. Ordinary individuals are not likely to understand the technical details of some of our reviews, but they're much more likely to understand our process, at least in general terms. First, we looked at X, then we independently reviewed Y, then we analyzed Z, and so on. Process is the way the public knows they can trust us when we reach a safety conclusion. Legitimacy and credibility must be earned and fervently upheld and protected. At the foundation of our legitimacy is the core technical competence of the NRC staff in which I have full faith. But we must continue to invest in the people who make up the agency and bring in new talent, both with their own expertise and the ability to learn from our existing staff. There are a lot of competing demands on the NRC staff. Our top priority must continue to be the oversight of existing reactors and uses of materials. For years, as the nuclear industry has been shrinking, the NRC was told to shrink too, and we did. Since 2014, the number of operating nuclear power plants has shrunk by 10%, and the NRC staff has shrunk by more than 20%. Meanwhile, the excitement outside the NRC is on new reactors and building them quickly. We've been changing course to be ready, and we're doing our best to have the necessary resources in place. A key indicator of our legitimacy going forward is our ability to continue to transform our inward-facing and outward-facing processes. Ideally, citizens, applicants, and licensees will see modernization of government at the same pace and scale that they see in the private sector. That's not easy. Transformation for me has never, repeat never, been about cutting regulations or staff. For me, it's about making better regulatory decisions by bringing our data and the full expertise of the agency to bear on an issue. Sometimes that results in greater focus in some areas and less than others, depending on risk significance. I'm willing to follow the data. For many in the agency, transformation has been extra duty, which people have been largely willing to do, but it's not sustainable. Our people have been stretched thin by multiple demands and the COVID public health emergency. Transformation, rather than being an exciting initiative, has in many cases become a burden. And sometimes what we call transformation is really just internally shifting responsibilities, rather than truly rethinking what needs to be done, why, and which parts of the organization are best suited to the task. For me, our transformation efforts are inextricably linked to the hiring initiative spearheaded by our EDO Dan Dorman and our Chief Human Capital Officer, Mary Lamery. Annual attrition at the NRC is running about 7%, which means we need to hire roughly 200 people a year just to stay at Curtin staffing levels. A level, by the way, that we know will not be sufficient to meet the challenges of the future. Not when 24% of our people are over the age of 60 and 55% are over the age of 50, all of them looking forward to a very well-earned retirement. And we need to expand our perspective about how, who, and where we are recruiting. Building the diverse workforce of the future in agency transformation go hand in hand. Equally important, transformation is about preparing the agency for a range of possible futures, potentially a wide range of possible futures. With regard to nuclear reactors, we have an existing fleet, some of which are decommissioning, and some of which are continuing to optimize their operations and seeking to extend their licenses out to 80 years. We have to get our house in order on NEPA and continue to efficiently review applications for subsequent license renewal. Then we have new light-water reactor designs, with a lot of technological adjacency with the existing fleet poised for near-term deployment. And we have advanced reactors, which build off decades of research and development in fuels and materials that have the potential to greatly expand the economic use cases for nuclear power. With developments in fuels and materials, we've seen increased engagement on uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication and transportation. Therefore, our forecasts and preparations for the future must address all segments of the nuclear fuel cycle. Also in the materials area, we have a growing number of agreement states, 39 to date, and we have two additional applications. We must adjust to state agencies taking on more of the materials licensing and oversight roles by taking a close look at our inspection procedures, our integrated materials performance evaluation program, and capacity building among new agreement states. There are advances in nuclear medicine with an expanding array of radioisotopes and treatment modalities. Patients and their families should be able to continue to count on us to efficiently evaluate new technologies and oversee the safe and secure use of these materials. Finally, the security and incident response situation is constantly shifting, especially with regard to cybersecurity, international events, and domestic political polarization. Our partnerships across government, federal, state, tribal, local, are crucial to our security awareness and posture, emergency preparedness and incident response. It's a dynamic situation to put it mildly, and I didn't even talk about fusion. I don't know which future will come to pass, but I do know that any future will require a flexible, efficient, transparent regulatory framework implemented by experts dedicated to continuous learning and improvement. My view is that we've made significant progress over the last couple of years. By way of example, I want to spend a minute or two talking about the development of our risk-informed performance-based regulatory framework for advanced reactors, also known by its proposed place in the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 53. The staff has taken an innovative approach to development of this rule by engaging stakeholders early and often in the process. We've received feedback, sometimes even oftentimes conflicting, from many stakeholders addressing key issues, such as the use of probabilistic risk assessment and risk information more generally, appropriate criteria for a performance-based approach, and how to accommodate a wide range of both technologies and technological maturity levels in the advanced reactor community. I've been substantially involved in this effort, receiving regular updates from the staff, as well as hearing directly from stakeholders. And let me say this, I've been pleased with the approach and the progress the staff is making. Work is ongoing, but they're being thoughtful and deliberate, taking care to maintain some adjacency to existing frameworks while being creative where needed to craft a balanced and protective rule. I have every confidence that the staff will produce a rule that adequately protects people and the environment, while allowing a range of technologies and licensing approaches in the timeframe set out by the Commission. While the agency develops the new framework, the staff is working commendably within our existing regulations to review reactor applications and topical reports that are ready now. I started this speech talking about the importance of process, its importance for objectively determining reasonable assurance of adequate protection, for accountability and for public trust and legitimacy, not just for the NRC, but for the entire industry. And I've talked a lot about change. One of the key themes of my speech last year was change in the context of an institution. Adapting is essential, but in doing so, we must preserve and further the goals of the institution, adequately protecting people in the environment and overseeing the safe and secure use of nuclear power and materials. To be an effective regulator, we must be careful. We don't create instability in the institution. It could throw things off balance and undermine our legitimacy. It is a challenge to which we must rise, and I know we will. So, we need to do several things at once. First, we need to uphold our institutional values, stay true to our principles of good regulation, independence, openness, efficiency, clarity, and reliability. Second, we need to continue to risk and form our regulations, so we're focused on the most safety and security significant issues by leveraging data and training our people. We need to apply modern technology to yield safety and security insights, to communicate more clearly, and to streamline and modernize our business processes. In other words, we need to drive change in the context of our overall mission and values. And finally, and perhaps most crucially, we need to recognize each other as the future of nuclear safety and security, and as the bearers of the sacred trust of the American people. The NRC is just people. That's all it is. That's all any organization is. Honest, smart, and talented, yet fallible. Dedicated and engaged, yet weary after two years of a pandemic. Creative and eager, yet unsure about the future. Together, we will honor the work of those who came before us, and we will sustain the institution as we advance. Thank you for listening and for attending this year's RIC. Andrea, back to you. Thank you, Chairman, for number one laying out so many themes in such an eloquent way in such a short period of time. And this is a reminder to those on the platform. If you have questions, you can select the Q&A tab in the upper right hand box and type your questions. And so whenever you're ready, Chairman, I have the first question ready for you. Go for it. The first question is, you discussed the NRC not being a hurdle for new and advanced reactor technology. The NRC has yet to fully approve new reactor technology. How can the NRC ensure that its processes are not causing new and advanced reactor technology to wither on the vine? Great question. I think one of the main things we can do is really, and I'm going to have a session on this, this is just this afternoon, so I appreciate kind of the tee-up on this, is really pre-application activities and as much pre-application activity as applicants are ready for and on specific technical topics so that the staff is already familiar with the technology that comes in, it's already familiar with the fuel types and the materials and the other technical aspects that we might receive. I really, part of the discussion this afternoon will be about lessons learned from GE and Terrapower and Kyros on this front and things that I'm sure the NRC can be doing better in this space too. So we're really leaning into these engagements, this interaction and we'll continue to do that. Right. Next question. Do you expect acceleration and applications for new nuclear power plants as a result of high energy prices? That's a great question. I mean, the issue I think is probably going to be natural gas prices. You know, there isn't a lot of oil-fueled power plants in the country and so sometimes natural gas and oil prices move together and sometimes they don't and we'll just have to see. I think one of the interesting things about some of these newer designs is the idea that they can be built and deployed more quickly and that potentially changes the economics in terms of response to energy prices going forward. So we'll have to kind of see on that. At least in the public announcements that we've seen out in the world that I think everybody's seen out in the world is much more about decarbonizing power production for at least from some of the major utilities in this country and so I think carbon is a major issue, but certainly energy prices could be a factor as well. This next question has to do with transformation and at first, thanks you for your statement on transformation. You mentioned transformation versus just shifting responsibilities. This is a large undertaking and as you said, we have decreased the size of staff putting us at a disadvantage and having sufficient resources to conduct change while ensuring our mission. How do we best carve out time and resources to really transform and what risk appetite does the commission and senior managers have for real transformation? Well, that's a great question and there are a lot of questions in there. So I think I'll probably start with the last one and kind of move up. I mean, I have a lot of appetite for transformation. I was having this discussion with my staff on a trip a few weeks ago and I said, boy, I'd like to see, I'd like to understand more about both what's going on in the agency and I've done that some and at one point they kind of threw up their hands and they said, well, what do you want on transformation? I said, I want more. So I think particularly on the business side, I mean, I look at it as one of the strategic imperatives I think of transformation is really around exactly what this person is asking. Whereas the agency is shrunk, but the mission in a lot of ways, the scope has kind of stayed the same. The operating reactors has changed somewhat, but we still have a lot of licensing actions. We've got a lot of interest on advanced reactors and so on and so forth. And yet, like a lot of government agencies, we've got demographic pressures on us and so how do we use transformation to focus on the most important activities that we have? And I want to say this is a little inside of the agency, but I know a lot of that line staff have felt that burden of transformation. And so I think that augmenting our staff in some ways, pushing ahead with this hiring initiative that Dan and Mary have going is really critical in order to provide some relief. There's kind of that added, you have to spend money to make money. This is kind of the same thing, right? You need a few extra people around to actually drive change in the organization so that everybody has a little bit more bandwidth to do that. That's really the idea there. All right, this next question has to do with software digitalization, which is a mouthful to say for me. What are your views on software digitalization and how we make our fleet safer and more cost effective? So I assume this is a digital instrumentation and control question, which is also a mouthful. Look, this is something that I've been very interested in since I came to the agency about how we get, again, that people have heard me talk about having a regulatory line of sight on some of these things and getting clarity on that, revisiting where necessary, what is it, the 1993 policy on common cause failure and getting some regulatory transparency, clarity, certainty, whatever you want to call it on that issue for licensees. All while we're making sure that we've got appropriate redundancy where necessary, we've got the firewalls in place where necessary hardware as well as software to protect these systems. Look, I'm very interested in this issue both on the technical side of this, but also on the human factor side, which I think is another thing we can and should be interacting with applicants and licensees on. So I think it's important each utility will make their own business decision about whether or not to invest in that. It's not an insignificant cost to them. I understand that, but I'm committed to having, at least for the NRC's part, again, a predictable and clear process for addressing digital I&C. Okay, toward the end of your remark, you mentioned fusion. So this question has to do with fusion. What might the role of the NRC be in the use of nuclear fusion? That's a great question. I think we're trying to figure that out, right? Because in some cases, it depends on the fusion technology itself. In some cases, it might be perfectly appropriate because it falls under part 20 that our agreement state partners are going to be involved in that. So it's not just a matter for us. I mean, there are kind of key regulatory issues about activation products and tritium and some other things that I think the staff is still learning about and thinking about where that fits. Also, this issue of having a burning plasma and what the risk significance of that is and what the safety systems are. So I wasn't trying to neglect fusion. I'm actually really interested in this topic. But we're still kind of figuring that out. I think we're in learning mode. We're hearing from stakeholders, both individually and collectively with the Fusion Industries Association. We're hearing from our state agreement state partners on this as well. And we're starting to kind of piece this together. Next question. Internationally, there's a great interest in globally accepted licenses. How is the view of NRC? Will you accept design approvals from other regulators? Are there any activities in this direction? I'll acknowledge that there is interest in this, what's kind of called harmonization. But I'll echo my colleague in the UK. He and I and President Felci from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission were into discussion with Director General Grossi and my British counterpart Mark Foy. We were talking about harmonization and this was something that the Director General is very interested in. And Mark had a thing that was kind of like, yes, yes, yes, but sovereignty. And sovereignty is really important because I'm not accountable to the British people. I'm accountable to the American people. And the American people look to us, look to the NRC for us to make our own determinations. And in a way to reflect the risk tolerance and the policy environment that we're in. Now, having said that, the laws and the theories and principles of physics work in the United States the same way they do in Canada and Britain and Poland and other places. So is there room to collaborate on the technical aspects of advanced reactors? Absolutely. And we have a memorandum of cooperation with Canada doing exactly that, where we're sharing information and approaches. Now, is that a universal license? No, but at the same time, and I don't think it should be, frankly, but at the same time, does that mean that every applicant has to come up with an entirely new set of information or data? Well, I think that's probably where there's some work that can be done. Okay, next question. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your risk-informed decision making and how has the NRC addressed the challenges? Oh boy, that's a great question. I've been so proud of the NRC staff and the way we've adapted. I mean, and some of this was just some really great foresight by our chief information officer, Dave Nelson, who we moved from desktops to laptops probably six months before the pandemic. And boy, aren't we glad we did. And he had made a number of other investments internally. So when the pandemic hit, I think other agencies were getting supplemental and emergency appropriations for tens and millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars to kind of upgrade their infrastructure. I think the NRC, we got 3 million. And it was to improve kind of the bandwidth into the building and really help people do VPN and a couple of other real minor things. I'm just so impressed and proud. And we've adapted in all kinds of other ways. I do think though that, and I've said this at commission meetings, right? The nuclear safety and securities, it's a contact sport, right? It's boots on the ground. There's nothing quite like having NRC people around with our NRC badges and our NRC hard hats in facilities and checking things out. And so while we were able to do some things like remote inspections or some materials inspections remotely and some other things, those are really important in the pandemic, right? People didn't want us going into hospitals or people didn't want to go into hospitals. That was kind of sufficient temporarily, but not something that we necessarily want to do in the long term. On the other hand, you look at our resident inspectors and very quickly, our licensees provided them with remote access into their systems either by providing laptops or VPN or whatever. So there were things that they could do remotely, review documents and other things without having to be on site for some of those direct sampling. So I think we're working on a lessons learned in the agency. That's been kind of an ongoing process. And I know we're going to share the results of that publicly when we kind of crystallize some of those lessons. Okay, this next question is long and it's multifaceted, so I'm going to speak slowly. Get ready. NRC regulatory processes within nuclear reactor regulation benefit from a clear set of procedures that were first developed in the mid 1990s to clarify the myriad of regulatory guidance into clear standards for regulation. Processes in other areas, for example, decommissioning, new reactor designs, et cetera, rely on regulatory guidance rather than clear rules. Clear rules in these other areas are definitely needed. Since these diverse areas cannot be addressed simultaneously, where and how would you prioritize rulemaking in select areas? That's a great question. I mean, this gets to the heart of a lot of our efforts on part 53 and advanced reactors. It's a long spectrum between predictability and flexibility. And where should we be in that? Where do we have rules on the flexibility part and where do we have guidance? We've got a lot of feedback on that question. Our staff and all of it entirely consistent. And I'll be honest, I'm not exactly sure where we should be on that continuum because I think in different issues, we're going to be in different places. I think having that option for having clear rules or having guidance lets us evaluate each one of these things kind of individually. Now, we have to learn, we have to be cognizant that there's some consistency in there. We can't kind of do this, we can't pick one end of the spectrum or the other at random. But I do agree that having a set of procedures is important. I mean, we've got a couple of papers in front of the Commission on this, 5046C. I think as an example of that, where that paper I think the staff proposes to be more on the procedure end of and the predictability end of things. Likewise, a rulemaking plan for higher enrichment, higher burnout fuel, which is another paper in front of the Commission. Again, having rulemaking around those things rather than guidance. There are going to be other things though that are more appropriate on the other end of the spectrum. All right, now you use this word in your speech and I remember trying to pronounce it out. And so here comes a question again. You're framing of regulations as epistemological. It seems insightful and suited to the time we're living in. Can you say more about what the NRC can do to safeguard its interactions with stakeholders and an error of truth challenged public discourse at which you talked about truth decay? That's a great question. I was having a conversation with our Office of Public Affairs staff who I think feel this challenge particularly acutely in the agency, but I think everybody does. And I think that one of the key things we can do is just be as open and as transparent as possible. And the NRC has done a remarkable job over the years. I mean, people complain about Adams, our online document management system, but literally everything is out there. We have public dockets. We have, with the exception of some business extension of information, some security information, we really do make everything available. I think sometimes the NRC can do a better job of the translation function, but the translation function isn't easy. And there are some concepts that don't always lend themselves to translation. But I had this, I was doing an emergency planning exercise recently. And I honestly, it was for Limerick. And we do these things every couple of years, and we work with FEMA and state and local, and I was over in the operation center. And I was playing my role as chairman, and we had everything staffed up on the screens going and lots of activity. And one of the managers that we had in our nuclear security and incident response group said, okay, this is the part where I take you into this back room, and I brief you. And so I said, okay, great. And we went in, we sat down, and he gave me the spiel about what was happening at the plant under this exercise scenario. And I said, fantastic. Now, say it again in English. Because, right? I mean, everybody, you know, I'm not necessarily a technical person, but I also knew that I was in my role in this instance, I was going to have to go explain what was going on. If this was a real situation, I was going to have to go explain what was going on to National Security Council, to the secretary of Homeland Security, to the secretary of energy, et cetera, right? And I needed that in plain English. And he kind of caught up a little bit. And he went, he kind of took a breath. And he said, okay. And then we did it again. And it was great. And it's that kind of, you know, we're, we're a technical agency, we're a technical regulator, we're really good at that. But sometimes, you know, there's what's that this cliche, right, I have to go home and explain it to, to, to my mom or to my sister or whatever who aren't in the agency, I think there's, I think there's some more we could do there. Okay. Next question. Given the variety of advanced nuclear technologies, do you think NRC should move away from prescriptive regulation? Well, I see that kind of like the, the situation a couple of, of questions ago, right? Where, where is, there is this kind of more prescriptive end that is, that's predictable. And, and there's the, and then there's the flexible, there's the flexibility. And I did, I did talk, I think in my speech quite a bit about the need for flexibility and for performance based approaches, right, where we're focused on the outcome. And, and less on prescribing specific methodologies for getting to that outcome. Now, that doesn't mean that adding the methodology is okay, right? It's the show your work. We, we get to validate whether those methodologies for, for assessing or for meeting the requirements of those performance based of criteria are adequate. Because again, if they're not, or if we think that they don't work in some way, it calls into question the conclusions, which is ultimately what we're about. We're about safety conclusions. So, so it's gonna, it's gonna depend. It depends. Hey, we have time for one more question. You mentioned data in your speech. Can you talk more about, you're very busy. So can you talk more about how you and your staff use data or data analytics to make your job easier or how you use it in your day to day interactions? Yeah, great question. I mean, certainly in a couple of key areas. I mean, one is, is certainly on the budget and internal processes, right? I've, I've, I've worked in CFO offices. And so I'm like, give me all the information. And, and in the CIO has really done a great job, I think recently of, of turning that data into information. And then I would say in, you know, in other areas, it's in a lot of the papers. I use it quite a bit just, just in, in papers. I mean, medical technologies, right, where we have a lot of data about the use of radioactive materials and, and what issues might arise with those. You see it in some of the fuel papers we've seen and some of the other nuclear papers we've seen, whether that's the ISI, IST inspections or other kinds of things, right? So what is, you know, what does the data tell us? And how can we use that to kind of inform moving forward? So I'm, I'm, you know, really constantly asking staff about, okay, well, let's, let's gather the data on this. And let's see what that says. And then let's, let's kind of, kind of move forward. And I have to say, I mean, we've used on a number of occasions too, the tools that we've got out there that are MAPX and, and, you know, other kind of performance data on the plants. So. Well, Chairman, thank you so much for breaking the ice and opening our second virtuals a little bit in person. Rick, your expert remarks and for fueling the questions. And with that, I close the session. Thank you so much. Thank you, Andrea. Thank you, Ray.