 think it's time to start. Good morning. Welcome to the second day of the Regulatory Information Conference. I'm Brian Sharon, the Director Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, and I want to welcome everyone again. This morning, Commissioner Jeffrey Barron will be speaking. He was sworn in as a commissioner on January 2nd, 2015 to serve the remainder of a term ending June 30th, 2018. He was originally sworn in as a commissioner on October 14th, 2014 to a term ending July 30th, 2015. Before coming to NRC, he worked on Capitol Hill for over a decade. He's originally from Chicago, and a commissioner and a bachelor and a master's degree in political science from Ohio University. He also holds a law degree from Harvard Law School, and most importantly, this is his first RIC. So with that, let's give a warm welcome to the commissioner. Thanks, Brian. Good morning. I hope everyone enjoyed the first day of the RIC and arrived ready for another full day of events. I'm very happy to be here with all of you for my first RIC, and as you might imagine, this being my first RIC, I got a lot of advice about my remarks today, and it is all, let me start by saying, it is all genuinely appreciated. Commissioner Spinecky encouraged me yesterday to seize day two of the RIC and make it my own, but how does one go about doing that? Well, one former commissioner told me that this is my one chance each year to be philosophical. On the other hand, someone else suggested that I avoid getting too ethereal. One person said, it's important to make three main points, but another said, I should really have a single major theme. I've been told that I should demonstrate a deep understanding of the issues. I've been told that I shouldn't get too into the weeds. A friend told me that it was important to somehow work stairway to heaven into the speech. I don't know what that's about, but consider that box checked. My favorite piece of advice though came yesterday on my way home. On the metro platform, someone told me, and this is a quote, have better jokes. That is not, I don't think that was anything negative towards any of the jokes from yesterday, but. Well, our good friends in the news media have met that challenge. This morning, Politico actually provided me a joke for delivery today. Do you guys want to hear it? You got to want it. Yeah, okay. All right, brace yourself. What's the favorite food of a British physicist? Fission chips. Please send all complaints about that joke to Darius Dixon, care of Politico pro. This event is all new to me, but my initial impression is that it seems to be a little bit like a nuclear safety prom. It's the big once a year gathering where everyone's dressed up and excited to see each other and to catch up. There are fancy dinners and receptions. Christine Svinicki told us that she's fussing with her hair. There's no dancing as far as I know, but there are four huge Jeff Barron heads on the screens behind me, so that probably makes up for the lack of dancing. For those of you who have been attending the Rook for years, I may be an unfamiliar face or an unfamiliar giant head on a screen as the case may be. So let me take a moment to briefly introduce myself. Many of you know that I'm an attorney. Before joining the commission in October, I worked for over a decade on Capitol Hill. During my first five years on the hill, I served as counsel on the staff of the House Representatives Oversight Committee where I worked on a range of issues, including nuclear issues. Beginning in 2009, I spent about six years working on the staff of the House Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, the House Committee with jurisdiction over NRC. One of my main responsibilities during that time was oversight of NRC and of nuclear energy and waste issues. Over that 11-year period, I had a number of opportunities to work across the aisle to develop bipartisan legislation. I had the privilege of helping to negotiate bills that became law with broad bipartisan support, including legislation on medical isotopes, pipeline safety, energy efficiency, and hydropower. I think that legal and policymaking work was good preparation for my current role in the commission. It is a great honor, a real honor, to serve as a member of the commission and to work on issues important to our vital mission of protecting health, safety, and the environment. I'm committed to bringing an open-minded and thoughtful approach to the policymaking, rulemaking, and adjudicatory issues that come before us. I've truly enjoyed working with my fellow commissioners these last few months. Collectively, we bring a wide range of experience and perspectives to our deliberations, which I think is valuable. While there are only four of us on the commission right now, we are all working very well together to get the work of the commission done. During my years on the Hill closely following NRC's work, I benefited from many briefings with NRC staff. I've long been impressed by their experience and dedication. Since I arrived in October, I obviously have had the opportunity to interact with many more NRC staff members and continue to be struck by the quality of the people who work at this agency. After my confirmation in the fall, when I was beginning to staff my office, I looked within the NRC staff to assemble my team, and I believe it is a terrific team. Amy Powell is my chief of staff. Everyone, they're all like in the second row right there. If we had like a spotlight capability, that would be great right now. But Amy Powell is my chief of staff. Jody Martin is my legal counsel. Rob Kersick is my reactor's technical assistant, and Ray Ann Shane is my materials technical assistant. My administrative assistants are Renee Taylor and Stacy Schumann. I hope that you all have the opportunity to meet and talk with them this week. During my years working for Congress, I also benefited from many meetings with utility representatives and trade associations. On a number of occasions, I worked with these and other stakeholders to develop the consensus legislation I mentioned earlier. As a commissioner, I look forward to continuing to build those relationships. Since I arrived in October, I've made it a priority to begin visiting NRC regulated facilities, including recent tours of Peach Bottom, Watts Bar, and North Anna. I plan to head to Vogel in summer, early this spring, along with the Westinghouse facility in Columbia. I've been impressed with the professionalism and knowledge demonstrated by the personnel at the nuclear plants I visited, and I look forward to visiting additional facilities in the near future. I thought I would use my remaining time this morning to share some of my initial impressions of NRC after five months on the job and give you a sense of what I see as likely areas of focus for the agency going forward. I also want to leave plenty of time for questions. As many of you know from watching and working with the Commission through the years, we work on tough, complex issues, and there are several important items currently in front of the Commission. As a general matter, I believe that we need to hear a wide range of perspectives from the staff, stakeholders, and the public as we deliberate on these matters. I think we make the best decisions when we get input from a broad range of stakeholders. First and foremost, we are always focused on our mission of protecting public health and safety. This priority governs all that we do. Currently, five new reactors are being built in the United States, and five reactors recently ceased operations and are entering decommissioning. At the construction sites, NRC is conducting oversight to ensure that the new plants are built safely in accordance with regulatory requirements. With respect to decommissioning, the Commission recently directed the NRC staff to proceed with their rulemaking. Although the risk profile of permanently shut down reactors is very different than that of an operating reactor, NRC does not currently have regulations specifically tailored for permanently shut down reactors. Because of this gap in NRC's regulatory framework, licensees with reactors transitioning to decommissioning routinely seek exemptions from many of the regulations applicable to operating reactors. This approach of regulation by exemption is inefficient for both NRC and its licensees. The exemption approach does not improve the stability and predictability of the licensing process and does not allow for effective public input or improve public understanding of the decommissioning process. So I support the staff's effort to take a fresh look at these decommissioning issues. We can benefit from the lessons learned from the recently shut down plants and the closures in the 1990s, and there is real value in taking public comment on decommissioning issues that are of great interest to many stakeholders. The agency along with its licensees continues to address post Fukushima safety enhancements and lessons learned. The tsunami and resulting nuclear accident rightly caused NRC to take a fresh look at its assumptions and regulations. Given the work that many of you have done directly on these initiatives, I'm sure you all know that substantial progress has been made in several areas, but I think we all recognize that more work remains to be done. For example, flex mitigation equipment is now present at a number of plants around the country, and two regional response centers are fully operational. Uniform connections for generators, pumps and hoses should provide tremendous flexibility in responding to future beyond design basis events. However, many plants will not have all of their new mitigation capabilities in place until next year, and we still need to ensure that the new equipment can withstand the reevaluated seismic and flooding hazards at the sites where it may someday be needed. Today marks four years since the Fukushima accident, and we all need to maintain our focus on implementing the lessons learned from that tragedy in a timely way. We look forward to your insights, creativity and commitment as we all work to complete these essential efforts. Security will continue to be a major focus of NRC's activities in the coming years. Cyber attacks and infiltrations remain an evolving and significant threat. Enforceable performance-based standards are already in place for nuclear reactors, but we also need to make sure that we protect the digital systems at fuel cycle facilities as well. The Commission is currently considering whether additional actions are appropriate in this area. If the Commission decides to initiate a rulemaking to enhance cyber security at fuel cycle facilities, I believe it is important that it be conducted and implemented expeditiously. Cyber vulnerabilities at all NRC-regulated facilities should be addressed in a timely way. These are just a few of the issues that will continue to be priorities for NRC. For these and other issues, I believe we must continuously strive to be the gold standard in nuclear safety and security regulation. That's not an accolade an agency earns one day and declares itself satisfied. We have to work tirelessly to further improve the way we do business in protecting the public health, safety and environment. That drive for excellence applies to another priority for the Commission, the continued improvement of our licensing process for new reactors and designs. The Commission recently certified the ESBWR design and held an uncontested hearing for the combined license application for Fermi Unit 3. We expect to hold an uncontested hearing on at least one other combined license application in the coming months. While NRC continues its work on pending applications for new reactors, we need to be ready to accept and review applications submitted for new technologies. The staff accepted the APR 1400 design certification application for review just last week. We are expecting to receive the first application for a small modular reactor design in 2016. NRC already is reviewing an application for a new production facility for medical isotopes and anticipates additional applications of this type in the future. I think we are well positioned to handle SMR and medical isotope production applications, but we are always open to feedback on how our process is working. Nevertheless, the agency faces a different environment that what was expected just a few years ago when substantial new reactor construction was anticipated and no licensees had yet announced plans to shut down any reactors. To meet our responsibilities now and in the future, we need to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and agility of the agency. In order to avoid disrupting the agency's work, it is important to set a thoughtful trajectory to the appropriate resource and staffing levels over the next few years. We need to make sure that we do a good job matching resources to expected workload. Before I joined the commission, my colleagues at the foresight to initiate Project AIM 2020 in internal working group tasked with looking at the changes NRC should make to prepare for the future. I think you've all heard quite a bit about that in the last day or so. This is a valuable and timely effort. We are actively deliberating on the recommendations of the Project AIM team and I expect that the commission will approve some prudent actions in the near term. Finally, I think we need a renewed focus on enhancing our transparency and openness with Congress, stakeholders and the broader public. Transparency and openness allow Congress to fulfill its important oversight function and the public to actively engage, participate in NRC's regulatory activities. As I said earlier, I think we make the best decisions when we hear from a diverse mix of stakeholders. That dialogue doesn't just help us to improve our communications about what we are doing. It actually helps us to make better decisions in the first place. It forces us to question our assumptions and to think creatively about new approaches to regulatory challenges. Openness means sharing as much information as we can, describing the issues and the agency's work in understandable language and being open to the feedback that we receive. Our congressional oversight and appropriations committees are more interested than ever in NRC's mission and the way we are carrying out that mission. I firmly believe that NRC can provide Congress with the information it needs to perform its oversight duties while preserving the independence that is essential to accomplishing our safety and security mission. Once again, it's a pleasure to be here with all of you today and throughout the week. I look forward to meeting many of you during this conference and to seeing your facilities in the U.S. and abroad in the future. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. There's plenty of time for it. Thank you. Is this? Okay, now it's on. We have several questions here. So I'll start. Given your experience on Capitol Hill and recent experience in NRC, what is it going to take to get our government to move forward in establishing a long-term storage repository for used nuclear fuel? Wow, you guys are playing hardball. If I had the answer to that question, I don't know. Well, let me talk just for a second about what we're doing now. So we had some appropriated funds from the Nuclear Waste Fund that the DC Circuit Court of Appeals instructed the NRC to expend. So with those funds, the staff recently completed the Safety Evaluation Report that happened in January. With the funds we have remaining, the staff will work to supplement the environmental impact statement, particularly on issues related to drinking water. We're also going to, we had the Licensing Support Network which housed all the documents for the proceedings and there should be funds available to transfer those and make them publicly available on our ATOM system. There's also some lessons learned and kind of archiving activities that need to be done with respect to the Safety Evaluation Report and we believe there will be funds available for that as well. So the Commission recently decided that's the path forward with the funds we have remaining. And then really I think it's a question, not so much for NRC but for the Congress about whether or not it wants to appropriate additional funds for future activities. Some preliminary staff estimates indicate that it would be north of 300 million dollars for just the NRC part of the adjudicatory piece of this. I mean we have, I believe 288 contentions that were filed and there could of course be additional contentions filed in the future if the adjudicatory proceedings were to be reopened and restarted. So that's obviously a really significant task working through that kind of work even if there is funding available to do it. And frankly I have real questions about whether that process would be, would that process work unless we have an engaged applicant who is really committed to pursuing their application. I mean this is an adversarial trial-like process before the board. It would take a considerable amount of effort to go through that process. And in the absence of an applicant who is not only the legal applicant but an applicant who is interested in pursuing their application, I think that's a pretty challenging process. Next question is, given your experience in the waste area, do you expect the NRC to issue part 61 soon? When do you expect the Seckie paper to be released? This is a question from the staff who worked on part 61, but this is. So this is something that's being actively deliberated on by the commission. So I probably shouldn't say too much there. The staff prepared a proposed rule and it's before the commission for their review. I've probably answered that question for everyone's satisfaction, I'm sure. Okay. As a newcomer, you have an opportunity to change, or at least influence, the commission's institutional culture. What are your thoughts in that regard? Is the culture all that it could be? Is the culture all that it could be? Well, the project aimed 20-20 recommendations that we received suggested that although the culture is good, it could be even better. And I think that's probably always true, right? Well, I guess you could have an organization that has a bad culture, but that's not what we have at NRC. We have a very good culture. I'm very impressed with our staff and their dedication. One thing I think is important, and cultural changes I don't think are ever really easy, but one thing I think going forward that is important. We heard a lot yesterday about efficiency and I think that is very important. But I think agility is really important as well. I think if we look back five years ago and tried to predict the future, what is it going to look like in 2015? I don't think anyone really would have predicted the last five years for the nuclear sector. I don't think people would have predicted Fukushima and all the efforts that would go into responding to that. I think with respect to NRC in particular, I don't think people would have anticipated the reduced number of new reactor applications that we have and how that's affected our workload. So I think there's never going to be perfect prediction about the future. We could try now and look at the next five years and say what do we think it's going to look like in 2020? And we're almost certainly going to be at least a little bit wrong about that, maybe a lot wrong about that. And so what does that mean? I think it means as an agency we have to have the agility to be ready for whatever comes our way. We have our expectation about what, particularly in the licensing context, for example, what we're expecting, but we don't know for sure there could be additional applications or some of the applications we're anticipating may not materialize. So we have to make sure we have the right skills at the agency and the ability to deploy those skill sets on whatever work we actually have in the coming years. So that's one element of kind of the culture or organization of the agency that I think is important. The courts have directed NRC to proceed with Yucca Mountain to the extent that it has funding. Will the commission ask for funding to proceed with Yucca Mountain licensing? Well, so a bit of history. So for the fiscal year 2016 budget, I was not around for most of that budget formulation process. I came in at the tail end of that process. And for fiscal year 2016, the commission did not request funds. We are now, of course, just starting the fiscal year 2017 process. So I don't want to make any predictions about what will happen there. I, for one, just personally do not think it makes sense for NRC to request those funds unless our applicant, the Department of Energy, is requesting funds. And unless we get an indication that our applicant is interested in being engaged in pursuing their application, I think in the absence of that, there's no amount of funding in the world that NRC could get that is going to get us through that adjudicatory process. Okay. Being new at the NRC, you must have observations about the way in which the NRC functions that those who have been here for a while do not. In what ways can the NRC be more agile in the future? What can it learn from other federal agencies and from regulators in other countries? Well, I think we could, this is one of those questions that falls into the, you know, doctoral dissertation category, I think. I think we can learn, and we do learn a lot from our counterparts abroad. I think meetings like this and conferences like this are really valuable in that regard. As commissioners spend a lot of our time during these days, having bilateral conversations with our colleagues, and I at least, and I think probably all of us get a lot out of that. I think we learn a lot from activities that are going on abroad. You know, we have four AP 1000s being constructed here in the United States, but there are AP 1000s being constructed in China, and I think we're getting a lot of good information and lessons learned from the process over there. So, on the international side of things, I think it's extraordinarily valuable. I think we have a lot to offer other nuclear regulatory bodies abroad, and I think we have a lot to learn from them, and so I see it as a two-way street and I think it's a really valuable relationship or a set of relationships. Having been involved in the legislative branch of government interfacing with the NRC, do you share the opinions of the majority of the commissioners on rulings related to waste confidence, approval of new reactor builds, and Fukushima actions? Wow, okay. So, this is more like a confirmation hearing type question. I thought we were through those. Okay, what's our list? Continued Storage. So, on Continued Storage, Continued Storage, my colleagues resolved that question just a few months before I arrived, and decided on an approach of having a generic environmental impact statement and accompanying rule and moving away from the approach that had been used for some time on waste confidence findings. And so it got a nifty new name, and we call it Continued Storage now, and we have an actual environmental impact statement as opposed to a set of findings. So I think that's a reasonable approach to responding to that court decision that we got. And I think ultimately it's going to be, again, the course that decide whether that's an adequate approach. What else is on the list? It was new reactors and Fukushima actions. New reactors. Well, right before I arrived, my colleagues had approved the ESBWR. I wasn't here for that, and I was here, though, for Fermi Unit 3 for the uncontexted hearing for that, and we'll be deliberating on Fermi Unit 3, which, of course, is an ESBWR, or would be. So folks will know what I think about that in the near term, but we're actively deliberating on that. What's next? We've got a long list. It was new reactors and then Fukushima actions. Fukushima actions. Well, so as I mentioned over my remarks, I think it's I think it's clear that a lot of progress has been made in a lot of areas, but we're also still implementing in those areas. And I think the way the commission organized our work in that area made a lot of sense. So tearing it by both a combination of urgency, but also our ability to actually do what needs to be done in those areas in terms of whether there's additional research needed. I think having tiers one, two, and three makes sense. We've worked our way through, or they worked their way through a lot of that work. And now we're really for a lot of that work in the implementation stage. And so I think as we go on that, there are going to be bumps in the road. We have had seismic reevaluations done. We're in the stage now of a lot of some folks screened in, some folks screened out. And we have seismic PRAs that are going to be going on for some time on flooding. The progress there I think has been a little bit slower. And that's a challenge that the commission is currently wrestling with. We have a paper in front of us on the flooding approach. But I think there too, there's going to be a way forward that both gets the necessary analysis done, make sure that our plants are ready on the flooding side of things to protect and to mitigate anything that does happen. But also to provide some clarity to folks going forward about what that process is going to look like. And some of these multi-year processes, they get started. And it's not always apparent to everyone at the very beginning how it's all going to look and play out over those years. So I think it's good for the commission to revisit these things and to provide additional guidance and clarity about the path forward. You mentioned making better decisions through better public participation. What could the NRC do to better engage with the public? Well, that's a tough question. You really called me on it. I can't just say we should do better job engage and I've got to say something about what we should do and how we should do it, I guess. I think my sense from watching NRC over the years and but not being at NRC over the years is that we could do better a lot of times on the communication front. And I actually can tell a little bit of a story about this. When I was interviewing, I guess this was back in September, I was interviewing for my staff and I think everyone I interviewed was from NRC and I did probably a couple dozen of interviews. And one of the questions I would ask folks is just to kind of see how they thought about things and what they came up with was, you know, is there something that you think the agency does really well? Is there something that you think the agency could improve at? And I thought I'd get a variety of answers. People obviously approach things differently. They come up with different things, but I got almost the exact same answer from every single person I talked to. I mean, there were a couple outliers. I won't name names on that, but almost everyone told me the same thing. What they said is, NRC and the staff are technically extremely capable. And people would say they never worked at a place where the caliber of the technical staff is as good as it is in NRC. And by five months here, I think that's right. My experience bears that out. But they also said almost to a person, we could do better communicating with the public about what we do. And so I was struck by that even before I arrived here on day one. It was kind of pre-arrival. And I think that's true. I think part of it goes to being as clear in our language as we can. We deal with highly technical issues, complex issues, and we're used to, I think, frequently engaging with folks who have a long history on those issues and have a lot of technical expertise on those issues. And sometimes I think the language can get a little bit impenetrable. And so I think that's one thing we can do. It's not easy because you all develop shorthands over time for things and acronyms and all that stuff. And they're inherently technical and complex issues in many cases. And you have to address them in that way. But I think that's one thing we can do to be conscious of that. When we put out a document, and it's odd atoms, and it's publicly available, can we make it as readable as possible to someone who is a concerned stakeholder, who may not have an engineering degree or a PhD in the relevant technical field, but is interested and wants to understand what we're doing. And I think that's the kind of thing that every time we're writing one of those documents we should be thinking about. And some documents are going to be more difficult to digest than others, but that's a start. And then I think, and I do, we know we saw a video about this yesterday. And I think the agency can be variable on this, but it's, we, we've had lots of stakeholder meetings, we've had meetings with the public and those are extremely important. We have to make sure we're doing a good job, and I'm not saying that we aren't now, but do a good job truly listening to what we're hearing and, and respond to that feedback and, and learn from what we're hearing. Because people want a sense, I think, that they're genuinely being heard, that they're not just getting an opportunity to stand up and, and talk for a minute, but that what they're saying is being listened to and considered in the process. And so that's not something you either do or don't do. It's a spectrum and you just try to get better and better at that as you go. Okay, now we're going to continue with your confirmation hearing. Okay. Yes, Senator, what is your question? Do you think Congress has posed, poised, to pass legislation to modify the nuclear waste policy act and incorporate the Blue Ribbon Commission recommendations? Well, having worked on, on Capitol Hill for 11 years, I, I am always reluctant to say Congress is poised to do anything. It's a wonderful institution. I, I loved working there for many years. Well, there's clearly a lot of interest in it. I mean it's, you know, for, for the reasons we kind of discussed. High level waste, it can be a, a pretty intractable policy and political issue in this country. And, and that's, that makes it tough for Congress to act, I think. But I think it's good that there's a real conversation going on about that, because obviously we need a solution there. And when we, when my colleagues and I recently testified in the Senate before the Appropriations Committee, I'd say about half the time we spent talking about these, these waste issues, which is good. And there's, there's interest in fighting a path for consolidated interim storage among some members. And there's interested in focusing on Blue Ribbon Commission recommendations that aren't related to interim storage. There's also a lot of interest still on the Hill in just proceeding with Yucca Mountain. And so, whether the members of the House and the Senate can, can come to some kind of compromise on all that, I don't know. But it's good that the conversation's happening. It's good that they're actively getting additional information on these issues. They're tough issues, obviously, or we would have resolved it by now. And that's, that's an area where I think we can learn a lot from our colleagues abroad. And that was part of, I think, what the Blue Ribbon Commission found when they did their work is that there are some innovative things going on, in other countries that we should be aware of. And, but I, you know, I'm also struck that when I have meetings and we have meetings with our, our international counterparts this week, we'll hear that we're not the only country that's struggling with this. It's a tough problem. It's been a tough problem since really the founding of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So, Congress could surprise us and have a really good year. And resolve this and that would be terrific. Because I think ultimately it is, it is for Congress and the president to resolve. It's, this is, these are the big policy questions. And we have a law on the books right now and that is the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and that is the law that the NRC will implement. But when it comes to the question of should changes be made to that? Should we go in another direction? That is a question for Congress. Okay. This one's obviously from Eric Leeds. What are your, what are your top three goals as a commissioner? Top three goals. Well, I get, this is a question not quite that precise that I've gotten often. You know, people ask, I think, generally, you know, new commissioners, what are your goals? What's your agenda? And, and what I tell everyone because it's true and is that I didn't come here with a, with a long list, a to-do list, a personal agenda. My approach is, my focus is to just really ensure nuclear safety in a balanced and thoughtful way. And I want to be open-minded about the issues that come before us. I mean, we get a steady stream of really interesting and sometimes tough policy and rulemaking and adjudicatory issues. And some of my colleagues reference that. It's just a conveyor belt of these things that you, you deal with. And my own view is, it's just important to approach each of those with an open mind, which is easier to do at the beginning, you know, of a tenure than after you've actually voted on things and have kind of a track record and views on certain issues. So, I'm in a great spot right now where I can look at things with a fresh pair of eyes and just think them through on the merits as they come. Okay. What do you think about the WCS announcement about the spent nuclear fuel and ERM storage in Texas? Can we get this done? I'm detecting a theme. Well, it's, you know, this was one of the, this, so far we've received a letter from WCS. That's basically a letter of intent to file an application for a freestanding dry cask storage facility in Texas. And they expect to provide that application to us next year. So, obviously, we need to wait for that application and review it. And we can't make any decisions about it before then. But in terms of what the specific business plan is, you know, associated with that, obviously WCS is, is the right organization to ask about that. But then that does get you into the questions about is it, is it something that requires any change to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act? Is it something that requires appropriations for the Department of Energy to contract with WCS? And so those, I think that pretty quickly gets us back into issues that, that relate to Congress. There's a piece of this, obviously, the licensing piece that relates and is in the purview of the commission. But I think they're potentially depending on the, the application and the, the business plan may involve things, you know, beyond the commission. I guess this person really wasn't aware that said with two attorneys on the commission, but it's really with three attorneys on the commission, do you see more emphasis on legal issues rather than technical issues? No, I don't think so. I think it's, I guess it's true that we, we now have temporarily a majority of, of lawyers, although I never think of Bill Ossendorf that way, not because he's not a brilliant lawyer, but because the guy was a nuclear submarine captain and that's how I think of him. So I don't, I don't really count them on the, on the lawyer side. But but I think it's great. I mean, I think, well, obviously, I think it's great that we have a couple of lawyers. Steve Burns probably thinks it's great too. It's, I think it's good. I think it's, it's really important to have a good mix on the commission because we get some of the issues are really technical. A lot of the issues are not as technical. They're really more management issues or or policy issues that are about setting priorities or or other things that don't get into the technical weeds. And then we also have a chunk of our work that is a judicatory and where I think it I hope that, you know, I'm having lawyers is is is helpful and contributes to our deliberations there. I don't want to make it sound like the commission is entirely a reactive body because we're not, but we we do get papers that come up from the staff when we make these decisions as we as as they come. And we we obviously don't control who decides to appeal a ruling of the ASLB to us. So I think that generally speaking, most of our our workload in that way is is kind of brought to us by others. But I think it's I for one, at least think it's valuable. And I think just in my five months I felt that to have folks with different backgrounds and different areas of experience and expertise because when you have a decision making body of five people or four right now. I think that's really valuable because I mean, the whole premise I think behind the commission structure for decision making is that you bring different people together and they have different experiences and they have conversations and negotiations and debate about what the right answer is. And I think having four or five people who are all clones of one another really kind of defeats the purpose of that. Having having people with different perspectives and different backgrounds I think makes that makes that model work even better. What do you think of small modular reactors and their chances for deployment into U.S.? Well, so we're going to we're going to find out the answer to that question. We're expecting, you know, our first application for a design certification next year. And I think, as I mentioned in remarks, I think where the commission's been the commission as an agency has been pretty forward leaning in this regard. We are working on design specific review standards so that we're ready to review specific applications. And that's that process is ongoing for the application we're expecting next year. And we're also, the staff has been, this is something they were doing before I arrived and I think are continuing to do, think through, sometimes with at least the knowledge of the commission, but also in some cases with their input about what are the potentially novel issues associated with SMRs and how are we going to resolve those? How are we going to resolve control room staffing issues or fee issues, emergency planning issues the issues that are going to be a little bit different potentially or a lot different for small modular reactors than for for the larger light water reactors. So I think though my sense is that we did have a commission meeting on this and I've had, you know, additional briefings and conversations about it. I think we're well positioned as an agency to review applications like like the one we're expecting next year. And it's something we're going to have to stay on top of and it's something where once again, if you know, we should be ready and to do it in a timely way. And if there are hiccups, you know, we want to hear about those. OK. A lot of public opposition to nuclear power seems to be based on an almost irrational and certainly uninformed level of fear. What can and should we do about this? Well, for the for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is really an agency focused on safety, obviously, the most important thing we could do is make sure that the plants operating in this country are safe. And to the extent there is information that we as an agency have that the public should know about, we should make sure we're we're clearly communicating that. But on the, you know, kind of the flip side of that, of course, that's so that's our job. That's clearly within our purview and it's absolutely what we should be doing. You know, it's also not our job, though, to promote nuclear power. That's that's someone else's job, the Department of Energy, the industry. Our job is to ensure safety and security. And I think the best way for us to affect views about nuclear power is to do that job very well. This one is, do you have any concerns over staff safety at public meetings where there are very aggressive outside groups? For example, what occurred at the recent Vermont Yankee decommissioning public meeting? Well, I haven't I haven't heard anyone bring concerns of staff safety to the commission. But I think I think there was a the most recent meeting in Vermont actually went pretty well from the feedback I heard. You know, it's these can be emotional issues for people and but we obviously need to keep the lines of communication open. And it's important that that people who participate obviously have the opportunity to express their views as strongly as they want to express them. But but being conscious of the the safety and rights of others. And I think that can be tough. But I also I also haven't heard anyone suggest that we should do anything other than continue to do those types of meetings and make sure that we're engaging with the public on issues that that people care about. OK, I'm looking at my clock here. I think I think your confirmation hearing is over. Well, thank you. But anyway, you are like Congress. But anyway, thank you very much. Thank you.