 Okay, I think we're ready to start. And good afternoon. Welcome to this session. Enjoy the view, let emergency preparedness be your guide. I'm Todd Smith. I'm the senior level advisor for emergency preparedness and it's a response at the NRC. We have a great session for you this afternoon, but before we could go in and have a few housekeeping items, we expect to have some time for your questions at the end, and we're also gonna be making use of a lot of live polling through this session. So if you could please, right now, scan the QR code that's displayed, or log in through the app and join our session. If you're logging through the app, you'll find the QA and the live polling questions, tabs for you to use. If you've joined us virtually to the right of your screen, you should also find tabs for the live polling and QA. For those of you in the room, when we display the live polling questions, there will be a number option for you to text to 22333, that's 22333. While you're logging in, I would like to take a moment to introduce our panelists because we have a fantastic lineup of subject matter experts to talk to you today. Joining me on stage is Eric Schrader, Eric's an emergency preparedness specialist at the NRC. Mr. Schrader has over 40 years of experience in nuclear power, encompassing areas of on-site and off-site emergency preparedness. Eric was also a reactor operator on nuclear submarines. Edward Robinson is a senior emergency preparedness specialist, leading advanced and new reactor licensing at the NRC. He has extensive licensing experience and among as many achievements are many first of the kind application reviews. Captain Janice McArrel is a United States Public Health Service Officer assigned to the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency. She is the senior public health advisor for the Office of National Exercises and Technological Hazards. And Captain McArrel is currently focused on the National Resilience Mission. And then joining us virtually is Mr. Ken Evans. Ken has spent over 43 years in emergency planning, having recently retired as the head of the Radiological Emergency Assessment Center for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. Ken is also involved in the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors having served as the chair of the HSER5 Committee on Emergency Response and Planning. In addition, Ken teaches an online graduate course in emergency response for Illinois Institute of Technology. And we also have with us Courtney Eckstein. She's the Radiation Program Director for the Indiana Department of Homeland Security. Courtney is the state liaison for 11 counties involved in ingestion pathway planning and response. Prior to her current role, Courtney worked in healthcare. And one note I wanted to pull out of Courtney's bio, she noted that her change in career to emergency preparedness has been both challenging and amazing and has given her a newfound passion for emergency preparedness and radiation safety. And I really like that note because change is good and change can be viewed by some as difficult, it's viewed by others as opportunity. And as we heard from our chair yesterday, there's a lot of opportunities ahead of us. But how you adapt to change depends a lot on your view of change. And that's good because in this session, what we're inviting you to do is sit back and enjoy the view for a while as we discuss how we've adapted to change in emergency preparedness. As I mentioned, we are gonna have a number of live polling questions to aid our discussion. Can we have the first question called up please? These questions are gonna be calling up periodically. Please don't wait for me to read through them to respond. Go ahead and start providing your answers now. After I read through them, then I will give a little explanation and we will move on. So the first question asks, compliance with the NRC's emergency preparedness regulations provides reasonable assurance that safety goals and quantitative health objectives are met. Protective measures can and will be taken in the event of a radiological emergency. Public dose will not exceed 10 millisieverts one REM, total effective dose equivalent over 96 hours or D, all of the above. Now these are gonna be a little tricky and not promising they're not gonna be hard, but there is a good answer here and we're gonna be talking about why there's some good answers. And so for this question, the answer is that emergency preparedness provides reasonable assurance that protective actions can and will be taken in an emergency. Can we have the next poll question please? The next question asks, it's a true or false, the final rule in 10 CFR 5160, and that's our new rule on emergency preparedness for small modular reactors and other new technologies. Is this the first time the NRC has risk-informed EP? So this is asking, what do you understand about our EP regulations? So think about how we regulate in other areas, think about how we implement protective action strategies and I'm asking is this the first time that we've actually risk-informed? And I think many of you are getting the answer or that is false. In fact, the risk-informed approach to EP goes back many decades back to the 70s. They looked at a number of potential bases, including risk-based, probability-based, cost-based and they decided on a risk-informed approach. Now in this conference, if we can go back to the slides please. When I saw the theme as adapting to the changing landscape, it gave me some pause and I began to wonder, what does that mean? The changing landscape, because many things are changing. Technologies changing of course. The climate is changing, we're hearing this week too, the renewed calls for nuclear to combat climate change. The regulatory landscape is changing and you're hearing about how we're working to become a modern risk-informed regulator. And of course our technology tools that we use to aid us in decision-making are also changing and we're working, looking toward tools like artificial intelligence. So as I was preparing for this session, I decided to pull from a tool of online and ask, what is a changing landscape? And the answer I got is that a changing landscape applies a dynamic, fluid and unpredictable of virant. One that requires adaptation, flexibility and resilience. So in this session we're really gonna talk about how our regulations have been adaptable, flexible and resilient. And to talk a little bit about EP, one way we can think about it is being like bedrock in the changing landscape. And what do I mean by that? What I mean is that, as we discussed in the poll question, EP ensures that protective actions can and will be taken. Doesn't matter how the landscape is changing, EP is always there to serve its purpose. And this means that EP is a final independent layer of defense and debt. So as designs change, as we change, how we control and operate reactors, as the safety systems that prevent and mitigate accidents evolve, EP is there to serve the purpose of providing those savings to achieve the objectives of EP. This means EP is risk informed, which means that it's adaptable to this changing landscape. And so that's the first thing I wanna focus on is how our regulations have adapted. Because last year we published the final rule in emergency preparedness regulations for small modular reactors and other new technologies. And with us now, we have Eric Schrader from our Policy Oversight Branch, and Eric was instrumental in getting this final rule publicized. So Eric, I have up here the slides, the major features of the rule. Would you please walk us through and describe this new rule? All right, the major provisions of the final rule and the guidance are made up of a number of parts, the performance-based framework, the current prescriptive regime, beginning in the 80s focused inspection efforts and license fee efforts on compliance with control of emergency plans and facilities. In the late 90s, the idea of performance being as important as compliance, it gave rise, I'm sorry, it became in the late 90s, the idea of performance was introduced as being just as important as compliance, which gave rise to the Ractor Oversight Program. An improvement, but voluntary and still based in prescriptive regulation. None of the technology inclusive and performance-based regimes, now the technology inclusive and performance-based regime takes the next step. To create an emergency preparedness regulatory framework that focuses inspection efforts and licensee efforts on actual performance competencies, rather than compliance with emergency plans and procedures. Compliance is still required, however, compliance with the requirements will now be demonstrated through effective response and drills and exercise for emergencies and accident conditions. The technology inclusive aspect of the new rule is the flexibility to use the specific facilities, technological innovations to the fullest extent in determining the most effective and effective and efficient method to meet the regulatory requirements as opposed to a prescriptive requirement defining how they are to be met. Being technology inclusive allows for the new rule to be applicable to a variety of designs and being performance-based puts the emphasis on demonstration of capabilities over the compliance with written plans. There's also a hazard analysis that is now part of it for facilities near the site. SMRs and ONTs have the potential to be located close to or with existing reactors, industrial facilities, military bases, transportation hubs, or a combination of these facilities. This new potential setup requires additional independent AP considerations of credible hazards that could adversely impact the implementation of emergency plan. The applicant's licensee, the applicant or licensee's AP program must address these hazards. For example, arrangements might be to notify contiguous or nearby facilities regarding a facility emergency, classifying a hazard from another facility that could negatively impact the safe operation of the facility, providing protective actions for other facility personnel or other on-site individuals such as visitors. This hazard analysis is independent of the Part 100 sighting analysis, but may be informed by it. Another section of it or another provision of it is a scalable plume exposure pathway emergency planning zone. A scalable emergency planning zone is not really a new concept. It's part of a graded approach which has always been part of the EP. This rule provides a framework for SMR and ONT applicants to develop an EPZ size commensurate to the risk profile of the facility. The difference now is that the applicant develops a technical basis to justify and justify the proposed site-specific EPZ size. The justification needs to include the design and licensing information, off-site dose consequences, accident considerations, accident source terms, vision product releases, accident dose characteristics, and considering site-specific meteorology. And lastly is ingestion pathway planning. The existing concept of ingestion pathway planning zone was created in the 70s, a time when the infrastructure to identify and remove radiologically contaminated goods from a food chain was not as well developed as it is today. The new framework requires an emergency plan description of, or reference to, the capabilities to prevent contaminated food and water from entering the ingestion pathway. The ingestion response planning description needs to include the federal, state, local, tribal, or licensee capabilities to support immediate and long-term monitoring analysis and introduction or embargo if warranted of products that are part of the site's food and water ingestion pathway. Thank you. Over here, Eric, it was a lot to put in there in one slide, but it's a new rule, but are we really doing anything different in terms of EP? It's really more similar than it is different. The functions of each planning standard that we currently have, the 16 planning standards and the requirements of Appendix E are basically still included. They're broken up a little different. They're worded a little different, and we now call them emergency response functions and planning activities. Another way to think of this new rule, performance-based technology inclusive is that the requirements describe the trip's destination, but the route and what mode of transportation is used, well, that's left up to the traveler. An example would be an in current regulations specifically require an on-site technical support center, emergency operations facility, as well as the specific communications capabilities and the emergency, as well as the testing requirements for communication systems. The new rule, 10 CFR 5160, requires the establishment of an emergency facility or facilities from which effective command and control can be exercised with the capabilities to support the emergency response functions. So using my previous analogy, the new rule establishes the destination. A facility or facilities for effective command and control. However, what route you wish to take to this destination and what mode of transportation you wish to use is up to you. Thanks for that, Eric. Couple of things you mentioned. You talked about the graded approach to EP, and I like your analogy of the destination. Can we have our next slide polling question now, please? Because you mentioned this new rule isn't really different from what we do now. A lot of the planning functions are the same. And we apply this a graded approach to EP, but what does that mean? So this question is asking, the graded approach to EP is best described as an approach that uses probabilistic risk assessment to determine acceptable risk, uses the licensing modernization project to develop risk-informed performance-based emergency plans, uses insights from a spectrum of accidents to inform the planning, or uses worst case scenarios for specific facilities to bound the planning. And I see a lot of people have already provided the results, and the answer is C, uses insights from a spectrum of accidents to inform the planning. I think this gets to the destination, the how. If we can go back to the slides, please. The key to emergency preparedness is understanding your planning basis. And this goes back, again, as Eric said, to the 70s, and it can be summarized succinctly, that the planning basis uses the consequences from a spectrum of accidents to scope the planning efforts for the distance to which planning is needed for pre-determined, prompt protective actions, the time-dependent characteristics of the potential release, and the types of radioactive materials that are released. And so understanding the planning basis gives you this clear view of the destination you're trying to reach. And so Eric, if you wouldn't mind, what's the value in understanding the planning basis? The short answer of what the value in understanding the planning basis is the better you understand it, the better able you are to be able to construct an emergency plan that is most efficient and effective for your specific facility. And that's a key flexibility of the new rule. So understanding that the planning basis doesn't require an exact prediction of all accident sequences and their consequences, only that the basic information on accident types and that are applicable to the facility eases the development of the EP capabilities needed to address them and greatly simplifies implementing them. So understanding what the basis is nicely sets the stage for how to accomplish it and makes the how much easier to understand. The basis begins with a spectrum of accidents, not just one accident type or the worst accident. Planning for a single accident type could lead to gaps in emergency plan capability to deal with uncertainty. Each potential accident will have a unique set of challenges such as the timing, how quickly the event unfolds, makeup of the source term, what isotopes are being released and condition of a site, what's the event caused by a hostile action or, you know, et cetera. Each of these aspects will be used by decision makers to determine what the appropriate protective public action will be. For example, most events that result in a release that exceed EPA-PAG, the Environmental Protection Agency Protective Action Guides, decision makers would evacuate the public in harm's way of the release. However, if the event were caused by a hostile action against the facility, it could create a situation where sheltering the public in place may be the best protective action. By examining the spectrum of accidents, their characteristics, release timing, magnitude, source term, et cetera, an emergency plan can be developed with capabilities that will be robust, flexible, and able to respond to this situation or uncertainty as to what the accident might be. The ability to deal with the uncertainty is why EP is the final independent layer of defense and depth. Thanks for that, Eric. And I really appreciate your overview of the rule. I know it's been a long road in getting us there to that final rule. And if you're interested, you know, we record these RIC sessions and if you'd like to review the development of the rule, we did have a session last year setting a course for the future of EP that you can view online. But I think really what a lot of us are interested in is learning more about how are we going to implement the new rule? So now can we call up the next live polling question? The next series of polling questions are to kind of test our knowledge and look at some of the features of the new rule. So while the first question comes up, it's asking the final rule in 10c far 5160 does not require the use of probabilistic risk assessment. And that is true. While PRA is a tool that we can use and leverage and get risk insights from, it's only one tool in our toolbox. And as you heard our office directors talk, if you heard their session this morning, they talked about the use of quantitative and qualitative risk insights. And the rule is very flexible in letting you apply different sources of information. We go to the next polling question, please. The next question is asking the emergency planning zone is not a design feature of the facility. And again, that is true. We'll talk more about the planning zone that the planning zone is a planning tool for the purposes of EP. And next polling question, please. This one's asked, the performance-based approach to EP focuses on performance of safety features to prevent and mitigate accidents, licensee control of emergency plans and procedures, response capabilities and results rather than means, or response capabilities to meet safety goals. I think most of you are getting it. Performance-based is focusing on results and not just means. Can we go back to the slides, please? So what we want to talk about now is how the regulation is flexible. So with me on stage is Edward Robinson from our regular licensing branch. And Eddie, the new requirements in 5160, they're not prescriptive in how to meet a standard. So how does that change the potential approach to licensing and content of application? With the implementation of 5160, there's been a slight paradigm shift to how the NRC would traditionally regulate in that 5160 is not prescriptive. It's incumbent upon the applicant to describe how the EP functions will be met and provide an adequate basis to address the specific hazards of the facility. Now it's recognized that a lot of this information is contained in the design documents, but the applicant must consider site-specific aspects to the planning approach. And this includes things like specific nearby hazards. But the rule is flexible to the license approach of the applicant. For example, while we need information on the characteristics of a spectrum of accident, this does not mean need to come from the PRA. Applicants can use a maximum hypothetical accident or MHA. During the application review process, the NRC staff also considers aircraft impact scenarios and security event impacts on EP. 5160 continues to provide a flexible regulatory infrastructure similar to the alternative license approach identified in 5047B and part 50 Appendix E. So today we've heard that 5160, although not prescriptive, provides for a risk-informed framework in which safety requirements and the criteria or set commensurate to the risk of the facility. Under 10 CFR part 50 Appendix E, the review involves evaluation of evidence of preliminary planning, which is a PSAR, or substantial evidence of planning, which could be captured in the FSAR for emergency preparedness directed as situations involving real or potential radiological hazards. The regulations in 5160 require applicants and licensees to demonstrate effective response in drills and exercises for emergency and accident conditions. At that time, the NRC staff will, one, review the application to determine whether the application has described, how the performance-based framework in 5160 will be met, and two, evaluate applications using a graded approach based on site-specific consequence analysis. Thanks for that, Eddie. You know, when I think about our current regulations and how long they've been in place, we're fortunate we have many regulatory guides, new regs that describe acceptable methods and how to meet the regulations. We have decades of generic communications as well that address particular issues, NEP, and then of course FEMA. We have a well-established offsite radiological mercy preparedness manual. Eddie, what can applicants look forward to use in terms of guidance in meeting the requirements in 5160? Absolutely. The new requirements and guidance include recognition of advances in design, technology advances embedded in design features, credit for safety enhancements, and evolutionary and passive systems, and credit for smaller-size reactors and non-light-water reactors, potential benefits associated with postulated accidents, and this includes slower transient response times and relatively small or slow release of materials. Regulatory Guide 1.242, entitled Performance-Based Emergency Preparedness for Small Modular Reactors, Non-Light-Water Reactors, and Non-Power Production or Utilization Facilities, has been crafted to identify methods and procedures the staff of the NRC considers acceptable for use by the applicants and licensees for small modular reactors, non-light-water reactors, and utilization facilities to demonstrate compliance with Performance-Based Emergency Preparedness requirements in 10 CFR 5160. Again, this Reg Guide is available and adaptable to suit any technology. This Reg Guide was issued in November of 2023, and it's publicly available on our NRC website for those that wish to view it. To facilitate the EP Stash Review of Applications involved in SMRs, non-light-water reactors, and other new technologies that choose to adapt an alternative EP framework in 5160, application submittal review guidance is under development. Future public engagements will occur regarding those staff efforts. Ultimately, the message in here is that the NRC EP staff is in the ready for receipt of such application submittals. Hi, Yeti. EP knowledge is really very specialized, and so when we talk about risk-informed approaches to EP, those are different than risk-informed approaches in design. And my next question to you is, what can applicants do to best prepare to approach the NRC for licensing? Great question. Pre-application engagements are highly encouraged to ensure a methodical and logical success path forward as it pertains to licensing. The best way for me to highlight these advantages is to kind of categorically describe the advantages for applicants as compared to the advantages for the NRC. For the applicants, pre-applications engagements result in enhanced regulatory predictability reducing project risk. For the applicant, these preliminary engagements provide for greater review efficiency because NRC staff becomes familiar with the design and that efficiency frequently translates to lower cost and shorter review schedules. From an agency perspective, pre-application engagements provide for a greater review efficiency because NRC staff becomes familiar with the preliminary design and pending the assessment type may be able to provide an official agency position on the attributes of the preliminary design review. This official agency position will be documented in a safety evaluation that can be referenced by the applicant in the safety analysis report. Public engagement during the review process is critical. Preliminary engagements between the applicant and the NRC staff afford just that. Early public engagement on the attributes of a license in action. These public engagements increase transparency and enhance public awareness of the intended license in submittal. Ultimately, the message in here is that the pre-application engagements are highly encouraged and can be helpful to identify technical and regulatory gaps in policy issues. Identifying these items early in the review process results in the application submission of high quality and provides for an efficient review by the agency. For example, new scale developed an EPZ size and methodology topical report for their facility. This topical report provided for methodology that will be used to establish the site specific plume exposure pathway EPZ size at the new scale SMR plant sites. The staff's acceptance of this approach was documented in a SCR dated October of 2022. This is just merely one example of the many pre-engagement efforts which the agency is involved. As it pertains to our EP advance and new reactor efforts, we have seen these pre-application engagements occur approximately six months or more before the intended application submittal date. In summary, 5160 rulemaking is an example of our agency's recognition that technology is advancing and EP is evolving. As a result, the NRC staff anticipates design specific methodologies may be developed. Nevertheless, our agency's mission to protect the health and safety of the public remains unchanged. I would also like to point out that the ENSER DPR Division of Preparedness and Response is hosting a digital exhibit. I believe that's at desk K if I'm not mistaken right outside the doors. The digital exhibit is titled Realizing Performance Based Emergency Planning. The exhibit further highlights some of the key messages that were already discussed by myself and my colleagues thus far that those relate to the guidance that is available to support the applicants, how performance-based EP regulations lead to defined results without requiring specific direction on how those results are to be obtained. The agency's encouragement of pre-application meetings and the emphasis of the agency's readiness to license SMRs and ONTs under 5160 should an applicant wish to pursue licensing under that framework. So I encourage you to visit that exhibit as your time permits for those additional details. Thank you for that, Ed. Yeah, please come see us at that exhibit. Ask us your questions. And a reminder, as you have questions, go ahead and submit them now. We will have time for your questions at the end. But Eric, I want to come back to you for a second because you gave us a great overview of the performance-based aspects of the rule. And in many ways, our regulations now, even our performance-based, and a key part of performance-based is drills and exercises. And drills and exercises are unique because that's where you develop and demonstrate that you have the key skills that are needed to implement the EP functions that you talked about. Our current regulations, they're prescripted, though, in terms of the exercise and the drills that you must conduct. So what is performance-based drills and exercises going to look like in under 5160? Specifically, what they're going to look like, I can't say. That's going to be up to each licensee, and they'll have the flexibility to determine for themselves the most effective and efficient method to demonstrate their effective response in drills and exercises for emergencies in accident conditions. But what I can say is that it will need to have one, a performance objective metrics for each of the emergency response functions, an approved method for performance objective development, performance of objective thresholds, defining acceptability or successful achievement of each of the emergency response functions, and a drill and exercise performance critique process that demonstrates the licensee's ability to be adequately self-critical in evaluating the emergency response organization performance, identify their performance weaknesses, document the necessary corrective actions, and track metric performance. A simple example of what this might look like, though, would be to track emergency response function performance by percentage. What percentage of the time does the ERO successfully demonstrate the emergency response function? To do this, a licensee would create an exercise scenario to demonstrate the effective response to emergency and accident conditions. They would count the, one of the required emergency response functions is to demonstrate event classification and mitigation, which calls for the capability to assess, classify, monitor, and repair facility malfunctions. So for the event classification and mitigation part of this response function, the licensee would count the number of opportunities presented in a scenario, that would be the denominator, and compare it to the number of times the ERO successfully recognized, classified the scenario, and took the expected mitigate of actions. That would be the numerator, and then multiply that result by 100. Thank you for that example, Eric. You know, I remember my time in the Navy, we switched to performance-based regimen and it actually had been very, very helpful, because sometimes the advantages of these performance-based approaches aren't really recognizable immediately, but one of the advantages I see with performance-based is that when you're doing well in one particular area and function, it allows you to focus your training needs in other areas where you see your performance start to guide, and so overall, you maintain very high levels of performance, and so, you know, even under prescriptive approaches and performance-based, both achieve very high level of performance, which is great. You know, we've been working very hard on this rule for a number of years, and now as we implement it, we're looking to also provide oversight, and so, how is oversight of performance-based EP, what does that look like for the NRC, and how are we preparing? Well, at this point, the process is still under development, so exactly what's going to look like is yet to be determined. However, I think it's safe to say that it'll likely use a very similar philosophy to the current ROP inspection oversight process. We'll establish a minimum baseline inspection that verifies enough of a sample of the licensees EP program to continue reasonable assurance, and then when we find a weakness or weaknesses, we'll apply additional inspection resources to be applied to that topic. So the current ROP uses a set of voluntary PIs. The rule uses a set of regulatory required performance objectives and metrics, very similar. Each emergency response function is measured by a performance objective metric, and that will be established by the license, that will establish the licensees response bound. This sounds kind of familiar to the ROP licensee response bound. Very similar to the current ROP. The new ROP oversight process will likely include in broad brushstrokes inspection of exercise performance coupled with an evaluation of the licensees exercise critique process, and then a planning activity program inspection. Yeah, thanks, Eric. And that's a good point of what you were mentioning, that the performance objectives aren't really different from what we already do now on an ROP with performance indicators. So that's something to, comforting that we're not changing things so drastically. It's really an extension of a lot of things we already are doing and we're very familiar with. And speaking of being familiar with, I think about our oversight of the Radiological Emergency Preparedness Programs for large light water actors. This is something we've been doing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for over 40 years. We've been partnering and providing oversight of the on-site and off-site plans. And I'm sure many of you here today are very familiar with NRC roles and responsibilities, but how much do you know about our partners at FEMA? So can we have our next live polling question up, please? I'm just gonna test your knowledge. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, performs what role in Radiological Emergency Preparedness assists state, local, and tribal governments in the development of radiological emergency plans, supports the evaluation of the emergency plans and preparedness of state, local, and tribal governments, performs preliminary capabilities assessments and disaster-initiated reviews following significant events, coordinates the national effort to support state, local, and tribal governments with relevant and executable radiological planning, training, and exercise guidance, trains responders on the latest techniques and tools to respond to radiological hazards or all the above. And I think most of you got it. It's all the above. FEMA does quite a lot. And that partnership between NRC and FEMA will continue into the future. And what I wanna turn to next then, oh, can we go back to the slides, please, is how our regulations build resilience. Again, as I was preparing for this, one of the definitions of resilience that I found defined it as the process and the outcome of successfully adapting to a situation. In EP, resilience isn't just something, a natural feature of the program. It is the result of a deliberate process. And this process requires communication, coordination, and cooperation. So I'm now gonna turn things over to Captain Janice McCarroll and she's going to discuss with us now more about FEMA's role in radiological mercy planning and how to build resilient communities. Janice? No small task. Thanks, Todd. But I'm super excited because it looked like 83% really knew who FEMA was and what we do. So that is very reassuring. You know, I'm glad, Todd, that you mentioned last year's RIC, one I would never ever miss a RIC because this has got to be one of, I think, the best collaboration opportunities. And it really does bring our entire community. I like to call it the nuclear enterprise and, you know, my running joke is that it's not, just because I'm a captain that I like talking about the enterprise. You guys all get a little coin after that for laughing. Oh, a few more coins. Okay, so last year at the RIC talked a little bit about our agency strategic goals and they haven't changed. That's the lucky thing about strategic goals. You can kind of continue to build on them and so those remain to be equity, climate resilience and a prepared nation and I'll touch on all three of those but it really ties back to what you guys have already laid out. I find myself in the great position of kind of bringing us up to how, you know, where does radiological preparedness fall within national preparedness and then I get to hand it over to my state colleagues who could really bring it home with, what does that really mean to our communities? And I wanna emphasize that the radiological preparedness is a subset. It's part of a much larger national preparedness approach and so when we talk about some of these resources and we talk about the approaches, this is part of, it's a layer, right? We talk about defense in depth but I mean, I would argue that this is, you know, this is a layer as part of our larger emergency management approach and you also touched on the fact that we've been doing this for what, 40, 45 years. I never tried to do math up on the stage but the Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program was one of the first, if not the first emergency preparedness program that our brand new agency in 1979 had. So, you know, this really, the radiological approach ended up being really foundational when we look at what we now think of as a national preparedness system and I think that you can see that, right? That the DNA is fundamentally within our national approach when we talk about building capabilities and sustaining capabilities and validating capabilities. Todd, you're example from the Navy. I mean, that is exactly what we do across the threat and hazard space is work with our communities. One, it's a partnership. You know, the role of FEMA is very interesting. We're a federal agency but we are a supporting entity. It really, I like to say, like disasters, right? Preparedness starts and ends locally and so we locally execute programs. We state support but we've, excuse me, we state manage but then federally support and NRC and FEMA together are part of a much larger federal family that all work to build that overall preparedness and it's important that when we talk about the language and I feel like, okay, like Siri, start a timer because I can go on about this and I wanna make sure we have time for our state folks to talk but you know, when we talk about the overall preparedness approach, it's so important that our language is similar because our communities aren't just dealing with a nuclear reactor in their space and so whether you're a federal partner or whether you're a developer or whether you're an industry partner that already has this technology, working with that community right from the beginning is so important and each community is so different. So trying to come up with kind of this, one size fits all is kind of off brand at this point. I mentioned that equity is kind of a cornerstone to our current strategic goals and I can't say that enough. It's recognizing your communities and what your communities need and kind of their unique challenges. It's all part of that uniqueness of each community. I tried kind of going through, we have states that have commercial nuclear power today. Does that make that state, they have a different knowledge base as you go in to have discussions about next generation nuclear technology but even if you're in a radiological, a rep state, that doesn't mean that community is familiar with the radiological preparedness basis and so I think not only do government and private sector and public sector partners need an education but it's really making sure that you're working with that community to understand that capability basis because it all keeps coming back down to those capabilities. And again, I know I talked quite a bit about the preparedness cycle. Last year, FEMA.gov, it's a great cycle. There's some great diagrams there that can walk you through but that really hits developing those capabilities, sustaining those capabilities, making sure you've got a plan and as you kind of raise up, look outside that fence line that we're talking about and making sure you understand what are the threats and hazards that that community has already identified as a basis for what the capabilities they need. That's really important across that partnership and we talk whole community is kind of a shorthand for that everybody needs to be at this table and I heard that this morning during one of the roundtables, just really, really powerful to hear it both in a radiological sense but recognizing that as that larger sense too. A couple more things I just wanted to kind of emphasize is how I talked about a bedrock for a changing landscape. Again, right in line with our preparedness and ultimately our resilience approach. 2024 is the year of resilience as defined by our administrator so I can't wait to talk to you a little bit more about that in a little bit but again, that this approach is consistent and I would kind of challenge all of us to understand what those linkages are is again, if you're only looking at the radiological footprint I think you're leaving a lot of capabilities on the table and you're not necessarily able to see one of our analogies, right? It's that forest through the trees. I would kind of challenge all of us across the board to just recognize that when we define a community even a jurisdiction that that really is so unique to each place and so you almost can't look at one state and then just say, okay, well great, that worked there, I'm now gonna go to another state and again, not gonna go too far down the civics pathway but to understand that we have very, very different environments that we're looking to engage with nuclear power preparedness as well and again, I would love to talk a ton about emergency preparedness both like EP specific to radiological but also EP broader. I just want you to understand that that's really woven across our emergency management doctrine. And I mentioned that it's the year of resilience. It's also one of our big strategies and kind of again, one of our priorities is talking about place-based, it's a place-based approach and again, it's kind of meeting communities where they are and I think that this is so in line with what we're talking about on our current reactors and looking into the future, right? Kind of the now and tomorrow's and I think building off of a lot of these emergency management and emergency preparedness fundamental ideas is so important and so again, happy to talk a little bit more if we have time during the Q&A about place-based technical assistance but it's really making sure that we're holistically looking across the threat and hazard spectrum. I think if we focus solely on the radiological spectrum, you don't necessarily see some of the tools and the capabilities that both federal partners but then really across the board really what do our states and locals have capability-wise to bring to bear especially if we're looking at, what are looking, right? Like at these, a wide swath of opportunities as these folks come in with applications, right? I think one of the things that I wanted to also emphasize is just again, SMRs I think we'll get to that when we talk about this year of resilience but there's a couple of resources that I wanna make sure that everybody is familiar with and one of the areas that we've really seen with FEMA is that we've got some inequity in delivery of programs. Just feel like I'm gonna pivot to, this isn't radiologically specific but I think that the radiological community can really build on this and so there's some resources kind of coming out this year, 2024 as the year of resilience to build on this concept that we rolled out last year which are these communities disaster resilience zone what we call these cedars. I'll try not to use acronyms but community disaster resilience zone CDRZ and Congress kind of challenged us to make sure that we're being equitable and again, both program delivery but just making sure that some of our traditionally underserved areas are getting the resources and are informed about some of the financial thinking grants but some of the financial some of the other support systems that we've got in place and I would just love to see that some of our developers and federal partners and other partners all are aware of some of these initiatives to make sure that we're not leaving behind some of our communities that again we've kind of historically seen as underserved. We have a whole advocacy program within FEMA we've just announced a new senior assigned to be the small state and rural advocate again, kind of happy to talk to you guys about that in a little bit but want to make sure we also get the folks on the line. So last thing I'll mention is just we do have in this year we're rolling out some resilience guidance and you'll start to see that plugged in everywhere not only at the program side but also within our training and education programs that we put out with FEMA that working with all of our emergency management colleagues just I will foot stomp that we don't do this alone whole community is definitely woven in to our I would say proverbial DNA and so when we talk about whole community it's that the rubber meets the road at our state and local partners, right? I mean, I think as you'll hear from both Ken and Courtney it's just that's where a lot of this really meets the road so I'll pause there. Thanks, Todd. Great, thank you. You matched what I had on the question that FEMA does a lot more than we realize but a couple of things you said really struck me as you were talking because you mentioned having a holistic view of all the hazards not just being focused on the radiological and I want to tie that back to what Eric said there's some really innovative smart features of our new rule one is the hazard assessment or hazard analysis of the contiguous facilities, okay? So we're concerned with the protection of the workers not just from the risk of the radiation but what else might be there on the facility and what could limit implementation of the radiological emergency plan? So thank you for that, Janice. Now, next up I want to have some more perspectives from off-site organizations and so to tee us up for that can we have the next live polling question please? The first question related to emergency planning zones asking protective actions could be needed outside unestablished emergency planning zone and the answer to that is true because the way we use the emergency planning zone in our regulations is it's a planning tool, okay? It ensures that you have some initial planning in which you can take some pre-determined prompt protective actions but it's a risk-informed construct that is there is it's unlikely but there's some potential that you could exceed protective action guides outside the EPC and so what the planning does it makes sure that you have capabilities in place that you can extend your protective actions outside the emergency planning zone as needed. Can we have the next question please? Off-site authorities will not perform an independent assessment of potential radiological impacts until a licensee issues a protective action recommendation, true or false. This is the off-site wait on the licensee to act and I think many of you are getting that that's false, state and locals are their own authorities and they're the ones with the responsibility to make decisions for public health and safety and so I'd like to turn now if we can go back to our slide. We have with us Ken Evans online. Ken, are you there? I'm here Todd. Hi Ken, glad you could join us today. So Ken. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, for over 40 years the success of the radiological emergency preparedness program for large light water reactors that was built on the communication, coordination, cooperation between the on-site and off-site response organizations. As you reflect on the changing landscape of nuclear in what areas can we evolve in our approach to EP and what are the fundamentals that never change? Well again, thank you Todd for the invitation and for the Rick here and I just want to say too thank you for scheduling or sequencing the speakers the way you did because I'm going to be referring back to some of the comments that have already been made about flexibility and about partnerships and the only difficulty I have in answering the question that you posed and if some of the things have already been indicated is that one size does not fit all. All states are not the same. And as my years with CRCPD and working with different states I found out just how much of a difference there is. And also as we talk about the rule and the flexibility for the developers is they do their risk analysis and hazard analysis. One size does not fit all. So that being said, I think that as we go to these new technologies and these so-called SMRs, it's going to depend a lot on the availability of resources that you have in the particular jurisdiction that you're going to be constructing this SMR if you will. Even if you look at the hazard is being much less as far as, and I know the rule has the one rim TED dose and there is being a criteria for determining if you're going to need to have an EPC so to speak. But even if you don't need to have the EPC there is still the radiological aspect to consider and that gets into the does the entity and I'm talking about here now that local state, local county have the resources to monitor for radiological detriment if you will. And you don't necessarily have to exceed the EPA pegs. In fact, somebody mentioned about ingestion earlier and about the concept there. So there is a much lower threshold to needing to monitor for ingestion related activities and depending on the jurisdiction, again, this has just been brought home quite well. It depends on what resources you may have locally already established just because you have an hazard plan. If you've not developed an all hazard plan that takes into account radiological risk, then there is a concern about how that is going to be funded. But I could go on and on and on, but I know we're short on time, so I'm going to stop now. Can I think we're doing great on time and I appreciate that the thorough response. And I think again, just touching on ingestion planning and another real key innovation of the rule focusing on capabilities over prescriptive distances, I think, because that's where we see emergency preparedness really shines in those capabilities. Can we know emergency planning zones that we talked about in the question? They're planning tools to help us scope the planning efforts, but they don't limit response capabilities. That's a key, they bound the initial planning, but they don't bound the response. And nor do they impact state and local responsibility for protecting public health and safety. So how would planning for radiological mercies be addressed under all hazards? That is, if there's not a formal program offsite. Well, again, that gets back to, I think some of my previous comments. If, and again, I'll use the example of an entity, you know, offsite response organization, if you will, where they may have an all hazard plan, but they have not developed a plan that might include a potential radiological hazard. Now, I think that one of the things that can be said with these smaller reactors and much reduced source terms in time to take actions, probably the all hazard planning would be more than adequate. In other words, it's not like you're going to need an alert notification system for a small modular reactor. I mean, that probably is not gonna be required. So any immediate actions for the public obviously could be handled under an all hazard plan. However, what the all hazard plan may not include is what are the protocols for working with our federal, if you will, partners or private entities to have increased radiological monitoring capabilities. And some of the jurisdictions out there that may not be even aware of, and I'll use the PIRMAC here, Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center. Maybe they don't even know about what capabilities some of the federal entities can bring to the table. So there obviously has to be some development and coordination efforts if something like this is going to be established in a jurisdiction that previously has not had a nuclear facility. Thanks Ken. My last question to you is what can states do now to prepare for small modular reactors and other new technologies? Well, I would say this probably is going to depend on the individual state. And I guess if I may set Courtney up a little bit here. Because I know she's going to follow me. And in my time in Illinois, I did work with Indiana extensively on what we had ingestion exercises. So I would say that if you look at a REF state and of course a lot of people know that Illinois has more reactors than any other state. So as far as preparations, there's probably not a lot of preparations a state like Illinois would need to do. If I may use that as an example, if you are already prepared for six different sites with basically 11 units operating, you probably can handle another SMR without any additional resources. Very few additional sources. I mean the templates and response organizations, equipment is already in place. However, if you move into a state like Indiana, and I don't want to take away too much of Courtney's material here, so I'm going to let her elaborate on it. But if the state does not have existing arrangements, equipment, plans, procedures, then there's going to need to be more lead time for them to develop their resources. Yeah, thanks for that, Ken. So Ken, as you can tell, represents decades of experience and wisdom in emergency preparedness. And of course we have a lot of smart people in all the states that know all hazards preparedness, but we're mentioning not every state and that every community has radiological hazards in that. So what we're going to do now is turn to the state of Indiana, which happens to be my home state. Now, as a native Hoosier, that means I'm allowed to poke a little fun in my state because when people think of Indiana, they tend to think of a flat landscape with nothing but cornfields. But that's actually not reality. Actually Indiana is a very beautiful state. In the north we have beaches, we have rolling hills. If you go to the south, there's lush forests and many things in Indiana are very rich. And the energy landscape in Indiana is also changing. As I drive through the middle of the state now, you'll see windmills dotting the cornfields, okay? And then if you were following the news, you know that, I believe it was last year or the year before, Indiana is opening the door now to nuclear. And so I've asked Courtney to join us to help us understand from a newcomer state's perspective, how does the changing nuclear land state impact you? So Courtney, let me start off. Indiana is opening the door to nuclear, but you do participate in radiological emergency preparedness now. Can you describe us a little bit how you participate and rep? Yeah, so finally Indiana is only an ingestion pathway state and that's only our 11 most northern counties. But we still try to participate with our plants that we would follow in the ingestion pathway zone and their plume exercises or their hab exercises just to get a better understanding, stay connected with our stakeholders and stay checked up on our skills. And we work a lot with our neighboring states, Illinois and Michigan, as Ken said earlier. Great, thank you for that. And if you weren't aware too, that the northern states were preparing for a big exercise next year, cobalt magnet 25 that's gonna involve many of the states and also across national coordination, cooperation, communication, and all the things I'm talking about here. So we'll be demonstrating those capabilities next year. Next question to you Courtney is, how is Indiana individually preparing for the changing landscape of nuclear power? Yeah, so just actually to go off the exercise that you were talking about earlier, we are participating in that and we're doing it in not traditional rep counties. So that's already, we're starting off trying to train everyone from the ground up in rep. And it's definitely kind of been a challenge because we don't traditionally train there. So there's the first challenge for us already. And then going to a broader spectrum, Indiana Office of Energy Development has announced and requested proposals for SMR reactors in Indiana. They wanna analyze their potential impact if they were deployed in the state and or if they were developed in Indiana. And I know Purdue University and Duke Energy also completed a study last year on a similar topic. Indiana is also in the process of becoming an agreement state. When I started in Indiana in 2021, there were two of us. It was me and my former boss. We've now grown the team over the past years to nine and that includes five new health physicists. And we're cross training our health businesses with our nuclear response team. So if anything were to happen, we have the technical expertise around our boots alongside our boots on the ground operations. And that way we have the big brains in there explaining things that needed and all the boots on the ground stuff that we need. And then as of this week, we have seven radiological operational support specialists Ross is at the state level in Indiana. And that's great for us because they can serve as subject matter experts and sit down with our policymakers and explain anything for people who don't work in radiation every day. We've also been working a lot with our public information office to get more positive stories out about our radiation team out in the community and as well as training our first responders not just to wrap in already radiation or nuclear emergencies, but the past six months, we've covered 200 first responders and rep radiation basics, hospital trading radioactive transportation and radiation nuclear detection operations. We really believe that a strong foundation of education is how we're going to move forward in the nuclear world. Our governor's even involved he visited Darlington nuclear generating station in Ontario recently and met with officials in Ontario about their energy transition and discussed opportunities for power energy generation and storage innovations. And then specifically with rep right now we are redoing all of our sampling plans because as we've been going through them and training these non-traditional rep counties, we've realized there's a lot of holes in our plans which is great to figure out now, we'll fix them. And then we get a chance to test it next year and we've also finally solidified communications between all of our surrounding states and who's going to follow during a radiation emergency. And I know that's on small but we're very happy that we have that finally nailed down in place. Well, that's great Courtney. Thanks for that. And everything you rattled off there one with the growth and the staff and the number of HPs that's remarkable in itself, good for you. It sounds like it's a very much a whole community, whole state approach in preparing for nuclear. I'm reminded last year we familiarized ourselves with some efforts in Virginia. There's a Virginia Innovative Nuclear Hub that's also seeking to expand nuclear in the state and it's a grassroots effort from the ground up and with K through 12 education, college education, workforce development. So it's exciting to see a lot of the states looking ahead to the changing landscape and preparing. But with that, we know there's going to be some challenges. So what challenges do you face in adopting nuclear technology in the state that traditionally has not had reactors? Yeah, so first we have to start with education and I'm really lucky because I have a very great team that we built and we all work in radiation every day but we still have to educate our executive team. And sorry, as I spoke earlier, the governor is also involved. So educating like those officials as well and then persuading local communities who have never had a power plant in their backyard and how that's going to work. And we think that having specific trainings or education for the public, local first responders, local law enforcement, including conservation officers on the enhanced safety features of SMRs, basics of radiation, how SMRs work and then proceed with other aspects from there. Maybe even having a KANDOTs presentation, stuff on social media, it goes all, I just getting the information out. And as we've said a lot of, many times today already, Indiana has never had a traditional EPC. So this is all new to us. We'd have to start from the ground up planning-wise and working with our partner agencies to get them caught up on everything in the developing nuclear world. And Indiana, it's still a rural state. It still has small towns. There's still a lot of volunteer fire departments who can only train when they have the time or if something were to happen, maybe one, two, three guys could respond. And that's a big concern I have with our local first responders, just making sure that they feel comfortable responding with two people if we're three hours away in Indianapolis versus it happening maybe in a bigger city outside Chicago, outside of Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, stuff like that. Great, great, thanks for that, Courtney. And then specific to radiological mercy preparedness, what challenges or opportunities do you see? There has been a lot of turnover. I'm sure you all have felt a lot of turnover in jobs. We've lost a lot of retirement since COVID. We've lost a lot of knowledge from our first responders. And training a new person in rep is not easy and not straightforward. When I started in Indiana, I was the rep coordinator and I was in that position for maybe a year and a half before I got promoted to a director and then I had to hire a new rep coordinator and us learning together, we decided it takes about two years before you feel like you're not drowning in information and then you feel like you have a solid footing. We're also very lucky in Indiana that we have FEMA region five and our FEMA reps are fantastic and have educated us so much and have been there the whole way but it's still definitely a challenge. And we're trying to train everyone to kind of meet their own standard because a lot of feedback we get from our local first responders, law enforcement, EMA, healthcare, PASMA is that everything's kind of a general training to radiation and they want more specific to what they work in. So that's something we're working on now. Always communication with all levels of government from local up to federal and in between different federal partners to communicate with us and with each other. And then to be more proactive in trainings and more proactive in communications, not reactive. We can't wait until something happens to a former plan. So that's what we're trying to do is try to get as much as we can in place in case something does happen, not exchanging business cards when there's an emergency because nobody wants to do that. Great, thanks for that, Courtney. Here when you talk about the challenges you face, I don't know if it's company is the right word but we share many of the similar challenges. So for example, yesterday, and we talked a lot about knowledge management how do we deal with retiring staff? And so I think this is something we're all faced but this is an area where we can cooperate and work together and find solutions for workforce development and help prepare for this future together. And I think the message we heard, thank you Courtney from you and from Kenneth from Janice is again communication, coordination, cooperation those are essential to this whole community approach to preparedness. Thank you. Can we go back to the slides please? This actually brings me down to the summary of our session. The landscape is changing but as you've just heard in the past hour or so, we've adapted to the changing landscape with a new framework for emergency preparedness. It's a flexible framework, it's technology inclusive and it provides many ways you can meet our regulatory requirements and importantly the regulations are one part of the approach to preparedness that builds resilient communities able to protect public health and safety. So we thank you for listening. If you can please give our speakers a round of applause here for a minute. So I think we've saved some plenty of time for some questions and again a reminder you can ask your question online. If you're joining us through the QA or if you're in the room, if you join us through the app please submit your question and we'll get to them. First question I have, Eddie I wanna start with you. There were so many things that we did to prepare for this final rule. What are we doing to prepare ourselves to review applications in the NRC? It's recognized collectively the agency and the applicants are in an ever-changing environment. From what we've heard today in relation to 5160, this rulemaking was developed to be technology inclusive and as such the staff does anticipate design specific methodologies to be developed. Todd as you pointed out earlier, although the staff had methodically worked through some of these very difficult concepts and concepts during the 5160 rulemaking process the staff continues to verify guidance and undergo training efforts to ensure connectivity for future nuclear new reactor activities. Internal to the division of preparedness and response, we are in the midst of developing an EP specialist qualification card. One of those qualification areas is the staff's recognition of the various cross-cutting technical reviews between existing large light water reactors and advanced and new reactor licensing efforts and this includes the recognition and understanding of the specific regulations that correlate to those review efforts to ensure regulatory stability and consistency in the application review process. Infrastructure development is another preparation tool in which a division of preparedness and response is developing and that's another preparation tool that we're undertaken to better position the staff to be successful at the onset of application receipt of advanced and new reactor application submittals. For instance, a strategy tool is being developed to better inform the staff's review of applications submitted under 5160 for the purpose of compliance with performance-based emergency preparedness. The division is also hosting knowledge management training sessions led by our technical experts on concepts related to various program elements of 5160 including but not limited to event classification and mitigation and staffing and operations and what that may look like for SMRs, non-light water reactors and non-power production and utilization facilities licensed under 10 CFR 5160. So we continue to perfect the licensing process internally but I want to make it clear that we're certainly standing in a ready state for application receipt. Greg, thank you for that Eddie. I just want to emphasize as we're talking about adapting that changing landscape, it's one thing to have a final rule and it's another thing to ask the states what they're doing to prepare, the licensees what they're doing to prepare. I just wanted to emphasize that the NRC, we still are continuing to prepare ourselves to review these applications so we review them in an efficient and timely manner and that we can come to reasonable assurance determination so a lot of good work I know is happening to prepare us for that. The next question is a licensing question maybe for you Adam or for you Eric. It has to do with at what point in the licensing process is certain information needed and so the question would be specific to emergency planning zones for early site permits and is it appropriate or reasonable to expect an EPZ to be defined at the ESP stage? Permit. Whoever, Eric or Eddie? Okay, sorry. Good to add to that, you can go first from your perspective or... Sorry. Well as far as the early site permit piece that's coming under regulations in part 52 process. So essentially from a design perspective or from a construction permits piece you gotta look at and this is just me talking now you gotta look at the construction permit stage is providing the preliminary safety evaluation kind of safety analysis report. So for all intensive purposes that's the straw man of what the applicant plans to do. Then you have the operating license which provides like the final safety analysis report for all intensive purposes that's the soup to nut approach for all the emergency planning details the functionality requirements, et cetera. So for the early site permit it also depends on the complete and integration of that. So you would have that EPZ size and captured in there and the details related to that at the ESP stage under part 52. Anything to add here? A little bit. I think it would be incumbent upon the applicant to determine exactly how much finality they want and how far they've come with the ESP. Part of the reasoning behind getting an ESP is you may not know exactly what your design is or you may not have matured your design far enough to have all those types of answers. So if you want that much finality to have the EPZ size determination finalized then that would be an option for you but it would take a greater amount of design certainty to do that as far as whether or not it would be a good idea or a bad idea that would be completely up to the applicant. We can deal with it whether it's at the ESP stage. TVA came in and they only gave us a methodology to determine what their EPZ size is. So we looked at the methodology and made comments and ended up approving their methodology but that methodology doesn't include any type of specific EPZ size. There's a lot of flexibility with the ESP and it would all be based on the maturity of the design and exactly how much finality a given applicant would be looking for. Thank you for that. The next question or maybe a comment. Concerning the demonstration of capabilities in drills and exercises and the associated tracking metrics, it's worth mentioning that NEI engaged the NRC on this topic and developed an approach, reviewed in public meeting last year, that would likely be found acceptable in an application. Would that comment? Likely to be found acceptable. That document that was presented to us wasn't presented to us for endorsement. That's so, I think I would stop short of saying likely to be approved by us. I think that if an applicant wanted to use that, I think that they're off to a good start but they would need to make certain that that document is tailored to their specific situation and there's a lot in that document that would need to be fleshed out as far as the specifics of what that drill and exercise program would look like that it wouldn't necessarily be generic to any SMR or ONT or small modular reactor or micro reactor for that point. Yeah, considering this comment, I actually think back to what the chair said yesterday, we're an independent agency but we don't act in isolation and I think to me what excites me about just approaching us with these ideas is that we see engagement from everyone, not just the work of the regular but the industry, the states. Everybody's gearing up for this to adapt to this changing landscape and this proposing solution. So this is very encouraging. Eddie, you mentioned a lot of the topical reports that we've already reviewed and worked on and we're all working toward the same goal here which is exciting and I'll even mention this goes back a number of years and the NRC has a study where we looked at what does risk-informed performance-based EP look like and we published that and so there's a lot of resources and good thinking that's out there and I think that those are gonna be other tools that we can use to help us achieve this future. And the next question is an owner-operator of a small modular reactor obligated to train and support local responders under this new rule. Yeah, so basically one of the things that we are gonna look at from a license and perspective is the training aspects of this small modular owner as far as not only what the training aspects look like for that specific facility and unique to that site but also how often is the training occurring? The exercise and periodicity of that for those training requirements. How are from the exercises, how are lessons learned from that being incorporated to any type of procedure aspects of it? So these are things that we're actually looking at and we continue to look at. We looked at those from our past regulations, not past but our other pre-existing regulations in 5047 space as well as appendixy we'll continue to look at that under 5160 as well on those training, qualification and then actually exercise requirements. Thanks Eddie. Janice, I think this next one might be for you. If requested, can FEMA Tech Hazards Division provide technical planning assistance to a community near a small modular reactor? If that facility does not have an emergency planning zone that extends beyond the site boundary. For example, can THC provide help with a Thyro or review local procedures to identify recommended improvements or raise awareness of federal response resources? Wow, that's like not a loaded question at all. I mean, I have a short answer. Currently our authorization is very much tied to the current light water reactor fleet, right? So we build industry directly for that work and so if it's for a utility that's not already being built, I don't know that the technological hazards if it's a radiologically specific review or support but that's not to say that FEMA can't provide technical assistance. So there's a little bit of a nuance there. I think the specificity of using technological hazards which leads me to believe that it's a headquarters entity, some of our regions use that designation but not all of them. So I think that that's probably, I'd have more questions than answers to that but the short answer is we'd use FEMA authorities for something that is not currently part of our billing process if that helps. Thanks. One thing that was mentioned, workforce challenges and I can't remember if it was mentioned or not but the idea of the ROS, the Radiation Operations Support Specialist, so I thought maybe Ken and Janice if you could, can you briefly describe what the ROS program is and what that can bring to a community? No, absolutely and I'm gonna turn to Ken as soon as he's ready to receive the ball but I think that's a great question. Well, I already caught the ball. Yes, I'll go ahead and I believe that Courtney may have mentioned this in her presentation but the ROS, the Radiation, Radiological Operations Support Specialist is something that was created a number of years ago and there's been a part to do the credentialing, the training and certification of these individuals but I think the simplest way to state what the purpose of this is is that the recognition is that even in a state such as Illinois that has extensive resources if there was ever a major radiological incident you simply don't have enough staff to basically handle the emergency. So with these Radiological Operations Support Specialist or ROS, if you will, it would be additional resources that could be brought in to augment your resources and one of the things that and ROS has been actually demonstrated at a number of national level exercises. I know there was an extensive use of it at Southern Exposure back in 15 and there's been other numerous exercises where this concept was actually proven and the idea behind the ROS too is I think Courtney may have mentioned in her presentation is that when you have counties or entities that may not be familiar with dealing with radiation it helps to have what I call a translator. The ROS hopefully is a translator that would say, okay, here's some of the resources out here that you can use. I use Firmac as an example in my presentation and the ROS would stop and say, okay, you can, here's what the Firmac can do for you. Another example would be, here's what the advisory team can do. You need to use the advisory team to answer some of these questions. So again, the ROS is just an excellent resource that would be available and it could either come from the same state or it could come from either an adjoining state depending on the extent of the emergency. Thanks for that, Ken. I think we have time for just one more question. So if I could briefly, outside of rulemaking in the public participation and rulemaking process, how is the NRC engaged with the public and stakeholders on this new rule? I know myself, I've given a few presentations. Most recently this past fall I was in Idaho Falls speaking to the Western States Energy Board. And in Idaho Falls there's Idaho INL, so they're a community that's familiar with radiological emergency preparedness and that, so they were happy to have the presentation and talk about what's new and how the new rule could be used in potentially their area. I think it was about two years ago, I think, about three years ago, I did a, well in fact we co-authored a paper and I was fortunate enough to be the one to deliver it in Vienna at a technical information conference and I was speaking to a large international audience about how it is that we, at that time it was a proposed final rule but how we got to where we were at and how we were looking forward to having the commission approve that rule. Thanks, Eric and Janice, I'll just speak for us briefly because I know Janice and I went up and addressed the Nuclear Energy Advisory Council in the state of Connecticut at their invitation and we got to explain our rules and new rules to them and so a lot of these efforts are continuing and as Eric mentioned, a lot of international engagement. We've been hearing that in a lot of these sessions. We've had lots of opportunity to engage with NEA and also IAEA on what is the emergency preparedness for small modular actors and new technologies look like. So with that, please join me again in giving a round of applause and this will close our session. Thank you. Can I have Purdue along? Yeah. No. Yeah. Sorry, it looked like a Purdue Jersey in the back of, in her background. Oh, who's yours? Well, who's yours? A boy? Is she? Step away from the live mic. It may be another funding question. I don't want to get that on tape. I'm just sorry, don't jump on it. Oh And how are you buddy Thank you Oh You go by robber robber That's fair that's fair Yeah, I'm trying I'm trying to figure out if I can they still my name wrong now I'm trying to figure out if there's like any email where they sit where they wrote this and I just didn't catch it I think that is mess. I think that is doing it to mess with me. So we'll see They got the slides, I'm just checking up one one thing Okay, and I'll have I might have them all I said they want me to do it But there's like one clicker Robbo have a question for you guys okay confidence monitor right in front of you. Yeah, are we are we sitting are we going up? No, yeah, you got the microphones here. You can stay right here. So then the camera just focus on you. Okay, so you have to Know they can see me. Oh, well, maybe you can everybody else can Yeah, so Yeah, any other Only just to confirm if you if you intentionally did that to mess with me is uh HOLTZ I Would a copy pasted so maybe I might I don't know so I did not mess with you So it's not it's not even the first mistake already for this presentation for this session so Nicole's a brain she's not a well she's listed as a brain sheet, but she's acting director I'm not sure was that always like that or is that something more new? And I'll it's been a couple months Yeah, I think I mean my slides are fine on it. I think on the website. It looks right So on the website for you as a presenter it shows up correct I believe so Oh, oh, yeah, okay. Are you the tech guy? Yeah, okay HOLT right yeah, okay It gets changed and it's another new Yeah, it's right on the website So it looks like I don't think These don't look like they turn off so they're alive. Yeah, that's the other thing I've noticed and normally like in the So looks like it'll be live, okay, so don't sneeze into the mic. Oh, yeah, you know, don't run at what I say Yeah, there's a reason why I only of course Like we like we like our pictures. Yeah, we talk about we talk about the pictures Yeah, I think it'll be an interesting session. We'll see we'll see I had to practice it to get make sure I was actually at 10 minutes But I think we'll hopefully we'll get some good Q&A Yeah, I actually Slightly all work out So Yeah, I think I'll be hopefully that'd be good Rob's got the list of the ones that we have prepared that hopefully we don't have to use them Was your rule again, so right, so I'm a branch chief in our region one office So I'm typically more in the operating reactor oversight world Last year I was on rotation into our advanced reactor division and one of the projects I was reading Looking at our construction oversight process So when I went back to region one at the end of it I kind of begged my boss Mo and Rob. I said can I like to stick with this and I think you know I bring in some of the operating reactor oversight concepts like you know Think I was able to leverage that a little bit so and and then we would And they obliged so stay involved in advanced reactors a little bit And that'll be good. It'll be nice to have be able to maintain some momentum And drive this I know there was You know, I think we want I think originally we were hoping for to start a little earlier If I remember the timelines correctly but This this is I think the right time in terms of the development of projects for us to try to start figuring this This piece out just because we're gonna start being in construction Rather than later right CDAs started are going Kairos is ready in but like we'll be a hit RDPs or I think this year We're gonna have to have some something at least figured out even if it's not perfect of like, okay Well, it's yeah, what are we all anticipating? So Kairos and ACU This oversight process. Yeah, it's their since their party ours, but It's certainly a good live case to test out some of the concepts So whether it's hey, you're doing it in parallel You're not you know, we're looking at where we're taking what that inspection team is doing and saying Because even though it's an RTR Isn't all that proper pleasure to meet you yeah Yeah, no exactly and I think that's You know an important aspect right is you have to look at this and say like what are You know some of the best practices you must have learned that we can gain not only from the existing fleet of construction Aspects but also you know the RTR How are you all sorts of things? Such a diversity of what new nuclear looks like that all of a sudden it's like well, you know I'm like But you might want to picture while you're sitting Right, so you need somebody in the audience Stage And some of the models Their jurisdiction Yeah I Figure they didn't want me to have an open glass All the Mike short now, yeah, yeah, thank you Yep, yeah, so I'm I'm down in But I'm right over by Capitol Hill Maintain also, yeah, it's not too bad. I just had I just drive up the central most of the time I'm just doing stuff either virtually or you know Like individually anyway Like I go in when they're like everyone else is coming in Sure happy to do it like I don't useful sometimes to be able to chat