 Hello, my name's Scott Morris, I'm the Regional Administrator for the NRC's Region 4 office and we are based in Arlington, Texas, and have responsibility for the nation's civilian use of nuclear and radioactive materials in the western United States, one of which is the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. A little bit about me. I grew up in Southern California and, in fact, graduated from San D'Aquito High School in Encinitas, California in 1981. After that, I got my degree in electrical engineering and subsequently served seven years on active duty in the United States Nuclear Submarine Force. I joined the NRC in 1993, where I've served in progressively more responsible positions for the last 26 years. Today I'm going to talk to you about what happened at the San Onofre site in San Clemente, California on August 3, 2018. On that particular day, Southern California Edison and their contractor, Holtec International, was lowering a 50-tonne cask full of 37 spent fuel or used fuel assemblies into a vault that had been constructed at the site. While lowering that canister into the vault, the canister got stuck or hung up on a shield ring inside the vault that was undetected by the workers. That cask or that canister was suspended there hanging on the shield ring without the benefit of the two independent safety slings and was in a rather precarious position for over 45 minutes. However, the canister did not drop. Even if it had, there wouldn't have been a significant radiological release. You got to remember that fuel, those 37 assemblies, have been sitting in a pool of water for six years. They have cooled to the point where there's simply no longer enough energy to produce any kind of significant emission of radioactive material to the environment, even had the canister breached. This notion or speculation about the offsite consequences from an incident at this plant causing trillions of dollars worth of damage or environmental impact to the surrounding area is simply not possible. The laws of physics would dictate otherwise. On Monday, August the 6th, the site vice president for San Onofre gave me a call and it informally notified me of what had occurred at the site that prior Friday. It was during that call that the licensee of Tom Palmosano told me and committed that they would not move fuel until they had an opportunity to understand what happened and what they needed to do to keep it from happening again. On hindsight, we determined that they should have made a formal notification to the NRC's headquarters operations center consistent with our Part 72 regulations. On September 10th, the NRC sent a special inspection team to San Onofre to evaluate what occurred on August 3rd and assess Southern California Edison's actions to determine why it occurred and what they had planned to do to correct the problems. It was during that inspection that the NRC noted five specific violations of NRC requirements. All five of those we discussed in a public meeting. On March the 25th, the NRC released its final decision on those significant enforcement matters. Specifically, we issued a violation for failure to operate the system in a manner consistent with our regulations. And also a failure to make a formal report to the NRC within 24 hours of the August 3rd incident. Attached to those violations was a $116,000 civil penalty. I want to point out that this violation or these violations and the civil penalty is unprecedented when it comes to independent spent fuel storage installation activities. Now during the canister downloading operation, specifically lowering these 50 ton canisters into the vault. There is a potential for the exterior shell of that canister to be scratched. Now this scratching issue is the principal reason why the NRC is not yet comfortable with or confident that the licensee can resume spent fuel handling. So Edison is employing a special new robotic camera system to fully investigate the surface area of these canisters. Even a little car with magnetic wheels that's being placed into a very tight space on the order of three to five inches and systematically driving up and down the surface of the cask with these cameras to characterize the scratching that they may have been incurred. It's that system that's been being employed right now and as of today three canisters of the 29 have been fully inspected using this system. The NRC is awaiting the results of Edison's review of each of these canisters and specifically the results of these camera inspections as well as their analysis of what they found. Once the NRC receives that information from Edison, we will then apply our own independent technical judgment as to the adequacy not only of the inspections but whether or not what they found and the results of what they found meet our requirements. One of the regulatory issues we're concerned about is that the safety analysis that was provided to the NRC as part of the application to certify the whole tech ISFASY system, that safety analysis report indicated that there would be no scratches on the canisters. However, we know for a fact that some scratching or abrasions have occurred on these canisters so that inconsistency needs to be reconciled. Now, in addition to the whole tech ISFASY system receiving a certificate of compliance, San Onofre or Southern California Edison also has a general license to use that whole tech ISFASY system and in that general license, the NRC does recognize that the American Society of Mechanical Engineers boiler and pressure vessel code acknowledges that there will be some scratching. It's not unusual. In fact, it's expected to some degree that during the manufacturing process and later the operational phase of using the system that some scratching will occur incidentally. Some is permitted per that code. The challenge that we find ourselves in specifically Edison finds itself in is reconciling these documents to ensure that they fully understand why scratching is okay, how much scratching has actually occurred and to what degree and is it bounded by the technical basis again that can be found in some of these in the boiler and pressure vessel code. There's another aspect to this that I want to address very briefly. So if it turns out that technically what exists at the site with respect to canister scratching is okay, is there's not a safety issue, there's still another regulatory hurdle that has to be addressed and specifically that is the process by which the licensee or Edison has to go through to reconcile these documents that are currently inconsistent or would not otherwise permit scratching. And that process, it's yet to be determined whether that process, again consistent with our regulations, can be done without prior NRC approval or whether NRC prior approval is required, the latter of which could take several weeks or potentially months to resolve. Right now the ball is in Edison's court to deliver to us a technical basis or rationale for why the degree of scratching on the canisters that they have observed is okay from a safety significant standpoint and why it meets our NRC requirements. Until the NRC receives that information from the licensee, the NRC is not going to permit Edison to move, resume fuel handling. As an independent regulator, the NRC will continue to conduct inspections at Santa Inoffery for years to come. In the process, we will continue to make available to the public in as transparent manner as possible all the information that we derive from our inspection and assessment activities at that site. In fact, today, if you go to the NRC's home page, www.nrc.gov, you will find on the left hand side a spotlight column and specifically a link to the song's canister downloading incident. If you go to that link, you will find an immense amount of information related to all the work we have done related to that facility since the August 3rd, 2018 event. And we will continue to post information as we move into the future.