 So, good morning and welcome to the 28th Annual Regulatory Information Conference, or as a national football league we call it, RickXXVIII. My name is Bill Dean, and I'm the Director of the Office of Nuclear Ractor Regulation. It's a great honor to be here with you today and have the opportunity to welcome you on behalf of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. My office, along with the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research led by Mike Webber, are co-sponsors of this event. We work closely with all of the other NRC offices to put together what I hope you will find to be a comprehensive and dynamic agenda over the next two and a half days. I would like to start by asking for a round of applause to thank the Joint Armed Forces Honor Guard from the Military District of Washington for joining us this morning and for Milton Valentine of the NRC for a great rendition of the National Anthem. The Rick is the largest meeting hosted by the NRC. The goal of the Rick is to provide an opportunity for an informal open dialogue amongst all the stakeholders involved with the nuclear community to learn, share, and discuss information on significant and emergent issues. This includes both the domestic and international nuclear community. I would note that out of over 2,800 attendees this year, we have approximately 230 international guests that are participating, representing 33 countries. I would like to recognize not only our international attendees, but all of you who are taking the time to participate in the Rick this week. And this includes several distinguished attendees who are here with us this morning. Not that I have seen all of them, but I heard they're here. Former Chairman Nils Diaz and Richard Miserve. Former Commissioners Kenneth Rogers, Jeffrey Merrifield, George Apostolakis, and William Magwood, who is currently serving as the Director General of the Nuclear Energy Agency, and our previous Executive Director for Operations, Mark Satorius. As I think of these names, I think about, for example, the Jedi Knights that you hear about in Star Wars. I'm wondering how many people have actually seen the new Star Wars movie. Yeah? Okay. This is a pretty good movie. I saw it the other night, and I came out of there, and I bumped into this physicist, and he said to me, May Mass Times Acceleration be with you. I didn't know what that meant. This year's conference features several distinguished speakers. To open the Rick, we'll hear a keynote address from Chairman Stephen Burns, followed by remarks from our newly appointed Executive Director for Operations, Victor McCree. Later today, you will also have an opportunity to hear from Commissioners Christine Savineke and William Ossendorf, who will be conducting his last Rick speech, given that he has planned to leave the agency at the end of June. On Wednesday morning, we will begin the day with remarks from Commissioner Jeff Barron. This year, the technical program consists of 38 technical sessions with participation from experts from across the agency, as well as from industry, academia, nongovernmental organizations, and international organizations. The sessions offer a variety of topics, including significant domestic and international issues associated with operating reactors, new and advanced reactors, fuel cycle facilities, spent fuel, nuclear security, and safety research initiatives. And there are two sessions I want to highlight, the first being 25 years of NRC's Principles of Good Regulation. In this session, you will learn what prompted the agency to develop the NRC's Principles of Good Regulation back in 1991, and how they have been applied by the NRC over the subsequent 25 years. The second is entitled Proactive Initiative Project AIM. In this session, panelists will share diverse perspectives on proactive initiatives by both the NRC and industry that are designed to streamline regulatory processes and optimize the cost of producing nuclear power while ensuring and maintaining safe operation. This year, the RIC is also featuring 23 technical posters and tabletop exhibits on display throughout the conference spaces. Costs include significant regulatory issues, important research findings, and other items of interest. Each morning before the program begins, during all breaks and over lunch, the subject matter experts will be there to present and engage with you in discussions relevant to their areas of expertise. Traditions for the RIC are the tours of the NRC's Operations Center. These are quite popular, and this year is no exception. All five of the tours that we have scheduled are currently full at this point. But to show that we are a learning organization, we have heeded the advice of tour participants from prior RICs, and have made some improvements to the way participants are processed through security. This year, there is a tour registration desk located outside the White Flint Amphitheater, which is down the stairs on the west end of the building. The tour assistance there will handle all arrangements for security, and if you want to cancel or try and join an existing tour of spaces become available, also you may be able to do that at that registration desk. You do get cancellation, so if you want to be on standby, I ask that you arrive 15 minutes prior to the start time to check for availability. By the way, what did one Uranium 238 Nucleus say to the other Uranium 238 Nucleus? Got a split. Okay. All right, so what's new and different? We're always looking to improve the RIC, and this year is no exception. For example, instead of featuring the NRC factoids as we have in the past, we are featuring a compilation of videos showcasing memorable moments in NRC history. As a reflection on how we can learn from our past and use milestone moments in history to shape our future, these videos are being shown on the session room screens and overflow monitors during the conference and are also available on CD at the Office of Public Affairs and Knowledge Management Tables. We will once again be live tweeting selections from various sessions. These live tweets will be displayed on the overflow monitors intermingled with the videos. So at this point, I'm going to take a moment and post the first live tweet of the conference. By the way, I have four followers so far, my wife and my three daughters. Okay, 138 characters. I had two to spare. So that should be posted. In our continuing effort to go green, we're now completely electronic with the evaluation feedback forms. So no longer will you see paper copies in the technical session rooms. You can let us know what you think of the session by scanning the QR code posted outside each session room or utilizing the walk-up kiosks that are available on site or accessing the links on the RIC website. You'll also notice that there are no longer standing microphones in technical sessions. These microphones were rarely used as the vast majority of questions came from the written cards. Therefore, all questions will be submitted by the way of the written cards for this RIC. I also want to mention that we will no longer be collecting unanswered questions for response in posting to the RIC website later. This was a very time-consuming process for us, but we had very few people access these on the web. As a result, we have attempted to build more of an opportunity for Q&A into the sessions themselves so we can answer more questions live. Who's forgotten their cell phone charger? Yeah? No? Have we brought their cell phone charger? I don't believe that. Well, we've got it covered. As a courtesy to our participants, there is a small cell phone charging station available for you to use located at the bottom of the stairs on the west side of the building on the lower level next to the internet and print center. So you may see me squinting a little bit because the lights are a bit bright up here. So I just wanted to ask, do you know where bad light ends up? In prism. Okay. All right. This is general information. Safety and security are paramount to the NRC, and this holds true for the participants here today. As has become standard practice, you will see that the following safety measures are in place. Security bag checks during each entry into the conference space. Emergency contact cards were provided during registration. I filled mine out. So I hope you did too. We will have Montgomery County police and canine officers on property during conference hours. And as a general reminder, participants will want to visibly display your name badge for the duration of the conference, so you should do as I say and not as I do. Report any suspicious activity to the security staff of the registration service desk and be aware of the fire exits, which are located on the sides and the back of every room. In case of fire, please proceed calmly to the nearest emergency exit and await further instruction. Based on registration information, a number of session rooms will be at maximum capacity for seating. In addition, with the gorgeous weather that we are expecting this week, you may want to make reservations for the patio seats outside. We encourage you to make your way to your session rooms early as sessions are filled on a first come, first served basis. Officers will assist with seating to ensure that all seats are filled. In accordance with fire and marshal regulations, once the rooms are filled to capacity, participants will be directed to other sessions. I will note that the session on Thursday morning that I am facilitating on Fukushima Road Declosure is one of the most popular sessions this week, which is no surprise obviously. So get there early if you want to get a seat. As a reminder, at the conclusion of a session, we request that participants exit the session rooms promptly and engage in networking with your colleagues outside of the session rooms so that the rooms can be changed in a quick and efficient manner. So a programming note, today we started at 8.30, just want to remind you that tomorrow morning the sessions begin at 9.15 with Commissioner Jeff Barron. To plan an executed conference of this magnitude requires the hard work and dedication of a lot of people. This includes both NRC staff and support we have received from contractors. For the NRC, I would like to recognize a number of people. First of all, Lorna Kipfer and Bren Warren, who are the project managers for the RIC and basically begin planning for the RIC the day the RIC ends for the following year. They do a wonderful job and really are quite dedicated to this activity. Out of the office of administration, the multimedia branch for providing VTC, web streaming and photographic services. The publications brands who produce this beautiful program and other materials for the RIC. This is the first time we have done this in-house and we didn't even need Project AIM to come up with this efficiency initiative. All of the NRC staff serving as volunteers at the registration desk and the technical sessions in many other capacities who could not conduct the RIC effectively without their support. And finally from the NRC, the technical committee, which was led by Mina Kana from my office and Scott Elkins from the office of Nuclear Regulatory Research. They did a lot of great work working with a number of individuals to help pull this week's agenda together. For the contractor organization, I want to recognize first and foremost the Bethesda North Marriott for their partnership with us and hosting this event in such a great facility. Lead management consulting incorporated and synergy enterprises incorporated for their planning, logistical and IT expertise and BAV audio visual services for their flawless execution of everything audio visual. The talents of these folks and many others too help make the RIC a success. So before I introduce our keynote speaker, I do want to leave you with one thought. There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't. And if you don't, tell the person next to you if they didn't get down. So I'd not like to introduce to you somebody who does understand binary and lots of regulatory stuff too. The Honorable Stephen G. Burns was sworn in as a commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission November 5th, 2014 to a term ending June 30th, 2019. President Obama designated Mr. Burns as the 16th chairman of the NRC effective January 1st, 2015. Chairman Burns has had a distinguished career within the NRC and internationally. Immediately prior to rejoining the NRC, Chairman Burns was the head of legal affairs for the nuclear energy agency of the organization for economic cooperation and development in Paris from 2012 to 2014. Prior to assuming his post at the NEA, Chairman Burns was a career employee at the NRC from 1978 to 2012. Chairman Burns served in a variety of roles during his career including being appointed as the NRC's general counsel from May 2009 until April 2012. Also of note, Chairman Burns was the executive assistant to former NRC chairman Kenneth M. Carr and the director of the Office of Commission Appellate Adjudication. Chairman Burns received his JD degree in 1978 from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975 from Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. I present to you Chairman Steven Burns. Well, thanks, Bill. I'll try not to do any physics jokes or whatever. Not in my training, but in any event, William Shakespeare wrote, what has passed is prologue. Yogi Berra, a baseball player and philosopher, is credited with saying, it's deja vu all over again. And both might agree that you need to learn from history or be doomed to repeat it. So good morning, I'm pleased to be speaking to you at my second rick as chairman of the NRC. I want to welcome my colleagues, my fellow commissioners, members of the public, and distinguished national and international guests who are here with us today. As Bill noted, I joined the NRC in 1978 as a newly minted attorney. And today, some 38 years later, I'm speaking to you as an older, hopefully wiser and certainly grayer chairman of the agency. And I want to take a few minutes today to reflect on where NRC was in 1978 and where it is today in 2016. And I'd like to project a bit where we will be in 2017 and a little beyond, particularly as it relates to how NRC regulates and increasingly risk averse world. Let me start by reminding you about what 1978 was like, or at least what I remember. Dallas won the Super Bowl, Commissioner Ossendore. The New York Yankees won the World Series. And the Washington Bullets, the Washington Bullets won the NBA championship. Sony introduced the Walkman. And the first TestTube baby was born in London. The upgraded Apple II came out with a five and a quarter inch floppy disk. I found a few of those when I was unpacking my things. And a first class stamp here in the US only cost 13 cents. Sweden banned aerosol sprays. Fantasy Island premiered on ABC. And now Senator Diane Feinstein became the San Francisco's first female mayor. It was also an interesting year for NRC. Some of you may remember that NRC headquarters staff worked out of a dozen office locations in Maryland and DC. We had a shuttle service that went all over. And the commission offices were located downtown in H Street, a couple blocks from the White House in a building that Tom Wellick, our historian tells me was capable of surviving an atomic bomb. I find that hard to believe. There were 70 reactors licensed to operate in the United States. And 88 had construction permits with more announced or in various stages of the NRC licensing process. And that would have represented about 200,000 megawatts of capacity if all had been completed. And as you know, many were not. Public service electric and gas of New Jersey deferred construction on a floating nuclear power plant off the Jersey coast. And the DOE's task force on nuclear waste management estimated that the earliest date for operating a high level waste repository would be 1988, not 1985. Thanks again to Tom Wellick for this information on our history. Today, of course, we have a consolidated headquarters complex across the street by the White Plant Metro Station. There are 100 operating reactors with a few more anticipated in the next few years. And we well know that the path forward for high level waste is indeed muddled. Yet the safety and security mission remain our fundamental regulatory objectives. We are still bound by the language of the Atomic Energy Act, with a focus on adequate protection and reasonable assurance. Broad terms and a statute purposely left free of prescriptive language by the Congress. Or as the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a famous Segal versus AEC case back in 1968, the Atomic Energy Act sets out a regulatory scheme under which broad responsibility is given to the expert agency and ministering agency as to how it shall achieve its statutory objectives. In other words, the NRC has over the decades wrestled with how much is too much regulation and how much isn't is necessary. How much is safe enough? The bottom line is always how much risk are we willing to take? How much risk is acceptable? And it must be acknowledged the NRC does not regulate to zero risk, not in 1978 and not now. Adequate protection is a difficult phrase to explain to lay audiences. When adequate in the usual vernacular means okay, good enough. For us, of course, it means the Commission must consistently and over time use its broad discretion to impose requirements it believes meet this mandate. And we can be neither too lax nor too strict. And we must not conduct our decision making in a vacuum. We must consider real life and actual operating experience. And we must weigh public and stakeholder input to guard against making decisions in isolation. This balancing act is what I would call the essence of the regulatory craft. And part of that craft, I believe, is listening to the opinions of those outside of the NRC. While the NRC is independent, that does not mean we are isolated. It's important that the NRC communicate with and engage in meaningful dialogue with the industry, the Congress, the states, local governments, non-governmental organizations, international entities in the public. That's sort of like what we're doing here at the RIC today. We can be independent while still listening and considering the opinions of others. In a speech I gave last year, I talked a little bit about my regulatory philosophy. I'm registered as an independent, not a Democrat or a Republican. And along these lines, I believe I'm independent of my thinking and philosophy. And I don't adhere to a rigid theology that compels a certain outcome each time. Though I believe I'm predictable in my approach in evaluating each matter on a case-by-case basis and applying rules consistently and deliberately across the board. I'm also independent in that I'm open to new ideas and solutions others may offer. And I listen open-mindedly to all stakeholders without becoming beholden to just one point of view. And I believe problems must be clearly defined. And I think there is rarely only one solution to them. Nor do I believe that the NRC necessarily always has the right answer to address a problem when we start out considering one. In my experience, oftentimes the best decision, the consensus-based solution, is reached through meaningful dialogue among all affected parties. And let me give you an example. When the Commission was assessing the best approach to dealing with beyond design-basis external events in response to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the industry developed a concept for flex equipment. And out of that also was born the National Response Centers. To me that is a collaborative problem-solving effort and innovation at its best. What I hope is clear from my voting record, my congressional testimony and my previous speeches that I don't compromise on safety or security for the nation's commercial nuclear facilities. And what I hope is clear from the voting record of the Commission as a whole is our commitment to independent decision-making. While we at the Commission may not always agree among ourselves, while our staff may not always agree among themselves as they formulate positions, while we may reach conclusions in ways others may not always agree upon, we are doing what we believe is necessary to make our mandate of reasonable assurance of adequate protection of the public health and safety. Or, per the back-fit rule, we have determined that a new regulation or new requirement provides substantial additional protection in overall safety and that additional costs are justified. Part and parcel of everything that we do is assessment of risk. And I think that it is an area where there's been a significant shift in public perception and acceptance since 1978. If you're about my age and we're raised in the United States, I can think back for a moment on what it was like growing up as a child and the types of risks we may have taken or our parents accepted for us. When I was small, cars did not have seat belts. We didn't wear bike helmets. Some of us smoked. I was not smoking at age 10. We wandered, or really never after that. We wandered our neighborhoods freely. We often ate white bread and TV dinners and processed foods. And no one lectured us about the nutritional deficits or the health risks. We had no idea that one day, the World Health Organization would announce the dangers of a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. To be sure, changes in some behaviors and practices have saved lives. Wearing seat belts is perhaps the most obvious one of the examples I gave. It is something where society came forward in requirements that added to safety. But today, for reasons, I'll leave to sociologists to describe. There is a considerable level of risk aversion, of fear, even paranoia, about what could be considered relatively small risks. And we need only to look at the headlines and the arguing on social media to realize how differently people perceive risks that the world faces today. And the arguments over the administration of vaccines are perhaps one of the most telling examples. At the same time, counterintuitively, we may dismiss as meaningless or unsubstantiated what others consider substantial and considerable risks. The global debate over climate change seems to fall into that category. How it did assessment of risks become so fraught with politics and emotion? Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a fascinating book published in 1991 on the subject of risk and regulation. The book is entitled Breaking the Vicious Circle Toward Effective Risk Regulation. And in the book, Breyer points out that regulators generally have a two-part job, risk assessment, that is, measure it, and risk management. That is, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about risk? In the risk assessment part of this equation, the NRC is informed by the probability and consequences in an event, risk informing our practices. For the management part of it, we're going to use our discretion to act through the lens of adequate protection with an eye on predictive and stable decision making. Breyer's book underscores that the public's evaluation of risk often differs radically from that of experts. The book includes a table, a little bit dated perhaps, where survey results from two groups of what might be called the general or lay public. Both put nuclear power at the top of that perceived risk list. While experts in the field rank nuclear 20 out of the 30 matters that are listed, well behind car accidents, handguns, smoking, police work, and fruit preservatives. Says Breyer, when we treat tiny, moderate, and large risks too much alike, we begin to resemble the boy who cried wolf. While Breyer doesn't single out the phraseology adequate protection as a verbal stumbling block, he might well have. Breyer makes, excuse me, risk makes people nervous, and the mere invocation of adequate protection, even reasonable assurance, may not provide the confidence people need for their that their regulator basically has their back. So what are we as regulators to do? This might be where I lay out a five-point plan or come up with three things for you to remember. Instead, I'm going to focus on one concept to think about, and that concept's connection to risk and the public's perception of the NRC's role. And that concept is trust, or as our strategic plan states, our vision, a trusted, independent, transparent, and effective regulator. Let's focus just on trust for the moment. Researchers have found, and we know this intuitively, that trust plays an important part about how we accept and respond to risk. Our acceptance of risk is in, say, smoking or eating bacon, global warming, even nuclear power, can be related in no small part to how much we think that person or institution telling us about the risk is trustworthy. If we don't trust them, or if we don't know them well enough to place our trust in them, we are skeptical of their risk calculations and their risk communication. We won't believe in the reliability of their information and their judgment or their decisions, and we may not believe them when they say there is no wolf at the door. This can be a difficult situation for a federal regulator overseeing a highly technical and complex industry that many people simply don't understand, especially when we're regulating something, radiation, that can't be seen or felt or heard. The NRC must make decisions and function in an environment in which I believe government as a whole is often not trusted, and where there is a tremendous public division over the trustworthiness of science and of federal scientists in particular. In my opinion, there is also a certain distrust of big industry, which is something I think those of you from utilities may understand. Breyer's book lays out the dynamic, the vicious circle of his title, between public fear, political response to those fears by lawmakers and by independent regulators. And while his solution of a new professional bureaucracy with interagency jurisdiction may not be wholly feasible, the notion that the dynamic is worth attending to, I believe, is an important one. So I don't have, though, a magic wand to wave and create trust, but it appears to me that both the NRC and the industry need to look even more closely than in the past at how that trust is achieved. For the NRC, I believe it is achieved with decision-making done openly, with ample explanation of our conclusions to the public, so the public can understand our actions. It can be achieved incrementally and over time by consistently applying the doctrine of reasonable assurance of adequate protection to our actions. And it can be accompanied by being responsive to our oversight committees in the Congress and attending to their concerns about our activities and about risk. We must be vigilant in explaining our role, I believe, and we must be seen as collaborative within the agency and open to ideas and concerns of those stakeholders outside of the agency. We are not a regulatory island. And it appears to me we further build confidence by consistently reassessing how safe is safe enough, based on experience and analysis and sound science, by practicing the regulatory craft. And I believe there needs to be a sense of craftsmanship to good regulation, although you may consider the pursuit of the regulatory equivalent of the unattainable holy grail. But the pursuit is itself worth the journey. I argue that the regulator needs to constantly pursue the sweet spot between regulation, good regulation, and over-regulation to pursue effective regulation without imposing undue burden and stifling innovation. We need to set certain boundaries, a fuzzy bright line, some might say, that allow licensees to innovate within that framework. We at the NRC don't operate power plants. We don't push the buttons, manipulate the valves. We have to set parameters within which operators can operate, however. We cannot be static and assume everything done in the past is always right and never needs to be reevaluated and reassessed through a new lens. I believe that changes last year to the reactor oversight program are a good example. We first established certain levels within the program when it was established to inform ourselves in terms of trying to achieve a better way of consistently looking at the oversight of the reactor program. It was in an effort that came after a couple decades, quite frankly, of focusing on the assessment of licensee performance to provide a more effective and dynamic way of addressing performance, a goal long sought by the agency. The structure and approaches under the program were never meant to be static, and I believe recent adjustments underscore the importance of the NRC re-looking and thinking about how it was achieving its goals through the program. Our response to the Fukushima Daiichi accident five years ago this week is another example of our ability to be flexible and to adjust to changing circumstances. We found a regulatory, we faced a regulatory problem and we worked through it in a thoughtful and systematic way. Our expert staff came up with a variety of options, which the commission further focused based on safety significance. We listened to stakeholders and took appropriate actions, and now at the anniversary we find ourselves in a better place in relationship to the safety of the U.S. fleet of nuclear reactors. We are now rolling the Fukushima lessons learned activities into our day to day operations. I've been to Fukushima last year and seen the site and the surrounding community, and I know everyone in this audience shares my commitment to not letting that happen here or elsewhere. We may never convince everyone that we are practicing regulatory craftsmanship and being transparent in our processes to the utmost of our capability, but I believe that the past year has shown that the NRC's ongoing commitment to these ideals, ever more information is made available to the public, and the commission as a whole has been forthcoming with explanations of voting in its voting decisions, of why we do the things we do, why we take the approaches we do, and we have been generous, I think, in stakeholder conversations and open to stakeholder input. Project AIM is an example of our desire to be good stewards of our resources and a measure of trust in how we conduct our business. Our public outreach continues to be among the highest of any regulator anywhere, and you can trust this much. The agency is a hole, and myself as chairman will continue to build upon and maintain public trust, so there is confidence in our assessment of risk and the measures needed to minimize it and address it appropriately. Our craftsmanship may not always be perfect. The quest to achieve greater craftsmanship is one we must always engage in, and I think it's something that we need your support as we carry out that effort. Llewellyn King, who used to own the trade publication Energy Daily, wrote an op-ed piece last November, underscoring the perception of our lack of perfection here at the NRC. He derided the NRC as an agency so, quote, sclerotic, pusillanimous, and risk averse that it has priced new reactors out of possibility of being built in the United States. Now, I mentioned this quote for two reasons. It's one of the rare occasions I've ever had to use the word pusillanimous. But seriously, I want to end today by talking about adequate protection and reasonable assurance, risk and trust, related to what could be the future of the agency down the road for the future of the agency, but also the industry and the country, not small modular reactors and advanced reactors. These new reactors could provide important generation of electricity in the future. They could be sources of innovation for the United States and bring a host of benefits from jobs to reduced impact on climate change. And while the benefits are not for the NRC to tout, we can work hard to ensure that the public trusts us to do the right thing when these new ideas and new applications come to us for review and possible licensing. Within our current framework, we have been working with NewScale in preparation for the NewScale's expected design certification application at the end of this year, 2016. And we expect to receive an early site permit application from Tennessee Valley Authority earlier this, later this spring. And for advanced non-light water reactors, our 2017 budget proposal includes $5 million off the fee base to relating to developing regulatory infrastructure and for advanced reactor technologies. This is an arena in which we can exhibit our regulatory craftsmanship, assessing risk, balancing risk and regulation, setting boundaries without stifling innovation. The public needs us to do our job. And our job is going to depend on getting the right information at the right time to make the right decisions. That was true in 1978 when I joined the agency. And it's true now. We may no longer watch Fantasy Island, except maybe on Netflix somewhere. And we, some of us, may eat a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich with some trepidation, not I. But we must always take a look at ourselves, make hard decisions in the open, and make a clearly understood assessment of risk based on the science that comes in front of us to provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection in every neighborhood, in every community, in every state, and in this country. I want to thank you for your attention today. Before I close, I want to just note two things. First, one developer, as Bill noted, Commissioner Austin Dorf has announced that he is moving on to a position at the Naval Academy when his term ends in June. And I want to take this moment to congratulate him on that and thank him for his service. It's been an honor for me to serve with him and under him, first as general counsel and then upon my return here to the agency. He's always I think he's always brought his wealth of experience to the commission and helped guide the agency through the challenges of the Fukushima Daiichi response and the changing industry environment. And his straightforward and thoughtful approach have earned him not only my respect, but I think the respect of his colleagues and the agency and the American public at large. So I wish him well as he moves on. And finally, I'll just lastly note our public affairs director, Elliot Brenner, has also announced he'll be moving on later this summer. It's been a pleasure to work with Elliot over the years. And I know he's given you, particularly those in the media, great support. So I want to thank them. Again, welcome to the RIC. Thanks for listening to me and I will appreciate and enjoy engaging with you during the next few days. Thank you. No, sir, you have to stay up here and answer some questions. So here's the first one. Actually, people were paying attention to your your speech because they've asked questions specifically about topics that you raise. So this first one says trust implies shared values and values vary greatly between various stakeholders, for example, industry, communities near plants, etc. And NRC has its own institutional values. How can these divergent values be reconciled? And thank you for your good work. Thanks. That's an interesting question. At the core, I'm not sure how divergent those values are. I think how what the perspective is on them can be different. And I think that's one of the struggle that I focused on with this question. And it's an age old question, not just for the nuclear industry. In response to a question I had somewhere else, I took a course in law school on FDA regulation. And at that core, that at the core of that course was the question, how safe is safe enough? So I think for our part is the regulator. We need to focus on that. This is what goes into the I'm glad we're having a session on the principles of good regulation because it goes into the values of predictability and consistency across across the board. We're going to have different perspectives. That's what happens in a democracy. Ultimately, we as decision makers have to take those inputs and make a decision consistent with what we've done in the past, leaning forward in the future, where we need to make some change. So second question. How, if at all, do the realities of industry economics factor into the regulatory framework? Does the benefit of nuclear power to the environment and economy enter into the equation? For the most part, those questions are going to be dealt with outside of the NRC. The question of continued operation of plants under challenge because of economics is something that essentially the NRC can't do anything about. We have to be consistent about how we carry out the safety mission. And part of that is looking at ourselves. That's one of the purposes of project game, to think about how we can be more effective with our resources, how we can focus on the right things, which then doesn't become an unnecessary burden. So the next question is, with no national energy policy, ultra cheap gas for the foreseeable future and no carbon legislation, how do you view the viability of nuclear as an industry? And do you see the NRC having a role in the survivability of nuclear as a national energy source? Well, as I said in response to the last question, our role is not, really does not bear on the survivability question. And this interplay of energy policy of the way electricity is priced, cheap natural gas, those things, those things have to be done if at a governmental level by other policymakers. We have to keep focused on our safety and security mission. Again, what I would say is we can contribute from the standpoint that we look at ourselves or look at our programs and look at how we regulate and do it in the most effective way possible. The next several questions have an international bent or flavored to them. Increasingly in Europe and Asia, China in particular, it is said that consequences of severe accidents should be practically eliminated. Any thoughts on how to harmonize this goal with our safety goal statement such as adequate protection? That's an interesting question. I think the way we look at it is that particularly as we move forward for generation three plus designs, if we get to the generation four designs, we're looking at technologies that have addressed some of these issues and look at safer technologies. What we've concluded as an agency and responsibly so is that the existing fleet is safe to operate. And it's safe to operate. In that context, there are upgrades that we have required. The industry has implemented that we have addressed through the Fukushima lessons learn efforts. And so from that standpoint, I think those are things that merit our good practices, that merit our attention. And I think going forward, as we look at other designs in the promise, again, we haven't looked at some of these, but the promise on some of these designs, particularly in the advanced reactor area, addresses some of these questions of a higher level of safety. As the agency looks for areas to cut in its downsizing efforts, one of the areas highlighted is reduction in international collaboration. NRC staff's participation in activities such as workshops, conferences, technical meetings, et cetera, have been identified as areas to cut or reduce. Would you be willing to reduce agencies' international activities? Yeah, would you be willing to reduce agencies' international activities? In that context, through what we have to look at all of our activities and look at where the value at it is. And having said that and having worked in the international sphere at the OECD, I am a big advocate in terms of our international engagement. What I think really what we're trying to look at is, when we go to a conference, do we need eight people going to that conference? Do we have every conference in the world? Do we need to go to every conference in the world? But the core things that we do, and a lot of I know with our commissioners and I this week will be engaging with a lot of our international partners from counterpart agencies across the world. That continued dialogue with them, that continued support, working through, there are things like, I'll hear Bill, I'll give a plug for the NEA, working through joint projects through the NEA or the IAEA, where we can leverage our resources because other contributors give contributions in kind or money to projects, that's a big benefit to us. And that's what we're going to continue to do. We have to look in an environment in which our resources come lower, are going to be lower, is we have to look at how effective we are in that. And that may mean in some areas, not only international, that we don't do as many of those things as we do, what we want to do, and I think the staff is focused on, is keeping the core and keeping the important things going. There's a couple of questions. I'm going to combine them into one, but it deals with new reactors. And basically it orients around, do you feel that the NRC's present regulatory norms are a hindrance or a help in fostering increased construction of new nuclear facilities compared to international and foreign country norms? I don't believe that our basic regulatory structure is a hindrance to new reactor implementation development. And I don't believe, as compared to other systems, that it stacks up poorly or it doesn't allow for innovation or that it doesn't allow for progress in going forward. I think what we have on our plates, and it's alluded to in some of the earlier questions, an interesting circumstance in the United States, that in some circumstances perhaps wasn't predicted even 10 or 15 years ago with low natural gas prices, the other aspects of the electricity market, so as it is, such as it is. I've looked at a number over the years, the approaches that others take toward licensing. We also share with our colleagues through the multinational design evaluation program their approaches. And we're able, I think, we're able to make decisions in a reasonable timeframe with the process we have. And what we've been talking about, for example, for advanced reactors with a lot of these smaller companies who think they may be interested at some point in time coming to the agency with an advanced design, we've looked at things like topical reports and other types of approaches, approaches that have been inherent in the NRC's regulatory process since I joined the agency. So I think we can do this. It requires good communication between us as an agency and the applicants. It requires some forecasting, some alert to what's coming down the road to us. And then working through, particularly as if we talk about non-light-water reactor designs, if we're getting to there, looking at and addressing some of the framework issues that may be a bit different for those types of designs. That's a nice lead into this next question. I have a little bit of trouble reading the handwriting, but I believe what the gist of the question is, given the fact that we will be faced with licensing advanced reactors with a significant difference in design, how can the NRC, with little operational experience with such reactors, maintain public trust as it makes its licensing decisions on such reactors? Well, we have to take an account, the information that we have. And there is some historic experience, some of it old, some of it in other places of the world that can feed into. And I would imagine, as I said, you're the technical guy, but I would imagine doing in the type of job your staff and Jennifer Yule's staff does, we integrate that experience that we know as well as this scientific evaluation and technical evaluation, that analysis that accompanies the applications that we confer independently. We integrate that together to make the best safety judgment that we can. And as I emphasize in my talk, the thing we need to do is lay open for people to see how we reach our conclusions, what those conclusions are based upon. And we can make, I think we can earn that trust going forward doing that, doing the work that we have always done in trying to address safety, the safety issues, and giving good judgments on the safety of multiple designs and plants around the country. And I would offer, just as an example of that, the recent commission affirmation for the construction permit for the shine facility, which was a unique design, I think reflects how the staff can and is very capable of doing that very thing. So there's a couple of questions associated with your thoughts on adequate protection. One of them is, don't you contaminate the adequate protection concept when you enter cost into it? Well, when, no, I don't think we do. Because we have this interesting concept and believing across the course of my career, I think within talking with people in and outside of the agency, talking among ourselves when I was in the general counsel's office, among lawyers as well as talking with the technical staff, we have the interesting thing about the adequate protection concept is the idea that it creates the floor, the floor for safety. And that is we make a judgment that no matter what the cost is, there are certain aspects that you must address and that must be present in order for us to license it. The idea of cost, the idea of cost really comes in in terms of the regulatory construct. When we talk about this ability of the agency and the freedom that is allowed under the Atomic Energy Act to say, well, maybe we should do something more. And that's where we have had this interesting and robust discussion in terms of the back fit rule, the back fit rule going back to the 70s being significantly redone in the 1980s. It went to court, came back, the agency addressed those issues, satisfied the court's mandate in that context. But the idea, again, of providing substantial additional protection. And that idea is that there is a way of looking at costs and benefits of additional protection. So the basic framework we've had there, we've had since the beginning, I think what we have in some ways I would say, giving one more legal analogy, it is not unlike our experience in this country with the common law. We look at issues that come up in this context about what adequate protection is, about what adds substantial additional protection, looking at costs and benefits, thinking about how we assess that and measure that and apply it to the regulatory framework. And I think that's a good thing. I think that helps us maintain and continue to achieve a high level of safety in the things that we regulate in this country. And then a second question associated with adequate protection is, how does the NRC put in perspective public opinions, especially opinions that are extreme falling outside of the adequate protection mandate? I may not quite understand the question. Obviously, in our processes, anybody is on a rulemaking, other types of things, an environmental statement, other types of things that we put out for comment, anybody can comment on it. And we're going to get comments, I think, at either end of the spectrum. And I know I can think of things where we see basically, and they're both in a way saying you're killing us. One of them saying you're killing us as an industry, the other one you're killing us because you're not safe enough. We have to take into account those things. We have to process, that's part of the administrative process that we're required to do, pure, basically pure comments that don't offer anything more, that don't offer an explanation or an analysis of why a particular outcome may not be beneficial or why it may be harmful. Those are things that are going to be put to the side. It's really serious and substantive commentary that has, that addresses the regulatory issues, addresses the technical issues that we have in the particular problem. Those are the ones, and they're going to be across a spectrum of views. Those are the ones that are going to be taken into account when we, you know, particularly I think of in the rulemaking context as we look at requirements that should or should not be imposed on the regulated industry. Okay. So I have one more question for you, Chairman, but before you do that, there's a question that came in that really I think I might be better positioned to answer. And the question is, the RIC does not seem to have any critical perspectives such as sessions with the Union of Concerned Scientists. How do you make sure that the industry isn't the only stakeholder with a seat at the regulatory table? So I would offer, if you take a look at the program, I did a quick look at it as I was looking at this question. I counted at least four sessions where we do have NGO representation at the table, including David Lockbaum at several. A number of our technical sessions are purely technical in nature, where we are sharing or providing results of recent research activities and so on. And then several of our sessions are internationally flavored, which is basically perspectives provided by international counterparts. So I would offer that, I think the RIC does incorporate appropriately critical perspectives by trying to include on a number of panels other stakeholders other than just industry. So I wanted to answer that question. And then the last question for you, Chairman, you don't have to answer it. Will you run for president? No, only when Kanye West does, I think. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause, please, for Chairman Burns.