 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to day three of the NRC's Regulatory Information Conference. My name is Scott Morris. I am going to be facilitating this morning's session. I am the regional administrator for our Region 4 office based in Arlington, Texas. Today we're going to be talking about emergency response during the COVID-19 public health emergency and specifically lessons that we learned, we all learned, and we want to share with you about our real world response to Hurricane Ida, which many of you know had a significant impact in southern Louisiana back late last August, early September, and specifically the Waterford nuclear power plant. So today we're going to be sharing our insights and lessons learned during the response to Hurricane Ida given the ongoing COVID public health emergency. So let's go to the next slide, please. The first thing, this is just a quick agenda, what we're going to be going on again. The goals today are to discuss the noteworthy and unique aspects of our response to the hurricane and share lessons learned. We're going to start with some panel introduction of our panelists today. I'll provide some context, and then we're going to, a couple of photos, and then we're going to engage in what I think should be a very interesting panel discussion. So next slide, please, and we'll do some introductions. So today with me, we have Mr. Ryan Lance. Ryan is the Director of the Division of Operating Reactor Safety in NRC's Region 4, and he was one of the NRC's response directors during the event. Also with us is Rebecca Richardson. She's the Chief of the Intelligence Liaison and Threat Assessment Branch back in NRC headquarters. We also have Mr. John Overly, who is an energy employee and happens to be the Emergency Preparedness Manager at the Waterford-Steam and Electric Station. We also have Oscar Martinez from FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Region 6, based here in Texas, and he is the Chair of the Regional Assistance Committee for FEMA. And finally, we have Ms. Linda Gee, who's also a FEMA Region 6 staff member, and she's a senior specialist and the lead for FEMA Region 6 for the state of Louisiana. So please welcome our panelists, and can I have the next slide? All right. So just to set a little bit of context, you'll recall Hurricane Ida was a very significant hurricane that when it was initially, when we were initially tracking it was projected to make landfall in Louisiana and continue inland, potentially affecting three different commercial nuclear power plants in addition to, you know, all the other, obviously all the other infrastructure. So obviously, like we always do, the NRC and the licensees were actively engaged in preparations for that hurricane potentially making landfall and passing it over their sites. You can see how the storm intensified over time on Wednesday, the 25th of August. It made its original hurricane classification at 80 miles an hour. It was a Category 1 hurricane. And you can see as it began to track closer and closer to the United States mainland, it intensified over the days until eventually reaching Category 4 storm, which is very significant 145-mile-an-hour winds on Sunday morning. Next slide, please. So on the 28th, which is Saturday, was when we first learned about the forecast of hurricane force winds actually being present on the Waterford site. Sunday morning, consistent with their procedures, the licensee proceeded to shut down the unit and cool it down. Obviously that's the safest condition for the plant to be in, given the impending storm. And by around 10.30 on Sunday morning, the unit was in fact shut down. The unit was off the grid and they began their cool down of the unit. By around noon, the hurricane made landfall as a cap for hurricane at 150-mile-an-hour winds. And later that evening, the maximum winds reached the Waterford site and they experienced a loss of off-site power. So the unit no longer had off-site power to assist in the plant cool down and maintain the unit in a cool down condition, so they had to rely on their own power sources on-site. At that point, they declared a notice of unusual event, which then precipitates a call among the NRC executives, including myself, and then we make a decision as to what posture we want to take as a federal organization to address the impacts of the storm. Next slide, please. So here you can see just a little bit more timeline. Waterford officially notifies the NRC of the loss of off-site power event and their entry into an unusual event condition. We made a decision as an agency to enter what we call the activation mode, which is essentially standing up our emergency response organization and having real-time communications amongst ourselves and with the licensees and other response entities. By later that evening, the hurricane winds forces had begun to subside, but it wasn't for a couple more days until the licensee exited the unusual event, and we'll talk about that and what were the exit criteria for that. But the agency, the NRC remained in activation mode for a few days, and it wasn't until September 1, which was a Wednesday morning that we finally exited the activation mode. Next slide. So here's just a couple of pictures. There really was not a lot of damage, really no damage to any of the safety-related systems, structures or components at the site, which is good news. The bad news was there was a lot of infrastructure damage around the site, of course resulting in the loss of off-site power, but also damage to some of the non-safety-related systems at the site and certainly impacts to buildings and structures and other things, and we'll talk about that some more as well. But the impacts were limited primarily to the structures that weren't essential to plan operations or certainly maintaining the unit in a shutdown and cool-down condition. Next slide, please. Here's just some more pictures. The photo on the upper right shows some damage to the site's low-level radioactive waste building. You can see it took a pretty significant beating there. No safety-related equipment, however, and the radioactive waste contained within the building was stayed in the building. The photo on the lower right is actually part of the intake structure. This is out on the Mississippi River. This is intake water for the main condenser cooling, not for safety-related cooling, but it took a substantial—it encountered some substantial damage. You can see there's a piece of the weir wall that's missing and those structures that kind of look like tripods, I believe they're called dolphins and they're meant to keep large debris and ships and barges from impacting the intake structure. They got beat up a little bit, too. And then next slide, please. This is just some internal damage to some of their on-site buildings. You can see ceiling tiles missing, windows damaged, et cetera. Next slide. And this is a pretty vivid slide here. As you can see, this is on the Axis Road on the east side of the plant. You can see the containment building for Waterford in the background. And you can see how after the winds have subsided and the sun came out, what some of the damage looked like out on the road or in the community. So with that, we'll go to the next slide. We will actually just bring up the—if we could, just bring up the panelists on the screen. And I'm going to start with Ryan Lance. And Ryan, given all that I've talked about contextually, what did you think or what did you think made this event unique? I mean, obviously hurricanes are not uncommon and they certainly have affected power reactor sites in the past. But what made this one unique in your view? Thanks, Scott. Good morning. So as Scott said, hurricanes are not unusual for this part of the country. Waterford has certainly seen its share of hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina from several years ago was comparable to this hurricane. But this one was a little interesting in that it escalated. It rapidly escalated in its intensity and didn't necessarily exactly follow tracks. But it was a big hurricane. The damage that this hurricane caused, the winds were pretty much second to none. If you go all the way back to Hurricane Andrew in 92, the winds are comparable. So it had been 20 years since we saw a hurricane with this kind of wind force at a site. And what was remarkable with that is Scott went over in the slides, there was a lot of damage in the infrastructure. There was a power line sitting in the Mississippi River. There was loss of offsite power, of course, to the site. There was significant damage as FEMA may talk about offsite. But on site, the safety-related structures, the support needed to keep the plant cooled and safe, they were unaffected. There was some effect to the security systems and monitoring systems at the site. But physically, the site weathered 140-mile-an-hour sustained winds just extremely well. So that was a bit of a surprise how little damage there was to the infrastructure, to the site structures. So as far as the hurricane goes, that was, it was a pretty remarkable hurricane and that it actually affected the sites directly. And Ryan, I should have mentioned, I believe this is true. The wind forces, the winds at Waterford during hurricane night, I believe were the highest recorded winds on a power reactor site since Hurricane Andrew back in 1992 at Turkey Point. So, yeah, extremely high winds and yet little damage to any of the safety-related structures. Yeah, it was pretty remarkable. I mean, we were expecting, well, I guess, planning for worse because it was such a strong hurricane at the site. So that's talking about the hurricane. And I don't know if, Scott, you wanted to go into the response and what else was very unusual about it at this time. But the hurricane itself, pretty remarkable. We'll circle back to that. We invite other people to weigh in on this question. Maybe Oscar from FEMA. Welcome. Good morning. Thank you for having us on today's panel. For sure, one of the unique things for FEMA and this particular hurricane was the fact that we were also coinciding with a pandemic that had been gripping the whole United States. So not only did we have, I didn't deal with, but we also had some concerns with the ongoing pandemic and how we were going to get our team of folks in there to do what we generally do prior to hurricanes and then also after a hurricane for response purposes. So it was significantly different for us at FEMA. We needed to change and kind of innovate and do some things that we hadn't done in the past as far as our VR response processes and such like that. And then obviously, like was said by you all, just the amount of damage that we had seen because of Hurricane Ida prevented a lot of ability to gain access to certain facilities, offsite facilities and such like that. So it was definitely a different or abnormal hurricane response that we had for this. So I'll vote to Linda. Linda Gee is our senior site specialist for Waterford and from the state of Louisiana and see if she has any input on that. So what I might add is normally in the past historically, we were able to get moving, get down to the area and start planning for a DIR. In this case with everything going on with the pandemic and the damage, we were prepared to move, but then we had other issues we had to deal with. We had hotel rooms. We were able to move forward, but then there was the issue about logistics. What do we do about fuel? There was quite a bit of damage. We weren't sure if we could get in and talk to the parishes. There were just a lot of questions. So we remained back at Denton, actually at home through teleworking and decided to go ahead and conduct the DIR virtually. Linda, some people may not know what a DIR is. It stands for a disaster initiated review and that's something that FEMA will do after an event like this one to make sure that the provide assurance that the offsite infrastructure is able to support the operation of the nuclear power plants in case there should be any emergency response needed. So I want to turn now to John overly. The emergency preparedness manager at Waterford and ask him to share with us what insights or surprises he had relative to this particular event because Waterford has been subject to other storms in the past, including Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. So John. Thank you, Scott. From my perspective, really, I kind of twofold. One has Ryan alluded to and talked quite a bit about with the storm, the intensity, the changing in the tracks because up until two days before it came to us, it was predicted to go much further west of us. And so the quick change and the speed in which it intensified really kind of took us a little bit off guard. It came towards us quicker than we anticipated. And then once it got here, and I know Linda and Oscar saw this in the offsite activities and inspections, but the storm sat on us for a very long time. Normally hurricanes will just continue and go on past, but this one sat on us for about four or five hours. So you're talking about 140-mile-hour winds for sustained periods of time, literally hours. And with the swamp areas around, it just kept staying at that same intensity because it was just regenerating itself before it finally moved off. So that was anybody that saw the pictures of St. John, St. James, St. Charles Parish outside of the Waterford plant knows exactly what I'm talking about. A lot of devastation for key infrastructures that are out there required for basic living. The second part really was because of COVID-19, we were already all of us were in COVID-19 protocol. So ahead of the storm trying to prepare, we sequester personnel on site. And then you're trying to implement COVID controls and protect them while they're on site sequester. And so it made us, one of the things we learned is taking a hard look at our sequestration roster and that over the years it tends to inflate because it's, well, this would be nice to have, this would be nice to have. And then when you get back down to it is, what is it that you're really trying to do? What's the minimum staffing that you really need to support the ongoing response of white prior to and then during the hurricane and then some of your immediate actions just shortly after the hurricane. And so really we're looking at, you stabilize the plant, we shut down, we stabilize the plant. And you're looking at maintaining stabilization of the plant until you get your full staffing back in and really assess the damage. So we had to take a really good look at that and that our footprint inside to protect the areas smaller in some cases. So it kind of put people up and let them sleep and then do some other things and get the logistics in, presented a little bit of challenge, implementing COVID-19 controls. But I believe we came up with a really, really good solution. We really worked a lot with our corporate staff and lessons learned from others. We worked with our female and RC partners to talk through a lot of these activities. And I think one of the things that we really did a really good job is engaging all of the organizations early and frequently, including the state and the parishes, female and RC. We all rolled up our sleeves and really started preparing for this. We were prepared maybe three days out for a slightly different response. And then as it got closer and closer, we had to check and adjust as we went. So those are kind of the two big points was the intensity of the storm, a rapid changes in the COVID-19 impacts that we had today. Yeah, thanks, John. You mentioned something about rolling up sleeves and early communication and working together. And I'm gonna go back to Ryan and ask him to sort of compare and contrast. Well, let me start by saying this. So obviously the NRC is a nuclear regulatory authority in the United States. And we typically make decisions based on a thorough deliberative process that takes time and involves a lot of folks, including the public. That's not the mode we're in when we're in a response mode. We're in a completely different role. We're in an operational role. We're potentially dealing with incomplete information. So that's standard and that's expected. But I wanna ask Ryan, given that context, how did the agency's response differ in this particular event than what we would typically see and typical is in air quotes? All right, thanks for that question, Scott. So as John was talking, I had a thought about our initial response just for everyone's information. When a hurricane is predicted to be, to affect a nuclear power plant, our normal response is to take care of the residents, the NRC inspectors who are stationed at that plant. There's always at least two. And we allow them to leave the plant, go home, potentially evacuate the area, protect their families. That's a high priority. So then we will send a volunteer, very knowledgeable NRC inspector to the site, typically two people to the site to basically be on site, sequester with the licensee, which we did this time, but because of COVID considerations, we sent one senior inspector actually from the Arkansas nuclear plant to the site to sequester with the licensee and monitor activities and assist where he could. So that was a bit different. We didn't send two people, although we had others in the area and others ready to go. And later on, a couple days into the event, we actually did send another inspector to look at security issues and then another inspector to relieve the first inspector who was at the site. So just a little bit different. Otherwise, this, as you know, was the very first time that the NRC went into an activation mode for an event at a site in a fully virtual environment. So that was very different. And I think that helped specifically with communications because we were all in the response almost immediately. We didn't have to get in our cars, drive to, because this was Sunday night when we activated. We didn't jump in our vehicles and go to our response center in Arlington, Texas, which would have taken pretty much a minimum of 30 minutes more for some folks. We were immediately in activation. We had folks supporting. And when I looked back over some of the communications, I noted that our state liaison officer who interacts with FEMA and our public affairs officers, they were both engaged very early with their counterparts and with FEMA. And we were talking about the potential for a disaster initiated review need very early in this scenario, very early in the event. Whereas before, just like I think Linda mentioned, we would take our state liaison officer who works with FEMA and participates in that disaster initiated review. He would have to make travel arrangements, get to the local area in any way possible and then meet up with FEMA. Well, he was automatically engaged with FEMA from the very start. So I think that facilitated a very rapid disaster initiated review, which was another surprise. That was able to be completed very quickly. So that was a bit of a different response. And as far as other communications, one thing I found interesting is we were following our procedures in this first time using an activation in this manner. And because the activation did not directly involve all headquarters staff, normally we would have the commission involved in our old response mode. They would head up the response once we go to activation and then the region would get ready to go to the site or take over if we needed to. The commission was not directly involved. And so it was almost an afterthought to make sure the commission was kept informed of what we were doing in the response. And we actually got some questions during response. Hey, what's going on in the response? So that was kind of an interesting aspect where normally they would be directly involved. We did put out periodic reports that summarized what the response was. And that got emailed to lots of folks. It was on WebEOC, it was shared very broadly and I think was very useful. But the aspect of communication to all folks, it was almost a second thought in some respects. Whereas before in our response mode, it was automatic because everyone was in the same room, including headquarters. Thanks for that. I want to invite Rebecca to weigh in here. Were there any surprises from your, you're obviously based at NRC headquarters. What was your role in the response and were there any surprises for you, particularly given the fact that we were in a COVID environment? Yeah, thanks, Scott. So I'm a volunteer responder for our security group. And then for this event specifically, I was in a support role to region four to the security lead. And this was actually my first time responding during a hurricane. But I have lived through a few of them myself and I know that they can intensify pretty quickly. And that changes what your response looks like, whether it's deciding to evacuate your family or preparing the plant. And as everyone's mentioned, there was the added layer of the COVID-19 public health emergency. So for us at the NRC, we were responding primarily from home rather than in the operation center. And on one hand, as Ryan mentioned, our response was quick. And I think it eliminated some of the challenges that come with staffing shifts of people in an operation center. But on the other hand, our reliance on communication technologies became even more important, when you can't just get up and walk over and tell someone something. So for me, it really reinforced the need to ensure we're regularly maintaining and training on all of our various communication systems. So that was probably my biggest takeaway just from the COVID aspect of it and not being in the ops center. Okay, thanks. John, I'm gonna go back to you. What were your, what was your focus after the storm had passed by? What was your focus at the site? There's a gazillion things going on. But how did your organization decide what the main focus areas were? And what I'm particularly interested in, offsite support in what support did you request, need, what priorities did you express to the federal and state governments? And I'm sure the state was real interested in getting power back to the grid too. So maybe you could just talk through that a little bit. And particularly if there weren't any unique or surprising aspects. And by the way, I wanna just, before I let you answer, I apologize. I wanna invite the audience to use the tool and ask questions if you have, they can be specific or broad and they can be to me or any of the panelists. So I do invite you to ask questions. I'm sorry, John, go ahead. Well, that's fine. I'll talk about just a little bit before the response. One of the things we did early on also is we've been embracing the probability of one. And so while the storm was not initially predicted to come our way, using the probability one, we actually made the decision to actually sequester personnel on site very, very early. So we were able to get all of our sequestration families, all of our teammates out of harm's way much earlier than what we normally would have. So that put us in a really good spot to be able to respond back. Now, once the storm was over, obviously we had a loss of offsite power. You all saw the pictures of the devastation on the support facilities around the site. So now we're actually, we're in competition with other critical infrastructures, hospitals, nursing homes, emergency response facilities, relocation centers, things of that nature. So there's a law enforcement of facilities. So there's a lot of things that we're competing and we're asking, okay, we want to get power back to the water group site, but we also need to save people's lives. And so there's always that. So we're working really closely. We started part of the storm and during the storm, you've got to be locked up with your transmission and distribution and the utilities around the area to make sure that we're really setting the priorities of where we're going. So the parishes in the state and the utility all work together to have a lot of really good calls on what the prioritization of power restoration was going to be. And so for us, really getting some of our support facilities back. So how are we going to get the people back on site? So we started working with logistics. Our main concern and main priority was getting generators brought in to bring back the facilities. And in particular, our maintenance support building, which houses our outage coordination center and it's also our operation support center, our generation support building, which houses the vast majority of our engineering organization and our maintenance building with all the craft personnel. So trying to get power back to that so that we can get some semblance of normalcy to be able to respond, including our work control center as well. So then the logistics were, we were gonna be without power. We knew we were gonna be without power in most of the area for a very long time. Initial instruments, seven to 14 days. And so now the logistics are, okay, we bring people on site. How are we going to let them sleep? How are we gonna feed them? How are we gonna have the sanitation services? So having all of those logistics of bringing in trailers, we brought in 30 plus trailers to house personnel on site. We're fortunate that back in the Hurricane Katrina area, we actually had an area where we set up and when we brought in campers. And so we were able to, before the storm, we made sure that that area was fully available again. And so people actually who had their own campers and motor homes and stuff like that were actually able to respond to the site and hook up there as well. So just kind of giving back and kind of giving our feedback under us for a little bit of an odd normal organization to go back and start restoring power. So those were really some of our main logistical things. The other thing is what I'll say that we really need to do and make sure that we do is we were running a long time on the emergency diesel generators. So we were working through getting fuel oil from batteries here. And if anybody knows anything about the emergency diesel generators, that's pedigree fuel oil. Requires sampling, requires pedigree. So having those contracts in place to have the sampling already done so that can be loaded on trucks and get to us instead of waiting to go there, sample it, send it off, wait for the results and then bring it on site. Working those details out well ahead of hurricane season start is a really good lesson to learn that people should really hang their hats up on and just make sure you have all those contracts in place. And again, I can't overemphasize. Transmission distribution, they deal with storms for a living. They're out for every thunderstorm, every cold weather event. Their logistics and their ability to get logistics in is really on par with no one. With the exception of maybe FEMA who does this for all across the country and stuff like that. Those are some of those. Thanks, John. I want to throw it over to Oscar and Linda. So FEMA is a large organization. As John just pointed out, has a responsibility to provide effective coordination and response of federal assets, working with the states, et cetera. I can certainly imagine that FEMA had a number of competing priorities during the event and subsequent to the event. Maybe Oscar and Linda, you could talk about what some of those competing priorities were and what maybe some of the pressures were from different stakeholders and kind of how you work through that. Yes, sir. Thanks again. So yes, there was definitely a lot going on during that time period. Here at FEMA, we've always tried to be very flexible. Obviously that's a key for our preparedness environment at FEMA. We've always been on the ground and able to change and do some things. And so there were a lot of competing priorities, like you said, one of the ways that we try to prepare ahead of time for those competing priorities is we do a lot of pre-hurricane calls, pre-hurricane trainings throughout the year, prior to hurricane season, we do a number of hurricane calls, not only with the NRC, but with our state and our local and tribal areas and stakeholders and such like that. So all year long, we're definitely preparing for the event that could occur or that may occur sometime during hurricane season. But some of those priorities, like we were discussing, the political climate obviously is key. One of the things that took place during Hurricane Ida was there was quite a push politically to get this disaster initiated review done as quickly as we could. And we were able to do that. Again, we were, for FEMA, this virtual disaster initiated review was the first of its time for us at FEMA. So one of the better side effects, I guess of COVID was that that we'd already been used to a virtual environment for quite some time. So we've been doing a lot of things virtually in other aspects of FEMA. So during hurricane Ida, when it came time to innovate and try to pivot, to do the disaster initiated review from a virtual environment, I won't say it was easy because it definitely wasn't, but it was, we were able to do that with as little problems as we could. So again, because the state was in such need to get that disaster initiated review completed, we were able to do that again from a virtual environment. We leveraged a lot of social media, different avenues of social media to help us gather a site picture. There was a lot of folks in the state of Louisiana that were using a lot of social media, different platforms, they were posting various photographs and different things of different areas in Louisiana that had been damaged. And those were actually very good tools for us to use from a FEMA aspect because it did allow us to take a look at different locations and site visits that we normally would try to do in person and boots on the ground. We were able to do virtually and request other type videos or photographs of different sites that we needed to take a look at. And Linda can talk a little bit about that, but yes, there was a lot of competing priorities. COVID was still very active. It was a very concerning situation. That was one of the things that we were having to consider as we were trying to consider getting individuals into the state of Louisiana to conduct that disaster-initiated review. Some of that was how we were gonna do that along with the COVID protocols. So again, just another reason for us to conduct that disaster-initiated review from a virtual environment. So Linda, I don't know if you have any other... Yeah, I was gonna ask Linda to maybe explain a little bit in just high level. What is a DIR? What is a disaster? And why is it important? Well, we initially, FEMA loves their reports. So we begin with a preliminary capabilities assessment and I started with that. And early on I had that framed. Of course that triggers the disaster-initiated review. At that point, there's about 10 questions on a capabilities assessment. We did realize we needed to go ahead and do the DIR. Now, what we had to determine was how we were gonna do the DIR. And we weren't certain. Are we going to Louisiana or not? Well, with everything going on at the time, we decided to do the disaster-initiated review remotely. And as Oscar pointed out, we started early on. We started back on August 27th with coordination calls. Social listening was done throughout. I was able to get information on a lot of the facilities around Waterford. The state was able to provide information, both LDEQ and GOCEP. And then they were able to follow up with information from the parishes. So the disaster-initiated review once we were able to get all the information where we could present it for reasonable assurance, it probably took me about four hours to get the report done. So we were able to pull that together and push it up to leadership to review. Do you have any other questions on the? Yeah, I think the audience might be interested in understanding a little bit. Why is the DIR, why is that process so important? And why did FEMA lean through so hard early on? Well, it's FEMA's reasonable assurance letter. And I'll let Oscar jump in here. Yeah, so those DIR teams that consist of FEMA and RC regional staff, we conduct those DIRs in order to coordinate with our off-site response organizations to assure that we conduct that DIR in a timely manner and it doesn't detract from any lifesaving responses or things that are going on initially. The DIR review, it covers emergency response facilities, communication, emergency response organizations, the public alert and notification systems. It covers things such as transport, evacuation routes, accident assessment capabilities, the support services that are available and the different population shifts. So it's so that we can assure that the off-site organizations they can respond in case of a plant emergency or anything like that. So that's essentially the reason that we conduct those DIRs. Thanks, thank you for putting that into context there. John, I wanna ask you, from your perspective, the federal government and its response, and that's the bigger federal government, not just FEMA, not just NRC, but all of us working together to, what was your perspective on the level of support and interaction that your team had from the federal government, whether you're conveying priorities and needs, timeliness of response, et cetera? Can you comment on that? Yeah, actually, I've been through a few hurricanes in the Carolinas, but this was the first major one with the direct impact of the site. But we've got a really, really good working relationship with the region and FEMA and the NRC, our state and the parachutes. In other words, we know each other. I think the familiarity and the upfront work that Oscar and Linda and Ryan have talked about where we meet face to face, we talk with each other. I think you build those relationships and I know everybody has their part from a regulator to a utility, but actually knowing each other and being able to communicate was really good. And then for us, now we're throwing in the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard was critical with some of the responses, especially Ryan talked about, and you talked about a power line down in the river. So the Coast Guard's controlling that. And so Department of Transportation. So there's a lot of federal agencies that come under that umbrella of response. And anything we ask or we got, anything they were inquiring about, we were able to provide them because we understood what kind of questions we're going to come until we were prepared with the answers. And really our federal plans and state plans and local plans and our utility plans meshed pretty well together because we've worked on them over the years. While this hurricane threw a little bit at us earlier and the damage was a little different and had to kind of adjust on the fly. That's the processes and the people we have in place will facilitate a much smoother response in dealing with the uncertainty that we came up with. Thanks. I think it's fair to say that all of us were interested in getting power back to the grid as soon as possible, because obviously there was pretty significant damage and people were without power. And of course the city of New Orleans requires power to dewater the city. So it's a really important thing and it wasn't lost on anybody, this push and desire to get power back. But for us and for FEMA, it's how do we do that and ensure safety, right? We don't want to put the public at any further risk by expediting a response of plants returned to operation. Question maybe for Ryan. Ryan, we've talked a little bit about this notion of NRC response modes. What we've got a question from the audience, maybe you could just elaborate a little bit. What does activation mean? What does that look like and why is that significant? Yeah, so thanks for that question. Scott, before I get to that, I did want to put a little context on the disaster initiated review. So we rely on FEMA, the NRC relies on FEMA essentially to tell us that after a plant has to shut down because of some external event, they tell us the offsite support for operating that plant is intact, is capable of supporting. The safety of the plant is always with the licensee that they are fully responsible for ensuring they operate a plant safely. So Waterford in this case, before they restarted the plant and maintaining it in a safe condition while they were shut down, that is completely the responsibility of the licensee. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, our responsibility is to ensure that the licensee is operating safely. So we monitor, we have folks on site, and in this one, we talked about restoration of offsite power. I just wanna make sure everyone understands that the restoration of offsite power was very important and that happened fairly quickly. We were surprised how quickly the plant was able to find a pathway to bring power back to the plant. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a reliable source of power and that it would meet our standards for ensuring the plant could operate safely. So there was a 10 hour period following restoration of offsite power to the site that the NRC was continuing our evaluation and one of five criteria we used to exit from activation was that there was a reliable source of offsite power to the plant. So I just wanna- I wanna get to the exit criteria in a bit, but just for the benefit of the audience, what is activation, why is it different? How do we, who makes the decision, that type of thing? Sure, so when an event occurs at a plant, NRC decision makers have a phone call. We're notified by our headquarters operations officer who's a 24 hour a day monitoring, they're required to get phone calls from the sites when certain events occur. And then a phone call is made and in this particular case, the decision maker for that is the regional administrator who has oversight of that plant. And he also consults with the nuclear reactor regulation representative who's on the phone and gets essentially concurrence on going to an activation mode. And what activation does is it sets the NRC into this response mode where 24 hours a day, we have individuals dedicated to analyzing the situation, looking at the plant, communicating with the plant and offsite authority. So we are in a mode where we both have, we have full communications, we're assessing, we assign individuals that are needed depending on what has occurred at the plant. And then we also are preparing if we need to send a larger number of folks to the site itself. So that's another part of activation. I think it's fair. One of the key elements of being in activation for the NRC of course is to be able to provide that independent assessment, that independent assurance that the licensee has taken, that they've thoroughly evaluated the event that they're anticipating what might happen next, that they're taking all the appropriate mitigation actions, et cetera. So the NRC's role is obviously to make sure from an independent viewpoint with its own eyes and ears, its own staff making sure that the licensee is doing all the right things, but also in a support role. It's also saying, hey, how can we help, right? And also providing advice to other offsite and answering questions from the public, et cetera, and basically coordinating the entire federal response to support the unit. So thanks for that. I did get a question for John overly about what the sequence of events was relative to the hurricane moving closer and closer to the site, mode changes. And what happened at River Bend and Grand Gulf since they initially were in the path of the storm? And was the flex equipment and flex equipment is is installed obviously at Waterford and other power reactor sites? To what extent that that was that equipment used or deployed? Thanks, Scott. From, I'll just kind of touch, Grand Gulf, River Bend and Waterford, we had utility calls between us from our storm response calls. The other two sites were preparing because we believed it was going to be west of us. And so those other two sites would be impacted, Grand Gulf to a lesser extent. Once it turned our way and was going to be much less of a threat for River Bend, they kind of backed off some of their requirements. But they did, we all entered the same, we all have the same common severe weather response procedure. We were all entering those procedures and River Bend prepared for sequestration, but they did not need to pull the trigger on that. So a lot of coordination and just as FEMA and the NRC and the state and the Parishers are involved, all of us are together, all three sites are together talking through those issues and each of the sites were given where we were with different things. And then from a flex standpoint, we did not mobilize any of our flex equipment. We do have some flex equipment because of the unique characteristics of our site that are staged in other locations. For example, we have basically a permanently installed emergency diesel generator that can help us with a loss of offsite power in addition to the emergency diesel generators. We were versus having to rely on grabbing a flex generator to come in and place. So those are some of the logistics that we have it. I think I missed another part of the question of the user. Yeah, it had to do with mode changes. I think we kind of covered it in the timeline leading up that I went through at the beginning but obviously the most important thing is that the unit went from mode one operation down to mode four, which is shut down and cool down pretty aggressively starting on Sunday morning when landfall was made by the hurricane and it became clear that the site was gonna get some excessive wind and excessive storm activity at the site. Hey, I'll just add that both River Bend and Grand Gulf were able to stay at full power throughout this event even though they were preparing for the shift if needed. I'd like to add just one, what we talked about all the great things that great outcomes with the disaster initiative review being the first real full virtual one, how we were able to quickly come to that conclusion while we wanted to bring power back to the grid but we also have to remember all the waterproof was prepared to start up. We actually delayed sinking to the grid because the grid was not ready for that power that we had and so it's okay for us to generate power but if we have nowhere to send it our ability to transmit it and then our homes aren't able to receive it. So that was actually something we have to think about as well. So you have your time and you step through if there's a critical need, yes, we get it back up online but we also have to delay and then allow the grid to handle the capacity. So I'll leave it at that. Oh, thanks and Ryan and Rebecca maybe weigh in too. So obviously in our role as independent assessors and trying to be supportive of the site, we also, the NRC also is still a regulator and if the site decides that it wants to restart the unit there are some requirements, regulatory requirements that have to be met. And the NRC is gonna make sure on behalf of the public that those requirements are met before the plant decides to restart or the licensee decides to restart the unit. What sort of issues, aside from offsite power what were there other issues that of concern that you dealt with as a response director or Rebecca in your role that gave you concern about the licensee's return to the operation? Yeah, so I'd like to let Rebecca address the specific aspect answer is a very focused organization. So I think you have an aspect there and then I'd like to cover some broader items that we had consideration for. Sure, go ahead. Yeah, thanks Scott, thanks Ryan. So I would say in the security realm you aren't just thinking about what if part of my security system stops working temporarily but instead with a hurricane what if it's just blown away completely and how this could extend your time frames for needing to have compensatory measures in place which are requirements. And I think the beauty of the defense in depth strategies is that they are prepared for that but in the midst of a public health emergency it definitely adds layers of challenges to work through from both the personnel perspective and a supply chain to restore equipment. So one of the I think biggest takeaways from me was how this experience really highlighted the importance of that safety security interface which is another requirement we have. And while natural phenomena like the hurricanes are not the same initiating event as say a physical attack their physical protection programs are in place and are set up to compensate for those degradations or an operability regardless of the mode of failure. And so I think those are two big aspects for us. So yeah, I think maybe we didn't say this directly but the security systems at the site which are obviously required by NRC regulation those that we didn't talk about this much but the security systems at the site were impacted fairly substantially. And so I think what you're describing is it's not just about getting power back to the grid or getting power back to the site from the grid but also making sure that all the other infrastructure that's needed to support plant operations including security systems is available and reliable. And that was I think an interesting challenge not only for the for the licensee but also for us as we tried to do our independent assessment. Yeah, and as Waterford did this it's important for the security organization then to remain an active participant in the licensee emergency plans. They staff security emergency responders in the technical support center the operational support center. So this allows them to ensure that security is aware of any emergency conditions in real time and allows them to assess any potential adverse security impacts and then support the plant safety and emergency action. So I think that that's a key piece of the interaction there. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier so the licensee has the responsibility to operate the plant safely but the NRC is charged with ensuring that it's done and part of our being in the activation mode meant we had questions, right? We wanted to be able to respond quickly and prior to our exiting activation standing down our 24 hour response mode we did establish five different criteria and just real quickly, I'll talk about those. So first we already talked about we wanted to do an independent assessment of the security posture of the site and that was done by sending an inspector down consulting with NSER that office. So the security was it was really one of the top priorities. The next is we wanted to make sure that we had good communications with the site because early on they were a little iffy. So we wanted normal communications as well as emergency communications restored. Big important thing. The next was we wanted to make sure that we could reliably get NRC staff to the site. There was still a mess on the roads. It was hard to get around, but we wanted to make sure there was a good path that we could continue to get NRC presence on the site. The next had to do with offsite power. There are the plant operates using technical specifications and of course the code of federal regulations drive requirements that must be met for a plant to operate. So our charge is to make sure those are met prior to the plant continuing certainly before the plant starts up. So that priority, did they have a reliable source of offsite power to continue operating the plant? And then the final criteria had to do with have we communicated well enough offsite to the public to ensure there was a good understanding of why we were exiting from activation and essentially allowing the plant to start up when they chose to start up. So five criteria, they were all met, but it took quite a bit to just to make sure we had that. And the NRC at any time, if we feel like the plant is not in a safe mode is conducting, we do have the authority to tell the site, no, you cannot start up. You must remain shut down. That's within our regulatory authority. And we can do that essentially if we don't have confidence that there is safety, even if all the tech specs are met, technical specifications and we can't point to a specific regulation that isn't met. If we don't have confidence, we can tell a site that they cannot continue operating. So I hope that answers the questions, Scott. Yeah, I think so. Appreciate that. So one of the questions that we've received, that I've received from the audiences that it sounds like things went pretty well. I mean, overall, given the significance of the hurricane it went well as could be expected at the site for the licensee, the FEMA and NRC responders. Was there anything that, and I think that's generally true, but I'll open it up to anybody. Was there anything that really didn't go well or really just wasn't anticipated that you had to deal with? And how did you overcome it? I'll just open it up to anyone. I can start with just a simple one on communications. So our primary form of communications on some topics didn't work the way we had planned and we had to find alternate communications. So while I think it went well and we were able to do that and we had those alternatives available, the primary form that we planned on using didn't work. So. I mean, communications obviously is essential. And in your world, Rebecca, we're talking about not just unclassified, but potentially classified and sensitive information and how do you communicate that information when you've got degraded systems? So others? One of the things that I think could have gone better for us while we were getting generators in place, hooking those generators into some of our buildings that don't normally have generators. So in other words, having quick disconnects or connection points to where we can actually put those generators or actually having permanently installed generators in some of our support buildings that we didn't have at the time, especially like our supply warehouse for one. The others, I won't get into a lot of our security plan, but we have security posture locations that need electrical services in those locations. And so having quick disconnects and other accommodations to restore power a little quicker from a response standpoint, we have a corporate emergency response center basically. And while we did a lot of things virtually, we did not activate that facility sooner prior to the hurricane or rival. So we took that as a lesson learned that we could have activated a little sooner and got some of our resources and our communications a little clearer and crisper ahead of the response. And then our shutdown time with the storm speeding up, we took a hard look back at our procedural requirements of storm arrival time and how the storm speeding up may have cut into our decision-making time. So we're looking at again embracing our risk probability of warring and taking a hard look at it. Do we need to shut down a little sooner than what we did during the event? So we always take a hard look at ourselves and see where we can improve it. I think those are some of the areas that we could really improve it. Okay, thanks, John. FEMA, Oscar or Linda any surprises or things that maybe didn't go as well as you anticipated? Like Ms. Richardson was saying, communication was a big issue that we were having to deal with at the time right after the hurricane made landfall. The lack of phones and cell service and internet service provided a challenge for us to communicate with some of our state partners, some of the off-site response organizations. Some folks had to switch to ham radios or satellite phones and there were even occasions where some of our points of contact for the state and local stakeholders that we had. Some of those folks even had to evacuate due to the locations they were at. So some of the staff that we generally speak to during these events weren't in the areas, some of them even had to flee to or evacuate to North Texas. So just for a day or two in order to let the hurricane pass. So those are some of the difficulties that we had trying to establish that communication. So you mentioned some of the communication options that you had to employ. So the question from the audience, what other secondary communications did we wind up having to use or not use? What, maybe some of which were anticipated and baked into response plans, maybe some weren't. Anything, any thoughts on that? As far as from FEMA goes, I mean, we did have, obviously we do have some communication plans already established, such as satellite phone numbers and stuff like that. We do have different radio options that each state has. With them, we have different, UHF, VHF type radio communication methods if that is needed. So yeah, just generally, our gets cards and our WPS ability for some of those folks that had to, because of the lack of cell towers and stuff, there was a lack of lines and such. So there were some folks that had to utilize their gets cards and stuff in order to bump them up the front of the line so they could use some of those communication methods to reach out to us. So those were just some different ones because the plans that we have that we prepare for all year long have multiple redundant systems built into that and we review those plans annually. So that did actually play out for us. So that did help us. Yeah, thank you. And so some folks may not know what it gets is it stands for government emergency telephone system and WPS is wireless priority service. So as the federal response community has access to these tools to enable us to get priority service on the cell towers and priority access to normal telephone communications in an emergency. So that's what Oscar is referring to there. So back to you, Ryan, there's a question, you mentioned the five criteria that the NRC used that needed to be satisfied before exiting from the activation mode. The question from the audience is, what are those criteria kind of made up on the fly or are they captured in some standard process? How does that work? Yeah, thanks for that question. So they are all dependent on the specifics of the incident that is going on. And we will look at what's, I mean, obviously safety is paramount. That's our charge as a nuclear regulatory commission. Everything that we do is based on ensuring safety is maintained at the site. So that's the paramount consideration, but the particulars of the specific event will drive some of other criteria. So are they made up on the fly? I guess I would say sort of that's correct. There is nothing written down that says you have to have this thing. There are minimums and that's our safety standards, regulations, technical specifications, but the others are really driven by the specific event. And there's a lot of communication and consideration. When should we leave activation mode? So public confidence is a huge aspect and our confidence that the site is doing everything they need to ensure safety is probably the secondary. Thank you. So it was mentioned earlier Hurricane Andrew back in 1992 impacted the Turkey Point facility in Southern Florida. It was a pretty significant event. A lot of lessons learned from that. Question from the audience is it's been 30 years since then. What lessons from that event were incorporated into the response to this or other planning documents? So I can start with John or anyone, but let's start with John. Thank you, Scott. From a Waterford and an Interview perspective, Hurricane Andrew was obviously an eye-opener for the entire industry, but especially the Gulf plants and coastal plants. We really took a lot of those lessons. If you look at our severe weather procedure currently, a lot of our onsite facilities and equipment and protocols, all of those are in place because of the lessons that we've learned from Hurricane Andrew. So we actually took all those lessons line by line, looked at them, and pretty much do a tee adopted those activities. That's why we have these pre-hurricane conferences. That's why we have these relationships with the ERC and the state and FEMA and the parishes in place. So why we have third and fourth layers of communication systems because communication is vital in a disaster. So yeah, we really adopted a lot of those things and put them in place. Thanks. How about from FEMA's perspective? Obviously FEMA is charged with responding to all manner of events. And certainly since Hurricane Andrew 30 years ago, there have been a lot of other hurricanes and a lot of other disasters and Superstorm Sandy rings a bell for me about 10 years ago. It hit the Northeast and affected a lot of infrastructure and nuclear. To what extent have those lessons been incorporated into FEMA's response protocols? Well, that was quite some time ago before my arrival here at FEMA. But I will say that just in general, after every disaster that we have in FEMA, whether it's a man-made disaster or a natural disaster, we constantly do reviews and after-actions of what has occurred and implement any new changes or make any improvements to the processes that we have, would say since 1992 to now, we've obviously made several, not only communication changes, relationship changes, obviously improved relationships with the various federal agencies. And now in 2022, we have outstanding relationships with the NRC and our other federal partners that allow us to respond in the most rapid way that we can. So again, I can't really speak to the huge improvements from 1992 to now, but I can't say that we're always striving to make sure that we're implementing new changes. So especially with technology, the way technology is now, again, various social media platforms, the different web platforms, WebEOC, Adobe Connect, different things like that. We try to utilize our watch centers that we have within FEMA to assist all the different divisions in FEMA. And our national preparedness branches, which is what houses our tech hazards branch responsible for RIP, are constantly doing different community outreaches and stuff like that. So preparedness is the key for us here. Absolutely, thanks, Oscar. So you mentioned after-action report, and maybe I'll put this to Ryan. To what extent did the agency formally capture, formally capture the lessons from this particular event and are those lessons, how are they shared? Are they publicly available? How do we, as a country, benefit from these lessons? Thanks, Scott. I did wanna mention Hurricane Andrew before we go on to that question. That was a watershed event. And I actually remember Hurricane Andrew. I was in the Nuclear Rhetoric Commission when that event occurred. And we took several lessons learned. One was coordinating with FEMA. I believe the Disaster Initiative Review was actually an outfall of Hurricane Andrew. We formalized the process and our memorandum of understanding and coordination with FEMA for responding to sites that had to shut down because of some external event, such as a hurricane. And also, that was the NRC's really first inkling that we needed to have a common terminology and vocabulary with off-site authorities in their response mode. And so it took quite a long time for NRC to get there, but we finally have the same terminology of responders, such as a response director, operation section chief. We use those terminologies now that off-site authorities, police, fire have been using those terms for quite some time. Now, to the question, the after-action report, we did capture the lessons learned from this. They are in an after-action report. And I believe that's publicly available, although I'm not completely confident in that answer. But each one of these events is an opportunity to capture lessons learned. They are captured. And maybe Rebecca can talk about that quite a bit more. Those lessons are used to inform our response methodology and procedures to improve our response and make it more efficient. Yeah, I'll say, and this is also from Pima, like Ryan said, those after-actions, currently we do have a draft after-action for Hurricane Ida and for that event and an improvement plan that we implement in collaboration with off-site response organizations as well as the NRC. So we share that draft with each other before we finalize that. I can add on to that. So the after-action report, it does get added to our corrective action program database so that we can find resolution for those items and adjudicate those so that we're ready for the next time. So that did occur. Excellent. So I think it's fair to say then that it's an iterative process. There's continuous learning that happens. And ultimately the programs and protocols that are employed to effectively prepare and respond to disasters like Hurricane Ida are captured and continually evolving in our formal documentation. But of course people change, people take on new roles. And so it's really imperative not only to have quality procedures that are in programs, documents that are revised regularly to account for lessons learned, but it takes a whole lot of continuing ongoing effort as people change, as circumstances change, as technologies change to continue to train our response professionals, many of whom in the NRC all speak for the NRC, many of our, this isn't their day job. This is something that they do when the NRC enters that activation mode that normally their inspectors, license reviewers, they're, you name it. And they all volunteer to support a response should it be necessary, but it's not their day job. So it takes very, you can have great programs and procedures, but it ultimately takes people to implement them. And so Ryan or, I'll start with you. Is there, what do we do to make sure that this volunteer, obviously there are some permanent staff who focus on preparedness and response, but the vast majority of the response organization is volunteer, what do we do to make sure that when the bell rings, so to speak, that we, the agency can effectively mount a response. And I'll also throw that question to everybody with John and FEMA. All right, thanks Scott. Yeah, as far as the, I guess the on-call responders, the NRC doesn't really have any on-call responders, all of our permanent folks. I know FEMA will talk about on-call folks, but obviously we have a continuing training program as well as the initial training program that talks about emergency response. We have inspectors and managers who are trained and we exercise. So every two years at every plant in the country, there is a biennial exercise that we evaluate and FEMA participates in and we receive those reports and see the lessons learned from those. Every six years we'll participate in some manner at a site, at every site every six years so that we have our whole response organization that actually practices. As that comes up to two or three times a year, we are in an exercise that involves the entirety of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and A site. There are other national exercises that are done periodically every year that exercise beyond the NRC and FEMA, other federal agencies to participate in a response drill. So multitudes of training opportunities there to make sure both our new staff and our experienced staff continue to have the ability to implement our emergency response. Yeah, thanks for that. And interestingly, when those exercises, those biennial exercises are being conducted at the power reactor sites, NRC is really wearing two hats, two roles, two functions. One of which is what you just described which is enhancing the training and proficiency for our staff and how to implement our response program. But there's a regulatory piece too because during those exercises, we're also got a regulatory hat on making sure the licensee is doing all the things they need to do to be successful in responding to an event. So with that, John, did you wanna weigh in on this? We only have about four minutes left in the session. So you're on mute, John. I'm sorry, realistically, I think we've really covered the vast majority of the points that I wanted to make on that though, thank you. Okay, Oscar or Linda, any thoughts on that? As far as our, I mean, FEMA does have a reservists on-call program that's separate from us in our REP program. But as far as the reservists go, FEMA does, they do hire and seek talented individuals to help with those responses. And then in the time of disaster or need, they will call up some of those reservists and give them opportunities to assist with that. As far as the REP program within FEMA, we do annual DIR tabletop exercises that move from one region to another. Here in region six that covers Louisiana, we participated in 2020 with that tabletop exercise for the DIR there. So we also have standard operating guides and different things that guide us on preparedness and training for that. So really for us, it's just a constant training all year long with our off-site response organizations and on our state. So that's kind of how we do that. Okay. Well, we're getting here at the end of the program. So I wanna just thank all of you for participating and joining in today's panel. I thought it was a good comprehensive overview of all the aspects of the response to Hurricane Ida at Waterford and all the implications of that at the licensee site within the federal government. So again, very big thanks to all the panelists this morning and thanks to the audience for your participation and your questions and it's our hope that this was informative and interesting and you took some good lessons from this event so that we can be even better in the future. So with that, I will bang the gavel and close this session and I hope wish you all a good rest of the regulatory information conference. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.