U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission efforts to improve the safety-security interface

Full text: We agree with the broad international recognition that improving the interface between safety and security and utilizing synergies is critical to efficient and effective regulation of nuclear and radio active materials and associated facilities. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is implementing a number of efforts in rulemaking, licensing and inspection to recognize, establish and improve this interface. The NRC has been working multilaterally with the IAEA and bilaterally with our international partners to promote this concept. Safety has always been the primary pillar of NRC's regulatory programs. In the current threat environment, there has been a renewed focus on security, and NRC has issued enhanced security requirements for radioactive sources and nuclear materials and associated facilities. Regulatory authorities, whether regulating safety and/or security, share a common purpose of protecting public health and safety. In today's environment, safety and security activities are closely intertwined, and it is critical that consideration of these activities must be integrated so as not to diminish or adversely impact either safety or security. While many safety and security activities complement each other or are synergistic, there remain potential areas of conflict where mechanisms must be established to resolve these conflicts if optimal protection of public health and safety and prompting common defense and security is to be assured. NRC is implementing a number of efforts to promote safety and security interfaces. For example in June 2007, NRC developed draft guidance on safety-security interfaces at Nuclear Power Plants (NPP). NRC also published a proposed rule amending its NPP security requirements, which includes specific enhancements to the safety-security interface (10 CFR 73.58). Once finalized, these requirements wilt mandate that licensee's be responsible to ensure that adequate programs for assessing, managing, and coordinating proposed changes and activities, are established such that adverse interfaces between safety and security are identified and appropriate compensatory or mitigative actions arc taken to maintain both safety and security. Activities of interest include, but are not limited to, operations, engineering, work control and planning, emergency preparedness, fire protection, chemical safety, industrial safety, environmental protection, and security. This proposed rule is currently under review by the Commission and should be issued as final later this year. Once implemented, these requirements will serve as a significant advancement in fostering an improved safety-security interface. As with many countries, regulatory responsibility for various safety and security aspects involve multiple agencies in the U.S. The U.S. government has established interface and coordination mechanisms to consider the interrelationship of security and safety issues such as the inter-agency Radiation Source Security and Protection Task Force and the Department of Homeland Security' s Critical Infrastructure Nuclear Government Coordinating Council. For example in the radioactive material area, the NRC and the National Nuclear Security Administration arc working on security enhancements to certain self-shielding irradiators. The development and evaluation of these proposed security enhancements is being extensively coordinated with security specialists and safety reviewers to ensure that security modifications do not negatively affect safety aspects such as shielding and serviceability. As part of the process to develop and implement new security requirements, NRC involves a broad range of stakeholders to ensure integrated and implementable solutions. Also, NRC has established multidiscipline groups to review safety-security issues resulting from issuance of enhanced security measures for NPP and radioactive material licenses. (author)