The next item of business is portfolio questions, and the portfolio this afternoon is education and skills. I can remind members that questions 1 and 2 are grouped together, where I will take any supplementaries at the end of those questions. If a member wishes to ask a supplementary issue, press the request, speak buttons or place an arm if you want to. A oedden nhw'r Serfanaeth Gwneudd ddysgol yng Nghymru, zi Llywodraethol i'n mwyaf o blaen lleol Obawr ar gaelion a'r newidau ydw i Gwneudd wedi gweld cael ei wneud oeddechrau i Gwneudd Gwneudd dechydig o gyffiniddol yn y gwirioiliaid Gwneuddau. Mae rwy'n gwybod i'n hynny gwysig i'w perffiniddol i'ch gwirioiliaid o gymbratau영yme ar gyfer y Gwneudd Ddysgol, sy'n cymryd mai yn 12ations the Scottish Retainment Challenge, over the course of this parliamentary term to do that. Schools in Fife are receiving over £10.4 million in pupil equity funding in 2022-23, with allocations confirmed over four years. The Fife Council will also receive another £8.5 million strategic equity funding over four years. Those long-term commitments will support head teachers and local authorities to develop their short and longer-term plans to close the poverty-related attainment gap. In addition, the Fife Council is receiving almost 700,000 in care experience children and young people's funding in 2022-23. I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer and welcome the very significant investment that the Scottish Government is making in tackling the poverty-related educational gap. I wonder if she could provide further information about pupil equity funding that will be available in my Coutinbeath constituency schools, if it is possible to have that level of breakdown of information. It would also be helpful if the cabinet secretary could indicate what assessment has in fact been made as to the significant role that this funding can play in closing the attainment gap such that every pupil enjoys the same life chances wherever they live. I can advise Annabelle Ewing that schools in Fife, including in her Coutinbeath constituency, have had their PEF allocations confirmed for the four years. That means that schools throughout Fife will receive almost £42 million over the next four years helping support schools and head teachers who know their people's best to invest in approaches to improve children's literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing. A new education Scotland PEF resource has been published to support school leaders as it further developed its approaches to PEF. The sharing of effective practice, including how some schools in Fife have invested their PEF, helped staff to reflect and build on the practice to help to ensure that every young person in Scotland has an equal chance of success, including very importantly the members' children and young people in Coutinbeath constituency. To ask the Scottish Government what work has been done to close the attainment gap. The impact of the pandemic and the current cost of living crisis means accelerating progress to substantially eliminate the poverty-related attainment gap is as important as ever. That is why we are investing £1 billion this parliamentary term up from last term's £750 million. That includes the distribution of more than £520 million in pupil equity funding of more than £174 million to all 32 local authorities over the next four years, enabling them to make longer-term plans. Additionally, we provide local authorities with targeted funding for care experience children and young people. Finally, we have introduced a requirement for local authorities to set ambitious local stretch aims by 30 September to accelerate progress in closing the poverty-related attainment gap. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. The statistics show that the attainment gap for pupils achieving A to C at national five and higher has widened in the last year, with the gap at higher level nearly double the 2021 figure. Given that gap is getting wider, has the Scottish Government failed to tackle its supposed defining mission? I urge caution and comparisons from the 22 and 21 results, because, as members will know, there was an entirely different way that young people were assessed because of the pandemic. However, we have seen progress on positive signs in tackling the poverty-related attainment gap. For example, since 2009-10, at SCQF level five or better, the proportion of school leavers attaining one pass or more has increased by 19.5 percentage points for the most deprived areas. That shows that progress has been made, but we are aware that there is much more to do. That is exactly why we have been increasing investment in this area. The cabinet secretary has already cut vital attainment funding for the poorest communities in Scotland. However, we know that there is another £43 million of cuts coming to the education portfolio. Can the cabinet secretary guarantee to the chamber today that attainment funding will not be cut as part of that process and especially for the poorest communities that have suffered the brunt of the cuts that she has most recently made? As the member is well aware, the investment that is going in from the Scottish attainment challenge funding and particularly those that is now going to the 32 local authorities is a recognition of the fact that there is poverty in all parts of Scotland and the impact of the pandemic is throughout Scotland. It is very important that we recognise that and ensure that the local authorities right across Scotland have the funds available to be able to assist children and young people in this time. Cabinet secretary, we know that poverty is what drives the attainment gap. I welcome steps being taken by the Scottish Government that I hope will narrow the gap, like the game-changing Scottish child payment and the £1 billion investment over the lifetime of this Parliament through the Scottish attainment challenge. We need to see meaningful action coming from the UK Government. Ahead of the fiscal event tomorrow, does the cabinet secretary agree with me that the Tories should take the opportunity to end child poverty rather than deliver tax cuts for the rich? I thank the member for that very important question because we can do everything that we can within education and certainly our teachers and our local authorities are doing everything that they can to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap. The best way to tackle it is to tackle poverty itself. That is exactly why we are investing, for example, in the Scottish child payment. However, the member is quite right to point out to the fact that, if you look at the Westminster welfare reforms, they have severely impacted on families right across Scotland. If you look at, for example, the two-child limit removal to £20 uplift to universal credit, the benefit fees among others, if those were to be reversed, that would put £780 million into the pockets of Scottish households and lift 70,000 people, including 30,000 children, out of poverty next year. We will do all we can and we are determined to do so. It is unfortunate that the UK Government seems intent in prioritising bankers' bonuses rather than children. Stephen Kerr, back to education. When I was in the education committee, the cabinet secretary promised the committee that she would publish a statement of the expected outcomes and a plan for the £1 billion that is being spent over this Parliament. When will her statement, her plan, with these outcomes detailed with the plan, when will it be published so that we can review that at a further meeting of the education committee, which I am looking forward to rejoining? Can I welcome Stephen Kerr to his role as education spokesperson from the Scottish Conservatives? Can I gently say that education is impacted by many things? It is impacted by poverty. It is impacted by his Tory Government down in Westminster. If he does not see that, that is a disservice to the time that he will spend on the education committee. If he was listening to my answer to Alexander Stewart earlier on, he would have heard that the local authorities are set to give their local stretch aims to the Scottish Government by the 30th of September. Following the analysis of that, the Scottish Government will publish that and I look forward to appearing before the education committee. Should they wish me to do so, I am taking further questions from Stephen Kerr at that point. I am intrigued by the very careful language of the education secretary. She now says that she is going to substantially eliminate the poverty-related attainment gap. I have checked the SNP website. It is very clear that it wants to close the poverty-related attainment gap. The education secretary was pulled up by the First Minister before when she tried to slip away from the 2026 target for closing the poverty-related attainment gap. Is this another attempt to try to get round this very important target to help young people from our deprived communities? I quote from the 2016-17 programme for government, where it is said that the defining mission of this Government is to close the poverty-related attainment gap. We intend to make significant progress within the lifetime of this Parliament and substantially eliminate the gap over the course of the next decade. That is exactly what my answer is referred to and that is exactly what the policy of this Government remains. Question 3 is not lodged. Question 4, Cokab Stewart. I would like to ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the progress of its student accommodation strategy. Minister Jamie Hepburn, the Scottish Government is committed to delivering a student accommodation strategy for Scotland, which will, in part, be informed by a review of purpose-built student accommodation. The review will look at a number of issues, including supply and affordability. The PBSA research port has now been received and will be considered by a review group with recommendations being submitted to ministers later this year. Thank the minister for his answer. He will be aware that a number of institutions, including the University of Glasgow in my Glasgow-Kelvin constituency, find themselves unable to guarantee accommodation for the students this academic year and that this is the source of concern and anxiety for students and their families. Will he undertake to continue to work with institutions on the complex supply issues that they are facing to ensure that next year's intake does not face the same difficulties in securing appropriate accommodation? Yes, I can give that commitment. I am aware of the challenges that some students will face in attending the University of Glasgow. I should say that it is my understanding that all first-year undergraduates applied for accommodation by the deadline that has been set by the university who has not lived in our commute have now been offered accommodation. There are others who have not been able to thus far, and the university continues to work with it. As I have laid out, we have a commitment to our student accommodation strategy for Scotland and co-cab student and other members can be assured that we will work with Scotland's universities and others with an interest in that to take that forward. I have been contacted by multiple constituents saying that they have been advised by Glasgow University to suspend or withdraw from their courses. As they put it, Glasgow is full due to a significant contraction in the private rental market. The phrase of Allander Institute warns that this will get worse following the announcement of rank control. Further to co-cab Stuart's question about next year, my question is what will the minister do to help students now? It is interesting to see the Tory mass slips in terms of their opposition to rent control, but turning to the specific point of them. That is what I heard from Mr Gulhane very clearly. I am aware of the issues that we have made commitments to work towards a student accommodation strategy. That is exactly what we will do. He can be assured that we will continue to work with universities and others on that matter. If Mr Gulhane wants to make contact with me directly about any specific concerns, I will of course be happy to respond. Students have been venting their fury at the lack of accommodation with this Government failing to take any meaningful action to support them. Following the written answer that the minister gave to me yesterday, can he agree that the Scottish Government has a substantial additional responsibility under the Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014, the United Nations Convention, article 27 and article 29, to our young people who are under 18 who attend university that they be safe, accommodated and supported? The evidence is that this is not happening. Indeed, as we have heard, universities are asking them to drop out of their courses. Of course, we have responsibilities in that regard. I have laid out the work that is under way, the work that we will take forward. I would, of course, observe unless there is a suggestion that this should alter. The Scottish Government is not directly involved in the provision of housing for students, but of course we do recognise that we have responsibilities along the lines that Mr Whitfield has laid out. That will be at the heart of the strategy that we take forward. I am Beatrice Wishart. It has been well reported that other members have highlighted the serious lack of accommodation for students. Island students have also been experiencing major problems, just like the peers on the mainland. I was aghast to hear the short-sighted suggestion that students should suspend or defer their studies. Will the Government's student accommodation strategy include plans to guarantee students from Scotland's islands accommodation at their chosen place of study? Will it recognise that accommodation is required at UHI Shetland for those studying there, too? I go back to the point and understand the concerns that Ms Wishart has laid out, that there is no thus far direct role for the Scottish Government in terms of the provision of accommodation. I take the points that she makes. I take them seriously. Of course, as we take forward the strategy, of course we can consider that as a particular matter for the further reflection on it. The minister is only too happy to take the credit for when things go right, but it is absent when things go wrong. St Andrews has been quite a dramatic impact, as well. The minister knew that this was coming. We knew that there was going to be an uptick in student numbers as a result of Covid. We knew that there were consequences from the housing legislation whether we supported it or not, but the minister sat idly by and did nothing. What practical plan is going to make a change now, but also for next year, because this is not going away anytime soon? Mr Rennie is quite frequently as happy to derive me when I am apparently trying to take credit for the successes of this administration, but I will not linger on that too much longer. As I have laid out, we have plans to take forward the strategy. We have already taken on board the purpose-built accommodation research report. That will be considered further. We will consider those issues as part of the strategy that we take forward. I understand the stresses that are in the housing market right now. There is a degree to which we are seeking to work through that with a wider housing policy in tackling short-term lets, for example, to make sure that there is increased supply in the private sector. Fundamentally, through the strategies that we will take forward, we will look to tackle those issues and improve the current situation. Question 5 is not lodged. Question 6 is withdrawn. Question number 7 is Liz Smith. To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it is having with local authorities regarding child protection policies in schools. All children in Scotland should grow up feeling safe, loved and respected. The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that robust child protection measures are in place across Scotland. Last year, we published updated national child protection guidance. The Scottish Government engages regularly with local authorities on the implementation of consistent good practice on this critical issue. The national guidance implementation group was set up last September to lead on that activity. Education Scotland and the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland are both represented on the group. Liz Smith. I am sure that the minister is aware of the article that was in the Pershar edition of the Courier on 5 September, in which it reported that there had been a very high absence rate of child protection committee members. That encompasses both Perth and Ross Council and NHS Tayside staff. There was a total of 148 apologies over the course of two years, with three members of that committee missing on 12, 11 and 9 times respectively. Can I ask the Scottish Government what action it is going to take to impress upon both local authorities and health boards the importance of people turning up to these meetings, particularly at a time when we have so many vulnerable children who are desperate for our assistance? I thank Liz Smith for her follow-up question, and I think that she raises a very important point. Child protection, child safeguarding is everyone's business, whether that is in education or in health. I will certainly have my officials look into that and come back to writing. How can the Scottish Government be assured that the new national child protection guidance is being implemented in schools? Can the minister comment on how the Scottish Government is ensuring oversight of private music or dance lessons both in schools and other settings? Local authority schools, grant-aided special schools and independent schools were instructed to review and update their procedures in line with the 2021 national guidance. The national child protection guidance implementation group was established to support that implementation. A monitoring and evaluation subgroup is developing an approach to monitoring the extent and the quality of guidance implementation, and this multi-agency subgroup includes education. With regard to the point about private music or dance lessons within schools, the 2021 national guidance describes the responsibilities and expectations of everyone who works with children, young people and their families in Scotland. It makes clear that those responsible for the organisation of activities, regulated or otherwise, must ensure that safeguarding is integral to recruitment, training and oversight of staff and volunteers, and that children know how and with whom they can voice questions and concern. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support pupils with the declared or assessed disability at school? We are committed to ensuring that all children and young people get the additional support needed to reach their full learning potential, including those with disabilities. We published our joint response to the independently chaired review of the implementation of additional support for learning in October 2020. The action plan sets out the measures that we will take to implement the recommendations. We will publish an updated action plan in autumn 2022. Further, under the Equality Act 2010, responsible bodies, including local authorities, have a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils and provide auxiliary aids and services. The stats show that there has been no noticeable improvement in the attainment gap between declared and assessed disabled children and non-declared and assessed children, particularly at national 5 and higher level in the past five years. Therefore, the policy is simply not working. Will the Scottish Government's approach change to allow disabled people to do better in school, and when will this be implemented? I thank Jeremy Balfour for raising this important issue. I think that the updated action plan that I spoke about in my original answer contains the measures that are required to ensure that our education system is working effectively for all children and young people. I would, of course, be happy to have further discussions with Mr Balfour following today, should he wish to raise particular issues that he does not think were in the previous action plan or that should be in the updated action plan. I would be happy to receive correspondence from him on that issue, should he wish to write to me further. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Support for people with a disability in schools is certainly an issue that has been raised by my Cowton Beath constituents over the years. It seems to me that much anguish could be avoided if there were more early and direct engagement on the part of the school with the people and their family. I ask the cabinet secretary what she could do to help to ensure that that happens in schools in my Cowton Beath constituency and across Scotland. I agree with the context that Annabelle Ewing has described. It is incredibly important that not only schools but everybody involved in the life of a child and a young person has very close discussions with that young person directly and also with the family at the earliest opportunity and, importantly, continues to provide the support to that family even before diagnosis is given. It can be a very difficult time for families. It does not need to necessarily be as difficult as it is for many families. I am sure that Annabelle Ewing has had those kinds of constituents' issues in her mailbag. I think that there is a role for education in that and a role for the wider Government and local agencies to play a part in that, too. Thank you very much. That concludes portfolio questions. There will be a brief pause before we move to the next item of business.


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.


Yeah, so first of all, I would like to thank the organizers for the invitation and the great honor to speak here in Trieste This talk will tie in a little bit to the previous talks We're talking about strain how to apply strain in an experimental way and two examples I will talk about our strontium ruthenate and iron cell night So first of all, I would like to acknowledge all the people involved in these projects This is mostly the team around Andy Mackenzie's group at the Max Planck Institute for chemical physics of solids in Dresden and For strontium ruthenate. We had lots of theoretical support by Thomas Gaffidi and Stephen Simon from Oxford Some of the samples are grown by Alexandra Gibbs And we also had a lot of input from Yoshi Mino from Kyoto University For iron cell night, we had a very nice collaboration with Suguru Hoso and Takasadashi Boushi Will give us samples and important input to the theory So a brief outline. So first I want to motivate the story a little bit We look at tuning and condensed matter why we should look at uniaxial strain and What we classically use as tuning parameters for example for quantum phase transition here I've brought up Classical system e-turbium rhodium 2 silicon 2 which if you tune down to very low temperatures You have anti ferromagnetic order which can be suppressed by applying a magnetic field Along the c-direction of the system and then you have here a quantum critical point Which is indicated by this large kind of funnel shaped Resistivity exponent that's close to one so linear resistivity over a wide range of the phase diagram Another classical tuning parameter and condensed matter is of course chemical composition and here shown is the phase diagram of high-temperature Cucarates and what we can see here is by changing the chemical composition We can go from anti ferromagnetic order to a wide range of metallic behavior to strange metal behavior and Possibly also tuning to two different quantum critical points here within the superconducting phase And we've seen already in the morning a little bit that if you apply pressure to iron cell and night you can Influence the nematic order you can induce a magnetic order here and you have a Change of the superconductivity on a wine temperature scale by applying pressure and Now looking a little bit what happens with uniaxial pressure or strain here is a tight binding calculation of strong subruthanate 214 and what we see here is that basically a lot of materials if we look at here That is the Fermi surface in the AB plane if we apply hydrostatic pressure We will see a very small change and if we apply a comparable uniaxial pressure we can often see dramatic changes to the Fermi surface and shown here below our band structure calculations where we see that for a Strain of 0.75 percent we can drive this system already to a lifts its transition And this is not achievable with hydrostatic pressure under normal experimental conditions Furthermore if we compare the Experimental accessible strain this corresponds to a Zeeman energy of more than 100 tesla and it's a very clean Tuning parameter we can apply it in situ down to 100 milli Kelvin also in high Fields and it's also a continuous parameter Now coming to a little bit the experimental setup. How can you actually apply strain to single crystals? The standard way is basically you take a sample and you would clamp it between two end valves Then that allows you at least to apply pressure But if you want to actually strain it it would be better if you can go in both directions And what we tried in our first iteration is attach the sample to a piezoelectric actuator Which allows you to apply tension and compression to the sample and Then if you take into account the system when you cool it down you have a relatively large differential thermal contraction between the sample and the surrounding Instrument then you can take three piezoelectric actuators, and then you compensate this differential thermal expansion Now going a little bit further. We also want to restrict any movement in the other directions to have really uniaxial pressure So we integrated some linear flexures here and have the sample glued to this movable anvil in the center of the device Now to create more Symmetric conditions to the sample we basically add small clamps on top and Then this is shown here basically a sketch of how the actual sample is mounted So we have a long straight bar we use here for example electrical contacts to measure the resistivity The sample is attached with a small amount of epoxy to the sample plates and more details of the setup in this reference Now a little bit. What can we actually achieve with our devices? So if we then apply a voltage to the inner stack that is shown here the stack expands We can reach compression if we have a voltage to the outer stacks We basically pull this back and achieve tension to the sample and Here is one of our devices the body is shown here is made out of titanium in this setup We can reach strains up to approximately 1% in a temperature range between 300 and 100 mili Kelvin And the samples are millimeter sized single crystals And currently what we can measure is for example AC susceptibility in a very crude way by attaching just a Susceptometer coil on top of the sample. We can also measure resistivity As AC specific heat and are trying now to integrate scanning Hall probe measurements into the setup Now coming a little bit to the first example of Stront's Ruthenade Where we're trying to probe the superconductivity with uniaxial strain So a brief introduction to Stront's Ruthenade here on the left hand side is shown the tetragonal crystal structure Which is analogous to the high temperature superconductors The electronic structure in this material is nearly two-dimensional and Several of the 4d ruthenium orbitals contribute to the Fermi surfaces The material is at low temperatures a very nice Fermi liquid behavior, which is shown here in the t-squared resistivity The anisotropy is quite high So if we compare the resistivity along the c-axis to the ab plane we get a ratio of about 1400 Now shown here on the left hand side are the three Fermi surfaces in the ab plane And Experimentally these have been very well characterized using various quantum oscillation methods It's relatively clear and uncontroversial that is an unconventional superconductor This is shown here for example in measurements of tc versus An amount of disorder for different samples And so basically as soon as you reach a disorder level that's above one micro ohm centimeter The sample is not superconducting anymore and that limits a little bit the research in this material Because for example for thin films you cannot reach currently samples with residual resistances less than 10 micro ohm centimeters And early on from thermodynamic measurements, but most importantly from the nmr night shift It was kind of clear that it's a special type of superconductor He has shown the night shift as we go through the superconducting transition Compared to the normal prediction of a spin singlet superconductor and essentially you see a constant night shift in the ab plane When cooling the sample down So this was indication that it's not a spin singlet superconductor and further experiments that kind of show that The potential order parameters of odd parity is shown here. These are muon spin resonance experiments for both In the ab plane and along the c axis and we see for both directions kind of Exactly as we enter the superconducting state An internal field that the muons feel and this field has a range of approximately 0.5 Gauss So this shows really the time reversal symmetry in this material is broken in the superconducting state And further evidence for this time reversal symmetry breaking comes here from polar curl rotation measurements Where as shown here is basically the electrical resistivity which drops here at tc and at exactly the same time We see an increase in the curl rotation. This is on a very small scale But the magnitude of the effect is comparable to other spin triplet superconductors like uranium platinum 3 And further experiments kind of hinting at odd parity pairing come from Josephine interferometry experiments But this is as far as I know not as reproducible On the other hand, there's also some evidence that the system is not a simple odd parity superconductor shown here is the Face diagram where if we apply a field along the ab plane the transition becomes first order And that is of course an hint for pauli limiting which is incompatible with the proposed spin triplet superconductivity And furthermore from the The basically predicted state where we have internal fields. We would also see Currents in the sample and here are measurements of scanning quit squid experiments where we see here the data and that is Drawn here the expected signal of these currents and their approximately effect of 1000 below the prediction So at this point, it's kind of clear from the experimental side We have more or less some evidence for some evidence against it And we're trying now to explore this a little bit with uniaxial strain and our hypothesis is basically for Px plus ip y wave function if we look at the low strain region What should happen is that we break The tetragonal symmetry of the system and then if we apply anisotropic strain We should see a small cusp in tc over strain and renormalized bend structure calculations show that the cusp at zero strain should have Magnitude of approximately 300 millikelvin per percent of strain And furthermore from the band structure calculations We hope to reach at higher strain the van Hof singularity Which is indicated here by a large increase of the density of states and Furthermore if we look a little bit at the orbital limits in the simplest case here If we consider the upper critical field this proportional to 1 over the coherence length And this is in principle Kind of an average of the gap times the density of states squared And if we hold others all other things equal in the system we Kind of expect that the upper critical field scales as tc squared And now considering that here are shown two brilliant zones if we have pot parity pairing That requires that the gap exactly when these two Points touch is zero and so here exactly the firm reverse velocity is small So from the symmetry argument we would expect that hc2 actually decreases And these are we coupling renormalization group Calculations which kind of support this very basic symmetry argument shown here is basically what happens to the ratio of hc2 over tc squared For applied strain for a p-wave scenario where the ratio actually goes down where the Here we have a very strong increase for a dx squared minus y squared order parameter And Basically Trying to reach high compressions in stront's ruthenate has already be done in chemical ways. And here's shown up as results of chemical substituted stront's Ruthenate and from these we know that the van Hofstingularity is approximately 14 millilevel Below the Fermi level and for substitution levels of about 20 percent who can reach this And similarly here with biaxial strain thin films you can reach the van Hofstingularity by basically Applying stront's ruthenate compared on other substrate materials In both cases though the high amount of disorder only allows to study the electronic properties But not the superconduct defeat t in this material And similarly it has early on been shown that you can increase tc For example by including small amounts of ruthenium or by applying uniaxial pressure between anvils Which is shown here for different kind of uniaxial pressures We see an increase in tc, but of course the the onset is very broad So you can't really distinguish different types of superconductivity from this measurement So coming a little to our results now of the ac susceptibility We have the sample here now under compression and we're measuring the ac susceptibility By putting a coil on top This is the unstrained sample where we see a very nice sharp transition around 1.5 kelvin And by increasing the compression now we see that the transition moves up Gets a little bit broader which is due to strain and homogeneity along the axis of our sample And then going further we can increase this and at approximately 0.6 percent We see now a change in the behavior We see now this very sharp onset here And by going even further we see that the onset doesn't move but we see a decrease at Lower temperatures again So if we put all that together into a phase diagram We see here for different samples that we can More than double the critical temperature of this material If we look closer around zero strain we see a more or less broad quadratic behavior And at high strain we see basically for all samples kind of a finite range Where we really say we have reached the maximum tc in this material And for higher compression going beyond we see the steep decrease of tc And so comparing that to kind of the same range the predicted range We think we really have reached now basically the van Hof singularity at this compression And very recent results of the same setup have integrated a squinting squint setup And what is shown here is basically this is the setup also using the same strain system And putting a small scanning squint center into the center And here is shown a map a local map of tc of the material in the unstrained state And we see on a scale of 50 microns we have a lot of inhomogeneities and ruthenium inclusions But still looking at different spots here we can try to resolve The tc versus strain dependence for the different points And then comparing that to kind of the predicted casp magnitude We can try adding kind of the linear term And fitting that to the data of all the different observed points here We see clearly that the prediction really does not match the kind of combined data So if there is a casp in this material then it's an order of magnitude lower than the prediction And we also looked now at critical fields This is now shown here for the system right at the van Hof singularity with tc of 3.4 kelvin What we see is that we increased the critical field along the ab plane by a factor of approximately 2 point over a factor of 20 And if we compare that basically with previous data We see here that we have an enhancement of hc2 over tc2 of about 3.6 So this clearly shows it's more compatible with a spin singlet scenario If we have the material under strong uniaxial strain And if we look at the phase diagram under magnetic fields This also reminiscent of the three kelvin phase around ruthenium inclusions that have been found earlier Yeah, so we can conclude a little bit for Strontium ruthenate That with uniaxial strain we can enhance tc up to 3.4 kelvin The peak in tc corresponds to a lift transition And that our hc2 data suggests that we have spin singlet pairing at the peak And also kind of the first order of behavior here is indicative of a Pauli limiting in this material And furthermore the three kelvin phase is probably a strain effect Yeah, coming now a little bit now to our very recent results on iron cell night Here we're trying with uniaxial strain to probe the pneumatic properties of this material A short introduction in the morning we heard a lot about this already What's important for us is shown here is the tetragonal crystal structure at high temperatures Which becomes orthorhombic at about 90 kelvin And here on the right hand side is shown the phase diagram from thermal expansion measurements Where basically if you take the material and measure the orthorhombic A-axis You see a strong decrease along the one direction and basically an increase along the other direction And if you don't apply any kind of external pressure or force Then you have a lot of twinned state in your material And of course this spontaneous breaking of the rotational symmetry is An indicator for pneumatic behavior Here's shown the evolution of the fermion surfaces This is mostly from ARPIS data What happens is basically that the whole like in the center and the electron likes At the boundary of the brilliant zone become Distorted we have here an ellipsoid and here these peanut shapes And we have comparatively here so a shortening of the B-axis a lengthening of the A-axis And what makes the electronic structure complicated as we saw already is that All d orbitals contribute to the electronic structure And further evidence for the pneumaticity comes from illustrious activity measurements Here is shown the 2M66 coefficient, which is basically kind of The susceptibility to the orthorhombic transition and we see this Divergence here towards the structural transition temperature, which goes with a Curie Weiss kind of behavior Now a little bit the motivation for our experience First of all we wanted to look a little bit into the dependence of TC with applied strain And furthermore if the pneumatic order parameter has a special symmetry Maybe we can couple to that with applying strain For example if we strain a sample along the crystallographic 110 direction This is basically the B2G strain And this shear component should then couple to the order parameter Furthermore we wanted to look also a little bit in the wider phase diagram at the resistance which we can hopefully experimentally access And for this very ductile material we had to modify our setup a little bit You cannot really compress iron cell knighted So what we did we developed a platform technique Where here the actual strain from the piezo device is put into a small titanium platform And we glued the sample into the center of the platform And here are shown FEA simulations which show that we have a relatively homogeneously strained region in the center of the device And we calibrated that by an optical method which is shown here Where we measure the displacement and compare that to the strain in the platform And then here is shown kind of the experimental setup Where we have here kind of the side view of the platform Where the sample is glued onto the titanium with a thin amount of epoxy Our samples are between 10 and 25 microns thick And are grown via chemical vapor transport And here is shown a setup where we have basically the sample glued to the center of the platform And electrical contacts are done via sputtered gold and silver epoxy on top And then in the actual experiment we control and basically determine the strain By a simple plate capacitor method Now looking a little bit okay what are expectations for the order parameters In a very simple two order perimeter Ginsberg-Landau treatment If we have nematic order and strain and apply stress And we have no coupling between the two of them What we expect is basically for applied stress that the strain in the sample just linearly increases And we have no no coupling to the nematicity Now if we kind of let them couple a little bit What we expect is that instead of the lower ordering temperature We have now for in both a single transition temperature And for any applied stress we also have a non-zero order parameter at high temperatures as well When we break already the symmetry And here we assumed basically in linear coupling in first order And now this kind of very simple picture Would lead to a phase diagram that looks like here If we could hold actually the local strain fixed What we expect is like a ferromagnetic in field If we apply a small field we would see here this crossover at higher temperatures And going at lower temperatures we would expect the first order transition Now the sample can build twin boundaries and domains And so what we can in our experiment only do is we can hold the average strain constant By gluing it to the platform And so what we expect is that we actually have a transition here And by applying strain we enter this domain phase So here we have the first order transition On both sides on compression and tension And we hope to kind of explore this phase diagram Yeah and we did this with electrical resistance measurements First we focus a little bit at the region near TS And here we perform temperature sweeps And this is kind of the raw data And we see here this kind of kink like feature in the resistivity And if we apply now either tension or compression We see that the transition gets much broader very quickly But also in both directions moves towards lower temperatures And to identify the transition We looked a little bit at the first and second derivative And then applied a Gaussian fit to the derivative of the electrical resistance And with this we're trying to create a phase diagram And here is shown the structural transition temperature That under strain applied along the 110 direction This is not coupling then to the pneumatic order Or the orthorhombicity And here we just see a very shallow slope With a linear behavior along the whole applied strain range And then if we apply strain along the 110 direction That is along the orthorhombic distortion Then we see here this approximately quadratic behavior For the three different samples And we also see that the width of the transition Increases a little bit by applying higher strain And we further look into the elasto resistance By applying strain sweeps here right below the Structural transition temperature And what we can see here is basically that By going down in temperature Now we're entering the twin region Here we have a very nice linear behavior of the resistivity Which can be shown here in the first derivative Where we basically go from this kind of quadratic behavior Above the structural transition temperature To a linear behavior within the phase So in principle we can access directly the resistance anisotropy Where we can either have the sample in the state Where everything is along the A direction Or where we measure the resistance Along the B direction of the sample And from this if we compare that a little bit To previous measurements of x-ray data From iron cell light we have scaled this Here and shown as a guide to the iron We see that is quite comparable to the data previously published Now coming to lower temperatures We looked at domains And what we did here this is within the phase Going down in temperature and then sweeping the strain And what we see here is not really a hysteretic behavior But what we think is that we're kind of annealing Out domain wall boundaries And basically if we go further out We see always a decrease in temperature Until we exit the phase So it's not really that the amount of domains Is the dominating scattering factor here About the amount of domain walls And if we go down in temperature and further out We can also see kind of this closing Of the hysteretic behavior So here we have a fully detuned sample And coming now to the last Measurements at low temperatures Here we look at the superconducting transition This is here different cuts at low temperatures Into the resistivity data And we see basically here very nicely that In the twin region we have an absolutely Dynia behavior of TC with applied strain Along the 110 direction With a slope of approximately 1 Kelvin per percent So that measures in principle not the B2G But the basically the perpendicular The A1G response of the superconductivity to strain Here and with this I would like to conclude For iron cell night With our platform technique We can apply compressive strains up to 0.6 percent Now with also ductile materials We can probe with strain in both directions And we see signatures of the structural Transition temperature We can map out the elastor resistance Look at domain wall contributions And see a very large response of TC With applied strain Here and with this I would like to summarize We have a uniaxial strain setup Which is kind of a new tuning parameter And condensed matter We can apply this to very hard bulk materials And reach large changes in the electronic structure We can now also apply this to very thin and ductile materials And in transruthanate We can tune TC over a wide range And our HC2 data suggests That we have spin singlet pairing When we reach the high TC state And furthermore We are now exploring also iron cell night And trying to map out the phase diagram And access basically the whole region Where the sample is twinned And also go beyond the twinned region And with this I would like to thank you for your attention