Hi, and welcome back to this video course on biological psychology in this video video 4.4 We're going to take a look at working memory or sometimes called short-term memory Now so what is working memory in the previous video? We've seen that all basically all visual stimuli that we see Briefly form a sensory memory, right? They're sort briefly Reverberate in your visual brain areas and the same is true for sounds that briefly reverberate in your auditory brain areas, etc As soon as we perceive something we have a very brief sensory memory of it Now this sensory memory as we've seen Disappears after about one second but what you what you can do is you can pay attention to some of the things that are in your sensory memory and This paying attention Keeps the representation of these these these items active and that is working memory So imagine for example, you see a display with 12 digits on it, right? Those 12 digits are too much you work you will forget them But what you can do is pay attention to only a few of those digits and then you can rehearse say three or four of those Digits that you see keep those active in your working memory, right? So what happens then is that you see 12 digits You have a very brief sensory memory of all 12 digits and then you form a working memory of only three or four of those digits That's the idea of working memory Now and working memory is roughly equivalent to the term short-term memory I would say it's mostly a fashion choice of fashion whether you want to call it short-term memory It's a bit old-fashioned maybe or working memory, which is the term that most researchers use nowadays Now working memory has a very limited capacity And I gave the example with that you're able to remember only three or four digits It depends kind of on the sense that you write the sense that you are using for your working memory So and also on how you measure the capacity of your working memory, but roughly speaking Visual working memory sometimes called the visual spatial sketchpad has a capacity of about four items So you can sort of in your mind's eye you can sort of memorize three to four items what they look like visually Well your auditory memory sometimes called the the phonological loop auditory visual Auditory working memory has a somewhat higher capacity of about about seven items, right? So if you hear for example a phone number of ten digits, that's too much You will not really be able to remember that but seven digits to a lot of people is barely doable, right? You start to you maybe you're able to rehearse those seven digits in Effectively in your working memory Auditory, right? So for vision seven items would be too much, but for for hearing for audition it would be okay Now this cognitive framework that you have That you have different forms of working memory and especially the the visual form of working memory Which he badly called the visual spatial sketch visual spatial sketchpad or the auditory form of working memory Which he called the phonological loop was developed as I as I said by Ellen badly in the 1970s It's a very influential model of working memory, but I think it's somewhat outdated It's not really incorrect as such I would say but nowadays we have more refined Ways to think about working memory than just thinking it thinking about it in terms of boxes that have a particular Modality attached to them and a particular capacity now in the previous video about sensory memory. We saw this partial report paradigm that Sterling used in the in the 1960s to test sensory memory and you can test almost the same paradigm Test working memory with almost the same paradigm The only thing that you have to change is add some delay between the stimuli and the recall queue recall queue so imagine that so you imagine that we're Memorize we asked a participant to memorize these three by four Letters right and digits actually Then if we show the letters very briefly and then immediately afterwards within one seconds ask the participant Okay, report the top right location. Then we're tapping into sensory memory, right? Because we're still in the time range of sensory memory about one second But if we do the exact same experiment, but we wait a little bit So we present all 12 letters and then we wait say five seconds Then all those letters have faded from sensory memory and in order to remember any of the letters You need to actively pay attention to them and rehearse them, right? So you need to use your working memory and then you will find that performance is much worse because the capacity of working memory is much lower than that of Sensory memory, right and people participants will be able to recall maybe three or four letters Another way to tap into working memory is to mask stimuli So that would mean that you first present these three by four letters and digits and then immediately afterwards you present 12 hashtags, for example at the same location and then what you're essentially doing is Overwriting the sensory memory with those hashtags and then the only thing that is left is your working memory that you actively rehearse All right, so it's a very simple way to test the capacity of working memory of people using this partial report paradigm How exactly neural neuraly working memory works is still quite unclear But I think there are three main hypotheses And the traditional hypothesis which we'll take a look at first is that the frontal cortex has Areas that are dedicated to working memory, right? So your frontal cortex is the part of the brain that's in front and that is not really Directly involved with one specific modality And there would be sort of special brain areas that implement working memory. That's the traditional traditional model a More modern way to think about working memory is that working memory is essentially a form of perception without actual Any sensation coming in, right? So in that case with working memory Corresponds to you could say sustained activity in sensory brain areas So to make it a bit more concrete It would mean for example that if you working memory of something visual a visual stimulus would basically trigger the same kind of activity In your occipital cortex in your visual brain areas that actually seeing that same stimulus also Triggers, right? So we sort of reusing our visual brain areas for visual working memory And we would be using reusing our auditory brain areas for auditory working memory, etc So it's quite an attractive idea And I would say a state of the art model is kind of a mixture of the two and To my view, but it's a this we don't know it's just my opinion But to in my view this sort of state of the art mixture model probably approximates the truth best And the idea is that working memory can be either active or passive so that there are different ways in which you can keep things in working memory We'll take a look at that later And that when you keep something actively in working memory It is indeed represented in your visual brain areas if it is a visual item or in your auditory brain areas if it's an auditory item, etc But if it is not visual But if it's not active so if you're keeping Multiple items in working memory most of these items would be past represented in a kind of passive way And that would them maybe indeed be done in your frontal cortex, right? So the idea being that you have one active item in working memory and multiple sort of passive items in working memory We'll take a look at some evidence in favor of this idea in a minute But let's start with the idea that there is a link between working memory and the frontal cortex, which there certainly is And there are a set of classic experiments and one very nice one was what done by Goldman Rakic and colleagues in which they trained monkeys to make memory-guided saccades So a memory-guided saccade is simply the monkey looks at a fixation dot like this and then you flash for example Stimulus here and then after you ask the monkey to your train the monkey to remember to to to be able to do this task After say a few seconds the monkey makes an eye movement to the location that was cute, right? So the monkey makes an eye movement, but not immediately after a little delay So there's an element. It's just like very very simple working memory, right?  That's a very powerful technique and it has taught us a lot About how the brain works regardless of how you might feel about that kind of animal treatment from an ethical point of view And then the following came out. So this looks really complicated, but I'll walk you through it. It's not that difficult So say that the monkey was preparing an eye movement down So the monkey was initially fixating here and preparing an eye movement down to this dot here Then what they found was during the delay period So while the monkey wasn't new already that it was going to make a second downwards But did not yet execute that's a cat, right? So it's a cat is an eye movement They saw that some neurons specific neurons started to fire Encoding essentially for the downward position On other trials where the monkey would make an eye movement to the left a different set of neurons would start to fire If they would a monkey would make an eye movement to up a different set would start to fire, right? So different sets of neurons encoded for different positions the memories of different positions So clearly these these neurons in the frontal cortex had some information about what this monkey was keeping in in his or her working memory, right because You can tell from this pattern of results right if you look at these neurons you can say, okay This monkey is his head has a downward cicada in working memory So this information is very simple form of working memory was clearly represented by these neurons in the frontal cortex of the monkey a very striking very very profound finding So that's where the idea comes from that the frontal cortex is involved in working memory Now we also have evidence that sensory brain areas are involved in working memory Right and that comes from many types of experiments But for example the following kind of experiment say that you now we're not measuring monkeys But we're measuring human humans in an fMRI scanner So we are measuring their brain activity using functional magnetic red resonance imaging And then we asked a participant to keep for example a line in working memory and the line can for example Be tilted like this or like this and a participant has to say it has to remember what what the orientation of the line is now then With the brain activity that is measured Through fMRI and some computational processing right in a computer You can determine what the participant is memorizing keeps is keeping in working memory in other words You can sort of read you read the mind of that participant You sort of decode the content of the working memory of that participant based on brain activity and more specifically Based on brain activity in the visual cortex not in frontal cortex, but in the visual cortex in other words The visual cortex in this type of experiment contains some information about what the that person is keeping in working memory So visual cortex therefore encodes working memory at least in some cases right So the studies by goldman rakeach and colleagues using the monkeys Shows that working memory is related to the frontal cortex And here these studies show that working memory is also related to the sensory cortices right and I think they're both quite Compelling findings they both show tell us something about how working memory works But they tell us something different Right, so what is the role of the frontal cortex and what is the role of the sensory cortex? So Well, let's go back to the sensory cortex this kind of suggests that we reuse brain areas Right, so it suggests that if we have a brain area that's involved in vision So our primary visual cortex here Then we use that same brain area for visual working memory And if we have an area that's involved in hearing we use that for auditory working memory, etc A very elegant idea. I think very for very parsimonious Now one question that you can ask yourself is if you are remembering Multiple things that use essentially the same visual brain areas. How can you do that? Right? So for example, how is it possible that we can remember multiple objects that were presented at the same location? So these would these these objects would activate similar activity in your visual brain areas So it's difficult to see how you can remember all of those different things in the same visual brain areas Right in a sense, they just don't fit that we our visual brain areas are just not Don't have the representational capacity to represent all the things that we can keep in working memory or Maybe they do but that is one that is at least one argument that you can raise against this model of working memory So more recently People have tried to reconcile this this idea that you use your frontal cortex and use your visual cortex using kind of mixture model And this mixture model suggests that you can generally keep one active item in your working memory really active That's the item that you are going to use immediately Right. So imagine that you're in a supermarket and you have a lot of things on your in sort of in your mental shopping list The then one of the things that you have on your mental shopping list is the thing that you're looking for right now Right. So for example, I want to I want to get I want to get a beer. I want to get a sugar and I want to get milk And then but right now I'm searching for the milk So the milk would then be active in my working memory and the sugar and the beer would be still in my working memory But less active and the ideas of this this type of model is that that active work active item in your working memory Would be represented in your sensory areas Whereas multiple items that are not active are represented somewhere else possibly in your frontal cortex Right. So that there are different ways to represent things that are in your working memory Kind of goes against the idea that visual working memory or working memory in general is one thing Right because it suggests that there are different forms of working memory Which is not really attractive to most scientists. We like to reduce things make things simpler, right? So to make to basically Reduce all different forms of memory into one form of memory Because it makes life easier it makes life we if things are simple That's more elegant as an as a scientific theory And what this mixture model does is actually make things more difficult because it takes a concept working memory that we thought of as one concept and Tears it apart into different kinds of things, right? So it makes a messy world even messier But that does not mean that it's not true. Obviously um, so in uh, uh, researchers such as christian olivers and masut hussein and others have done quite some work Uh, suggesting that this mixture model has some truth to it. I think Now, um Let's take a look at one specific experiment, which uh, I think supports Somewhat supports this idea that there is a mixture model So what in this experiment participants have to do? I walk you through it This is this is really if you're not familiar with kind of neuroscience experiments This may be a bit tricky, but I think it's interesting if you if you follow me So what participants have to do here is remember two motions. So first they see a dot So cloud of dots here green that's moving for example a little To the to the bottom right and then there's a cloud of dots that is moving upwards Um, and then after so they see them both first the first and the second and then they have to reproduce these uh the orientations um Now they are presented one after another and the assumption that they make which is quite an assumption But there's something to it is that the last thing that is presented is active Right so there you can have things that are active in working memory and less active And the thing that is presented less the red the red dots in this case would be active According to them Then what they do, uh so, uh So at the end of the trial, right when participants are reporting the the motions the first motion the green one in this case Would be inactive and the last motion the red one would be active Now what they then do is apply tms. Now. What is tms? Tms is essentially a magnetic pulse that you can apply to the brain of a human or of anything But also of a human because it's kind of harmless and it disrupts Brain activity So if you apply tms over your visual cortex, you will start it will disrupt visual brain activity And you will start seeing all kinds of things that are not there right sort of hallucinations And what they did is they applied tms to area m m t plus Which is and that is very crucial and this is an area that is evolved in the perception of visual motion Why is that important? Well, because the participants here where we were memorizing visual motion, right? So say that both these these motion the the this motion and the upward motion here would be represented in area m t plus Then applying tms to area m t plus should disrupt performance of both Both stimuli right both the green and the red one But what they found Was that the memory was actually impaired only for the last item. So the one that was active And improved for the actually the inactive item Suggesting That this active item was represented in area m t plus right So do you see the logic they sort of disrupt activity in your sensory brain areas with with TMS And then they they look at what that does to your working memory and in this case They find that it disrupts the working memory only of the active item the last presented item the red one in this case And hence they conclude that only the active item was represented in your in your sensory brain areas That's the logic that they have here and that kind of suggests indirectly And there's certainly much more to be said here and much more to be replicated also This is I think the kind of finding that you need to replicate But it kind of suggests that there really is a qualitative difference between things that are active in your working memory Which are represented in sensory brain areas and things that are not active in working memory Right because only the active item was disrupted by tms Okay, now with that fairly technical story, which I hope you enjoyed Let's move on to the next video video 4.5 in which we're going to take a look at long-term memory


If you're willing to close your eyes or and take the arm or the hand of someone standing next to you or people standing next to you lower your eyes and For those who've walked today Think of the miles you've walked Since middle sex for those who started yesterday think of the sleet For those who started on Sunday Bring back the memory of that hillside in Caprax Park Our time together. Thank you for your feet Thank you legs and thank you friends who have held one another up as we walk these many miles Let's go tell these folks across the street Just why this is so important for us and for all of us Why we put those blisters on our feet why we've endured that cold and sleep Share our hearts and our love and our hope For the new world we wish to have reborn. I'm Rob kid with the Sierra Club first off my heart is So grateful for the those who marched from Middlebury to Mount Hillier today and the last five days to demand climate action to sad state of affairs that we have in Vermont that supposedly green Vermont is Not really moving forward on addressing climate and there's like all these different fears are happening whether it's gonna cost too much money Or whether it's gonna impact so-and-so is too much We're just not gonna stand still so while we have other states going to a hundred percent renewable energy implementing electric vehicle incentives we're debating policies that are gonna implement small Incremental changes and that's not what needed the gravity of this crisis is for a strong climate action That's a simplified action recently at the house past the weatherization bill age 439 to kind of double the Revenues for the home weatherization program to make sure that people low incomes have the money to weatherize their homes that's saving energy and Saving money and creating local jobs, but there's people who are kind of upset over that They're thinking it's a regressive and they think it's not gonna do enough help Well, you know, there's come to the point that we need to come up and act boldly on things implement policies that are gonna Be the right thing for our future future generations not just for one time One person we need to think about the whole and and so that's what I see a lot of the folks out here marching Are doing they're telling us, you know enough is enough what's act on us which create these bold solutions Now what's banned fossil fuel infrastructures? What's past the global warming solutions act? What's explore carbon pricing all those other elements what's really promote electric vehicle incentives? You know the Vermont energy action network released a report that said in order to reach our climate goals for transportation We're gonna have to have 90,000 electric vehicles right now We have less than 3000 electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids So was the governor proposed an electric vehicle incentive program that only covers about promoting 200 to 300 new vehicles You know one of the members of the house basically said the governor's request is piddly And this is you know a leader in the Vermont State House saying the governor's request is piddly So what happens our legislative leaders are passing piddly legislation So I'm glad this like I said, I'm glad to see the folks here in 350 and all the other movement organizers are out here today marching for climate justice Cool cool What about yeah, but what about saying something about the climate bills? None of the climate bills that have come up in the last four years have actually been acted upon Well, I mean that's a lot. There's a lot of fear going on. Everybody's always about gloom and doom Like this is gonna this bill is gonna cost too much money or it's gonna not Help so-and-so and the real reality is is If we don't do something we're gonna we're gonna be dead in the water So like, you know, particularly originally four years ago. We introduced a carbon pricing bill that equitably Distributed money back into the economy invested money in renewables that would help people transition to new energy futures Now, that's what we need to do even like the The last addition to the carbon pricing bill. Nobody wanted to do it because There's a lot of fear about it's going to cost 80 cents per gallon But in reality these programs are going to actually make it more Economically efficient for the state of vermont 76 cents per Of every dollar spent on fossil fuels gets shipped out of state So why are we doing programs that are just going to continue supporting our Fossil fuel industry and out of state and even out of country We want to create local jobs here. And that's why some of these climate bills that are being addressed are just not being Taken up. So that's why people need to make sure they always contact our legislators at all time And for those who don't know the number it's<PHONE_NUMBER> and they can always ask you a legislator to act boldly on climate Okay, bro 350 vermont worked together in a interfaith Intersectional way that's very beautiful trying to create the survival culture we need for the coming climate apocalypse and Regardless of whether we get legislation this time. It's been good for us. And I'm hopeful that the Legislature vans fossil fuel infrastructure and I hopeful I'm hopeful that we generally turn a cultural trend against the fossil fuel industry And save the planet for these kids who are so awesome and So thank you for the community access tv and everyone should Just join the revolution in progress and Save the planet while there's time There was some wet feet, but you know small price to pay for a verdant climate disaster And you know, I said that we added one mostly incredibly beautiful weather and then we had one day of challenging weather But that was sort of like being in the trash compactor during the star wars You know, it's the part of the Jungian hero journey that requires some courage So It worked out positively in the end. You can't all be like, you know, sunny days We had like simpson's the weather coming into uh Richmond with a brass band so It's been high and low and some all between that we're willing to sacrifice because we know It's gonna be much more in the future. So we should be get stronger But we should also demonstrate what climate ambition looks like and we hope the legislature does the same I don't know that there's a lot of climate change deniers left particularly in vermont But there are some in the state house who still they don't deny climate change is happening But some deny humans role in it But the science is very clear our activity our emissions the increased emissions due to human activity has greatly affected Our global climate and that's on each of us individually to make individual adjustments But then it's also really important as a governmental entity Representing the people as a whole and thinking ahead to having a planet for our own future as well as our children's future That we have to take bolder steps The legislature has passed different pieces of legislation over the years Most of them right now are not to the scale of the problem I just heard the other day that our our state goal had been to weatherize 80 000 homes by 2020 We've weatherized about 25 000 and this year's legislation that came out of the house Is going to increase it from about 800 a year to 1300 a year Well, 2020 is only a couple of years out and if we're doing 1300 a year and there's 60 000 homes short of our goal We're missing something And so I think where a lot of people are frustrated and i'm really excited about the the walk that these folks took to Sort of amplify the voice of the frustration that's out there that we need to do more And we need to be more bold with respect to weatherization with mass transportation with education about individual choices That we can each make to be reducing our individual footprint But also as a whole how can we collectively be pooling our resources to also make some change and impact our old housing stock our transportation system so that Folks can can be in buses instead of individual cars expanding broadband So folks can work from home and not have to drive everywhere to get to work We need to be looking at this from all different directions We need to be looking at it from carbon sequestration in our soil How do we pay farmers not just for the product they're making but for how they're treating the earth and the water So that that earth and water are in better shape and our air for all of us and our children to have in the future But we need folks voices and I would say to folks watching the key in democracy is people And if people care and take the time to spend say 15 minutes a week on democracy Calling your legislator and saying well, what are you doing? It is possible to do more asking questions being kind Even and friendly not only with folks who are maybe an opposition to the positions that we have But even with our friends and allies who are supporting good things But maybe need a little support to go a little farther It's time to do bold legislation and even if we lost five or ten seats We would not lose the majority and we could rest easy for the change we made We have to listen to Greta Thunberg 50 years from now when our children and grandchildren say, you know, why didn't you do more? I think now is the time to ask that question of ourselves. Why aren't we doing more so that our grandchildren have A planet and our children have a planet and even the end of my life farming We have a planet that will produce food and be able to shelter people and not have as extreme weather events Why aren't we doing more is the question we need to be asking today and folks need to ask their legislators Why aren't we doing more to help build that pressure for the political will to grow? Hi, I'm Andrea Standard and I'm here at the final day of the climate walk Next steps for climate change and I'm here wearing two hats I am on the board of 350 vermont just recently joined that board as an individual citizen And I also work with rural vermont, which is an advocacy organization for small-scale farming And so we're involved in the climate movement because we really feel strongly that Farms have a role to play in keeping carbon in the ground and providing a secure food system that is sustainable over time And is going to support our rural communities with livelihoods and healthy food Very disappointing that the legislature which started this session with big promises that they were going to take climate change Seriously, and they were going to work on things in a very deliberative way that they have not made much progress With a variety of bills that have been introduced That's a huge disappointment. I sometimes feel that what's going on is that The degree of urgency associated with this issue Is not being Taken to heart by the legislators. It's a very incremental process up at the state house Things take time and all the deliberate deliberation that has to go on But I think everyone here who's on the march recognizes that this is an urgent issue We are running out of time to take bold steps to Put in place policies that are going to help us adapt and survive and Perhaps even make some difference in the climate changes that are going on You also asked me about the green new deal at the federal level. I think it it is one of those bold steps I think people are getting a little hung up in the fact that it lacks detail And they are like, well, we can't do anything with this because we don't know what the details are But I think at this point it's time for bold action. It's time for bold steps And we may have to muddle through the details, but we have to get moving. We have got to take action today So come join us at this date house To uh person to song in the 50 years These are pretty much um is a tag that um folks who were on the walk wrote about Especially the youth that were on the walk about things that they wanted to express Um kids learned about and they really know the legislators to protect I know this I know this I know this I know This I know this I this I know Sisters all our ancestors held in the tame the public land and the private land The rivers and the fields Preserved the outspoken and the quiet the young and the old The beautiful and the rugged Please support our maple syrup industry Protect the ancient land of the nadakina home of the avarice The climate crisis is upon us all the chance to see our planet earth Our meaning the chances to see our planet earth our meaning Please find within your moral self to act nap fossil fuel infrastructure Please preserve this earth so we can have a beautiful future living in harmony with creation Please preserve my future and my children's future. Please protect all the love in the state Please protect our soils and remember that we are on stolen ground Preserve a future where I can raise my future children without fear Preserve our vermont not because you think it's right or wrong But because it is a thing that needs to be done There comes a time when you must choose between what is right and what is easy That time is now your choice will go down in history choose wisely Please help vermont do its part to preserve the stable climate that our living planet co-evolved with and relies on There are seven billion plus people on this planet and many of their futures depend on some of the decisions you make So think about the planet that we share protect it protect your children and mine Please preserve winter in vermont You have the power to make the future better than what it looks like it will be using Please preserve vermont so children will know clean air and clean water not desperation despair Drought and pollution Please do what you can to preserve life on our planet Preserve small towns and business on a sustainable scale do it for our children Please preserve a chance to build a future of resilience freedom unity and healing for all who have been oppressed Please think of all the vulnerable non-humans that will live or die because of our decisions I want to tell my grandchildren to go outside play there and breathe the fresh air and smell the scent of the forest I can't do that if there's a natural gas pipeline in the way Please protect the soil that grows our food and feeds our your children and your children's children and my children and their children Please put the effort into helping us to create a future where hope can grow and we can heal There is so much to be done to create climate justice. We need your help. Thank you Please support bills age 51 age 175 and s 66 I Here we are with migrant justice And we want to talk to them about how climate change affects Farm workers and brings them to vermont So So in mexico there are few effects from climate change Where many of us depend on agriculture And there's been a sickness That where many plants are just drying up and dying And this means that we don't have a way to provide for our communities and it leads us to migrate more And so this this climate change Causes us to migrate and now that we're here We need support to to work here and we need support with with less discrimination Migrants in the state of vermont We are in solidarity with the fight For the planet because the planet is for everyone And then we have the right to live where we want But we also have the responsibility The responsibility To take care of it and work together so that Those who have the power to change the laws do better things to preserve the planet and so As migrant workers here in vermont, we stand in solidarity with the struggle for the planet because The planet is for all of us And we all have a right to live But we also have a responsibility to work together And those who make the laws Have a responsibility to to make sure that the the planet is healthy and we can live Thank you all


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Well, good morning everyone. Welcome to day two of the Regulatory Information Conference. Welcome back for this bright sunny day, and hopefully the weather outside won't distract you from focusing your attention on our sessions here today in the plenary and also in our technical sessions this afternoon. You may have noticed throughout the course of the week that this image will frequently show on the screens. We're doing that because we want to call your attention to the Second International Regulators Conference on Nuclear Security. Some of you may be aware that NRC and other government agencies here in the United States sponsored the first of those conferences back in December of 2012. And we've been working with our Spanish counterparts to arrange and host this seminar, which will be in Madrid in Spain May 11th through the 13th of 2016. It's especially timely given the attention that the global community has right now on nuclear security. And we want to emphasize this conference to your attention so that you can participate if you choose to do so. We would certainly encourage that and hopefully we'll see you in Madrid. It is my privilege now to introduce our final commissioner plenary and that is a plenary address that will be given by Commissioner Barron. Commissioner Barron began his service at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on October 14th, 2014, and his term ends in June of 2018. Prior to arriving at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Commissioner Barron worked for the U.S. House of Representatives for more than 11 years. He most recently served as the staff director for the energy and environment, for the Democratic staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and that committee has oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So it's important for his current service that he has that experience to draw from in providing oversight as one of his primary areas of responsibility of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. While he worked in Congress, Commissioner Barron worked on a range of NRC issues, including new reactor licensing, existing reactor oversight and decommissioning, high-level and low-level radioactive waste, and uranium mining, milling, and enrichment. He helped to coordinate the efforts of six federal agencies, including the NRC, and two Native American tribes to clean up uranium contamination present on the Navajo Reservation. He also helped negotiate bills related to pipeline safety, energy efficiency, hydropower, and medical isotopes that were enacted with bipartisan support. Commissioner Barron earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in political science from Ohio University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Commissioner Barron. Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone. I hope everyone enjoyed the first day of the RIC and arrived rested and ready for day two. It's a packed schedule today. Last year, I talked a little about all the advice I was getting for my first RIC speech, and I think that all worked out fine. But here's the thing. I didn't get any advice at all for my second RIC speech. None. And so I've been grappling with big questions like, should I include a joke at the beginning of the speech? And here's what I decided to do. Here's how I decided to handle this. I decided to take a project-aim approach to this question, and I did a little rebaselining and determined that a joke was not vital to the core purpose of my remarks. I'm sorry. I know you're disappointed, but we all have to make tough choices in this project-aim environment. And the joke was on the shed list. As I recently told one of our Congressional Oversight Committees at a hearing, some cuts just make sense. Well, that was the plan until this morning anyway. And then I saw that Darius Dixon from Political Pro came through for a second year in a row with a joke for me to deliver today. So I thought, well, that's efficient. And I decided to demonstrate a little agility by throwing it into my remarks. So here it goes. Are you guys ready for this? That's...where is the enthusiasm? That is...you've had too many of these and now you know what you're going to get. Okay, here we go. A Higgs Boson particle walks into a church, but the preacher says, get out of here. You call yourself the God particle when there is only one true God. The Higgs Boson replies, well, if I'm not here, how can you have mass? If you like that joke, thank you. If it wasn't your cup of tea, please take it up with Darius. He's probably around here somewhere. I'm kidding, of course, because as Commissioner Ossendorf reminded us, I'm accountable for the telling of that joke. And we appreciate that Darius is on the NRC beat. He does a great job. And I'm not just saying that because he's my trusted supplier of nerdy jokes. I also want to note that I'm wearing a pink tie today in solidarity with Commissioner Svinike. I want to be clear that this tie is not fuchsia. Commissioner Ossendorf isn't the only one who struggles with the pronunciation of that word. In fact, my daughter Mia pronounces it phasia. Now, she's four and she also names some of her my little ponies phasia, but I don't want that to distract from the point I'm trying to make, which is that you're not alone, Bill. You are not alone in that. And I really didn't intend for my remarks to be a Bill Ossendorf roast, but unfortunately the time for that is coming sooner than I would like with his departure from the Commission at the end of June. So, Bill, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for all you've done and to let you know that I've really enjoyed our time working together. We don't always agree, but we agree quite a bit. And even when we disagree, I appreciate that we always have good, respectful discussions of our views, often finding common ground on a constructive way forward. I really appreciate that.  The Naval Academy, on the other hand, will be lucky to have you back, but they'll have to wait a few more months as we continue to benefit from your insights. During those next few months and beyond, the Commission will remain focused on post Fukushima safety enhancements and lessons learned. Friday, of course, will mark the five years since the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. It is a sobering reminder of the need for renewed and constant vigilance by independent safety regulators and power plant operators. And it is a natural and appropriate time to take stock of where we are. I will be traveling to Fukushima later this month. It will be my first trip to the site, and it will probably be the most important trip I've taken during my time as a commissioner. I've heard over and over again what a profound impact seeing the scene of the accident and the affected areas has on people. Fellow commissioners, NRC senior managers, licensee executives, they all leave Japan deeply affected by what they saw and heard and motivated to ensure that it never happens again. In the aftermath of the Fukushima accident, the Commission set a goal of completing NRC's response to the accident within five years. Now that we've arrived at the five-year mark, I think it's clear that we've made significant progress, but still have a lot of work left to do. Licensees are implementing the NRC order on mitigating strategies. That order requires plants to have equipment on-site and off-site to respond to beyond design basis events. You can see that progress on the ground. I've been to Arkansas Nuclear One, Dresden, Kataba, North Ana, Watts Bar, and if you visit these plants, you'll see a dome or other structure with equipment for responding to beyond design basis events and uniform connections for those generators, pumps, and hoses. This is new equipment since Fukushima, and I think there's broad agreement that it will enhance the ability of operators to respond to major natural disasters and other potential hazards. The efforts to comply with the mitigating strategies order should be complete at almost every plant by the end of this year. Every site should also have new spent fuel pool instrumentation in place by the end of the year so that operators will have reliable information on the water levels in their spent fuel pools. Seismic and flooding hazard re-evaluations are ongoing and interim measures are being taken in some cases, but we need to acknowledge that licensees and the NRC staff both have quite a bit of work ahead of them to complete and review these seismic probabilistic risk assessments and flooding analyses. It's going to take a few more years to finish that analytical work and determine whether any additional site-specific steps need to be taken to better protect plants from earthquakes or floods. The installation of severe accident-capable hardened vents at BWR units with Mark I or Mark II containment requires substantial physical modifications to the plants and will not be complete until 2018 and 2019. So that's where we stand on some of the most safety significant enhancements required by the commission. That's not an exhaustive discussion of every step the agency has taken, but I think it highlights several key elements of the commission's post Fukushima activities. During my time on the commission over the last year and a half, my colleagues and I voted on several Fukushima-related policy and rulemaking matters. We agreed on some of those issues and others I would have gone farther. One example is NRC's treatment of severe accident management guidelines or SAMGs. Since they were introduced in the late 1990s, SAMGs have been voluntary. The commission had to decide whether NRC should include a requirement for SAMGs in the proposed mitigating beyond design basis events rule. I strongly believe we should have done so. In the wake of Fukushima, NRC inspectors evaluated the status of SAMGs and their findings were troubling. Some plants had outdated SAMGs, others had emergency responders without SAMG training. The Fukushima near-term task force therefore recommended making SAMGs mandatory and the NRC staff agreed. They recommended requiring SAMGs so that they would be enforceable. The staff was not confident that SAMGs would be maintained and effective at every plant in the United States in the absence of such a requirement. The staff's regulatory analysis showed that making SAMGs enforceable would provide a substantial safety benefit. An industry told the commission that requiring SAMGs would have little or no additional cost, so making SAMGs an enforceable requirement would have increased safety without being burdensome. When I weighed the pros and cons, I concluded that the proposed rule should have included that requirement. Including the requirement in the proposed rule wouldn't have represented a final agency decision on whether to impose the regulatory requirement. It would merely have allowed members of the public to share their views on such a proposal. After a strong, well-supported staff recommendation to propose a SAMGs requirement, I thought we owed it to the public to solicit a broad range of views on the merits of such a requirement. I approached the containment protection and release reduction rulemaking the same way. This was commonly referred to as the filtered vents rulemaking. In this case, the staff had prepared a draft regulatory basis for the rulemaking. That's the step before a proposed rule. At that early stage in the rulemaking, the staff thought it made sense to require severe accident, water addition, and management, which licensees were already preparing to implement. But the staff planned to have the independent experts on the advisory committee on reactor safeguards review the draft regulatory basis and also get public comment on the document before presenting it to the commission. The commission decided to terminate the rulemaking prior to getting ACRS feedback without public comment. Frankly, I think that was the wrong way to go. Stakeholders were expecting a rulemaking to consider a requirement for filtered vents. I think we should have followed through and given the public a chance to weigh in on that important question before making any decisions. NRC required severe accident capable hardened vents back in 2013 because we learned from Fukushima that venting to reduce pressure and containment could be critical to safety in certain accident scenarios. If we expect plants to vent in these situations, it's reasonable to ask in a public comment period whether the vented radioactive gases should be filtered before being released into the environment. Seeking public comment is not a final regulatory decision. It's an opportunity for interested stakeholders to express their views and for the agency to consider those comments in its decision making. Let me mention one other area where I think the agency should do more work than it has to date, and that's on several of the Tier 2 and Tier 3 action items. Fukushima lessons learned activities were placed on a longer term track for completion in Tier 2 or Tier 3 based on skill set availability or the need for more analysis, not because they aren't potentially significant safety issues. The NRC staff and the commission assigned priority levels to these near term task force recommendations in late 2011 because they reflect valuable lessons from the Fukushima accident that warranted additional attention. Most of the Tier 2 action items were ultimately incorporated into Tier 1 efforts, but several Tier 2 and Tier 3 items remain unresolved. One example is an examination of the need for reliable hardened vents for containment designs other than BWR Mark 1 and 2s. The list of remaining items also includes reevaluating external hazards other than seismic and flooding hazards such as drought and extreme temperatures. My view is that NRC should do a thorough safety analysis of each outstanding item before deciding whether any additional actions need to be taken. The staff did this for some items, but I thought their recent analysis was insufficient for other items. We all share an interest in addressing the open post Fukushima items in a timely way, but we need to ensure that they are resolved and closed after an open minded examination of the safety issues based on the latest information. A full analysis would not necessarily result in additional regulatory requirements, but when someone asks me whether we fully examined all the items identified as lessons from the Fukushima accident, I want to be able to respond with an unqualified yes. So I look forward to reviewing the staff's ongoing work on the remaining open items. I'm very encouraged by the staff's commitment to ensure the proactive and routine evaluation of new external hazard information in a systematic manner. I think the staff is absolutely right that we need to actively seek out new scientific information that may deepen and refine our understanding of external hazards. Periodic or continuous reassessment of external hazards is crucial in light of the impacts of climate change on some hazards such as flooding and drought. These climate related hazards are expected to exceed historical levels in the future. We simply cannot assume that the frequency, intensity and duration of these events will be static. Improving our processes to better account for this reality is an important Tier 3 effort that I will be closely following. I want to touch on a separate issue that has implications for NRC's response to Fukushima, and that is the question of how our regulatory analysis should consider quantitative and qualitative factors. We've heard a lot of concern about the agency's consideration of so-called qualitative factors in its regulatory analysis. I think the term qualitative factors can be confusing or at least imprecise. Qualitative factors are really just non-quantified benefits and costs. In my view, we need to think about this in the context of what we're trying to accomplish with a regulatory analysis of a proposed regulatory action. A basic tenet of regulatory analysis is that it should examine all relevant costs and benefits whether they can be quantified or not. If a benefit or cost can be adequately quantified, there's obviously no need to conduct further analysis of that benefit or cost. But if a benefit or cost cannot be adequately quantified, it is appropriate and necessary to conduct a qualitative analysis of that benefit or cost. The ability to adequately quantify one or two benefits clearly cannot preclude consideration of other non-quantified benefits. Otherwise, the result would be an incomplete or inadequate examination of the true costs and benefits of a proposed regulatory action. Let me put these general concepts in the context of NRC's response to Fukushima. If NRC had only considered the benefits that we can fully quantify when determining how to respond to the accident, we likely would have missed some important benefits and probably would not have taken the actions we needed to take. A Fukushima type event is very low probability. So when you run the numbers, it is difficult for even common sense steps to pass a cost benefit test that looks exclusively at quantified benefits. In fact, it's not clear that any of NRC's major post-Fukushima requirements that had brought support would have passed such a test. The commission required mitigation strategies and initially hardened vents as necessary for adequate protection of public health and safety, which is an exception to the back-fit rule. Spend fuel pool instrumentation was required under an administrative exemption to the back-fit rule. As a result, none of these safety enhancements were subject to a cost benefit analysis. A narrow focus on quantified costs and benefits probably would have resulted in NRC taking no regulatory action at all after Fukushima. I don't think many people believe that would have been the right outcome. There's nothing new or novel about including a qualitative discussion of unquantified benefits and costs in a regulatory analysis. Under executive orders and office management and budget guidance, it is well established that quote, a complete regulatory analysis includes a discussion of non-quantified as well as quantified benefits and costs. And that has been the long-standing practice at NRC. Many of our security emergency preparedness and radiation protection requirements result in significant non-quantified benefits. Take security as an example. No one can accurately calculate the odds of a terrorist attack on a specific nuclear power plant. So the benefit of having security at that plant can't be precisely quantified. Does that mean there is no benefit from having security at nuclear power plants? Of course not. Disregarding those unquantified benefits isn't going to improve the rigor of a cost-benefit analysis. It will have precisely the opposite effect. Ignoring unquantified benefits would result in a skewed analysis that would almost certainly point to the wrong regulatory outcome. I think we intuitively know this to be true. Not every regulatory decision boils down to its effect on core damage frequency. As chairman Burns discussed yesterday, regulating is a craft. It's not a rigid formula. Defense in depth matters. Enforceability matters. Public confidence matters. Those benefits cannot be quantified, but they must be factored into our decision-making. Power plant decommissioning is another area where I believe we need to look beyond easily quantified risks. In the last few years, five U.S. reactors have permanently shut down and three more have announced plans to close in the near term. When a nuclear plant shuts down, it's a big deal for the company, for the employees, and for the community. It also changes the risk profile of the plant and the contours of NRC's regulatory oversight. But NRC does not currently have regulations specifically tailored for this transition from operations to decommissioning. As a result, licensees with reactors transitioning to decommissioning routinely seek exemptions from many of the regulations applicable to operating reactors. I see two main purposes for the decommissioning rulemaking effort that is now underway, and both are important. First, it will allow NRC to move away from regulating by exemption in this area. The exemption approach isn't efficient for anyone, and it provides no opportunity for public comment. And second, the rulemaking provides a chance for NRC and all of our stakeholders to take a fresh look at our decommissioning process and requirements. Stakeholders have strong views about important questions like the appropriate role of state and local governments, whether NRC should approve a post shut down decommissioning activities report, and the appropriateness of the three general decommissioning options and the time frames associated with those options. The rulemaking process gives us an opportunity to benefit from a range of stakeholder views. I don't know what the ultimate rule will look like at the end of this process, but I do know that we need to thoughtfully consider the ideas presented by stakeholders with an open mind. Let me turn to an organizational issue that is a major focus for the commission right now, Project AIM. The agency is implementing Project AIM to increase our efficiency and agility while remaining focused on our core mission of protecting public health and safety. The goal is to implement NRC's existing scope of work more efficiently, to identify any outdated and unnecessary initiatives, and to adjust to declining workloads in some areas. Project AIM is not about relaxing regulatory oversight of licensee performance and safety. The NRC staff has done a tremendous amount of work to generate a list of 151 proposals that would reduce costs in the coming months. The commission is reviewing those now. I think the vast majority of these items are going to make a lot of sense, but I'm going to take a hard look at these measures to make sure that none of them could compromise NRC's ability to carry out its safety mission. We'll also soon be considering additional options for streamlining our processes and procedures to allow the agency to do the same work with fewer resources. We appreciate all the suggestions and feedback we've received from those who work at NRC and with NRC. Before we turn to questions, I owe some of you a thanks for your hospitality. Since last year's RIC, I've had the pleasure of visiting a number of operating reactors, new reactor construction sites, a decommissioning site, a research and test reactor, a fuel cycle facility, a low level waste facility, and materials licensees. And I'm planning additional visits this year. I get a lot out of every site visit seeing equipment and conditions firsthand and talking directly to our resident inspectors and the workers and management of the facilities. So I look forward to reconnecting with many of you during this conference and meeting some of you for the first time, either here or in the field. With that, I'm happy to take any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. We have a few questions so far. And if you have additional questions, please avail yourself of the cards that are being locked up and down the aisles. First question builds on your remarks on decommissioning. And it deals with your views on safe store and whether you're comfortable with NRC's current policy on that topic. Well, I think I think this is exactly the question or one of the questions we've asked the public in the advance notice of proposed rulemaking. And I want to get public comment on. I think stakeholders have a range of views on this issue. My understanding this was obviously before my time when the regulations were initially established in the 60 year time period was established. The thought was that that would basically allow for decommissioning to start in about 50 years after the shutdown. And at that time, the amount of low level waste would have reduced dramatically, I think by around 90 percent and radiation levels would have also reduced significantly down to about maybe 2 percent of where they were. And so I think that was the technical thinking at that time behind the 60 year time frame. We're seeing some plants now move at a much quicker pace. And obviously states and localities and people living in these communities have an interest in seeing that land in many cases return to productive use as soon as possible. And so I think we as an agency benefit from taking a fresh look at that. Let's hear from the public on this. We have the advanced notice of proposed rulemaking out there. I believe there are questions specifically on this topic in that ANPRM. And I'm really interested to see what we get back from that. We're also going to have next week, as I think was mentioned yesterday, a commission meeting on decommissioning and the rulemaking next week. And we'll be hearing from a number of state and local officials, community members who are engaged on these issues at the various plants that have shut down recently or are expecting to shut down in the near future. So I think we'll get additional feedback then too. And that meeting is Tuesday morning with the commission. You can tune in live and watch it via web streaming. Our related question is your views on the reliability of NRC's requirements for decommissioning trusts. Are they sufficient? Well, the answer I think is the same, really. And this is another topic that we have included in the advanced notice of proposed rulemaking and are taking comments on. I know there are a lot of strong views on that as well. And I think we benefit from hearing from the public on that. We also have to be a little bit careful on that because we have adjudications pending that are related to that question. So I'm a little bit limited in what I can say on that. Okay. Moving along to the CPRR rulemaking, you had some remarks on that in your comments and your presentation today. The questions, there's several questions here. One has to do with didn't the commission receive an ACRS letter on the decision to end the CPRR rulemaking? We did. We did receive one. We received it after the decision was made, but we absolutely did receive an ACRS letter on that. Okay. And then there's a related question on how do you reconcile your views on the need for containment filters with the clear results of the back fit analysis? Well, to be clear, I hadn't reached the conclusion that filtered events were appropriate. The argument I was making or my view is that at that stage in the process, that very early stage in the rulemaking process, we shouldn't have taken that option or any of the options off the table before getting public comment on them. And, you know, particularly, I think that's generally true, and you may have noticed that it's kind of a theme of my remarks. I place a lot of value on getting public comment on proposed agency's actions, either at the proposed rule stage or even earlier, whether it's on a regulatory basis, most likely what it would be, I think there's a lot of value in that. And I don't think that we have to have everything figured out at the point where we get public comment on something. I agree that it's important to have a well-baked thought through product to put out public comment. But it's not, I think, uncommon at all for agencies to be exploring different possibilities of how to approach an issue, having not reached, obviously, a final conclusion. That's just the proposed rule stage or even earlier in the process. So I think it's a good time to get public feedback on both specific proposed regulatory actions, but also the accompanying regulatory analysis. There are, I think, often going to be insights that folks will have about cost benefits and how we approach those in a regulatory analysis. And I think we benefit from that as well. So I think, particularly, though, in the context of the filtered vents rulemaking, there was a really clear expectation, I think, at the time of the commission. Again, this is prior to when I arrived at the commission. When the commission decided to go down the rulemaking path there, I think there was a clear majority at that time for at least taking a close look at filtered vents and whether that made sense as a requirement. And I think there was an expectation, therefore, among our stakeholders that they'd get a chance to weigh in on that, that there would be a proposal at some point that at least addressed filtered vents and that they would have a chance to weigh in on. And I think it was just the wrong approach to not give them that chance to weigh in on that important question. It's a tough one, though, because once you get to this stage of weighing the pros and cons there, we all face the reality, which is a positive reality, that the likelihood you would need a filtered vent is very, very low. It's a very low probability situation. On the other hand, in the event you've found yourself in that situation, a filtered vent would likely have a really huge impact on the amount of radioactive material released. So I don't know. I haven't reached a firm conclusion about how it would have come out on that, but I have reached a firm conclusion that it's something we should have asked people about. OK. Here's a couple of questions that pertain to quantitative and non-quantitative analysis. A questioner notes that quantitative analysis has generally clear methodologies upon which practitioners generally agree, whereas qualitative analysis can be more open-ended and somewhat ambiguous. Do you have suggestions for good practices that should be followed in conducting qualitative analysis? And then there's a similar related question about incorporating non-quantifiable benefits into regulatory cost benefit analyses. And what about including non-quantifiable costs in those analyses? Should it be a one-sided analysis or should it be more of a balanced analysis? Absolutely. I agree with that. And we need to look at both quantified and unquantified costs and benefits. My view is we need to be weighing all the costs, all the benefits. And in an ideal world, you would perhaps be able to quantify everything. I mean, that would be the easiest way, I think, to weigh the pros and cons of a potential action. But in the world in which we actually live, you can't quantify every benefit. You can't quantify every cost. Although I think the quantification on the cost side tends to be a little bit easier. But I would acknowledge there are costs you can't quantify. We absolutely should consider those in our analysis of the pros and cons of a proposed regulatory action. And so going to the question of do I have suggested best practices here, fortunately, that's something that is being developed. The commission agreed that with the staff recommendation that the guidance that we have for cost-benefit analysis should be updated. And particularly with respect to the qualitative piece, to make sure that we're providing our regulatory analysts with a good best practices guide. How do you evaluate qualitative factors or how do you qualitatively analyze a non-quantified benefit or cost to make sure that we're clear about how that's being done. We're transparent in how we're identifying those, how we're weighing them. And we need that transparency. We need it all laid out, both for the decision-maker, because we're going to be trying to weigh the pros and cons, but also for the public and for interested stakeholders so that everyone who's following a potential action can look and say, OK, I understand how the staff came out on this. They've looked at defense in depth, and they're weighing it in this way against the quantified costs, for example. So I think we need a lot of clarity on that. We need a lot of transparency. It's true that for benefits and costs that cannot be fully quantified, you have the challenge of how to weigh that. And there's no one answer to that. There's no simple answer. And that's really where the judgment of the commission comes in. That's why you have five or four or maybe three commissioners to weigh those pros and cons in a transparent manner and come to a decision. But I think, I guess, if you take something from my remarks on that discussion of quantitative factors and qualitative analysis of unquantified or non-quantified benefits and costs, it's this. I think we need to look at all the costs, all the benefits, whether we can quantify them or not. And I don't think we're going to get to a better result by discounting entire benefits just because they can't be quantified. I don't think that's going to lead to the right result. I think that's where you get the skewed analysis. OK, thank you. And I did not write this question as the director of research. But with respect to plant decommissioning, is there value to be obtained by collecting materials and components from decommissioning plants to use in researching the effects on operating plants, particularly those who seek subsequent license renewal? Do you have an opinion on that? I don't have a strong view on that. I would imagine, I would suspect the answer is yes. The answer is yes. Thank you. In fact, we're doing that. Here's a question dealing with spent fuel storage. What's your response to concerns that the continued storage rule, generic environmental impact statement, does not adequately address broad safety concerns at nuclear power plants? My response is that the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is going to decide this question. I was actually, I went to the oral arguments. This case is pending before the DC Circuit right now. I went to oral arguments, I guess, a couple weeks ago. They were fascinating to watch. And we'll see what the DC Circuit decides. I think that the general approach of having a generic environmental impact statement makes a lot of sense. I was not here for that decision. But it's clear to me that whether we landed in the right spot or not is going to be decided by the federal courts and we'll see what they have to say on that. I do think it's worth mentioning one piece, which is related, because we do get questions about this, which is, is the continued storage rule the agency's endorsement of leaving spent nuclear fuel on site indefinitely? And I don't think anyone views it that way. And they shouldn't view it that way. This is really an analysis of the safety of doing so. And the agency's determination that it's safe to do so is not an endorsement for doing so. It doesn't mean we think it's a good idea. I'm not aware of anyone who thinks that's a good idea. So I think that's something that's worth mentioning in that context, in that broader context of safety. OK. And in a similar vein with an election in progress and a new administration expected in 2017. There definitely will be a new administration. Yes. That's not the question, though. So the question is, would you support congressional funding for Yucca Mountain licensing to proceed in the new administration? Yeah. I don't know the answer to that question, in part because I do not know what that administration will look like. I can tell you that I have not supported it in the past for, I think, primarily the simple reason that I don't see how our licensing process, our adjudicatory process, could function well in the absence of an applicant that is committed and engaged in the process. We have, I believe, 288 contentions pending that would need to be addressed in an adjudicatory proceeding. There may well be additional contentions that would be filed. And so that is, I think, clearly by far the largest adjudication this agency would ever conduct. And of course, typically with an adjudicatory proceeding, we have an applicant who wants the license and is going to engage very seriously in what is really an adversarial trial-like process. And in my judgment, we don't have that here right now. And in the absence of that, I don't think it makes sense to seek funding for that process. OK. Beginning with the end in mind, what would you like to see as the hallmark of your service on the commission? Wow. I don't know. I just started. Christine Svinicki says, don't answer it. And I'm going to take your advice. I'm not answering it. I've taken a pass. Perhaps your jokes for the. That's right. I don't know where I'm sitting in the bar. I'm going to set it higher than that, though. Should the NRC consider requiring periodic safety reviews in accordance with the International Atomic Energy Agency guidance in order to more formally capture recommendations and evaluating newly developed approaches on external hazards? Well, let me answer it this way because I addressed this a little bit. I do think that one of the tier three items we have is the question of basically staying current on the science related to external hazards. And I think the staff recognizes that's important. And I agree with them. It is a very important thing. And so the staff this year is going to be taking a look at how to address that question. When the near-term task force looked at it, I believe they recommended a periodic, every certain number of years, check of external hazards to see was there new information? Did we need to re-evaluate an external hazard, a given external hazard at a site? And what the staff's looking at is I think potentially a better alternative. We'll see what they come up with over the course of the year. But they're looking at something that's more akin to really continuous reassessment. As I mentioned in my remarks, I think a recognition of the fact that historically the agency's been very interested in new information about external hazards. But we haven't necessarily been proactively seeking it. We're not going out to find actively is there new information we should be considering about the flooding hazard at a site or the seismic hazard at a site? And I think it makes a lot of sense to be more proactive about that. And so then that raises the question about what's the right construct? Do we have a system where every certain number of years we do a formal re-evaluation? Or can we come up with a process that on a more ongoing, continuous basis ensures that we're gathering that information, considering that information and acting on it, if necessary? I don't know what the answer that is. I want to see what the staff comes up with. I'm definitely intrigued by the idea of something more continuous and ongoing rather than something more periodic. Both because I think it could be potentially more effective if we're able to do that right because you don't have to wait large chunks of time to find out if there have been changes in the science. But also, I think, as we're thinking about efficiency, one could certainly imagine if we set five or 10 or 15 years as the re-evaluation of various external hazards at every site in the country, that is a significant effort. It may make sense to do that, but there may be ways to do it that would be more efficient. So I'm eager to see what the staff comes up with on that. I think they have been really forward leaning on this in their analysis that they sent up on this Tier 3 item. So I think they're going to I'm hopeful they're going to come up with something really good there. The questions keep coming. Oh, great. This question deals with your remarks on wanting to use the rulemaking process to provide an opportunity for stakeholders to comment on various proposals. Can you point to an example where, in your view, receiving those comments had a significant impact on the commission's decision-making? Boy, I'm probably the wrong person to ask that question too, because I haven't been here that long. And in my time here, we've had a number of rulemakings that I've weighed in on or been a part of the decision-making on. But because of the nature of the rulemaking process, it's a bit longer than the year and a half I've been here. So I haven't seen anything from start to finish on that. But I do know, just in some of the rulemakings I've seen since I've been here, I've seen significant modifications from proposed rule to draft final rule. And even, I think, in cases where there have been significant modifications from a regulatory basis to a proposed rule. And so I think there's no question that there are times where we do that, where we get a lot of good feedback on something. And I think that's going to be aided by one of the steps. This isn't directly a response, but maybe not directly. But I want to add it, which is a good step, I think, that commission took prior to my arriving, which is a move towards making sure that when we put out a proposed rule, we also put out proposed guidance with it. And that wasn't always happening historically. I think that the main benefit of that, well, I think there are a couple benefits of that, I think if stakeholders have an opportunity to look at the proposed guidance, the more detailed guidance, at the same time they're contemplating comments on a proposed rulemaking, they're going to better understand where the agency thinks it's heading or proposing to head. And that also relates back to the cost piece and our estimates of costs. I think if licensees have a better understanding of what it is we're proposing to require in greater detail, it's much easier for them to provide us good data on, well, what would that cost? If folks don't know where we're heading on something in sufficient detail, it's much harder to gauge how much is it going to cost and apply. So I think that's another, I think that is an improvement in the rulemaking process that we've had in recent years. And it's playing out. I think we'll see the benefit of that. But I think it's something that's going to both increase the quality of the comments with respect to the substance of the proposal, but also with respect to the analysis of costs and benefits of a proposal. OK. The commission has recently received the results of the Inspector General's Safety, Culture, and Climate Survey. And there's also been recent reporting on a 2.206 petition submitted by NRC staff members. What's your view with respect to this trend? Well, I have been here long enough to have benefited on numerous occasions from the thoughtful comments I've seen raised in non-concurrences or in briefings where folks have raised different views. I don't know that I'd seen a 2.206 in the time I've been here, but I don't think that's unprecedented either. I think that we have a variety of mechanisms to hear from staff who have views other than the prevailing view. And I think it's just really valuable. There have been a number of papers we've had where we've had one or more non-concurrences. Sometimes non-concurrences with lots of employees on them. Sometimes non-concurrences with senior managers on them. And I think it's been really, really helpful. It forces all of us, allows all of us, to dig that much deeper into the paper, to really understand the different perspectives people have even within the agency about a proposal or a topic. And I think we benefit hugely from that. Let me give you one concrete example of that, which is on one of the post-Fukushima issues, which was flooding analysis and how we were going to approach that as an agency or how we were approaching that as an agency. And I think there was a general view that the flooding reevaluations that our approach to that was just going a little bit more slowly or maybe even a lot more slowly than had been anticipated, that it was becoming a much bigger job than maybe had been anticipated when we set on that course. And I think what we, the staff was struggling with this, but I think the commission struggled with it as well, which is how do we balance making sure we do a rigorous analysis that needs to be done of flooding hazards at sites? And how do we also make sure that the process is moving in a timely manner so that we get to the end result? You know, if we're going to have, and I don't know if we're still in this process, but let's say we had a few plants that would benefit from additional safety enhancements, we didn't want a situation where it was just years and years and years before we got to that point. And so I think there were a lot of non-concurrences in that case. People had very strong views in different directions on it. And as we, at the commission level, waded into that, hearing those different views was just really, really valuable. I don't know that we could have done the work we did there to kind of have a constructive way forward and a slight course correction there without hearing that wide range of views that we heard within the agency. On the topic of the IG survey, that was one thing that I heard from that survey that really concerned me. I didn't want to hear that, well, I want to hear, but I was disappointed to hear that folks weren't necessarily comfortable using that process or were concerned about using that process. I don't want any employee at this agency to feel that way. I want everyone to speak up if they have a concern. This is a safety agency where safety culture is incredibly important. We have an open environment and we need to hear those views. If people have them and they're worried about something that's happening, please avail yourselves of one of the many processes we have at this agency for expressing that concern because that's something we as decision makers want and need to hear. Good answer to conclude your question and answer period. We want to thank the commissioner for his great responses. Thank you.


there to be an intensity about training. I feel that if there's not then you're not rehearsing for the match and I think once you get probably from 18s upwards every training session every every time you go out there should be rehearsals to playing for the first team and when the first team are training that's a rehearsal for a match so I think underneath that you should be working a lot more with about individual developments of players making sure that they're ready to go and become a professional footballer but when they're pros then I think you you have to be working totally on rehearsals all the time so throwing in different patterns of how you want to play the intensity some some kind of shape but just learning things for them.


Hey, everyone, I want to go over our trade results for March. We had another great month of trading with 12 closed trades and 11 of those winners.  Now, some of you with larger accounts might be saying $3,400 in a month, big deal. That's not very much. And others of you might be saying, wow, that's great. But keep in mind, we are trading relatively small size in this account. We are only trading one to five contracts. So some of our members with larger accounts are trading five or 10 times that amount. So keep in mind, if you're trading the contract size 10 times what we're trading here, then we're talking about $34,000 a month. So you can really trade these strategies at any level. Now, I mentioned in the last month's update that right now is the best time to be part of navigation trading because the implied volatility is very high in a lot of different symbols. And as you can see, this is one of our best months as far as profit goes. And that has to do with the fact that we're collecting more credit. We're giving ourselves a better chance to make more profit on these trades. And it's reflected in the total profit that we made this month. Now, because of the consistent profits that we've been generating for the last 18 months, we've had a huge inflow of people joining. So we had to close down our membership to new members. At the time of this recording, our pro membership is still closed to the public. So if you are interested in potentially joining in the future, just go to navigationtrading.com forward slash pro dash member. And we have a waiting list. And so people will be able to join on a first come, first serve basis. At some point in the future, we'll start opening it up to maybe a couple new members a week. But we want to be able to control that inflow of new members because we provide such a high level of service. We respond to every email ourselves, every post on social media ourselves. And so we want to make sure that our members continue to get that high level of service that they've come to expect from us. OK, let's jump over to the members area and break down each trade as we made them throughout the month. So here's a snapshot of the members area. If you're a pro member, as you can see, you've got the navigation alerts. You've got all the different courses for the different strategies that we teach.  Let's click the dropdown for navigation alerts and take a look at the closed trades for this month. If we start at the beginning of the month, so our first closed one was on 3-6 in BKNG. Now BKNG used to be price line. They just changed their ticker. We did a post earnings short put vertical. So this is just a textbook, post earnings short put vertical, just like we teach in our earnings course. Booked a profit of $212 on that trade. Next trade was XLE, so an energy ETF. Did a short strangle there, booked a profit of 168. In EWZ, the Brazilian ETF, did a short strangle there, booked a profit of 144. And then you'll see here for ZN, which is the 10 year note. So we did a short strangle there. And as you can see, we had to do a few rolls, a couple of different adjustments, but by staying mechanical, we're able to book a nice profit of $468.75.  So we did a pre earnings long straddle, just never quite got the move that we needed to be profitable here. So it took a small loss of $66. Next trade was in SPY, the S&P 500 index. We did a traditional iron condor with just four contracts here, booked a profit of $272. Next trade was another iron condor, this in XLV. You can see we had to make multiple adjustments here over a couple of different cycles, but in the end, by staying mechanical, booked a nice profit of $686. EWW did a short strangle, booked a profit of 160 bucks. GLD, the gold ETF, did an iron condor there, booked a profit of 148. And IWM, the Russell small cap index. As you can see, we did multiple adjustments here, the price initially went way against us, but we were able to continue just to stay mechanical, make our adjustments, booked a profit of $164. And that's the key thing. If you have a trade that completely goes against you and you can manage out of that over a couple of different option cycles and turn a loser into a profitable trade, that is such a big deal. I can't tell you how big of a deal in your overall performance that is and learning the adjustment strategies that we teach and staying mechanical with your trades, it always pays off in the long run. We also did a trade in the Euro, Ford slash 6E did a short strangle in there. Just had to make one adjustment, but by doing so, we were able to book a nice profit of over $937 there. And then lastly, EEM, the emerging market's ETF, did a long put vertical, just kind of a short directional play and booked a profit of $129 there. So now if we take a look at one of the pages on our site, and this is open to everybody, not just pro members, but navigationtrading.com, Ford slash performance, this is where you'll see all the updated statistics. So you can see just year to date for the first three months in 2018, we've had 36 closed trades, average profit per trade is 162 bucks with a win rate of over 86%. You can see the breakdown of all the trades we just went over and the profit, we had the one loser, and we have all the previous months posted as well. So February, January, and then we have 2017 statistics all added up as well. In 17, we had 75 trades, average profit 140 bucks, 88% win rate. And you can see the breakdown going all the way back to June of last year when we started posting the trades. So as you can see, as I mentioned, we're doing really small size, we're doing one contract, three contracts, one, two, four, the most we did is five contracts on any one trade. So if you have a smaller account, you can do this many or you can even do less. I mean, if we were doing five, you can still do one or two. If you have a larger account, you could be doing five or 10 times the amount that we're trading here, you can do this on any level in any size account. Now remember, our pro membership is currently closed to new members, but if you click on pro membership, you'll be redirected to this waitlist page where you can put in your name and email address, click here and we will add you to our waitlist and on a first come, first serve basis, we will let you know if a spot opens up in the future. We are so excited for the trading for the next several months. Volatility is back, which makes trading much more profitable, much more fun, super excited, can't wait to share with you as we continue to move forward. I hope that was helpful, happy trading.