Hello and welcome to our afternoon technical session on decommissioning titled decommissioning in a dynamic environment My name is Jeremy groom. I'm the acting deputy director of the division of decommissioning uranium recovery and waste programs in the NRC's office of nuclear Materials safety and safeguards We have a great lineup scheduled for today with a focus on sharing broad perspectives from our panel members on reactor decommissioning topics Including challenges and lessons learned on a wide range of technical and regulatory topics in addition to hearing about program milestones achieved over the past year and The current status of a variety of decommissioning projects including the Fukushima Daiichi plant You will hear from us how the NRC is working with the regulated community To build on past experience to safely and effectively Terminate licenses for power reactors undergoing decommissioning keeping with this year's rick theme of navigating the nuclear Future today's presentations will include information on efforts underway to enhance our regulatory framework For plants and decommissioning as well as how innovation and advancements in technology are being used To accelerate decontamination Dismantling waste disposal and site remediation in a safe and effective manner Before I introduce our panel members. I'd like to cover a couple of quick logistical items first the Wi-Fi code for attendees is Rick 2023 as a reminder, please remember to silence your mobile devices After our panel presentations are over and time permitting we will enter a question-and-answer period For those of you joining virtually The process for asking a question is the same as the last two ricks through the Rick website Once you have logged on and joined the session there will be a tab for electronic Q&A where you can ask your questions For those of you in the room, you can also join in the Q&A the QR code Which is on the screen to my left? We'll redirect the mobile device user to the specific session page for Q&A first-time users will need to log on to the Platform by entering their name and email address that they use to register for the Rick, but you only need to do this once per day Questions from both the virtual attendees and the in-person attendees will be added to the same queue And we'll try to get through as many questions as we can It's now my pleasure to introduce our panel members for today's session including representatives from the NRC NEI Energy Solutions and Japan's NDF Our NRC panel member today is Anthony Demetriatus Anthony serves as the branch chief of the decommissioning IsoC and reactor health physics branch in NRC region 1 He has worked for NRC region 1 for 30 years and has had Extensive experience as a branch chief and as a senior inspector Representing the nuclear energy Institute is Bruce Montgomery who is the director of decommissioning and used fuel Bruce has 45 years of commercial nuclear experience with Bechtel power corporation Baltimore Gas and Electric Constellation energy and Exxon Now at NEI Bruce is responsible for industry policy on decommissioning matters Where he runs the NEI decommissioning working group Also with us today is Amy Hazelhoff Vice president of regulatory affairs for energy solutions Amy has more than 24 years of nuclear power experience working in the areas of regulatory affairs major projects and design engineering for both a utility and a consulting firm and rounding out today's panel is Tokyo Hiro Yamamoto Mr. Yamamoto is the executive director of Japan's nuclear damage compensation and decommissioning facilitation corporation Where he leads the project management of decommissioning work at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant He has more than 40 years of experience in the research and development of the nuclear fuel cycle and spent fuel repossessing With the Japanese atomic energy agency I'd also like to acknowledge our session liaison Bruce Watson who's at the table to my left to my right Bruce has been a integral part of the NRC's decommissioning oversight program since 2004 Having served as the reactor decommissioning branch chief for 12 years over 12 years His previous experience includes management of defense complex decommissioning projects at Rocky Flats Bruce also has 20 years of operating reactor experience and served as the radiation safety manager at Calvert Cliffs and Finally, I'd like to acknowledge Mr. Christian Dennis a health physicist in our reactor decommissioning branch since 2020 and who has served as the session coordinator for today There's a tremendous amount of work that goes into planning a Rick's session and today's session would not be possible without Christians hard-working dedication, so thank you I'd like to end my opening remarks by just displaying the contact information for today's panel With that that concludes my opening remarks Thank you for your time and attention and I'll turn the presentation in the floor over to Anthony who's going to talk to you about the NRC's Decommissioning Inspection Program. Thank you, Jeremy. Appreciate it. Good afternoon everybody I hope to I have about eight slides to go over with you that focus on decommissioning inspections Our insights based on those inspections next slide, please So I'm going to touch a little bit on insights based on our inspections at six different sites in region one and nine plants Within region one some obviously our multi unit sites I'll briefly cover that the transition that plant a plant goes through when it shuts down for the final time and enters into either safe Store or active decommissioning mode. I'll also Go over some challenges as well as some successes Finally, I'll cover some findings or violations that were identified next slide, please Reactor sites operate for years before their operators decide to permanently shut them down During operation the NRC uses what's called the reactor oversight process The reactor oversight program otherwise known as the ROP that is outlined in the spectrum manager chapter 0305 When a site permanently shuts down and the fuels removed from the reactor vessel for the final time the licea submits a notification to the NRC In accordance with 10 CFR 50 point 82 upon receipt of such notification The NRC staff shifts its oversight and ceases using the reactor oversight process that I mentioned And begins using the decommissioning power reactor inspection program. This program is described in our inspection manager chapter 2561 This this chapter is it really isn't long It's about 15 pages describing our process of inspections planning Communications even lists the inspection procedures that we actually use The reason I bring it up is because as we transition oversight from the ROP for to the decommissioning power reactor inspection program our Process utilizes what's called the traditional enforcement process Program and not the reactor oversight program We issue violations as opposed to colored findings that you may have heard for operating reactors like green white yellow and red Next slide, please The decommissioning inspection program has been in place since the early to mid 1990s in 2021 the staff revised the program and it issued a Revision to the IMC 2561 that describes the inspection program for reactor facilities As you could see in the slide along with the inspection manual chapter The staff also revised a number of the inspection procedures Including for one IP 7 1 8 1 that's entitled decommissioning performance and status reviews at permanently shut down reactors This is one of our core 9 for 9 core procedures that we use to evaluate the status of decommissioning To evaluate the licensees decommissioning staffing Qualifications and conduct of decommissioning. It's one of nine procedures core procedures There are other procedures that we have there's like 20 or 25 other that are general procedures that we can draw upon But these are core procedures that we utilize We also plucked out certain portions of IP 3 7 8 0 1 which pertains to the review process for changes Tests and experiments in accordance with 50 59. It also focuses on a programmatic Aspect of the program looks at the PINR aspect add samples and Remove some references to what we used called south the systematic assessment of lycee performance Program that was used back in the 90s prior as was used in the Prior to the establishment of the ROP so we took that out and updated it We relocated fire protection inspections under IP 64704 Which is a new procedure and finally we address recommendations made by a working group called the reactor decommissioning financial assurance working group We focus certain aspects of financial assurance on that for example the staff added certain focus points and Potential triggers that could that could actually potentially trigger an initiation of nrc decommissioning reactor financial assurance spot checks That would be supported by the financial assurance branch in NMSS Next slide please We are seeing that sites are effectively planning their decommissioning work and working their plans As you can imagine, there are a million different details involved in deconstructing a reactor and ensuring that it is done safely Sites are doing this effectively and as a result of external forces involved with supplies Transportation labor they make numerous actually thousands of adjustments This has an effect on schedules, but it's impressive how such adjustments have not affected the long-term schedule in a significant manner Cultures that's another thing. We're seeing we're seeing a vast difference in cultures from site to site All sites retained a portion of the plant employees which has served them well due to their familiarity From when the plant was operating The sites have also had to supplement the on-site staffing with employees from local communities like Union halls and such This has resulted in a number of employees that did not emerge from a nuclear background And therefore have not been previously indoctrinated in the very low threshold safety culture that comes from working at a nuclear site Therefore we're seeing some differences from site to site where folks who who were not raised in nuclear businesses Were not placing conditions and lice in the licensees corrective action program This is something that had to be adjusted by the site managers to ensure that it was done correctly and Lastly the cap the corrective action program The variety of cultures has also resulted in how each site has adopted or embraced the corrective action program as you know the NRC expects its licensees to identify and correct problems and Use of the corrective action program is essential Overall the light our licensees have effectively used the the cap The corrective action program and continued adherence and vigilance is really a key to future success Next slide please So we've seen some challenges some of the challenges that we are seeing involve fires Due to what is called the hot work on site There had been a few fires in the course of cutting and welding In deconstructing the site as you would imagine This is something that lice sees should be particularly careful with and Share the operational experience with other decommissioning sites and they actually do that fairly well, but we want to get the word out Next lack of surveys we are seeing that occasionally sites are not performing Surveys where the site staff sometimes attempt to make decisions about relevant information on actual conditions on the ground Surveys are the key to success at a decommissioning site in trying to figure out how to take things apart and safely Obviously, there's contamination the first thing on on on order is really the doing surveys Certain security issues have also emerged which sometimes result in NRC violations, which we'll get into in a future slide We're also seeing some aspects of the non nuclear culture Resulting in a lack of sensitivity from working at a nuclear facility I stated that previously Let me just say a few words on this when working at a nuclear facility that is licensed by the NRC It is imperative that each on-site employee be very sensitive to the protocols associated with identifying capturing conditions This means entering the condition into the corrective action program that will allow the overall organization to become aware of the condition and To address it accordingly. We have seen an interviewed with numerous Folks that were not previously attuned to this Lycee managers as well as our staff Have tirelessly taken the time to interact and answer questions and comments from on-site staff Last but not least that we have come to appreciate that our stakeholders on-site staff members of the public local elected officials state officials and members of the United States Congress Do not necessarily understand what decommissioning is And what it involves furthermore it has become evident that our stakeholders sometimes do not have a full understanding or Appreciation of the risks associated with the work being done at a decommissioning reactor site We have worked hard to explain some of the work and have addressed issues such as financial assurance transportation of radioactive waste Storage of spent fuel and especially effluent discharges as permitted under our regulations One of the major challenges has been staffing staffing for the NRC We are hiring by the way. I'm hiring and we've been we've been short. I know the industry is to Staffing for licensees at decommissioning sites and in spend fuel management This has been a significant challenge all around since we all came upon what I call cove it pond and it continues Next slide, please as this slide shows we have seen violations involving Surveys I'm sorry security a failure to detect and assess potential intruders under part 73 Failure to detect and immediately assess unauthorized personnel in a zone Containing what we call category 1 and category 2 under 10c of our part 37 security we've also seen Number of violations involving rad waste shipping that contain the wrong shipping and paper information For example shipping of a package. Let's say f had shipping papers that described information meant for package b Not f therefore wrong information So that would be a violation and Lastly fires as I mentioned earlier. We've seen a number of violations involving fires due to a The fire watch person left their station too early or we're not present when the hot work was still active or The failure to remove combustible material from the area of the active hot work or see Failure to follow procedures and not remove certain equipment that could cause a fire In violation of site procedures next slide, please Now I'll go over some successes NRC staff have done a remarkable job in communicating internally supporting inspections across regions for example Some of my folks have gone from region 1 to region 4 to support inspections and we've actually gotten a reciprocal help from region 4 and Program offices we ensure that our efforts and our objective and consistent. This is really important to us We don't want to be easy on one licensee and tougher on another licensee based on performance Our job is to be consistent in our regulatory approach Our staff has also attended or held public meetings to discuss decommissioning Spent fuel management decommissioning inspections and effort with discharges which result From the process of decommissioning and we will continue to do so This has been a challenging challenge for us due to the staffing issues as well as the onset of COVID But our staff has done a great job to ensure that the NRC mission was met Sites have made significant progress. So this is a success for the sites in dismantling and deconstructing their respective sites There have been significant challenges beginning beginning with the onset of COVID as I mentioned supply chain shortages weather delays Changes in staffing due to people retiring. That's one of the major factors here And getting fatigued due to the added stress of COVID and a shortage of radiation protection personnel to support certain activities Lastly, the sites have shipped a lot of low-level radioactive waste to various radioactive waste sites This involves use of trains and trucks with appropriate labeling marking communications and the use of proper shipping papers This is detailed work that must be done properly And has been done successfully hundreds or thousands of times that you may not even see on the news Which is the success here. This may not be known But it does not cease to be a success for the folks doing this important work. This concludes my presentation first Yeah, thank you, Tony Yeah, thank you. It's a it's a pleasure to be here at the Rick I think this is my fourth Rick in my capacity as a decommissioning guy at NEI It's always a pleasure to be here and it's great to be here in person again Opportunity to share industry's high-level perspectives on how things are going in decommissioning and Tony Thank you for those comments. I think what my takeaway is that things are going okay But there's an opportunity for some learning in some of these issues and we take those to heart and take those seriously I especially like you comment on the variety of safety cultures There's gonna be a tension between the folks that are used to running the plant to very strict nuclear procedures and human behavior Traits and those guys that come in that are used to Deconstruction practices which really tend to be in conflict with some of the cultures that we've become used to so it's important that we learn how to make sure that those two cultures mesh properly in a safe and effective way and As we demonstrate Our success. I think my observation over the past year is that You know for the most part we're proceeding through decommissioning in a fairly orderly fashion We're learning as we go improvements in the application of technology and our experience and project management We are getting better and better at the nuts and bolts of how to decommission a reactor now. I say for the most part While the typical timeline from reactor shutdown to completion of all the physical decommissioning work appears to be getting shorter The overall project timeline to the ultimate objective license termination Does not appear to be shrinking at all. In fact, it appears that it might be expanding and is at the risk of of Or it is expanding Due to problems. We are encountering at the back end of the process over the past two years I've been working with a small team of industry subject matter experts to better understand the license termination process and to suggest improvements that will establish a greater degree of stability and Efficiency in the license termination process So that's the topic of my remarks today in the focus. It's really been my day job for the past two years Termination complete on schedule and within budget. So how can we achieve that? Well, maybe not the way that guy does but What we're really looking for here is how can a decommissioning licensee? Craft and submit a license termination plan or LTP to the NRC have it approved in about a year Implemented and be able to achieve unrestricted release of the site back to the public within the eight-year overall time frame That we expect to consistently see in the future So why is this important? As I said in my remarks over the past two or three wrecks My personal driver, which I believe is broadly shared by the decommissioning community It's not just to show that we can get this right But to show that we can get this right to illustrate commercial nuclear power is a sustainable enterprise I've spoken in the past about how decommissioning is just part of the circle of life for nuclear design build operate decommission repeat We have to be good at all phases to be credible in a world that is focused on sustainable resources and practices With decommissioning practices or projects in particular There are two choices that we've been making recently over the past few years in decommissioning that illustrate the trend towards sustainability first Where we have the choice between putting a plant safe store for 60 years Or pursuing decon we've been choosing decon The term you will hear in the community is accelerated decon second Where we have a choice between restricted release of a site where controls must be left in place to protect the public in the environment We choose unrestricted release From a sustainability perspective these choices make a lot of sense There is great opportunity here. It's not just about getting these projects across the finish line It's about getting these projects across the finishing line With schedules that make sense to communities and the future investors With projects that are performed with fiscal discipline and predictability and by companies that demonstrate strong environmental stewardship The result will be a business enterprise that has earned the public trust The result isn't a foregone conclusion. We face challenges and I'll name a few that decommissioning workforce is limited In a few key areas and I really like Commissioner Wright's comments in response to a question yesterday about what workers were short of health physicists That's certainly true for the back end of decommissioning where licensed termination work requires a great deal of high-end RP and health physics expertise on top of that We have a large workload with 12 Reactors in active decommissioning at present time those projects either have LTPs in some stage of NRC review Or are thinking of submitting one in the next several years In the process of writing an LTP can be daunting the experience we have from plants like Connecticut Yankee Rancho Seiko and Trojan is dated and Difficult to recreate the regulatory guidance is voluminous and hard to assimilate particularly for newcomers to decommissioning Much of that guidance was written broadly to encompass all different types of facilities Regulated not just by the NRC But also overseen by the EPA the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense Lots of different circumstances and situations are covered a good bit of which might not apply to commercial nuclear reactors And even with all the guidance there is out there There's a few technical gaps emerging during the reviews of the current decommissioning projects that need to be closed If we are to be efficient in The final challenge that I would highlight owes to the fundamental nature of the decommissioning industry in the United States It's competitive and The fundamental behavior of a competitive industry is not always conducive to open sharing and collaboration So these challenges all beg for solutions Without solutions in LTP space will we will be at risk of a world where physical decommissioning work is complete at these sites But the radiological surveys and the regulatory reviews to demonstrate that the work was done In accordance with the regulations and the LTP can take years in fact many years After the last piece of heavy equipment has left the site So that's the tough news and like Tony I'd like to focus a little bit on on the progress that we've been making and Reward ourselves the progress that we have made some of which is quite recent first as I mentioned Innovation and in advancements and technology are accelerating the process of decontamination dismantling waste packaging and transportation and disposal the timelines for Between shutdown and getting all the fuel into dry storage is shrinking rapidly as we've seen demonstrated at recent sites We need to bring some of that high-tech technology over to the back end Where radiological surveys and analysis could benefit from some of those advancements as well, and I'm confident that we will Second the NRC has published a proposed rule that promises to rationalize the regulatory transition from operating status To decommissioning that will eliminate the need for many license amendments and exemptions We hope to see a final rule on that in 2024 Third we are starting to see competitors collaborating on projects that will improve business for everyone Improving the license termination process is a great example of this In addition the NRC has recognized the value of engaging with the industry in a discussion of lessons learned to improve performance And we are supporting NRC's plan to conduct a public workshop on decommissioning lessons learned in a couple of months I've already mentioned this issue so I'll go on it other than to say that Our immediate focus is to give the playbook for license termination a tune-up This is a complicated process So it's very important that the guidance to licensees and to NRC reviewers is applicable clear and concise And that's not never so easy to do but in 2020 at NEI we set off to do just that and more on that in just a minute So it's important to recognize the dynamic nature of decommissioning hence the title of this panel the regulatory oversight of Decommissioning the project itself. It are closely intertwined on top of each other along with the process for planning and executing a license termination plan It's it's overlaid in a way that just creates nightmares for project managers At the NES industry and NRC alike. Let me illustrate LTPs contain the acceptance criteria for the work to be performed The regulation state that LTPs must be submitted to the NRC for review and approval no later than two years in advance of the request to terminate a license NRC's approval of the LTP governs much of the work conducted throughout the course of the project and If the yet if the LTP is not submitted much earlier than two years before the need Then by then and by the time of the approval most of all the major work in D&D is already been done Which means much of that work was done at risk. So what could possibly go wrong here? So Being a good nuclear engineer that we are We think we can figure this out So the punchline here is that and I'm happy to announce that on Valentine's Day the industry submitted NEI 2201 license termination process to the NRC for review It's a comprehensive guide that consolidates regulatory guidance in one place It makes it specific to commercial reactors. It emphasizes the value of very early planning It includes operating experience to direct users to what works and what doesn't It outlines the importance of early and frequent regulatory engagement And it serves as a vehicle to capture future learnings Our hope is to achieve NRC endorsement and ultimately alignment around what a quality LTP looks like And how it should be implemented in the field So in closing we recognize that sharing lessons learned is not the natural trade of a competitive marketplace But collectively we are working together where it makes sense And I'll leave you with a picture of how we organize around decommissioning at NEI We get a lot of help from our membership And along those lines, I would like to extend my special thanks and appreciation to Jerry van Dordnen and Sarah Roberts of energy solutions Gene Fleming of Holtec rich McGrath of ePry Eric DeRoyce of RSCS Bill Barley of Pacific gas and electric and Ron Cartarelli and Wayne Harris of CN Associates also our own Mike Smith at NEI for their many hours of writing and debate Over countless meetings and phone calls over the past two years But you're not off the hook yet. I'm looking forward to a healthy exchange with the NRC on this document to Improve the quality of everything we're doing and the level of information in that document So thank you and now I'll turn the discussion over to Amy. Thank you Bruce It's a pleasure to be on this esteem panel today and speak with you all this afternoon So energy solutions has projects at various stages of completion. I Will note that we are the licensee at La Crosse Zion Three-mile Island unit 2 and Kiwani And we are key partners at Savannah for Calhoun and songs As you can imagine we have kept the NRC very busy both headquarters and region and on behalf of energy solutions I do want to extend a thank you to the NRC For their commitment to ensuring that the health and safety of the public Remains at the forefront of these important decommissioning projects I'm very pleased to share that La Crosse received the safety evaluation and license termination from the NRC in late February The license transfer back to Dairyland is pending So that's very exciting and a huge milestone for the industry My focus today is on the licensee perspective on two specific topics The first is planning and scheduling regulatory activities and the second is on leveraging technology for safety and efficiency Okay, so prepare a regulatory schedule that includes all licensing and compliance activities and Integrate that schedule into the site master schedule Success is measured by field activities not being delayed by pending permit approval or regulatory approvals So Bruce spoke about LTP license termination plan Focus on development early These have historically taken two to three years from initial submittal to NRC approval And as Bruce noted any delay in LTP approval results in work being done at risk additional regulatory considerations To obtain unrestricted future use of the site by the state The site must meet the EPA soil and groundwater activity limits for specific radionucleides The LTP replaces the ground water monitoring program once approved and implemented So this is a high-level decommissioning timeline It shows key activities and milestones. This is consistent with NEI 2201 Bruce can attest. I Do just want to highlight So right in the center there LTP development and FSS procedure development start early and do run-in series It's very important to coordinate NRC inspections The coordination with both NRC and state inspectors is key and Communicating any schedule changes promptly is also key Surveys of excavations must be coordinated with both NRC headquarters and region staff as These are done before the FSS is complete and therefore at risk now I'm going to shift to three mile island Our focus at three mile island is on leveraging technology for safety and efficiency TMI to solutions Recognizes its responsibility to ensure that the unique historic record of the TMI to Decommissioning project is sufficiently captured The TMI to facility was deemed eligible for the National Register of Historic Places in 2010 By the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Organization also known as Shippo As you can imagine there is significant amount of historic interest in TMI to Between the state and various museums one area of high interest is the present preservation of the TMI to control room panels So at energy solutions we manage remote field work and use new technologies to drive low-dose performance This includes a variety of applications Robotics and drones scanning and modeling Remote monitoring and I'll get into some of these here in the next few slides So robotics and drones Energy solutions utilizes both robotics and drones at TMI to Recently drones have taken video and radiation surveys of the entire reactor building Which is allowing us to see areas that have not been seen since 1979 So very effective use of technology there Robots are also being used to enter high radiation zones and in a few slides You will get to meet this robot who we affectionately call spot Okay scanning and modeling Used effectively for radiation heat mapping to show hot spots and we do use this as a guide for future dose reduction This picture shows the TMI to reactor building air coolers That were heavily contaminated during the accident and are a high-dose source in the 305 Which is the ground floor elevation of the reactor building? remote operation and monitoring We remotely monitor radiation radiation dose and field work from a command center This allows two-way communication from workers in the field to stakeholders in the office Another tool to reduce worker radiation and industrial safety exposure Additional applications. I won't get into all of these but again all things that we're using to reduce risk and dose I promise spot in action So these two photos show spot removing debris to gain access to the D-rings There was a wooden frame around the D-ring opening with a screen attached to it, which was dislodged during the accident So here you see spot tugging at the debris to move it out of the way to gain access This showcases spot again with his arm manipulation This is a large range obviously and can pick up, you know a certain weight of various debris This also shows the same So these are this picture here. This is the infamous block wall It's the source of the highest radiation levels in the basement These photos show spot taking radiation surveys in the reactor building basement and Here he has the boom extended So rad protection attached dosametry to spot at the three six and eight foot levels to get a dose profile I'm very happy to report that spot performed exceptionally well He took over 1200 REM cumulative With no impact to battery life camera or motion So in closing I just want to note that TMI to does have a citizens advisory panel also known as the cap It was established in April of 2021 to engage the local community We have held six virtual meetings and those presentations are available at TMI to solutions comm I can tell you from experience that we have a very dedicated team at TMI to Between all of our employees and key partners doing unprecedented work. I Do want to specifically recognize the TMI to regulatory staff Who've been working tirelessly as you can imagine so Tim Hannah and Jim I know you're all here somewhere. Thank you for your efforts So I'll now introduce mr. Yamamoto Okay, okay, I would like to introduce you Outline of the status and plans of the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants that experienced severe accident 12 years ago Before starting my presentation, I would like to note that many OHP is I'm showing you today Quoted from various sources and also, please note that I will refer to Fukushima Daiichi as 1f for short next please This one shows the contents of my speech and after the short introduction I will move on to the technical issue of the decommissioning next piece And it shows the organizational structure After the accident there was a need for injecting fans to typical Which is the owner and operator of 1f to cover the compensations for the loss and damage caused caused from nuclear accidents and Japan first injected with public funds in 2011 for this compensation Later in 2014 the government decided to add a scheme to facilitate the Commissioning and dismantling the damaged power plants For that purpose the NDF was established by a special act The NDF provides Financial assistance and longer-term technical management of the typical decommissioning program To establish such a long-term management using public funds The NDF collaborates very closely with the typical and the government next please Next Okay, and the three parties coordinate the progress and plans through the Documents publicly available The government publishes a mid and long-term roadmap. The NDF publishes Technical strategic plan In the roadmap our status is in the phase 2 presently Removal of fuel assemblies from the pool is underway and Many achievements are realized for for the management of radioactive waste and water There is a delay for about two years in the action of fast retrieval of fuel debris next please and From now I'd like to explain the technical issue of the life decommissioning and at first Let me quick review of the accident That's that accident the reactor core melting unit 1 2 3 and Hydrogen was generated because of the oxidation of fuel cladding. It led to hydrogen explosion in unit 1 3 and 4 and after the accident fuel assemblies in the reactor buildings were removed from unit 3 and 4 and Fuel assemblies are still stored and cooled in unit 1 and 2 And one of the biggest issue of one F decommissioning is contaminated water management Contaminated water is generated daily mainly because the ground water seeps into the building and is mixed with highly contaminated water and Countermeasures for contaminated water have been carried out based on three principles First one is removing contamination from water shown in red one second one is removing directing ground water from contamination sources showing blue one and the third one is Preventing leakage showing green one and lower charge shows the Reduction of the generation rate of contaminated water is achieved from about 500 cubic meters per day in 2014 or 2015 to about 130 cubic meters per day in 2021 The contaminated water is collected and treated in a safe way The multi-nuclear removal system alapses removes most removes most Radio-nuclearized From the contaminated water except for to reach you next week although Water containing to reach you may has been stored in tanks since the accident The water need to be handled in a way as other nuclear facilities do To release the land from being used for tank storage The safe and reliable solution is to discharge into the sea after dilution The treated water discharge system shown here Will become available this later spring to summer and in order to implement the treated water discharge into seed it is necessary to continue to provide Accurate information and Open and transparent monitoring of all systems and Discharges is required and also continuous ocean monitoring will be essential Next please and the next item is Fuel removal from spent fuel pools of unit 1 and 2 about unit 1 Large cover will be installed to achieve further reduction of radioactive dust in dispersion risk after the Removal of the rubble including the displaced overhead crane shown in green in the left picture and Removal of fuel is expected to begin in 2017 to 2018 and after unit 2 showing light making opening on the south side of the Reactor building fuel will be removed from this opening using a bottom type Boom type crane system operated remotely The construction work has already started and removal of fuel Is expected to begin in 2024 to 2026 next please And the next item is fuel debris retrieval This slide shows how much we know about the distribution of fuel debris and let me give a very brief introduction and About unit 1 Most of the fuel debris is present at the PCB bottom inside the pedestal and about unit 2 large amount of fuel debris is present at the reactor pressure vessel lower head and About 3 the distribution of fuel debris in Unit 3 is about halfway between unit 1 and 2 And some amount of fuel debris may have spread outside the pedestal in unit 1 and 3 Like this the situation inside the PCB is gradually becoming clear But still now information is limited and we do not have visual data inside the reactor pressure vessel up to now Next please This figure shows the system for or trial retrieval fuel debris in unit 2 the Operation will be performed by opening hatch of penetration and the robot arm moved in and out To retrieve fuel debris inside the PCB and to achieve that a new Containment barriers should be provided outside the PCB these robot arm and containment barrier system are now under the test and adjustment and There and the trial retrieval is expected to start in late 2023 fiscal year Next one please and after the trial fuel retrieval and subsequent gradual expansion of the retrieval scale Further expansion or large scale of fuel debris retrieval is expected This OHP shows that typical fuel debris retrieval method which have been studied dry method and new submersion method shown in left and center are now Mainly being discussed and both methods have no proven track record in the nuclear industry and many challenging issues and risks have been identified and The NDF has recently decided to start discussion About the method of large scale fuel debris retrieval at the newly established subcommittee To contribute to determine the debris retrieval method Next one please Next item is about the analysis and the characterization of fuel debris and waste is quite important for promptness and rationality of decommissioning and the analysis of such fuel debris and waste will be Is a critical and essential path in this context existing hot laboratories operated by nuclear fuel fabricators and JAA being utilized showing green one and To reinforce the analytical capacity and functions three Hot laboratories in the one F side are planned First one is for solid waste and treated water analysis showing blue left and Is in service since last autumn and second one is for fuel debris analysis And is now under licensing procedure light one blue and The last one is under the design by typical for future needs of analysis shown in pink and Like this the facilities for analysis are being developed in stages to meet analytical needs next one please The fundamental principle for decommissioning is balancing between Reconstruction and decommissioning and it is important to deepens the understanding of local residents about the decommissioning through interactive communication in addition the continuous Corporation of companies is essential and especially revitalizing decommissioning related industries is an important pillar of TEPCOS contribution to the reconstruction of Fukushima prefecture Based on these understandings NDAF have many activities on dialogues with stakeholders Including holding the international forum Hearing activity with local communities and others next one, please Last one is about the international cooperation the decommissioning of the one F is Expected to be a long-term project with many challenging engineering issues To solve these issues. It is important to learn lessons from precedents overseas case and to utilize the world's highest level of technology and human resources at the same time we recognize that as PC with internal situation is gradually becoming clear It's becoming more and more important to share the decommissioning experience Including information not only on the progress of the decommissioning but also findings and knowledge gained through the decommissioning activities Next one, please it shows Reference and as my closing words, let me invite you to the international forum of one F Decommissioning which is scheduled on August 27 and 28 for this year. I'm looking forward to your participation Thank you very much for your kind attention Thank you well, thank you, mr. Yamamoto Amy Bruce and Anthony that that was great presentation very interesting I do want to apologize for the technical difficulties during mr. Yamamoto's presentation I would just remind those you online and in the audience His slides are available will be available on the rick website Covers the information that maybe wasn't captured during the the microphone difficulties that we had and I would also encourage you to look at the References there's links in each of his references that have just a wealth of information about the status of Fukushima and where Japan is with that decommissioning very complex decommissioning project. So thank you again to our panel members I'm now going to get into the Q&A and we had several great questions that came in while the panelists were presenting and I'll just start with actually Bruce I have one for you So let me just pull it up real quick So, you know, we're all interested in knowledge management experience how we address You know an aging workforce and being ready for the future This very much goes with the theme of this year's Rick of navigating the nuclear future. You spoke about meshing of experience and The the question is what what advice can you give to longtime nuclear workers on Kind of that transition from operating standards to decommissioning standards How do you maintain the appropriate levels of rigor throughout the decommissioning process? Any insights and Amy, maybe if you have any instance on that a while we'd be interested Bruce well I think the best advice that we can give the folks They're coming out of the operating fleet and are now working on decommissioning projects Just a is to have an open mind. You want to maintain that discipline the procedure compliance But you know one of the stories I always like to hear from one of my colleagues energy solutions Is you walk down the hallway in the reactor building and we're in the turbine building and you see The decommissioning group working and the plant's been long shut down the fuels out of the core It's in dry storage and they're carefully unbolting a piece of equipment off the deck and The supervisor stop and says why are you doing that? We've got a bulldozer that we just bring in here and rip it out of the road and send it off for scrap I mean, it's a different culture but I think You know for the the most important thing we can do is Encourage the folks at these plants that have operated it for 20 30 40 even 50 years to stick around through the decommissioning project And thankfully there's great opportunities to do that and learn how decommissioning is done There will be future opportunities that you've been hearing for the past few days as the new reactors come along and hopefully it's at the site you're working on right now to decommission the the Reactor that you were working on so I think stick around learn how decommissioning is done You know we mentioned the 12 Reactors that are current through going through active decommissioning right now our objective here is to learn as much as we can from those 12 reactors Capture all that information in any I-20 to a one and a regulatory framework Put it on the shelf because there's gonna be a hiatus After these plants are done. We won't see I think Hopefully much more in the way of decommissioning as you know You've heard folks are going through SLR most of the plants are expected to request subsequent lice referral They'll be operating for quite some time. We don't want to forget what we're about to learn over the next five to ten years We want to bottle it and put it on the shelf so that when these folks need it. It's all there. So But I think the real challenges we have right now and in our workforce is really the high-end health physics Expertise on how you set up a survey how you collect samples how you maintain qaqc How you do the analysis and how you prepare reports to the nrc for review So you're setting them just the right amount of information and not 40,000 pages of data so Lot to be learned there. We have workforce planning group that's running it at NEI We are seeing the same challenges in decommissioning as the operating fleet is and there's a there's a significant effort under the nuclear strategic advisories committee to figure out how to Bring in the new nuclear workers that we so badly need so hopefully that answers the question. That's great. Thank you, Bruce You mean any perspectives? Yeah, I was just gonna add It's it's really important that you maintain keep up with your procedures and processes I think we can get a little laxed with some of the scope that we do and in decommissioning and I think you know, I Think Anthony you mentioned that we tend to have less experienced staff sometimes in nuclear So making sure we have those robust procedures and processes and that they're followed. I think is also key Great. Thank you So another question we received and I'll take a quick stab at this one How has the inflation reduction act? affected the decommissioning outlook for the NRC it does mention a couple of plans and I won't get into specifics, but It's a great question and it's it's obviously a challenging one for us I think the bottom line answer is once we receive Notification that a plant has permanently seized operations plans of transition to decommissioning We do make plans for that and try to budget get the workforce ready and and make the appropriate You know logistics so that we can you know address all the different elements of decommissioning But it's you know, and it's no secret. There are plans that are looking at possibly restarting possibly extending their lifetime Even though they've expressed a desire to restart Many times we work those in parallel We we want to be ready for any eventuality and so you know when when a utility Is kind of going down multiple paths I think our agency tries to be agile and nimble to make sure that we're ready for both paths And so the the plants that are out there now that are that are kind of exploring these options You know our partner agency in our are is is making preparations for the other side of it that could happen And so, you know the direct answer to the question it doesn't really change what we do on a decommissioning sound We want to be ready for that. We try to plan and prepare But as a big agency with with partners in the operating side We also try to make preparations for for if that plant were to stay online or restart so Tony I think this is a great question for you. It really does go along with your presentation and I Think you addressed it a little bit, but maybe you could talk a little bit more about the process that we use and Can you talk a little bit about what the NRC does and what measures we have in place when a regulatory violation is Identified at a decommissioning or decommissioning facility sure we handle that good question. Thank you So in when I mentioned in my slides that when a site Transitions from an operating reactor to a decommissioning reactor we change from the ROP to the decommissioning power inspection program the difference there is that we don't utilize the reactor oversight process that is Is is a it's a mature process, but it has more checks and balances We have the traditional enforcement process so when one of my inspectors for example identifies an issue of concern and It could be a violation There's a couple of things that go along with that and the first thing is we first determine Is it truly a violation of NRC requirements orders? Like see commitments tie downs things like that and the next question is is it greater than minor significance? So we have to clear that hurdle first and we there's a lot of information that goes into that to make that determination And we try to do that in an upset in an objective and consistent manner and we talked to the the inspectors Of course the inspector who identifies it, but also other inspectors who have experience in the field to make sure that we are objective and consistent and after that we use the The traditional enforcement process the enforcement policy and the enforcement manual to make sure that we assess it with Significance and the significance levels go from one as the most severe to survey level four or five if it's minor So that's our process and there's a lot of give-and-take To try to to see if it lands in the right survey level column and how do we do that? Well It's called Good judgment. How do you get good judgment? Well, you get it from a lot of bad judgment, right? So we do a lot of hypotheticals and you want to make sure that you compare Licensee a with this condition with another like CB with a slightly a different variety of let's say you change The duration of time for which the violation was in in effect To make sure that you're in a good place as far as what we Issued in the past and if it really makes sense really, you know effectively make sense. So that's how we do that. Yeah, great Thanks, Tony. I'll just add a couple of things. I do work in the enforcement world the level of rigor that the NRC applies as Violations become more significant also increases. So we want to make sure we get it right and We have violations that are non escalated violations. Those are typically dispositioned at like a branch chief level Peer checks, etc. When we start talking about escalated issues that are several level, you know, three or greater Typically those involve Formal enforcement panels we get headquarters involved. We make sure we have all the right subject matter expert involved So it is a graded approach, but I think that's just a piece that I wanted to highlight. So thank you, Tony I've got a basic question about The requirement for when a plant has to complete decommissioning If a multi-unit site like indium point Dresden peach bottom gets a 40-year extension for the operating units With the 60-year limit for Decommissioning for retired units be extended to align with the operating units. I like I've got Bruce here Bruce Gave me some of some insights. So the simple answer is no the the 60-year requirement Remains the same now that said, you know, the NRC is not Unwilling to entertain exemptions, you know, we want to make sure that the safety of the operating unit is maintained So if the the demantling deconstruction activities of the the retired unit when it interfered in any way with the The the operating unit we have and will entertain exemptions to that 60-year requirement, but it does hold as 60 years Anything else Yeah, I just like to add that, you know, we've got these Dresden ones for me ones peach one You know, they're out there and the expectation is is that the way this was worked with this plant That are in a safe store for 60 years is that year 50 you start doing the actual decon To meet the 60-year requirement, but it's not always practical or even desirable to To to actively decommission a plant that's adjacent to an operating reactor So there have been discussions around Exemptions which may not be the most fruitful path to take but I think there is a healthy discussion on options Which might include will do what you can if you haven't already done what you could at the at the long retired plant It's adjacent to an operating reactor. And maybe what you do is wrap around your RCA to to that unit and include it within the operating reactors Footprint if you would from a perspective of decommissioning and you defer the decommissioning of that unit along with the Final decommissioning of the of the operating units when the time comes Great. Thanks Bruce appreciate that perspective Amy we received a question on three-mile island And you talked about historical preservation by the way the spot in action was very interesting Also saw spot cracking open some pistachio nuts on a recent commercial At the same robot But the question had to do with the cooling towers at three-mile island You know you talked about maintaining for a historical perspective the the control room Obviously the cooling towers are somewhat iconic. It's very much associated with that unit Do you know what the the plan is for maybe the cooling towers or any other parts of three-mile island from a historical Preservation perspective. Yeah, so we you know we have a lar under NRC review to allow us to go to the next phase of decommissioning We also have a subsequent submission in front of the staff that deals with what's called section 106 and section 106 is the Historical and cultural preservation if you will it's the required reviews that that need to occur to kind of walk us through the Historic and cultural process to help guide us and determine You know what things will be preserved what things will not so you know cooling towers in particular that really you know We'll see where that leads us in terms of us going through the process Great, thank you Mr.. Yamimoto we received a question about Retrieval of fuel debris at the Fukushima units. Can you and I'll just read it We would just appreciate to hear your sharing of the view on the possible methods for the large-scale fuel debris retrieval for the reactors at the Fukushima units What kind of methods are you employing and Thank you very much for your question Let me see We've been studied about how to retrieve the fuel debris from three reactors and Just now we are discussing about fuel debris from unit 3 and Submargin Method When I showed you on the right side One was difficult to To to use use it because the Sealing of the PCB upper part of the PCB is quite difficult and so I Explained the center of my OHP Full submersion system it shows the cover the all the reactors these strong Structures and put Water into the that into that strong start structures But and We have already studied through the We have already studied that the structure can be made with seismic resistance and with Space constraints of the one F But still now there are many many Issues to to overcome to achieve that and so still now we under Discussion about how to achieve or how to achieve the fuel debris from these reactors Okay Thank you Anthony. I think the next question Probably is for you. You talked about You know the challenges of fires that at decommissioning plants Is there any guidance on plants maintaining an on-site fire brigade or transition to relying on off-site agencies that? You know of or that is readily available and then maybe just talk a little bit more about your insights into Best practice for hot work also interested in any other panel members thoughts on that So there is some guidance most sites when they decommission after a certain time they transition to what's called an incipient fire brigade They do have Goodwill contracts with off-site agencies private fire companies and things of that sort And they maintain Liaisons with that and bring them on site to talk about Where they would go if there was a fire But as this as the plants slowly decommission and buildings begin to disappear Obviously well starting with the the the site shutting down the risks of fire Drop down dramatically and after the Zerk fire window is closed then it goes down even further So that's number one number two after that happens they transition to what's called incipient fire brigade There is some guidance But generally it goes into an incipient fire brigade and they have procedures and things on site to learn how to That for which they implement to fight fires Did you want to add anything from the industry? Yeah? I just like to emphasize that the fire protection continues to be very important during decommissioning because if you really think about the risks Yes, the profile goes way down But if you were to think about how you might be able to transport radioactive material to the public off-site It's going to be you know through fires probably the way that would happen. So I Think as you get into decommissioning fire prevention fire protection is a very significant important part of the licensees program to maintain and for NRC to oversee great Thanks, Tony and Bruce appreciate that We received a question about spent fuel management and how that factors into the overall decommissioning plan and You know my thought is it it is transferred to dry-feel storage before most Decommissioning demanding work any any additional thoughts or perspectives on that Bruce or Tony or yeah sure I think that's one of the great success stories in the United States is the the ability for us to pivot from Ultimately, you know transporting this waste to this this spent fuel to a permanent repository back You know when we thought that would happen to being able to safely store this in dry storage At the sites, you know one of my old plants Calvert cliffs, you know this the fuels never left the site We've been operating since since the early 70s and that that the footprint for the dry storage the ISFSI Independent spent fuel storage facility is the size of a small Walmart parking lot is very impressive When you when you show folks that it's very safe and it can be there for a long time Unfortunately, but it's safe for a very long time So I think it's a success story and and the folks in that line of work continue to innovate on how we can more rapidly move from a Shutdown and get this fuel into dry storage by accommodating the higher heat loads Associated with those and the signs of these casks, so I think it's a success story We're hopeful that you know There's going to be someone who is able to license and operate a Consolidated interim storage facility and ultimately we find a way to permanently dispose of this fuel And of course as you've heard I think over the past couple of days The the new reactor community is getting sort of interested in and how this used fuel might be useful to them Yeah, just to add the The introduction of the ISFSI's the independent spent fuel storage installations When the when the reactor shuts down and they the first order of business is to remove the fuel put it in the spent fuel pool They've been Installing it into canisters what they call canisters The the licensees whole tech TN Arano new homes, they're very good at what they do They've been doing this for a long time They've been doing since 1986. This is not new stuff They do it and they do it very slowly and our inspectors are on site doing dry runs As they're there when they're actually loading the first couple canisters and they do it, you know every three years now or Or every sooner, you know more frequently But our guys are there to observe this thing because the fuel could be out there for a number of years Depending on what happens finally with either interim storage or final disposal So so our inspectors are there to observe the licensees performance for that and then furthermore what it is once it is on the pad There is security there and will be there until it finally goes to interim storage or final and our inspectors And inspect the security aspect as well. So I just want to mention that great. Thanks, Tony Anyone else on the panel feel like they would like to weigh in okay So we received a couple of questions that were very similar in nature and I'll kind of summarize them both together So it has to do with the level of public engagement through the the decommissioning process Maybe for the NRC staff and then the industry staff Could you talk a little bit about? How we engage the local communities during the decommissioning process what types of public events we hold public meetings and then Specific reverse we did we did get a question about the the NEI guidance that you referenced in your presentation Does that account for a level of public interaction account for the time it takes to do that? In your guides, so maybe start with Tony. I just kick it off and then Interested in your views on how we're doing and if you do more so For decommissioning where we the staff Hosts of what's called a psdr a public meeting for the post shutdown decommissioning activities report and we do that before and actually Bruce Watson Who's here has hosted that a number of times throughout the for years and so we do that We've also had a number of webinars and actual public meetings where we talk about a psdr's shutdowns and How decommissioning is done we also hold? Government-to-government meetings to talk to members of US Congress staffers county executives mayors things local Local elected officials things like that and so we continue to do that and more recently we've been having Similar public meetings to talk about either security or emergency preparedness at site decommissioning sites and also for Spent fuel and we also are planning with the program office with Jeremy staff with Sean Anderson We're planning further public meetings to talk about Effluent releases which are allowed within our regulations, but Bruce Yeah, I think Yeah, I'll start with any I-20 to oh one which is our guidance document You know we felt like we didn't really need to talk about public engagement in that document because folks have figured that out Pretty well already. In fact, you know give kudos to the NRC. They were directed by the Congress To go around and collect information on how public engagement was done across the country And I sort of trailed Bruce Watson around the country while he had held those public meetings But these community advisory boards or panels or whatever you call them have been quite successful I'm not sure how they started whether it was something that was instigated or suggested by the NRC or if they just began organically But they're working very well And you know one of the NRC's conclusions when they went around the country looking at these boards and panels is that you know One size does not fit all These work best when they're developed by the locals working with the licensee and other stakeholders in the area There were a couple places I think where there is no panel because the folks just weren't interested in following What was happening at the plant? So you know the Crystal River comes to mind and there's a couple of others But then there are places where these are very elaborate panels that are very active and engaged with what's happening at the plant So I think folks have figured that out and I think they're From everything I can tell they work. They are working very well for the for the licensee in the in the Community great and Amy I think you mentioned that you have a community engagement panel for three mile island Maybe a little bit of your experience and thoughts on that Yeah, so I mentioned that we had a citizens advisory panel also known as the cap at TMI to it Was set up to engage the community. It is a cross-section of the community We have I would say decent participation our numbers have been going up But it is like Bruce said a result of what the community wants or needs So TMI to head interest For example Kiwani at least not so far. There was no interest in a citizens and by advisory panel there So just depends on the community and the wants and needs The biggest issues who buys the pizza for the meetings, I think So Tony in your last response you talked about no discharges effluent discharges Have you have you seen any growing trends in? No public perception of that Anxiety even though the you know for the most part they're all within NRC established regulatory requirements Yes, there's been recent I Guess a little anxiety about you know discharges I believe that the stakeholders and near for example pilgrim and some of the you know a site in New York I Don't know if it's because the members of the public became aware that there are discharges where where in fact the discharges have been happening In pilgrim since 1972 Continuously except for I think 2019 and 2020 2021 but for 47 years that they've been discharging regularly when the plant was operating and in Indian Point for example Since unit 1 was on operations in 1962 Until 74 and then since units 2 and 3 have been operating There have been continuous discharges for years and continue to do so I think there might be it's possible that the stakeholders were not aware prior and that Now they become aware of what is it permitted for discharge these discharges are actually the water is not just Dumped in some way this this water is actually processed monitored ensured that it meets the regulatory limits and then the effluent discharges are done so There is some trends that people have some anxiety about it but this is happening throughout the United States and you know it There's a reason why we have a regulations that permit this sort of thing and we deem it to be safe great So we've got just a little over five minutes left I think we got time for probably one more question and we got a an interesting one about Maybe harvesting some knowledge from the decommissioning process You know doing What I would call maybe failure analysis on components that you know come out of the decommissioning process to learn about failure mechanisms Maybe feed that into operational experience for the operating fleet any thought from any of our panel members on You know learning from These components that have you know been in service for a long time. They've been subject to the effects of radiation How do we take that knowledge and build upon it? Yeah, thank you There's been quite a bit of interest in this and I'm surprised that there hasn't been as much motion on it containment penetrations piping and electrical penetrations that have been service for a long time those that are subgrade in particular Reactor vessel Components and samples there from I think You know every's not on the panel today, but every's been working with the NRC And some of these licensees to figure out What's what are the high value components to extract and send over for some R&D? I think that? The important thing here is if the NRC or the research community has some interest in a component is to let the Licensee know that early because it really has to be factored carefully into a very complex and aggressive dismantling project schedule and plan so You know, I think you know, there's there's Interest in flooding barriers, I recall, but I have not heard of anything happening along the lines of extracting samples Or equipment to take a look at those but yeah, just as an engineer I can appreciate the interest in in Doing some work on things that are coming out of these reactors to better inform The designs going forward in the regulatory framework around those things going forward in the future. Great. Thanks, Bruce Mr. Yamamoto or Amy any thoughts you've got a couple of really interesting sites that Thank you very much for question and Fukushima Daiichi has a severe Experience 12 years ago and it's decommissioning we need very very long time and so the Accumulation and transfer of the knowledge is quite important and so but at least right now We are just preparing for retrieval fuel WC retrieval and In the near future we have to Make a good good system about about Transfer of the knowledge to the next generation. Yes. Thank you. Thank you All right, I think that's probably all we have time for today. Jeremy Could I go back to that question that someone asked on the inflation reduction act? Yeah, just just bottom line I think you know the immediate effect is going to be it's going to dry up the decommissioning market going forward because folks are Going to continue operating, but it wasn't just the inflation reduction act It was the commercial nuclear credit program on the DOE loans and To a large extent this the actions were being taken at the state level to preserve these operating power plants But looking ahead the inflation reduction act is going to incentivize a lot of work that you're going to be familiar with its Steam generator replacements as folks go into subsequent license renewal reactor vessel head replacements Steam dryers and whatnot very large components that when you look at those projects are sort of decommissioning projects in the microcosm and instead of building a Place to store them on site when they're taken out of the reactor We're going to want to transport those package and transport those for off-site disposal And you know there is a discussion happening right now Between the industry and the NRC and can we use can we can we really treat those projects as decommissioning projects in As many projects if you will and use the decommissioning trust fund for that purpose And we think we're going to make some headway on that this year Certainly, there's going to be a lot of work going forward that's stimulated by the inflation reduction act as we renew these plants and renew some of these components and Make sure that as we do those jobs We can transport those large components off-site for disposal directly as opposed to storing them on site We've got hundreds of components that are being stored on site around the country right now That's probably not the greatest low-level waste storage place that we want to have so great Thank thanks for that Bruce and I think it very much goes with the title of our presentation Our theme or our panel decommissioning in a dynamic environment There's a lot of factors in play right now, and I think you hit upon a lot of them Well with that I'm going to bring this this Technical session to a close. I want to thank everybody for participating today. I think it was a very Robust discussion. I think a lot of unique perspectives were brought forward. I want to thank our panel members Who participated again? Thanks to the liaison and session Coordinator who brought this all together I do want to thank our audience members who you know provide questions and also who just came and listened and Learned something. I think it was fantastic I know that a number of our panel members will likely be available after the sessions over if you you have a specific question They'll likely be in the hallway You can you can grab them there Just a couple last-minute closing things Feedback is important to us. We're always trying to improve the Rick For those of you logged on and those who have accessed the portal There is a feedback tab and if you have any comments or suggestions on how we could make this session better or improve the Rick in general Please don't hesitate to add those. I do have one last announcement I wanted to make and The NRC is going to host a decommissioning lessons learned public workshop be a public meeting sometime in the next few months I'd encourage everybody to look on our public website for the details on that They'll be they'll be noticed like any other public meeting and look forward to a good attendance there With that I want to thank you very again, and the session is closed. Thanks, everyone I mean, it's just the roads are you know, and they're like Okay Thanks for coming to our session. My name is Terry Brock. I'm a senior health physicist in NRC's research office We're glad we were able to present the results of this study that's been going on for a while When we asked it started out with a interagency agreement between EPA NASA and and NRC with the DOE low dose program at the time and One of the things NRC asked for let's let's do an epidemiology study of our radiation workers Now after the three years of COVID, I think we're all become epidemiologists


American leadership and its role in the world to help provide global security and stability. The world needs to know that a bit of America is really going to be there for them and we want to accept some risk to do some of that and we need to reassure our allies because so many of them have lost confidence in faith in us.


In recent years, hyperspectral image classification techniques have been gaining popularity among researchers due to their ability to accurately model the development of cities and provide valuable references for urban planning and construction. However, due to the difficulty in acquiring hyperspectral images, only a small number of pixels can be used as training samples. This poses a challenge in terms of extracting and utilizing the spatial and spectral information of these images. To address this issue, we propose a novel hyperspectral image classification method based on dense pyramidal convolution and multi-feature fusion, DPCMF. Dense pyramid convolutions and non-local blocks are used to extract both spatial and spectral features from image samples. These features are then fused together and fed into fully connected layers to produce classification results. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves significant improvements over other state-of-the-art methods such as SVM, SSRN, FDSSC, DBMA and DBDA. As a result, our method provides more accurate and reliable terrain and environmental conditions for urban planning, design, construction and management. This article was authored by Jun Sanjiang, Li Xiao, Hong Xiaojiang, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


What I want to do now, now that I've created one pillar, I want to duplicate these pillars along the one wall. Now I could do that one at a time and position one at a time, but there's actually a built-in duplicate option that allows you to create multiple copies and have them at a set interval apart. So we're going to have a look at that now. So I'm going to click on this pillar, make sure I've got it selected, and then I'm going to click on edit and I'm going to go down to duplicate special, which means I can duplicate something with additional properties. I'm going to click on the options box for that. And what I want to do is I want to translate it along one of the axes. Translate is another way of saying move, and I'm moving it along this axis, along that one wall, and I can see from here that that's telling me that's going to be the x-axis. So I'm going to put a value in the x-box here, and it's really easy to know which box is which, because it follows the alphabet. So this one here is x, that's y, and that's z. So under the translate x, I'm going to put a value of five in. So each one's going to move five units along. And then the number of copies, I want four copies, meaning that I'll get five in total. And then I'm going to click on duplicate special, and it's done. And you can now see that in one step, I've created a row of these pillars along the back wall, which looks pretty cool.


I've got to be honest with you, I've been around for a long time in state politics and federal politics. I've never seen stranger bedfellas than Bernie Sanders and the extreme liberal left siding up with the Republican leadership in the caucus. I've never seen this happen. So teaming up with Republicans to block portions of the Democratic Party's agenda is now apparently bad according to Joe Manchin of all people who's been doing just that for nearly two years now. Interesting. Now he later goes on in that same video to accuse Bernie Sanders of doing revenge politics, which we'll talk about and I'll play more of the press conference for you.  Now what is the dirty deal? Well the dirty deal is basically a provision within an upcoming must pass budget bill that accelerates permits for fossil fuel projects, it scales back environmental reviews which would accelerate the development of fossil fuel projects like the mountain valley pipeline that Manchin and his donors have been aggressively pushing. Now I'll talk about why this is being included in must pass legislation here in a moment. But Bernie Sanders is opposed to this because obviously this is bad for the environment. Republicans, they are too opposed to this at least at this point in time, but not because they care about the environment. They're opposed to this specifically because it doesn't go far enough. It's not a good enough giveaway to the fossil fuel industry. So you could say technically Bernie Sanders and Republicans are politically aligned when it comes to this vote, but they're aligned for very, very different reasons to be clear. Now all of Democratic Party leadership Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, they all are hellbent on putting this provision that Joe Biden or Joe Manchin rather desperately wants into the upcoming must pass bill because this was kind of the stipulation that was used to get Manchin to support the Inflation Reduction Act. As Jake Johnson of Common Dreams explains, as part of a deal to secure Manchin's support for the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, Democratic leaders agreed to hold a vote on permitting reforms that the senator and his industry allies have long demanded. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California are expected to attach a permitting reform bill to a government funding measure that must pass by the end of the month to avoid a shutdown. The White House said Monday that President Joe Biden is committed to advancing permitting reforms. So in short, this is the Democratic Party scratching each other's back. Joe Manchin supported the Inflation Reduction Act and now they're paying it forward, giving him this fossil fuel giveaway that his donors have been lobbying for for a very long time. Now the question is where do House progressives stand on this particular provision? Well, on September 9th, Raul Grihalva, along with more than 70 different House Democrats, sent a letter to Democratic Party leadership, urging them to not keep this provision in the must pass bill and also explaining why this is harmful and whatnot. But this letter is basically toothless, seeing that there's no implicit threat that they'll be voting against this legislation. Now Nancy Pelosi is known for not bringing bills to the floor for a vote unless she has the votes needed to pass it. So House Democrats, progressives in particular, can kill it unilaterally if they simply say, we're going to vote against this if you're going to put this in a must pass bill. And Pelosi wouldn't want to have there be this government shutdown right before the midterms. So progressives have a lot of leverage here, but they're not necessarily saying we're going to vote against this. We're just saying we're urging you to not put this in the must pass bill. But why would Nancy Pelosi who wants to see this pass keep this out of the must pass bill?  So that's why they're putting this in the must pass bill because they know that you don't want to be blamed for a government shutdown. So, you know, if progressives say, nope, you don't have our support. If this is going to lead to a government shutdown, so be it, they would take out this provision because they don't want a government shutdown. But because progressives are just saying, oh, well, we urge you to not put this in the must pass bill, it's not going to happen. Like, you're not going to really affect change this way. Having said that, though, that hasn't stopped the opposition to this from growing. Environmental groups, for example, have come out against this. And since Joe Manchin is still facing pushback from these groups, from progressives, even if it may be not necessarily that harsh. Well, he's enlisted the fossil fuel industry for help. But again, I've just got to say, if progressives in the house followed Bernie Sanders lead, he said, I'm voting against this. They did that same thing. You know, there wouldn't need to be this huge kerfuffle. It would be over. It would be taken out of the bill because Democrats are not going to want a government shutdown before the election. Now, Republicans, on the other hand, they would love to see a government shutdown before the election. But, you know, if they can somehow blame Democrats for that. But we don't necessarily know how this is going to play out yet. Joe Manchin, however, because there's so much opposition that's growing, he decided to hold a press conference to address the critics. And I don't know how to describe this as anything but a temper tantrum because he accuses Bernie Sanders, as I stated earlier, of doing revenge politics and take a look at specifically what he says. He is offering one small concession in releasing the text because this was previously being negotiated behind closed doors. But take a look at what he says about Bernie Sanders and progressives specifically. First of all, the text will be out tomorrow. Tomorrow, you'll have the text in full. That's a week before I think we'll probably move or do anything on the CR. So there'll be no ifs ands in between and guessing and assuming things of that sort. That gives everyone plenty of time. And you know, I thought about this and then I've watched this whole thing unfold from all different sides. I guess the old saying that politics make strange bedfellows. I got to be honest with that. I've been around for a long time and state politics and federal politics. I've never seen stranger bedfellows than Bernie Sanders and the the extreme liberal left siding up with the Republican leadership in the caucus. I've never seen this happen. So it's it's come to me. What I'm hearing is it's like a revenge politics and basically revenge towards one person. Me and I'm thinking this is not about me. This is about something that Bernie has never and Bernie has never supported anything about permitting reforms. And you're facing a country today. We've passed this out to you, I think, permitting timelines. If you look at what we do in the United States, five to ten years, that's a minimum. If you look at basically states that have countries that have vigorous environmental over oversights, one to three years, one to three years. And then if you look at what's happening now because of the energy crisis we have in the Ukraine war, you have EU is considering emergency bypassing of all environmental reviews. And we don't think we're in a crisis and we're not going to do anything about it. And we can.  Which was better than the Inflation Reduction Act. I mean, sure, you could say that maybe there are some house Democrats who are vengeful and they should be to be clear. But this is all about principle. This is about standing up for the environment and marginalized communities, indigenous people, who these pipelines that you're pushing through will affect. But Manchin doesn't really care about that. He's desperate and he wants to make sure that leadership doesn't get cold feet and they don't pull this from the must pass bill. So this is all the more reason for progressives to resist it. Now, also notice how he's using a crisis to try to push this agenda that his donors have wanted for a very long time. But he's trying to say, oh, we have this crisis and we have to do this right now. Let's get this done. No, motherfucker, you've been pushing this for so long. Don't pretend. Now, one more video I want to play for you. So this is from the same press conference and he's now going to turn his attention towards Republicans. And he makes it very clear they are still friends. He emphasizes this all throughout the press conference, but he's trying to make Republicans weary that they'll be seen as sympathetic towards a socialist Bernie Sanders if they choose to side with him by letting the, you know, perfect be the enemy of the good. Because this giveaway, even if it's not what they wanted, it's not everything that they had dreamed for with regard to their fossil fuel donors. It's still really good. And so, you know, support this. Otherwise, you might be seen as aligning with Bernie Sanders. And since he's bad, you should probably support my giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, even if it's not as robust and comprehensive as yours. Let's watch. But to have an opportunity that my I know there's part of my Democrats, the caucus and the far left liberals that Bernie is so proud of. We're never going to be for this. I knew that this is a bipartisan. It doesn't pass without the Republicans. And to have something that my Republican colleagues and the leadership knows this better than any Republican, you know, and they'll see this when the text comes out and they know that basically what they've tried to do. And I says, I applaud my colleague, Senator Capito, for putting something out and dropping a marker, a messaging bill that they support, that they supported, they support permitting reform. How in the world do you go home and explain it? Well, the perfect just wasn't perfect enough. So the perfect will be the enemy, the good when you've had no movement. So when do you ever see you're going to change the permitting till we can have the American people get relief from the high cost? When you take a pipeline, the Mountain Valley pipeline, nothing puts more product into the market quicker and helps relieve the shortages that we have right now. That pipeline's gone from 3.3 billion over 6.2 or 6.4 billion dollars just because of the permitting process they're going through. So I'm just saying we're looking at it in a reasonable, responsible way. Take me out of it shouldn't be revenge. If Bernie's upset with me, fine, I understand that. But let's look at the American public. Let's look at our constituents. If my Republican friends and colleagues in the leadership and Republican parties attacking me personally, take it away from me personally because that's going to be hard to go home and explain. Well, we did this and we voted against it because of Joe Manchin. There's no sense whatsoever. None whatsoever. So we're in this quandary right now. We're going to vote and it's going to be in the CR. Okay. And if they're willing to say we're going to close down the government because of a personal attack on me or basically not looking at the good of the country, this is what makes people sick about politics.  You know me, I vote across. But if it looks good, I don't care what's Republican or Democrat idea, I'm for it. As long as I can explain it, a lot of it makes sense. A lot of my Republican friends do things that I support and a lot of American Democrat and there's things that both do that I don't. This type of politics is something I can't accept.  And that, my friends, is a masterclass in moral grandstanding. Do you want to know what actually makes Americans sick, Joe Manchin?  This time it's your fossil fuel industry donors. And seeing that Joe Manchin is a modern day coal baron. You know, he views this as personal. So I just love that Joe Manchin is throwing a temper tantrum because he thought that Republicans would support this because I mean, this is a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry. But right now Republicans, even if you're doing this giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, they don't want to support anything that would be perceived as a win for Democrats. And the ones who are really playing revenge politics in this instance to be fair are Republicans who don't like Manchin because he betrayed them by supporting the Inflation Reduction Act. So, you know, we'll have to see how this plays out. But I just love that Joe Manchin is squirming because I hope this fails. And if Republicans are the ones who end up tanking it, great, because it shouldn't go through. I don't care what reason they're using to justify voting against this. What I care about is they vote against this and it fails.