Law Enforcement Response in Power Reactor Physical Protection Programs

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Part 73</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NRC-2024-0167]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Law Enforcement Response in Power Reactor Physical Protection Programs</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed interpretive rule; request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing a notice of proposed interpretation of regulatory requirements to clarify that a power reactor applicant or licensee may, when designing or updating its physical protection program, incorporate law enforcement response into its site physical protection program through the implementation of a site-specific Security Bounding Time. This proposed interpretation would provide flexibility to applicants and licensees by allowing them to consider the assistance of law enforcement responders as part of the physical protection program. The NRC is requesting comment on the proposed interpretation and will hold a public meeting during the public comment period to address questions regarding the proposed interpretation and to facilitate public comments. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments on the proposed interpretation by March 3, 2025. Comments received after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but the NRC is able to ensure consideration only for comments received before this date. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments by any of the following methods; however, the NRC encourages electronic comment submission through the Federal rulemaking website: • <E T="03">Federal Rulemaking website:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and search for Docket ID NRC-2024-0167. Address questions about NRC dockets to Helen Chang; telephone: 301-415-3228; email: <E T="03">Helen.Chang@nrc.gov.</E> For technical questions contact the individuals listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document. • <E T="03">Email comments to:</E> <E T="03">Rulemaking.Comments@nrc.gov.</E> If you do not receive an automatic email reply confirming receipt, then contact us at 301-415-1677. • <E T="03">Fax comments to:</E> Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at 301-415-1101. • <E T="03">Mail comments to:</E> Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff. • <E T="03">Hand deliver comments to:</E> 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. eastern time, Federal workdays; telephone: 301-415-1677. You can read a plain language description of this proposed interpretation at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2024-0167.</E> For additional direction on obtaining information and submitting comments, see “Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments” in the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Wellington Tejada, Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; telephone: 301-415-1623; email: <E T="03">Wellington.Tejada@nrc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Obtaining Information</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2024-0167 when contacting the NRC about the availability of information for this action. You may obtain publicly available information related to this action by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal Rulemaking Website:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and search for Docket ID NRC-2024-0167. • <E T="03">NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS):</E> You may obtain publicly available documents online in the ADAMS Public Document collection at <E T="03">https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html.</E> To begin the search, select “Begin Web-based ADAMS Search.” For problems with ADAMS, please contact the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR) reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by email to <E T="03">PDR.Resource@nrc.gov.</E> For the convenience of the reader, instructions about obtaining materials referenced in this document are provided in the “Availability of Documents” section. • <E T="03">NRC's PDR:</E> The PDR, where you may examine and order copies of publicly available documents, is open by appointment. To make an appointment to visit the PDR, please send an email to <E T="03">PDR.Resource@nrc.gov</E> or call 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. eastern time, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Submitting Comments</HD> The NRC encourages electronic comment submission through the Federal rulemaking website ( <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> ). Please include Docket ID NRC-2024-0167 in your comment submission. The NRC cautions you not to include identifying or contact information that you do not want to be publicly disclosed in your comment submission. The NRC will post all comment submissions at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> as well as enter the comment submissions into ADAMS. The NRC does not routinely edit comment submissions to remove identifying or contact information. If you are requesting or aggregating comments from other persons for submission to the NRC, then you should inform those persons not to include identifying or contact information that they do not want to be publicly disclosed in their comment submission. Your request should state that the NRC does not routinely edit comment submissions to remove such information before making the comment submissions available to the public or entering the comment into ADAMS. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> In the NRC's regulatory framework, power reactor licensees regulated under title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (10 CFR) part 50, “Domestic Licensing of Production and Utilization Facilities, or 10 CFR part 52, “Licenses, Certifications, and Approvals for Nuclear Power Plants,” are required to provide physical protection sufficient to prevent radiological sabotage from a hostile adversary, the characteristics of which fall within a defined design basis threat (DBT). The DBT of radiological sabotage has been part of the NRC's regulations in 10 CFR part 73, “Physical Protection of Plants and Materials,” since 1979. To date, the Commission has interpreted its regulatory requirements to mean that a licensee's defense against the DBT may not consider the assistance provided by local, State, or Federal law enforcement agencies. In 2005, the NRC undertook a rulemaking to revise the DBT of radiological sabotage as directed by Section 651 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In the final rule, “Design Basis Threat,” the Commission set forth its views on the corresponding roles of licensee security forces and offsite Federal and State law enforcement agencies in protecting against the threats applicable to power reactors (72 FR 12705). As the Commission explained, the DBT reflects the Commission's determination of the composite set of adversary features against which private security forces should reasonably have to defend. Although the rule sets an upper limit on the threat that must be considered in the design of licensee security programs, the Commission noted that the defense of our Nation's critical infrastructure is a shared responsibility between the NRC, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, Federal and State law enforcement, and other Federal agencies. The Commission also noted that, although licensees are not required to develop protective strategies to defend against beyond-DBT events, it should not be concluded that licensees can provide no defense against those threats. The Commission expressed its confidence that a licensee's security force would respond to any threat—no matter the size or capabilities—that may present itself, and the Commission stated that it expects that licensees and Federal and State authorities will use whatever resources are necessary in response to both DBT and beyond-DBT events. In 2006, the Commission undertook a separate rulemaking effort to amend its security regulations in § 73.55 and add new security requirements pertaining to nuclear power reactors. As revised in the 2009 final rule, “Power Reactor Security Requirements,” the NRC regulations in § 73.55(b)(1) through (3) provide a general performance objective and requirements for a licensee to establish and maintain a physical protection program that must protect against the DBT of radiological sabotage (74 FR 13926). Specific requirements for the design and implementation of the physical protection program are provided in § 73.55(c) through (q). These regulatory requirements establish that the licensee has the ultimate responsibility for protecting an operating power reactor site against an adversary force up to and including the DBT of radiological sabotage. In the 2009 final rule, the Commission further stated that a licensee's ability to defend against the DBT of radiological sabotage is not dependent on the availability of offsite responders. Taken together, the 2007 and 2009 final rules reflect an interpretation of the security regulations that required licensees to establish a physical protection program, including a private security organization, that is capable of defending against the DBT without the assistance of local, State, or Federal law enforcement. As currently implemented, licensee physical protection programs do not include credit for local, State, or Federal law enforcement response. While § ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━