Public Protective Actions During a General Emergency

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Part 50</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PRM-50-123; NRC-2020-0155]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Public Protective Actions During a General Emergency</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Petition for rulemaking; consideration in the rulemaking process. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will consider in its rulemaking process issues raised in a petition for rulemaking (PRM), PRM-50-123, submitted by Thomas McKenna. The petitioner requested that the NRC amend its regulations to ensure protective actions in the event of a general emergency will likely do more good than harm. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The docket for the petition for rulemaking, PRM-50-123, is closed on July 21, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2020-0155 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-2020-0155. Address questions about NRC dockets to Helen Chang; telephone: 301-415-3228; email: <E T="03">Helen.Chang@nrc.gov.</E> • <E T="03">NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS):</E> You may obtain publicly available documents online in the ADAMS Public Documents 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, at 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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Philip Benavides, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; telephone: 301-415-3246, email: <E T="03">Philip.Benavides@nrc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. The Petition</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Issues Raised in the Petition</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Public Comments on the Petition</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Overview of Public Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. NRC Response to Public Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Reasons for Consideration</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Availability of Documents</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Conclusion</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. The Petition</HD> The NRC received and docketed a petition for rulemaking dated June 1, 2020, filed by Thomas McKenna. On August 31, 2020, the NRC published a notice of docketing and request for public comment on the petition (85 FR 53690). The petitioner requested that the NRC amend its regulations in part 50 to title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (10 CFR), “Domestic Licensing of Production and Utilization Facilities,” and that the NRC work with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to revise associated implementation guidance, supporting analysis, and materials and activities to ensure that protective actions in the event of a general emergency will likely do more good than harm considering the health hazards of both radiation exposure and protective actions. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Background</HD> The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, authorizes the Commission to establish, by rule, minimum criteria for the issuance of licenses for utilization facilities in a manner that protects the health and safety of the public. The Commission's emergency planning regulations are an important part of the regulatory framework for protecting public health and safety. Before it can issue an operating license or combined license for a nuclear power plant, the NRC is required by paragraph (a) of 10 CFR 50.47, “Emergency plans,” to make a finding that there is reasonable assurance that adequate protective measures can and will be taken in the event of a radiological emergency. The NRC bases its finding on its review of a license applicant's emergency plan. A licensee's emergency plan is considered adequate if it complies with the NRC's regulations, specifically, the 16 planning standards of § 50.47(b) and the content of emergency plan requirements in appendix E, “Emergency Planning and Preparedness for Production and Utilization Facilities,” to part 50. The objective of the Commission's emergency planning regulations is to provide dose savings for a spectrum of radiological incidents that have the potential to produce offsite doses in excess of Federal protective action guides. A general emergency is an emergency classification level indicating that events at a nuclear power plant are in progress or have occurred that involve either actual or imminent substantial core degradation or melting with potential for loss of containment integrity, or hostile action that results in an actual loss of physical control of the facility. During a general emergency, offsite releases can be reasonably expected to exceed exposure levels in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Protective Action Guides (PAG) Manual EPA-400/R-17/001, “PAG Manual: Protective Action Guides and Planning Guidance for Radiological Incidents” (PAG Manual). Onsite and offsite emergency plans provide for public protective actions in response to a general emergency under § 50.47(b)(10). This regulation requires, in part, a range of protective actions for the plume exposure pathway emergency planning zone  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> for emergency workers and the public. In developing this range of actions, consideration must be given to evacuation, sheltering, and, as a supplement to these, the prophylactic use of potassium iodide, as appropriate. Guidelines for the choice of protective actions during an emergency, consistent with Federal guidance, must be developed and in place. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  A “plume exposure pathway emergency planning zone” is a geographic area, approximately 10 miles in radius, including and surrounding a commercial nuclear power plant, within which the health and safety of the general public could be adversely affected by radiological exposure from an emergency at the plant. This emergency planning zone defines the area where predetermined, prompt protective measures may be necessary during an emergency at the plant that results in an offsite release. </FTNT> In an emergency, a nuclear power reactor licensee would recommend protective actions to the offsite decision-maker ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> the Governor, Incident Commander), who would make any protective action decisions. The current NRC guidance for developing protective action strategies is contained in Supplement 3, “Guidance for Protective Action Strategies,” to NUREG-0654/FEMA-REP-1, Revision 1, “Criteria for Preparation and Evaluation of Radiological Emergency Response Plans and Preparedness in Support of Nuclear Power Plants.” This guidance provides an NRC-accepted method for implementing a range of protective actions for the plume exposure pathway emergency planning zone and is intended for use by nuclear power reactor licensees to develop site-specific protective action recommendation (PAR) procedures. Offsite response organizations also should use Supplement 3 to develop protective action strategy guidance for decision-makers. The recommended dose criteria and their associated bases for protective actions for radiological incidents are in the PAG Manual. PAGs are the projected dose to an individual at which a specific protective action to reduce or avoid that dose is recommended. The PAG Manual provides PAGs to help decision-makers select appropriate protective actions under emergency conditions. As the EPA states in the PAG Manual, the decision to advise members of the public to take a protective action during a radiological emergency must be weighed against the action's inherent risks. The EPA established the PAGs by balancing the acceptable level of risk of health effects from radiation exposure in an emergency situation against the costs and risks associated with the protective action. The EPA considered the following principles in establishing exposure levels for the PAGs: (1) prevent acute effects, (2) reduce risk of chronic effects, and (3) balance protection with other important factors and ensure that actions result in more benefit than harm. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Issues Raised in the Petition</HD> The NRC identified four issues in the petition as follows: <E T="03">Issue 1:</E> NRC requirements and guidance on protective action strategies are outdated and do not reflect the results of the latest studies of nuclear power plant emergencies. The petitioner requested that the NRC promptly conduct studies to better quantify the current understanding of health risks of protective actions and associated dislocations, which refers to people moving to and residing in a different location as a result of protective actions. In addition, the petitioner stated that the revisions to regulations and guidance need to be based on a probabili ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 58k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━