Lauren Casey
Enforcement Specialist
Office of Enforcement
The NRC establishes regulations, inspects those we license to make sure they are meeting those regulations and, at times, steps in to enforce regulations that licensees are violating. This last activity – enforcement – is a very important part of NRC’s oversight.
Key elements of the enforcement process are transparency and openness. Because of that, when the NRC determined the Enforcement Policy should be revised to reflect changes in our regulatory environment and the way the NRC and our stakeholders do business, we made sure to get input from you. For example, we held public meetings and asked for public comments in the Federal Register on the proposed revision.
With the information from this outreach in hand, the NRC revised its Enforcement Policy. Some of the major changes are:
• providing guidance for the use of discretion when considering imposing daily civil penalties;
• clarifying that a violation identified at any NRC-licensed facility with an approved Corrective Action Program may be closed-out as a non-cited violation (a violation for which there is no formal enforcement action) when certain conditions are satisfied;
• adding a new section on civil penalties to individuals who release safeguards information; and
• providing guidance regarding the notification of employers when the NRC discovers damaging or disqualifying information about an individual’s trustworthiness and reliability.
The revised NRC’s Enforcement Policy, effective January 28, 2013, can be found here. Changes to the NRC Enforcement Policy since it was first published, with links to a summary of each change and the Federal Register notice for each change, are maintained on the NRC Office of Enforcement webpage.
Questions regarding the Enforcement Policy revision can be directed to Lauren Casey at (301) 415-1038.
U.S. NRC Blog 
You have just been appointed as the director of a new overall health treatment or human provider firm (for example, a community well being clinic). As the director, a person of your first responsibilities is to draft a mission assertion and a values statement for your corporation. As your group grows, your stakeholders will deliver their input and assist condition these statements.
Back and forth with generalities and distractions from the point forever. Malfunction is too slight a word, in describing the dangers, but I was trying to be brief. Earthquakes, for instance, are not predictable to any measure of damage expectations. If an earthquake strikes an Nuclear reactor site, shutting it down in time will be of no consequence. Undetectable amounts of radiation released after earthquake would be massive and devastating in so many ways. Not only will the reactors exposed components be releasing radiation toxins into the air water and soil, but the years of accumulated tonnage of spent Nuclear rods, being stored in the surrounding areas of the Reactor site, will be oozing toxins into the environment.
I used the word undectable because nuclear radiation can not be detected by our human senses. You can not see it. You can not smell it. You can not taste it. It can only be measured by mechanical devices. When a mechanical device does measure radiation, it can only measured in an exact location. Pure theory has to be used to determine where if any, other radiation has traveled to.
In South Carolina, water from rivers and resevoirs are cycled around the Nuclear reactors to cool them for operation. I say cycle because after the water is used to cool the reactors is retuned to the rivers. These rivers feed the water drinking supply down stream from the reactors.
The NRC requires the Reactor site to check the water for contaminants and temperature before releasing it back to the river. I would have to assume the mechanical testing device would need to have the water pass over or through something to detect problems. I do not know this, but I believe the testing will not contain the water in small or large holding tanks and test each batch of water before releasing a batch. This batching method would be minimumly, although very costly and time consuming, the best way to do it. Maybe this can be confirmed by our NRC rep that reads this reply.
If batching the water is not used, and the passing the water over a device is used, and when the water that is detected as unacceptable, there will be no control over how much water has already gotten out and back into the river. The recipient of the water coming from their tap won’t see it, won’t smell it, and won’t taste it.
Recently I read in the news in Florida, they are shutting down an aging Nulclear plant and it will take 60 years to shut it down. This shutdown is under a controlable arrangement. Sixty years !
Why ?! Because the toxins are so great that there is no way to get it done any sooner, apparently.
Solar, wind, and tidal generated power can also have major problems, but never cause an irreversable affect to the human health and environment that Nuclear generated energy can.
For me, I’d rather know when I am being poisoned by some toxic contaminant . I’ll take my energy from renewable resources any day over Nuclear energy.
The consequences are underwhelming when undetectable amounts of nuclear contaminants escape capture. The increased risk to an individual from radiation released from a nuclear power plant is so small it is difficult to determine. It is far less than the risk incurred by an individual in riding in a car across a state for business or pleasure travel.
Living exposes us to constant danger. A society is exposed to “constant danger” from using electricity. All forms of generation pose some risk. The pollution from generating electricity with fossil fuels causes health impacts including deaths on an ongoing basis. While nuclear power has its risks, I will take nuclear power’s low probability risks any day over the real consequences from other sources of power.
REGARDLESS OF NRC’S ATTEMPT TO ENFORCE ANY REGULATIONS, WHEN A FACILITY HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED, AND IS OPERATING, ANY MALFUNCTION WILL HAVE SOME IRREVERSABLE DAMAGE TO THE ENVIRONMENT. THE CONSEQUENCES ARE OVERWHELMING WHEN UNDETECABLE AMOUNTS NUCLEAR CONTAMINENTS HAVE ESCAPED CAPTURE AND HAVE ALREADY BEEN PASSED TO HUMAN INGESTION BY WAY OF DRINKING WATER AND FOOD FROM PLANTS IN CONTIMATED SOIL. THIS IS A CONSTANT DANGER WE HAVE TO LIVE WITH USING NUCLEAR POWER.