Category: General

Five Questions With Michael Weber

Michael Weber is the head of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research

  1. How would you briefly describe your role at the NRC?

I lead NRC’s scientists, engineers and administrative professionals in confirming safety and security through research on nuclear power plants and uses of nuclear materials, including transportation and disposal. I also help develop our people, computer codes, standards, and experiments to meet our mission well into the future

  1. What is your foremost responsibility at work?

Keeping our people focused on the nuclear safety and security mission of the agency.

  1. What is your most significant challenge in the workplace

Competition for time and attention. There are many issues that compete for our attention from the urgent to the strategic. With our focus on nuclear safety and security, we seek balance in how we use our resources to accomplish our mission in a manner consistent with our vision as a trusted, independent, transparent and effective regulator.

  1. What do you consider one of your most notable accomplishments at the NRC?

Actually protecting the public and ensuring the security of nuclear facilities and material. It is what we do and why we regulate. Because our regulatory program is highly successful in protecting the public, it can be difficult to see the outcomes that we seek to achieve. However, occasionally when we are responding to real safety or security incidents, we glimpse the benefits of nuclear regulation where the actions that we take or the controls we require prevent theft of radioactive material, avoid significant radioactive contamination following a transportation accident, or reduce radiation doses to workers or members of the public.

  1. What is one quality of the NRC that more people should know?

How talented and dedicated NRC people are throughout the agency. I am honored to be part of such a team working daily to protect the nation and to strengthen nuclear and radiological safety and security around the world.

Five Questions is an occasional series in which we pose the same questions to different NRC staff members.

 

 

Principles of Good Regulation: Clarity

Regulations should be coherent, logical, and practical. There should be a clear nexus between regulations and agency goals and objectives whether explicitly or implicitly stated. Agency positions should be readily understood and easily applied.

Maureen Conley
Public Affairs Officer

graphic-pogr_clarityThe NRC has a double challenge when it comes to clarity. We are a regulatory agency that derives its authority from a series of laws passed by Congress and we regulate a highly technical industry with many of our experts holding advanced technical degrees.

For those reasons, it can sometimes be challenging to explain what we do and why we do it.

Over the years, the agency has employed a variety of different ways to communicate with clarity. This blog and all our social media platforms are one avenue. Producing less technical executive summaries for otherwise quite complex documents is another way.

We often work with technical experts to help prepare them for public meetings and to ensure their presentations are “user friendly” for the audience expected to attend. The agency’s training center offers many courses to help technical experts present their complex work clearly in a way that is more accessible for both technical and non-technical audiences.

The agency’s website also provides a wealth of information to meet the needs of both technical audiences and the general public. Even our student corner section helps clarify the agency’s mission and activities.

The NRC’s work may involve an abundance of acronyms and technical jargon, but we are always striving to convey what we do and why we do it in the clearest way possible.

This post is the fourth of five that will explore each of the five principles separately. For the history of the Principles of Good Regulation, read this post.