NRC rolls out changes to Differing Views Program

Prompted by the ADVANCE Act and Executive Order (EO) 14300, "Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recently made a number of changes aimed at increasing licensing efficiency.

Today, the agency is implementing another change to the same effect, rolling out a revision of its Differing Views Program (DVP). This revision aims to significantly reduce the time each differing view requires without compromising the NRC's commitment to safety.

DVP background: To complete its wide range of technically complex responsibilities, the NRC relies on the expertise of an equally wide range of employees and contractors. When collaborating on reviews, there are sometimes disagreements regarding the technical outcomes of a variety of issues.

Openly debating these disagreements is "an important aspect of nuclear safety culture," according to Mike King, executive director for operations at the NRC, who discussed the forthcoming changes to the DVP with Nuclear News. King said that these debates ultimately lead to "a better, more defensible, more technically rigorous decision at the end of the day."

Not every disagreement enters into the DVP process. If disagreements first arise while a project is underway, NRC staff are encouraged to resolve differences of opinions with peers and supervisors through informal channels. However, these discussions do not always yield agreements, at which point the formal DVP process becomes a critical tool for resolving remaining issues.

There are two pathways through the DVP process. The nonconcurrence process (NCP) applies to positions that are still under staff review, and the differing professional opinion (DPO) process applies if an agency position has already been established.

Impetus for change: King said that the vast majority of the thousands of decisions made by the NRC each year do not require any engagement with the DVP process. However, the process is engaged about 10 times (or fewer) per year, and in those instances a significant slowdown can ensue.

"Historically, our performance and timeliness in resolving these issues have been pretty slow," King explained, "and many of these issues are not all that safety significant."

The push to reform the DVP process seeks to respond to these issues, but it is not coming solely from the NRC. Broadly, the NRC is being motivated by EO 14300, which calls for efficiency-oriented reform in the NRC's culture, structure, and regulation.

Specifically, the NRC is being motivated by the ADVANCE Act, which directed the NRC to "identify and assess measures to improve oversight and inspections, including updating the Differing Professional Views or Opinions process to ensure that any impacts on agency decisions and schedules are commensurate with the safety significance of the differing opinion."

For King, these changes "just makes common sense. We don't want to spend years resolving an issue if it's not that important."

The changes: Perhaps the most notable change in the new DVP process is its targeted timeline. Historically, NCPs have taken 59 business days. Under this new reform, the NRC now aims to complete NCPs in 11-15 business days, depending on the significance of the underlying issues. On the other hand, the NRC has historically aimed to complete DPOs in 135 business days, a goal it has not always met. Now, it is aiming for DPO completion within 11-21 business days.

This ambitious reduction is already in the process of being tested, according to King. "We've piloted the new process a couple of times with [the NCPs], and in both cases we were even under the new timelines easily." In those two pilots, the NRC averaged 7.5 business days to complete the process-a nearly 87 percent reduction.

These time savings are being achieved on multiple fronts. Most significantly, the NRC has developed a new safety screening tool that ranks the importance of the issue based on its safety significance. It is applied to each DVP as it arises, and naturally, the more safety-significant an issue, the more resources the NRC will invest in addressing it.

Before diving into a DVP, the NRC will also now ensure that it has not previously addressed the same issue. If it has, it will not expend new resources to duplicate efforts. Additionally, the NRC will avoid significant delays by ensuring staffers assigned to tackling a DVP will focus exclusively on completing it. In the past, DVP work has been piled on top of normal work functions, causing significant delays.

In all, King emphasized that these changes will have no impact on the thoroughness of each review or the NRC's broader commitment to safety. "We're driving a culture of accountability and continuous improvement, and this is all part of that. This is us learning from the past, trying to figure out smarter ways of doing business," and making "common-sense changes that we think will improve the outcomes without sacrificing safety."