[Federal Register Volume 80, Number 74 (Friday, April 17, 2015)]
[Notices]
[Pages 21274-21277]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2015-08932]
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
[NRC-2015-0044]
Guidance for Evaluation of Acute Chemical Exposures and Proposed
Quantitative Standards
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Draft interim staff guidance; supplemental information;
extension of comment period.
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SUMMARY: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is providing
supplemental information to an earlier notice, appearing in the Federal
Register on March 4, 2015, which requested comment on a draft interim
staff guidance (ISG), ``Guidance for Evaluation of Acute Chemical
Exposures and Proposed Quantitative Standards.'' The draft ISG, if
issued in final form, would supplement existing guidance in NUREG-1520,
``Standard Review Plan for the Review of a License Application for a
Fuel Cycle Facility,'' by providing additional guidance and the
descriptions of proposed quantitative standards for the NRC to follow
when evaluating the integrated safety analysis (ISAs) of acute chemical
exposures. This action is necessary to provide the public with the
backfitting information with respect to the draft ISG, and includes
references to the key documents on backfitting issues. The public
comment period was originally scheduled to close on May 18, 2015. The
NRC is extending the public comment period on this action to allow more
time for members of the public to review the additional information on
backfitting before submitting any comments.
DATES: The due date of comments requested in the document published on
March 4, 2015 (80 FR 11692) is extended. Comments should be filed no
later than July 1, 2015. Comments received after this date will be
considered if it is practical to do so, but the Commission is able to
ensure consideration only for comments received before this date.
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by any of the following methods
(unless this document describes a different method for submitting
comments on a specific subject):
Federal Rulemaking Web site: Go to http://www.regulations.gov and search for Docket ID NRC-2015-0044. Address
questions about NRC dockets to Carol Gallagher; telephone: 301-415-
3463; email: [email protected]. For technical questions, contact
the individual listed in the FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT section of
this document.
Mail comments to: Cindy Bladey, Office of Administration,
Mail Stop: OWFN-12-H08, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington,
DC 20555-0001.
For additional direction on accessing information and submitting
comments, see ``Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments'' in the
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section of this document.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Marilyn Diaz, Office of Nuclear
Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
Washington DC
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20555-0001; telephone: 301-415-7110, email: [email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments
A. Obtaining Information
Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2015-0044 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:
Federal Rulemaking Web site: Go to http://www.regulations.gov and search for Docket ID NRC-2015-0044.
NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System
(ADAMS): You may obtain publicly available documents online in the
ADAMS Public Documents collection at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. To begin the search, select ``ADAMS Public Documents'' and
then 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 [email protected]. The
draft ISG is available in ADAMS under Accession No. ML15051A029.
NRC's PDR: You may examine and purchase copies of public
documents at the NRC's PDR, Room O1-F21, One White Flint North, 11555
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852.
B. Submitting Comments
Please include Docket ID NRC-2015-0044 in the subject line of your
comment submission, in order to ensure that the NRC is able to make
your comment submission available to the public in this docket.
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 posts all comment submissions at http://www.regulations.gov as well as entering 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 submissions into ADAMS.
II. Background
The NRC is providing supplemental information to a notice
requesting comment on its draft ISG, ``Guidance for Evaluation of Acute
Chemical Exposures and Proposed Quantitative Standards,'' that was
published in the Federal Register (80 FR 11692; March 4, 2015). The
draft ISG, if issued in final form, would supplement existing guidance
in NUREG-1520, ``Standard Review Plan for the Review of a License
Application for a Fuel Cycle Facility'' (ADAMS Accession No.
ML101390110), by providing additional guidance for the NRC to follow
when evaluating the ISAs of acute chemical exposures, including the
descriptions of proposed quantitative standards used to classify
exposure events using the general criteria of section 70.61 of title 10
of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR). The draft ISG identifies
sources of information that the staff could use when reviewing the
proposed quantitative standards.
This supplemental information provides the NRC's proposed position
on backfitting with respect to the draft ISG, and includes references
to the key documents on backfitting. The public comment period was
originally scheduled to close on May 18, 2015. The NRC has decided to
extend the public comment period on the draft ISG to allow more time
for members of the public to review the supplemental information before
submitting any comments.
III. Supplemental Information
The NRC believes that the draft ISG, if issued in final form, would
not constitute backfitting as defined in 10 CFR 70.76(a)(1). All fuel
cycle facility licensees are required to conduct and maintain an ISA
that analyzes the chemical hazards of licensed material. The
performance requirements in 10 CFR 70.61(b) and (c) require that the
risk of each credible high or intermediate consequence event be
limited, and such events include those arising from an acute chemical
exposure as specified in 10 CFR 70.61(b)(4) and (c)(4). For all
credible event consequences as specified in 10 CFR 70.61(b)(4) and
(c)(4), the ISA summary must describe the proposed quantitative
standards used to address acute chemical exposures from credible event
sequences in accordance with 10 CFR 70.65(b)(7). This requirement is
reinforced by the ISA definition in 10 CFR 70.4. Subpart H of 10 CFR
part 70 contains performance-based requirements under which the
applicant/licensee must address all credible hazards, and there is no
regulatory language limiting consideration of chemical hazards to
specific exposure pathways. The draft ISG is consistent with the
regulatory language in subpart H of 10 CFR part 70 and the NRC's
position that the ISA should consider all acute chemical exposures,
including dermal and ocular exposures.
Since the initial NRC approval of ISA summaries, there have been a
number of hazardous chemical exposure incidents involving dermal and
ocular exposures at fuel cycle facilities. Two of these incidents of
exposure have resulted in intermediate or high consequences. See Table
1, Fuel Cycle Facility Dermal and Ocular Exposure Events Known to the
NRC Staff. The NRC believes that these events demonstrate the need for
fuel cycle facilities to address all exposure pathways when updating
their safety programs, ISAs, and ISA summaries. The information
contained in the draft ISG reflects and reiterates existing NRC
regulatory requirements for the fuel cycle facility licensees who will
be subject to the draft ISG. Therefore, issuance of the draft ISG in
final form would not constitute backfitting. The NRC's positions on
backfitting with respect to consideration of all exposure pathways (the
subject of this draft ISG) are set forth in a September 15, 2014,
letter to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) (ADAMS Accession No.
ML14251A150; Enclosure: ADAMS Accession No. ML14251A149). The NRC's
September 2014 letter responds to a March 26, 2014, letter from NEI to
the NRC (ADAMS Accession No. ML14086A267), which raises backfitting
issues with respect to consideration of dermal and ocular exposures to
hazardous chemicals at NRC-regulated fuel cycle facilities. The NEI
also provided their views on backfitting with respect to consideration
of dermal and ocular exposures to hazardous chemicals at NRC-regulated
fuel cycle facilities in a November 7, 2014, letter to the General
Counsel of the NRC (ADAMS Accession No. ML14322B019).
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Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 9th day of April 2015.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Craig G. Erlanger,
Deputy Director, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety, Safeguards, and
Environmental Review, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.
[FR Doc. 2015-08932 Filed 4-16-15; 8:45 am]
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