Information Collection: NRC's Policy Statement on Cooperation With States at Commercial Nuclear Power Plants and Other Nuclear Production and Utilization Facilities

AGENCY:

Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

ACTION:

Notice of submission to the Office of Management and Budget; request for comment.

SUMMARY:

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has recently submitted a request for renewal of an existing collection of information to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. The information collection is entitled, “Cooperation with States at Commercial Nuclear Power Plants and Other Nuclear Production and Utilization Facilities, Policy Statement.”

DATES:

Submit comments by February 26, 2016.

ADDRESSES:

Submit comments directly to the OMB reviewer at: Vlad Dorjets, Desk Officer, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (3150-0163), NEOB-10202, Office of Management and Budget, Washington, DC 20503; telephone: 202-395-7315; email: oira_submission@omb.eop.gov.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Kristen Benney, Acting NRC Clearance Officer, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; telephone: 301-415-6355; email: INFOCOLLECTS.Resource@nrc.gov.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

I. Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments

A. Obtaining Information

Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2015-0079 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-2015-0079.
• 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 pdr.resource@nrc.gov. The supporting statement is available in ADAMS under Accession No. ML15342A105.
• 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.
• NRC's Clearance Officer: A copy of the collection of information and related instructions may be obtained without charge by contacting the NRC's Acting Clearance Officer, Kristen Benney, Office of the Chief Information Officer, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; telephone: 301-415-6355; email: INFOCOLLECTS.Resource@NRC.GOV.

B. Submitting Comments

The NRC cautions you not to include identifying or contact information in comment submissions that you do not want to be publicly disclosed in your comment submission. All comment submissions are posted at http://www.regulations.gov and entered into ADAMS. Comment submissions are not routinely edited to remove identifying or contact information.

If you are requesting or aggregating comments from other persons for submission to the OMB, 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 comment submissions are not routinely edited to remove such information before making the comment submissions available to the public or entering the comment into ADAMS.

I. Background

Under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. Chapter 35), the NRC recently submitted a request for renewal of an existing collection of information to OMB for review entitled, “Cooperation with States at Commercial Nuclear Power Plants and Other Nuclear Production and Utilization Facilities, Policy Statement.” The NRC hereby informs potential respondents that an agency may not conduct or sponsor, and that a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number.

The NRC published a Federal Register notice with a 60-day comment period on this information collection on August 26, 2015 (80 FR 51847).

1. The title of the information collection: Cooperation with States at Commercial Nuclear Power Plants and Other Nuclear Production and Utilization Facilities, Policy Statement.

2. OMB approval number: 3150-0163.

3. Type of submission: Extension.

4. The form number if applicable: N/A.

5. How often the collection is required or requested: On occasion, when a State or Tribe wishes to observe NRC inspection or perform inspections for the NRC or when a State or Tribe wishes to negotiate an agreement to observe or perform inspections. States with an agreement and State Resident Engineer have both regular reporting and occasion-specific reporting.

6. Who will be required or asked to respond: States and Tribes interested in observing or performing inspections.

7. The estimated number of annual responses: 213.

8. The estimated number of annual respondents: 36.

9. An estimate of the total number of hours needed annually to comply with the information collection requirement or request: 1,380.

10. Abstract: States and Tribes are involved and interested in monitoring the safety status of nuclear power plants and radioactive materials. This involvement is, in part, in response to the States' and Tribes' public health and safety responsibilities and, in part, in response to their citizens' desire to become more knowledgeable about the safety of nuclear power plants and radioactive materials. States have identified NRC inspections as one possible source of knowledge for their personnel regarding plant and materials licensee activities, and the NRC, through the policy statement on Cooperation with States, has been amenable to accommodating the States' needs in this regard. Additionally, the NRC has been able to accommodate Tribal interests in the same way. The NRC has also entered into reimbursable Agreements with certain States under Section 274i of the Act, as amended, to employ their resources to conduct radioactive materials security inspections against NRC Orders.