Incident Response

The NRC's mission is to license and regulate the Nation's civilian use of radioactive materials, to provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection of public health and safety, to promote the common defense and security, and to protect the environment . The NRC has three strategic goals that the agency must achieve to carry out its mission successfully. Goal 1 is to Ensure the safe and secure use of radioactive materials , the objective of this goal is to Maintain emergency preparedness and response capabilities for NRC and NRC licensed facilities . The accompanying strategy is to Ensure that the NRC maintains its readiness to respond to incidents and emergencies involving NRC-licensed facilities and radioactive materials, other events of domestic and international interest, and public health emergencies or other emergencies involving NRC's facilities and workforce . The NRC's Incident Response (IR) investment meets these requirements as detailed in Management Directive 8.2. IR is the Primary Mission Essential Function (PMEF) for NRC. The IR program falls within the guidelines of the national response framework, which comes from the President through the NSC and coordinated by DHS/FEMA. Under that framework, and as delineated through the Nuclear/Radiological Incident Annex, the NRC is designated as the Federal Coordinating Agency for events at an NRC licensed facility. The IR investment provides a qualitative ROI by fulfilling these goals. The quantitative ROI is met by continuously monitoring the investment for efficiency gains and cost avoidance, by utilizing new technologies, and enhancing the investment to follow ICS requirements more closely. These savings have been realized by maintaining the appropriated budget the same over several years. Operations Center Information Management System (OCIMS) and Emergency Response Data System (ERDS) play an important part in support of the agency's IR investment, they are used to maintain the readiness and capabilities of the NRC Headquarters Operations Center (HOC) and regional response centers, which coordinate and monitor the agency's response to incidents and reportable conditions and licensees' actions to ensure safety at their facilities. Protected Web Server (PWS) enables NRC to fulfill its mission of communicating sensitive information to licensees and developing more formal, long-term relationships with Federal, State, and local organizations with shared responsibilities for protecting nuclear facilities and activities and responding to incidents. Further, PWS fulfills a valuable need in relation to the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative (NSI) which began in 2008. PWS is the NRC's contribution to this important national initiative to centralize suspicious activity reporting in the interest of assessing national trends across industries and critical infrastructure. Each of the four regional offices maintains a Regional Incident Response Center (IRC) equipped with communications equipment, response facilities, resources, and designated work areas for the regional response team. Each IRC serves as the focal point for regional incident response. NRC licensees are responsible for notifying the NRC in compliance with regulatory requirements (e.g., 10 CFR Part 20, 10 CFR 30.50, 10 CFR 40.60, 10 CFR 50.72, 10 CFR 70.50, 10 CFR 70.74, 10 CFR 73.71, and 10 CFR 76.120).

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