The NRC's Proposed Screening Program: Values and Pitfalls

In 1974 Congress passed into law an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act enabling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to establish a system of standards and specifications for screening employees in the licensed nuclear energy industry. •*- On March 17, 1977 NRC issued proposed rules outlining a clearance program for virtually all employees of li- censed facilities, requiring the equivalent of a top secret or \"Q\" clear- ance for most.^ In response to the proposed rules approximately 100 indi- viduals and organizations filed comments; about 25 of them suggesting that a public hearing be held to ventilate the issues. On December 28, 1977 NRC announced its intention to hold a hearing and at that time set forth the mechanism by which the rulemaking proceeding would be administered. Since that time written testimony has been submitted by about 20 interested parties and the hearing itself is scheduled for July 10-14. The purpose of this paper is to present the major issues sur- rounding the decision which will face the Commission subsequent to the hearing. At this time it is unclear even in which direction the Commission will move. The options range from promulgating the proposed rules intact to abandoning the proposed system and continuing to rely on industry screening as presently done. There is a great deal of room between these options. The NRC staff has outlined the major issues to be addressed at the hearing. They are: • The need for the program in the various contexts the proposed rules cover (e.g., power reactors, non-power reactors, fuel cycle facilities, and so on). • The identification of the advantages and disadvantages of al- ternative programs (e.g., psychological testing administered by the licensees). • The impact of the program on manpower requirements during outages at power reactors. • The suitability of using the criteria developed for access au- thorization to classified information for access authorization to special nuclear material. • The extent to which the proposed program should be credited to- ward meeting the recently upgraded physical security require- ments (e.g., 10CFR73.55). • The desirability of applying the rule to research and training reactors. • The impact of the proposed program on the transportation of special nuclear materials.