Up & Atom

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently issued its Report to Congress on Abnormal Occurrences for fiscal year 2020. The report documents key aspects of those events that the NRC considers “Abnormal Occurrences” (AOs) and allows the regulated community to review the operating experience of reactor, medical, and industrial users of radioactive materials. AOs are unscheduled events that the NRC determines to be significant from the standpoint of public health or safety.

The NRC held a public meeting on November 17 to review regulatory relief currently available to medical and other materials licensees, and to identify potential additional relief that the Staff is currently considering.

The NRC’s Office of Enforcement (OE) recently issued Attachment 2 to Enforcement Guidance Memorandum (EGM) 20-002, providing guidance to NRC inspection staff for exercising enforcement discretion for certain byproduct material licensees that suspended their use of licensed material and are maintaining the licensed material in safe storage because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) public health emergency (PHE).

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Advisory Committee on the Medical Uses of Isotopes (ACMUI) held a meeting on March 30 to discuss a variety of topics of interest, including recent trends in radiopharmaceuticals, the scope of “patient intervention” as occurrences that are not Medical Events. Below are some items of potential interest from these discussions.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on March 11 issued a Notice of Violation to Avera St. Luke’s Hospital stemming from findings during an inspection of its Aberdeen, South Dakota facility in July 2019.

The NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation and Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safety and Safeguards recently issued two Information Notices (INs) in response to medical events arising from the administration of radiopharmaceuticals.