Response Modes

The NRC Incident Response Program (IRP) is intended to respond to a broad variety of incidents that typically pertain to NRC licensees and licensed facilities. Regardless of the scope and nature of the incident, the objectives of the response organization remain the same. The Program is flexible enough to support any anticipated requests from other Federal agencies. To this end, all incident types will have a scalable response using the same organization and processes. The NRC Incident Response Program uses the following two modes for responding to events at its licensed facilities:

Normal

Defined as routine operations when the Incident Response Program is not activated. The Headquarters Operations Officers are always available to receive event reports from licensees and to provide essential notifications to NRC management and other Federal agencies. Events that do not warrant activation of the Incident Response Program are managed by normal processes, such as resident inspector follow-up.

Activated

Defined as continuous (24/7) staffing by NRC Responders. The NRC staffs its Regional Incident Response Centers, Headquarters Operations Center and declares the agency "Activated". Deactivating the Incident Response Program is decided by the Response Director in consultation with appropriate Senior NRC Leadership based on event conditions.