-: My name is Shadi Ghrayeb,
I am a nuclear engineer
for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
I work out of Region 1 of the regional offices
in the King of Prussia Pennsylvania.
And we're tasked with inspecting
the northeast nuclear power plants enforcement
and grading their emergency response plans.
It's mostly on-site inspections
and there's also remote inspections as well,
but it's mostly hands-on, traveling out to these sights
and it's where the rubber meets the road
and we're kicking tires out there.
And visiting the facilities, overlooking the staff there
and making sure our regulations and safety
is being enforced and obliged by.
There's multiple kinds of inspections.
There are security inspections,
there are fire-protection inspections,
there are material inspections,
there's quality insurance inspections.
There's more abstract ideas that we inspect,
such as: is there a safety-conscious work environment?
Are the employees at the power plants
able to bring up safety issues
to their senior managers without repercussions?
So it's a diverse selection of inspections
and it's an amazing experience.
So we get up very early to the plant,
attend their plan of day meetings.
It could be like a 6:15, 6:30 in the morning
depending on where it is.
And we're just sitting there observing
senior level management, how they're tasking
and delegating their task.
What's their work like for the day?
Are they evaluating risk and concerns,
are there redundant systems in place?
And we observe their communications,
their effectiveness and walk around the power plant,
make sure there's protective measures in place,
make sure the operators
are operating the way they should be.
Walking down the control room,
walking through the power plant,
seeing some maintenance staff,
what procedures they're working on,
are they enforcing the rules and procedures
of their site appropriately and effectively,
and just evaluating any concerns that may come about,
and if they are, how are they fixing it
and approaching it?
So we take the data and we kinda evaluate them,
we evaluate their performance.
And if there's any concerns, we could issue violations
or performance deficiencies
and the more violations we may find,
the greater our level of communications
and it could be under closer scrutiny
with more specialized inspections
and more staff coming to their site
and looking at their kind of work.
So it could be a concern for the licensee in the sense that
it will increase our scrutiny of their work.
So, for last year, example, with inspections
and training and qualifications
and back-filling for employees,
I probably spent over 180 nights in hotels last year,
traveling to these places and doing the work
that we need to do.