OPENING REMARKS OF NRC CHAIRMAN GREGORY B. JACZKO AT THECOMMISSION MEETING TO DISCUSS INSPECTIONS, TESTS, ANALYSES AND ACCEPTANCE CRITERIAGood morning. The Commission meets today to discuss the inspections, tests, analyses, and acceptance criteria for potential new reactor construction, a program otherwise known as ITAAC. Like all of our activities related to construction oversight, this issue has taken on added importance given the significant progress on the safety and environmental reviews for new reactor design and license applications.As one of our key construction oversight programs, the ITAAC process is at the heart of our efforts to ensure that potential new reactors are constructed in accordance with their designs and in a manner that ensures that they can operate safely. Under this process, the licensee bears the primary responsibility for developing and conducting the ITAAC, while the NRC has a morelimited oversight role in reviewing the licensee’s proposed ITAAC and verifying theircompletion through selective inspections. In order for this new process to move forward effectively and efficiently, it is critical that licensees be thorough, timely and comprehensive in meeting their responsibilities.In looking back on the history of the current generation of reactors, it’s clear that many of the safety issues that they experienced during their early years of operation were rooted inconstruction and quality assurance issues. Although operating reactors later achieved a much stronger safety performance, we can all agree that we need to avoid those types of early problems with new reactors that may be built in the future. Rigorous construction oversight through ITAAC, the Construction Reactor Oversight Program, and other inspection activities is essential to ensuring that.###