ML19259B178
| ML19259B178 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 08/24/1977 |
| From: | Bradford P, Gilinsky V, Hendrie J NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 7901170048 | |
| Download: ML19259B178 (87) | |
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2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COtiMISS10:1
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4 CO'1MISSIOti MEETING l
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6' BUDGET MARKUP I
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f Room 1141 1717 II Street, N.W.
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13 Nashington, D.C.
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15 I Wednesday, August 24, 1977 9:10 a.m.
16 !
Pages: 1-87 17l 18 l
l 19 20 The corrections made on this transcript reflect those of l
l 21 the office of the Comptroller j
,,1 and Office of the Secretary.
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I PRESENT:
Chairman Joseph M.
Hendrie Commissioner Peter A.
Bradford 2[
Commissioner Victor Gilinsky Commissioner Richard T.
Kennedy 3
Secretary Samuel Chilk i
4, PARTICIPANTS:
5 I&E:
Ernst Volgenau 6'
Elliott Greher i
Ted Legasey 7!
0 8i NRR:
Edson Case Dennis Crutchfield l
9l Mike Aycock l
10ll l
Lester Rubenstein i
11 l ELD:
Howard Shapar Thomas Engelhardt i
OGC:
James Kelley l
12 i
James Fitzgerald 13 j l
14 [
Learned Barry
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Lee Gossick 15 [
William Dircks g l,
j Kenneth Pederspn
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P_ R,O C,E E_ D I N G S, rptr jeri 2i CHAIRMAN HENDRIE :
Good morning.
l 3l MR. GCSSICK:
I just had a call from Carolina Power 4
and Light and they are beginning to get very antsy about this' 5
fuel transfer, you know, the paper is down here on moving i
$5 0
j their spent fuel %n Brunswick.
Apparently they have had some 7l real hot weather and they're burning up their core faster.
~
8l This is the first of its kind where we are moving i
I 9 1 spent fuel from one reactor to store it -- cool it at another 10 reactor.
There's a paper down there that requests permission Il' to expedite this movement.
They're pounding on me pretty I2 hard and I guess they called Ed Case as well a time or two 13 hoping that somehow we could get them an okay on this by the Id' first of September.
15 I talked to Sam to see if there was any way we 16 could possible get it on the schedule.
I7 SFCRETARY CHILK:
We have it tentatively scheduled 18!
now for September 7.
I can move it up to next week.
Let me I9 see what I can do.
20 CHAIRMA'I HENDRIE :
Mill there be any day next week 2l when there will be enough people to move?
22 SECRETARY CHILK:
We'll take a close look and see, i
23; I think there is.
Towards the end, I think, or someplace in I
24!
the middle.
% %unoa c smm f 25I CHAIRMAN HFNDRIE:
Okay.
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I 3
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-VOIM :
There's no safety or environmental problem.
2 It's a policy problem.
It's a first intersite transfer.
3j CIIAIR"AN IIENDRIE :
Ernie, we asked you to come 4
back down because the cuts that have been -- you had shaped i
your '79 projections on a base which it :npears unlikely to be 5
1 6
so and it seemed worthwhile to look back across the I&E re-7 quests and see how it looked, particularly the resident progra n.
0l Looked at with a somewhat lower implementation base based on 9 !I something, I guess, on the order of 70-75 people, something I
10l like that, new people for the program in '78 presumably to 11 be authorized in the supplemental appropriation, wnich 'neans I2 that we probably won't know for sure whether we have the 13 authorization to hire the people until a f ter the first of the Idl year, or like mid-fiscal year.
l 15 ~
think we would also like to refocus on the And I shape of the resident inspector program and its implementation 16 17 base.
I see you've got some new viewgraphs to look at.
18 Why don't you go ahead and fire those at us and 19 see where the discussion takes us?
20 MR. VOLGENAU:
I did not plan an elaborate presenta 21 tion here.
I think that these charts are intended to stimu-late discussion.
Let's start with the first chart.
23 (Slide.)
24 And reiterate the key aspects and benefits of the
% na,m m c ~,
25 resident inspection program.
And this list tracks fairly I
I 4
l jeri 4 I
well with the presentation that I had to the Commission in May I
2!
and also with my budget presentation a couple of weeks ago.
I 3
First of all, there's a few errors in these charts.
4l He put them together in a hurry.
The first line should read:-
5ll
" Full-time presence at each reactor site."
i 6
Generally speaking, our rule of thumb is if you've 7,
got one or two reactors, you would have one resident inspector l
8' If you have three or four, you would have two resident 9 1 inspectors.
l 10f Generally speaking, our resident inspectors would i
I 11 be different for reactors under. construction versus reactors 12, in operation, although the line becomes a little bit blurred 13 during the latter part of construction, early part of startup.
14 CHAIFb90I HENDRIE:
You might very well have an 15 overlap during that period.
16 MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes.
1 I
17 CHAIRMAN HEUDRIE:
Between a guy who will stay 18 on for operation and a guy who wants the construction finished 19 up.
20 MR. VOLGENAU:
Exactly.
In fact, we have a sub-21 stantial overlap in a
chart that we sent to the Commission 22 which addressed Commissioner Gilinsky's comment.
23 CHAIPfGN HENDRIE :
There's a peak in there.
1 24 MR. VOLGENAU:
A very strong peak.
It's quite a On cs Reporting Company 25 high peak today.
And it's a high peak under this program as I
l
5 l
I well, the overlap.
And it's also very high peak for the jeri 2
licensee who's got a lot of construction people there and then 3
a lot of his peopic.
4 The second point is the direct observation business.
5; And that's the issue that we have addressed directly about 6
the anount of time that I&E inspectors, NRC inspectors spend 7'
reviewinc records versus actually observing what is going on.
8 We feel that should be increased and this program will most 9
certainly do that.
10f Indepth independent acasurement, I have also I
II discussed before.
We feel that in order to verify that the I2 licensee system is working properly, we need to make more 13 direct measurements.
We feel that this will provide a good I#
incentive to the licensee as well.
We do not propose to 15 substitute our measurements for his.
It's part of a continu-16 ing program to verify that his system is working.
I7 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
To what extent -- the independen b IO measurement, sir, to what extent does that hinge on the 39 resident inspector program?
It would seem to me that to a 20 considerable extent those are separable items.
theyaresp[rable,
] 21 MR. VOLGENAU:
We don't feel 22 "r.
Chairman.
The basic issue concerning having a resident k
23l inspector present was the things that he and his backup --
l 2 l and I'm not just including the resident inspector, but rather r~a %w co-un, i I
the technical support inspectors, the performance appraisal 25
i l
6 l
I jeri team -- that they would do more direct measurements to make i
2 sys ten work.
If one confines oneself to the resident program I
3 and sneaking of the resident program, to only the person on d'
site -- then I think it doesn't properly represent a viable 5
orogram.
You've got to have technical support inspectors 6
back there.
7 A generalist just cannot get involved; he doesn't 8l have the knowledge, the background or the tine to get into i
9lI certain areas that require a technician.
And the technicians, O
for the most part, would do the direct measurenents.
11 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
The technicians, in a sense, I2 correspond to the present inspection staff, don't they?
13 MR. VOLGENAU:
No, sir, because a substantial t&
I#
portion of our staff,id' generalists.
The principal inspector s L) [?
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15 at a site -- a principal inspector at a site is the principal 16 manager for that site and he conducts general inspections, 17 he schedules and calls upon technicians support even today.
18 CO!1MISSIONER KENNEDY:
Particularly in health 19 ohysics, for example?
20 MR. VOLGENAU:
Health physics, safeguards; in the 21 case of a reactor under construction, there are people who are 22 specialists in heavy construction, radiography, plumbing, 23' and even for a reactor under operation, we call
- concrete, 24 ucon these heavv construction experts from time to time.
For ter c s %wte<y Comp,sny 25 example, during refueling operations or frequently when there i
1
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7 l
I jeri is major maintenance done. Electrical instrumentation people 2
l are another example.
3l Well, okay, going on then.
National evaluation of I
4{l licensees is something we really don't have today.
And I have 1
5 j talked about that.
It's something that we have had under I
6' development for the past year.
But in that I am talking about 7
evaluating licensees based primarily upon our inspection 8f reports and upon their reports to us and focusing our inspec-9 tion effort, allocating the inspection effort in some way 10l which will optimize our resources by bringing up, focusing l
11l more inspection effort on weaker performers and bringing them 12 up into the norm.
13 National appraisal of the inspection program.
14l Another element we don't have today.
The appraisals are done 15 almost totally from within the region.
I had, at one time,
16 when I came here a little over a year ago, I had a audit 17 team that went around and did national -- it attempted to do 18 performance appraisal.
But I had difficulty.
The people 19 tended to be oriented more towards auditing the paper trail 20 of our inspection program than they were toward looking at 21 the overall uniformity of the program itself.
22 I was strapped for resources and I disbanded that 23 team and used that manpower elsewhere in the inspection 24 program.
And I did that for a number of reasons.
One, I e m.a so m,,ng co - n.,,,
25 knew the GAO was doing an audit of my program and I felt that I
8 l
1 at least for the interim I would ride with them, at least in 2l terms of a general look at the validity and capability of our 3l program.
But I don't feel, particularly when you put a bunch 4
of inspectors out there on the site by themselves, that we
~
5 can rely on an unaudited program.
I also have reason to believe that there is non-6l t
7' uniformity even now between the inspection programs from 8
region to region; substantially less than it was two or three 9
years ago, but it still exists.
We can see it in the manage-1 10 ment indicators that wu are collecting under that program that 11 I mentioned earlier in my budget presentation, which concerns 4) 12 getting better management indicator for I&E and better models
{D g
lh 13 of our performance and improving our budgeting and planning 14 as a result.
15 Okay, well that takes care of the next two items.
16s The inspector objectivity, though, is a very 17 significant one.
An inspector may be -- probably is -- once 18 out there on the site, totally honest and as objective as he possiblfcanbe.
But he may, in fact, not be implementing (i 19 i
20 his program the way someone else is implementing the program, 21 or more importantly, the way the program should be implemented 22 And ve have got to have a check on that.
23 And then, finally, the real-time response to 24 events.
I think that is self-explanatory.
If you have got
~ s, - n.2 c - en, 25, an inspector there,when an event occurs he's right on the i
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spot and can respond to it.
2 Next chart, please.
3 i (Slide.)
i 1
4 CHAIRMAN HEMDRIE:
Uhat sort of plans do you have -
5!
on the resident orogram for leave time coverage?
Would you 6
attempt to cover during leave, sicknesses?
7 MR. VOLGEMAU:
Generally, yes.
Because we can 8!
schedule the technician inspections for when the resident --
1 9lI not all of them, but many of them -- for when the resident 10 inspector is absent for training or on leave.
The technicians 11 W
[;
are in the region.
We can also' arrange to have the perform-i 12 ance appraisal teams cone in at the time the inspector is 13 gone, or part of them.
14 So we won ' t have full coveragc.
We won't put an 15 inspector there, but we'll have a lot more coverage than 16 we have today, for example.
17 Well, the original full implementation plan, the 18!
one I briefed to the Commission earlier this year, had a 19 number of premises that are no longer valid.
The first one 20 I feel is valid.
And that is, we wanted to get inspectors out 21 as soon as possible.
And we scheduled, in our original plan 22 that we sent the Commission, 36 inspectors out on-site in 23 fiscal year
'78.
Now you can't get new inspectors and train 24 them in one year.
In fact, it is going to take probably in
~ o s nm.no comme 25l excess o f two years.
But we would take some of our existing l
h.
y__,,,..,,,..,
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inspectors and put them out there.
We also were led to be-2 lieve that it was very important to get all of the sites 3;
manned just as soon as you could, so we strapped ourselves --
4li we said, how fast can we viably grow in order to implement l
5l this program!
So we had our office grow by the rate of about 6
33 percent, fiscal year '77 and fiscal year
'78.
And a sub-7 stantial growth from '78 to
'79.
8; We pushed it just as much as we could.
We estimate 41 I
i 9l what our growth had been in
-- we recorded what our growth l
10 had been in the past and we estimated what kind of growth II we could handle in the future, particularly from '77 to
'78.
12, Now that premise is no longer valid.
13 The schedule.
What I mean by that, these Id individual items under the schedule, when I say, " redirect 15l qualified resources," I'm talking about putting some of the 16!
currently trained inspectors, the generalists, out there on i
17 site now and as soon as possible in '78 and
'79.
18 Intensive training.
That was one of the elements, 19 one of the new facets to our resident inspection program that 20 we were going to have extensive training amounting to formal 21 courses, correspondence courses, lots of exams, and inspector 22 grades ranging from inspector intern to assistant inspector, 23 inspector, and senior inspector.
Ne don't have that now.
24 An inspector comes on board, he's usually an w n %.m cm, 25; experienced man, he's in his late 30's on the average, he
11 i
t i
I goes through a training program in the region-and sometime f){) 2 during the first year or two that he is there, he takes a I
3 !
couple of courses, two-week courses in I&E, but that's about I
af it.
He's qualified as an inspector after six months and he is i
i 5;!
ut doing it himself.
Well, under a orogram like this, where you need lots 6
of people in a short period of tim 2, that kind of experience, 7
we don't # eel, is out there.
And we are going to have to hire 8
9l some younger people.
That's not all bad because there are some good effects to it and we, of course, would try to hire 10 as many of these experienced and qualified people as we could.
jj We would have -- under the original program --
12 this chart addresses the original program, we would have had 13 an inspector at every site by 1980 and the program fully ja implemented by 1981.
And the resources, we were talking about 15 a base in the fiscal year '78 President's budget of 666 people 16 l
in I&E.
To that we would have added 125 for a total of 7 91.
j7 18 And in fiscal year
'79, there would have been an additional 75 positions -- actually I think it was not quite that much, 19 because we fooled around a little bit with the clerical 20, resources and talked about using some temporary resources.
21 But to make a long story short, the EDO mark for 22 23' fiscal year '79 was 930.
And then the subsequent growth after that was less; it just kept up with the workload, the addi-24 I
cr cs serm.no comoany i 25 1 tional sites.
In other words, you see a step increase in the i
i 12 l
[
I I&E fiscal year '78 budget, a smaller step increase in the t.ou aw 2
i I&E fiscal year '79 budget, and then a graduag ramp-for the
/'
3 j increasing workload.
~
4; Okay, next slide, please.
Sli (Slide.'
6I The next slide is a little bit hard to read.
I i
7 hope your copies are better.
We had some changes here and the 8
changes came about f rom changes in the I&E base of 666.
The 9l wo rd I got last veek was, "Take 666 spaces and subtract 21.
10!
That's part o f the NRC 50-space reduction.
But NRC probably 1
11 only is going to get a 33-space' reduction in FY
'78."
12!
So we would start with a base of 651 and add to it 13 the 75 spaces that you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, and that 's 14 how you get 726 spaces.
15' 651 plus 75.
16 And in FY
'79, you would add 140 positions to the 17 FY '78 total, which is a growth of under 20 percent, about 18 l
18 percent, and that's how we get 866 spaces.
So the new program, 19 then, is substantially smaller growth from '77 to '78 and a L '^
20 s]3 relatively small growth from '78 to '79. The growth,,3 recall,
$ ~ 21 between '77 and '73 was in excess of 33 percent, about 33-34 22 percent under the original program.
Under this program, the 23 i growth is only about 18-or 19 percent.
24 N w, the question is, with this smaller number of um a s -,m com,,
25 l people in both FY
'78 and
'79, what would the program look like?
i
i I
13 l
I (Slide.)
jeri 2
And the next chart shows that the program would 3
grow more gradually.
And there are a number of points that l
4 7.d like to make on this chart.
First of all, the original l
5l program would have had inspectors at every site in FY
'80.
i 6!
This progran has them there in
'81.
The original program had I
7' inspectors fully manned at all of the sites by F,7 '81 and y>
(
8l this program is a year later.
9 The slope of the curve and the dashed line
-- see 10l the yellow, dashed line there is the answer to the question II l the Commission has raised.
There's two aspects about it.
12 re.s not just a 6-or 7-month slip in the program, but a 13 more gradual and orderly implementation, because if you look Id at the original plan in FY '78 there were 36 inspectors on 15 site.
Now we have had to plot the verticts.1 axis as a percent 16 of manned sites because the sites change from year to year.
II The workload increases.
IO There were 36 under the original program.
And 19' under the plan that addresses the Commission's question, 20 there would only be 17 on site in FY '78.
And there's good reason for it.
There's fewer resources.
But more importantly 21 i
22!
we are getting started later and we, in fact, probably won't 23 know that we have a full program before January of
'78.
So I
24 i you just can' t get them out there that soon.
- r.c s Aeporting Cemeans 25 In FY
'79, the original plan called for 46 l
l 1
I 14 l
I 46 inspectors out there, and then in FY
'80, there was a 2
substantial growth from 46 to 111.
We thought that over and 3.
that seemed like a pretty big growth in that one fiscal year, 4li from '79 to
'80.
We would cropose in
'79, 35 inspectors on 5ll site, under the new plan, and 80 inspectors on site if the i
6' py
'80, 7
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY :
You're approximately 8
doubling each year?
I 91 MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes.
10 Okay, next slide, please.
II (Slide.)
12 In summary, then, the action plan or the plan 13 which we would propose to implement if the Cor. mission gives Id!
us 75 spaces based on an I&E base in FY '78 of 651 would be
}y/ tLL-
. thel 17 sites in '78 and 35 sites in
'79.
I think the other
, 15
(
T I
16 items on this slide are fairly evident.
The last one is I7 that during the phase-in into the new program, we intend to 18 continue to maintain our current program in a very effective 39 way.
20 Now, this is the last slide that I have, Mr. Chair-21 but I'd like to point out that there are two issues
- man, 22 that have been raised by OMB with respect to the resident 23 inspection program.
24 Mr. Kearney called me yesterday.
Actually he im c s Ae;wteng Company 25 called me last week and I was out of the office and I returnec i
i l
15 l
jeri I
his call yesterday and he said, "The reason we feel that you 2
should have 75 spaces in FY
'78, there are really three 3
reasons for this.
4 Cof"tISSIOf:ER KENNEDY :
Who was taat?
S f1R. VOLGENAU:
Kearney is the Of1B analyst for 6
NRC, one o f two.
7 He said, "There are three reasons why you should 8
have 75 spaces in FY '78 rather than 125.
For one, you are 9
getting the funds later and so you just can't spend it all in 10
'78.
But, at least, and probably more important than that, 11 are we're not sure that you need to man all of those sites 12 with resident inspectors.
For example, the sites in early 13 construction possibly don't need to be manned.
Id "And secondly, we acknowledce that you should 15 have a performance appraisal team, but we are not sure you 16 need that many people; in fact, we don't think you do."
I7 So he said to me that for purposes of analysis, 18 for purposes of calculation, they assumed that the resident I9 program was implemented instantaneously, how many people would 20 you need out there versus how many sites, and don't man so 21 many sites, and don't make your performance appraisal teams 22 as large as you would like to and you get 75 spaces and also 23 handle the b'idget as a supplemental, since it is essentially 24 4 or 5 months later in the budget year than you would normally
%o n.,-m c - ean, 25 get it, and that gives you 75 versus 125 soaces.
1 16 l
jeri 1
Now, I think that the 13 sues, the issue of getting 2
the money later, the spaces later, in FY '78 is a nonissue; 3l it's a fact.
We're not going to get the money as early as I
4 hope and, therefore, we can't spend it all and we can't nut 5
as many people on site.
That's a fact of life.
6 The other two issues,concerning the size of the 7
performance appraisal team and whether or not all the sites 81 need to be manned, are issues that ought to be addressed.
I 9
But I submit they are neither FY '78 nor FY '79 issues because 10!
of the gradual implementation of the program.
) 11 5
-I? pven if one assumed that our performance
(
12 appraisal teams were substantially smaller and that we didn't 13 man all of the sites, suppose we manned only 85 percent of 14 the sites, or 80 percent, we would still want the same resources 15 FY '78 and '79 because you've got to get these people on board 16 you ' ve go t to ge t them trained, and our initial resources
/
paust{are/ inadequate to put inspectors on site and continue to 17 I
18 have a viable current inspection program.
19 So that's the end of my presentation for this 20 morning.
21 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
What sort of a breakdown in the 22 75 increment, there are several things that I would like to 23 get number sizes for, out of the current projection for
'78, 24 currently authorized manning level in I&E, the 651 breakdown,
%n am mo co,~,,,
25 approxinately how much between -- the numbers I'm trying to l
17 i
l jeri I
get to in particular are, out of the 651 people in I&,C, about ij 2
how many would fall into the category of general inspector?
3 That is, people whose experience and general current mission i
4!
make them eligible or likely candidates for resident inspectort l
l 5l MR. VOLGENAU:
Of the 651?
i 6lI And, in other words, if we took all of our I
7 I generalists today and assumed they were all capable of being 8i resident inspectors, what is that number?
9 What is it, Elliot?
I 10!
MR. GREHER:
50.
l Il MR. VOLGENAU:
Well, we have more generalists than 12 that, don't we?
13 MR. GREHE R:
We have 211 inspectors in the Id reactor inspection programs but most of them are specilists.
15 CHAIRMAN HANDRIE:
Hang on.
16l You've got 211 so-called reactor inspectors.
Okay.
17 Now, they include a number of specialist types whom you would 18 oresumably not want to move into a resident program because 19 then -- he might be a good man for it but you lose the skill 20 on a broader base.
2I MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes.
22 CHAIFOUG ![ENDRIE:
The 211 reactor inspectors, 23 which includes about 50 of what we will call generalists, 24 okay?
w.a n :o m ccmo..rv 25 MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes.
i l
18 l
l CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Now, is that current level or 2i does that contemplate the 651 total in I&E?
l 3
MR. VOLGENAU:
I'm not sure I understand your 4
question.
~
5 MR. LEGASEY:
That number is the end number for 6
FY '77 inspectors end year FY '77 strength.
7 CHAIRMAG HENDRIE:
So that is 211 of 589 8,
authorized places, okay?
9 MR. VOLGENAU:
Right.
10l CILW7N IGRIE: At the monent, the FY ' 78 appropric ' len; _ '.11 l
11 we don't have authorization bills -- but the appropriation 12 bills speak tc a number which would allow an increase to 13 651 in I&E.
Okay.
So there are another, what, 62 people --
Id MR. VOLGENAU:
But don't forget -- well, go 15 ahead, Mr. Chairman.
It's not just in the reactor area, of 16 course.
I 17 CHAIRMAN HEMDRIE:
Of course.
18 If I judge that the strength of the organization in 19 its various elements might increase approximately in propor-20 tion, 211 and 589, a little over a third, so I would expect 21 something like 20 in the pew of the 62 places would end up 22 in reactor --
23 MR. VOLGENAU:
Fine.
24!
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Inspectors, t ec= Rep r ting Company 25l MR. VOLGENAU:
Might even be a little higher.
I f
i i
19 l
I CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Maybe even a little higher if 2
the empnasis is heavily on improving the inspection thrust.
3f So that might end up at, let's see, 24 would allow me to make 1
dl a nice round number.
Depending on whether you get specialists l
5{
or generalists, why we end up with something in the neighbor-i 6'
hood of 60 to 70 generalists, assuming an emphasis on 7
generalists.
8l Now, there is a potential increment of 75 as a 9li supplement in FY
'78.
10 MR. VOLGENAU:
Right.
11i CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
And what sort of a -- these now 121 are presumably all committed to reacto-inspection program, j, fu -n> v And what sort of a breakdown do we now see[b'weteen
-- of I;
13
/
la the 75, how many are destined for residents at sights and 15 how many for appraisal teams and how many for technical 16 backup, approximately?
Do you have some sort of subcut in mind there?
I7 l
Yes, sir; but one must be very 19 careful about doing that in that manner.
First of all, of 20 the 74 or whatever it is, in fact, we can use 75 for a 21 rough figure -- well, let's use your number: 74, i
Well, the 74, you said there were 50 generalists 22 93 and then vou talked about 24 more.
Remembe r, just a moment 24 ago.
masm,nno co,w.my 25 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
All right.
I
i 20 l
l MR. VOLGENAU:
But your question --
2' CHAIRMAN HE:IDRIE:
10 to 20 to be added to the 3!
generalists.
'[ht
\\
4 MR. VOLGE:IAU :
But your question concerning475
~
5l delta and the makeup of the 75 is a difficult one to address 6
because they're essentially all in the training pipeline be-7l cause they need to undergo a two-year training program before 8
their ultimate assignment.
9l We just can't get new people and put them out i
i 10!
there on sites by themselves or even put them on the perform-Il ance appraisal team.
And at the same time because we are 12 trying to put inspectors on site, which under the new plan 13 would be 17 in FY '78 and 35 in FY
'79, we will have to try I#
to get som utilization out of those new inspectors, but not 15 as resident inspectors.
Most of the time they will be I
16i training.
More than half of their time they will be training.
I I7l But at other times they will be used as assistants l
18 to the regular inspectors in any way we can to relieve the 19 pressure on the current inspectors who will be deployed to 20' the sites primarily.
2l If you talk about the future growth, our 22!
performance appraisal teams total about 160; 158 was the 23 figure that we submitted to the Commission.
But that is in 24 FY '80 or '81 strength of performance appraisal teams.
We m % c,n.; cc,mn, l 25l would have, under the current program, about 10 or 20, let's I
i i
p i
i 21 l
I jeri say, 15 or 20 on performance appraisal teams in FY
'78.
2 CHAIP11AN HENDRIE :
Will the proportions between 3f people either on or destined for performance appraisal teams, people either on or destined for assignments at sites, people' 4
5 doing or destined for technical support work, will those 6
proportions remain approximately the same as the manpower in 7
the reactor inspection ef fort goes up?
O MR. VOLGENAU:
The proportion between the on-site 9
inspectors and the performance appraisal team inspectors will 10!
remain approximately constant.
I suspect that the ratio of Il technical support inspectors will go down in proportion to 12 the on-site inspectors.
And I say that because generally 13 speaking when a man comes on site, he will pick up some of the technical support inspections but he can't do it all 15 because he lacks the specialty.
16 And generally speaking, we think he can perhaps I7 pick up as much as 50 percent of that technical support 18 inspection.
Let me give you an example.
If you have an 19 operating reactor inspector and you consider his background, 20 he may have come out of the nuclear navy, have experience as 21 a watch office or a submarine plant and has been retrained 22 f,r commercial reactors.
Or he may have been an operator, 23 a shift supervisor, in one of the commercial plants.
And so 24 his experience lies primarily with operating reactors.
we n m no c m u.ev 25 Well, we may ask him to do some of the safeguard i
1 i
22 l
1 inspections because he is on site and we expect him to spend 2,
some of the time there at night and on weekends and we would 3'
want him to just drop in unannounced to see if the guards were 4
attentive.
~
5 But there's a limit to the amount of safeguards 6j!
inspection he can do.
There's a limit to the amount of 7
health physics inspection he can do.
He's just not familiar, 8
he's not trained with it.
And, furthermore, there are other 9
more important things for him to be doing in the operating 10 reactor area.
Il CHAIPImN HENDRIE:
I'm trying to get a handle on 12 the breakdown within the total reactor inspection effort as 13 we see the resident inspector program come into being.
If 14 I look forward to some semi-equilibrium state in that organi-15 zation, then I ought to be able to discern the manpower 16 divisions, so many people on site, so many man-years per a
17 year in performance appraisal, national evaluations, technical 18 backup, what have you, and I'm groping for that sort of a 19 breakdown.
20 MR. VOLGENAU:
The chart that --
2l CRAIR31AN HENDRIE:
Let me tell you in advance, so 22 you can align your information and arguments to suit, that the 23 reason I prove for it is that the resident inspection program 24 seems to me at first survey to have a substantial, what I we ace,y como.nv 25 will call a semi-overhead component, that is, if I look at the
23 l
I total number of people involved in inspection the reactor 2.
facilities versus the number of people -- the subgroup in that 3
total who are at the sites, it seems to be a fairly large 4
numbe r.
5; Now, in the best of all possible worlds why, indeed i
6 I expect those ratios are things you would prefer to have and 7
you would then be able to pick up on an assortment of evalu-8 ation and appraisal aspects which might very well be desirable 9
I suspect that we're going to have to make this program work 10 at manpower levels substantially reduced from what one would 11 specify if one had one's druthers.
And so the nature of this 12 probing is to just sort of see where the increments of man-13 power lie and to discuss with you what is possible by way 14 of tightening up in view of what I think are almost certainly 15 going to be people allowances that are much less, 16l MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes.
I 17 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
And let me assure that you 18 that having been -- spent some time while working budgets 19 with Commissioners and budget review committees from your 20 side of the table, let me say that this probing is in the 21 following sense.
It is not in the sense, " Boy, we are going 22 to squeeze the fat out of Volgenau's inflated requests here. "
23 It's in the sense that making a judgment now as to what_is 24 likely.to be practical and obtainable and so on.
% a m eny co-car, 25 I think we have got a oroblem in reexamining the
i 24 l
1 programs and seeing how we could move to sort of get more
,,.:p A.Y I
2 resident'-inspector for less total manpower.
f 3!
'4R. VOLGENAU:
Yes.
4, CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Because I think -- I'm in effect 5
saying I doubt that we can provide you the resources that 6
you would have hoped to have had to carry out a full-scale 7
program at this time and we are discussing together how can 8
we do the best we can at what are probably inevitably reduced 9
levels.
10i
-MR.-VOLGEN AU :
It's in that sense rather than
,3 7h
?
11 trying to figure out where you have 20 loose slots stashed 12 away.
13 MR. VOLGENAU:
I accept talt, Mr. Chairman.
I 14 understand the budgetary game and I think that those kinds of 15 questions will make our program a better one.
16 If you would like to probe the allocation of 17 FY '78 or '79 resources now, the chart that we sent which we 18 could flash up here shows how the inspectors are distributed.
19 Would you like to see that?
20 CHAIRFUCI HENDRIE :
That's one of the things I was 21 poking through.
22 MR. VOLGENAU:
Now this is one we sent later, 23 Mr. Chairman.
24 Would you put up the chart, Chris, that shows the
% c4 Recuting Company 25 application o f 1&E manpower to a typical plant in FY '79?
25 I
l I
jeri (Slide.)
2 It's not a very good chart.
That's the one that 3:'
l we had made up.
And this is during the implementation of the I
4 program.
Now this applies, I believe, to the original program, 1
5 i
not to the reduced progran, for FY
'79.
It's a little hard to i
6 read, but you can.
7 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
This is manpower --
8t j
MR. VOLGENAU:
Slide it to the right.
Slide the 9
chart to the right a little bit.
Okay.
A little farther, 10 and there are the man-years.
That's fine.
11 And on the horizontal axis are the various phases jgl g - e t' of reactor, life of a reactor, the-PGP-phase, early construc-3:.
J 13 tion, cnd then up there around where the three is indicated, 14 you see the large manpower effort as we get near startup.
15 And then the real peak is right at startup.
And then the 16 lower level of effort, 5.29 man-years once the plant is in 17 operation.
18 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
It's the equilibrium status 19 to the right and the time scale that's of interest.
20 MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes, sir.
21 Really this is for FY
'79.
This is just for 22 FY
'79.
Now, i# you were to draw another one of these in 23' FY
'80, a line that says resident inspectors would be 24 broader, be about twice as wide.
Actually, I'd rather draw
. m %,y cc,,,,,
25f you a new one with a new program that gives us the 75 spaces i
i
i 26 j
1 in '78 and 140 additional spaces in
'79, bu t in any case the 2
resident inspector line becomes broader.
And then in FY
'80, 3
there's a substantial jump in the size of the resident 4
inspector program and a corresponding reduction in the size i
5l of the lina labeled " inspectors in on-the-job training."
i 6!
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
What does the 5.29 become 7
at the time when you have the full resident p ogram in 8
operation?
Any idea?
I 9
MR. VOLGENAU:
I suspect that it's going to be 10 close to the same.
A little lower?
5.03, okay.
'i III CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Let's see.
When you ra';
12 application of I&E to a " typical plant," how many " typical 13 plants"?
That is, if I nultiply by 5.29 times some number, 14 does that equal the reactor inspection program?
15 MR. VOLGENAU:
Within certain limits.
This is 16 probably averaged out from multi-site plants and single-site I
17 plants.
I 18 Right, Elliott?
19 MR. GREHER:
Yes.
20 CHAIR 39u'i HENDRIE:
And is that the way that chart 21 was derived?
22 MR. GREHER:
Right.
You multiply by 63, which is 23 the number o f operating plants right now; that will give you I
24!
total I&E manpower devoted to operating plants right now.
the m, s.,-,mo comen, 25 5.29 times -- well, it's
'79.
If you took the '79 number, i
i 27 l
I which is 80, it would 80 times 5.29; that would be the total jeri 2
I&E manpower for operating plants.
3 MR. VOLGENAU:
So 2 multi-site plant, if you 4
had two plants on a site, the line would be thinner.
If you ~
5l had a single plant on site, it would be wider, i
6 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
This is the average unit.
In 7,
other words, you take the total manpower in reactor inspection 8
in various categories, divide it by 63 or whatever you like 1
9 1 as a number --
10f MR. VOLGENAU:
Exactly.
l II CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
And then the average unit looks 12 like this.
13 MR. VOLGENAU:
Right.
Id CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
So for the average unit, you've got -- there's a whale of a lot of manpower in training 15 I0 compared in
'79, compared to the on-site performancr.
17 MR. VOLGENAU:
Exactly.
I see no way to avoid it.
18 But not in FY
'81, or
'80.
I9 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
What is the distinction between progran direction and office management and executive 20 21 support?
22 MR. VOLGENAU:
Well --
23 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
And for that matter, admini-l 24 strative succort.
~ es een eno compa~
25l MR. VOLGENAU:
You could, for practical purposes, i
1 1
28 l
jeri i
take the top three lines, the top three groupings, office 2
management, administrative support, and program direction, and 3l call them one.
And what you would have in there would be the 4
combination of the regional administration, which includes a 5
substantial effort devoted to enforcement -- I don't want to I
I 6
play that enforcement business down too much nor for that 7
matter, responding to events and investigations.
8 COtiMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Let's see, does that t
9 include the men in the regional who are not inspectors or i
101 does this include --
l 11 MR. VOLGENAU:
It includes the pro rata share of 12 the secretaries as well.
Somebody has got to type up these, 13 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, that's in your 14 administrative support.
{Lin au.
, (
I'm talking about the combination of 16 the three lines.
17 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, I assumed that 18 administrative support was clerical staffs and so on, 19 MR. VOLGENAU:
Right.
20 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
And some pro rata share of 21 headquarters?
22 MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes.
23 The program direction line is primarily concerned 24 with the development of the inspection program, the develop-t e cs Aerxitcq Company 25 ment of the enforcement program, and the responding to events.
1 i
29 j
1 It probably would have been simpler just to combine all three 2
of those lines together.
3 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
So those are the headquarters 4
units plus the regional directors plus clerical --
5, MR. VOLGENAU:
Regional branch chiefs, clerical support, pro rata share of the travel section.
6 7
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
For all these inspectors 8
down below?
9 MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes.
i 10 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
So what you are saying is you've got about two-thirds inspectors, one-third directional II I2 MR. VOLGENAU:
That's pretty close.
It's probably I3 a little higher than two-thirds.
Id COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I was throwing the training 15 into the inspectors.
10 MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes.
17 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
In the sense that it's IO eventually --
MR. VOLGENAU:
Well, in two years it's essentially I9 20 going to --
21 But you know the -- another way of looking at it is the inspector ratio, the number of inspectors as a per-22 23 centage of the total people in I&E.
2d COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Which is?
s sro n., -,m co,. w n, MR. VOLGENAU:
In FY
'76, it was 55 percent, in 25 l
30 g
I jeri FY
'77, it was 57 nercent, in FY
'80, it will be 60 percent.
2 In fact, if we get the 75 additional spaces, it will be in 3
excess of 60 percent.
In FY
'79, it will be 63 percent, d j probably more than 63 percent.
5ll COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Now, of that two-thirds, i
6 what fraction is inspecting?
Are those inspectors -- I 7
presume they're mostly doing their work.
O MR. VOLGENAU:
What fraction is spent inspecting i
9l Versus enforcement action?
Or investigation?
t MR. GILINSKY:
On site.
11 MR. VOLGENAU:
What percentage is spent on site?
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Yes.
13 MR. VOLGENAU:
Well, that is a difficult question to answer.
We've got it in a chart in the main presentation.
15 Backwards, Chris.
16 (Slide.)
I7 This is our current program.
And you see with I6 the inspectors in the region, it is 27 percent.
19 Now, once you put the inspectors -- let's try to 20 work it out from this chart.
COMMISSIONER KENNFDY:
You have to add the 6 per-22 cent of of f-site inspection document review, don't you?
23 MR. VOLGENAU:
That's correct.
d COMMISSIONER-KENNEDY :'-Tha t ' s - co rrec t.
- <o amc.no c-en 25 COMM.ISSIONER KENNEDY:
Plus the 12 percent I
31 l
eri l
inspection preparation?
2 MR. VOLGENAU:
That's also true, except this is 3
the current program, and when you put a resident inspector i
i 4
out there, he is going to become much more efficient because 5
he'11 know the plant better.
And so that will go down.
6 Looking at the current program -- and let me guess 7
at what it might be for regional inspectors with the resident 8
program implemented.
9 For regional inspectors, not resident inspectors --
10l they're spending the great majority of their time on site, but Il for regional inspectors, or for the performance appraisal I2 j teams, the 12 percent will probably stay the same.
The on-site 13 inspection will go up to 30 percent.
The off-site inspection IdI and document review probably is going to be close to the same.
15 The inspection documentation, enforcement actions u
')
16 i
got to go down a little bit.
And training, probably about s
i 17 the same general program ef fort.
And administration will 18 probably have to go down a bit because we are increasing one 19 thing and we got to squeeze somewhere else.
20 So the resident -- the on-site inspection effort 21 will go up for regional inspectors under the new program.
22 For that matter, it will go up under the current program.
23 We're going to try to make it higher.
But I pointed out in the presentation to the Commission a couple of weeks ago,
+n a am n.ny como nv 25 that we have got a limit on how high we can make the on-site l
l
U i
32 l
I ri figure for people who are not resident inspectors.
2 Our people are going away from home in excess of 3l 40 percent of the time right now.
The 27 percent plus the travel clus inspection plus investigations plus actions back ~
4 5l here in the enforcement area.
I 6l COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Is enforcement and inspec-7 tion intertwined?
In other words, the same individuals are 8'
doing both inspection and enforcement, or is there some 9
separation there?
10l MR. VOLGENAU:
Not exactly.
When an inspector I
11 finds a series of noncompliances then, of course, there is --
12 enforcement action is considered.
But those noncompliances 13 immediately involve his section and branch chiefs to a 14 greater degree than just a clean inspection report would.
15 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
But inevitably he gets involved 16 in draf ting capers that are necessary --
17 MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes, he does.
18 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
-- in part in backup to 19 enforcement actions and consideration of whether further 20 steps in enforcement -- and just saying " Hey there, shape 2I up."
22
? tR. VOLGENAU:
That's exactly right.
3 COM:tISSIONER GILINSKY:
Do we do that deliberately?
24 I know many agencies, enforcement and inspection are separate
'. m non n,no c - nv 25 activities.
e i
33 I
MR. VOLGENAU:
I don't see how we can separate 2
them from the inspector at this point.
What we must do, when 3
it's a significant enforcement action, which is above normal 1
d i
notice of violation -- notice of violation, we sign out in l
5l excess of 1000 notices of violations every year at the regiona 6l level.
7 We have notices of violations that are signed out O!
at the headquarters level.
That immediately involves the 9
headquarters people.
And then we go to civil penalties.
i COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
What's the difference l
11 between --
I MR. VOLGENAU:
It's intended to be nore emphasis, 13 not quite as high as civil penalty.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Increasingly serious 15 matter.
16 MR. VOLGENAU:
Right.
I7 Once we get to the civil penalty or to the order, l
18 then of course, we've got substantial involvement by the 19 headquarters staff.
20 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE: Even in the case of a civil 21 penalty, I suspect that the guy who found the violation in 22 the first place continues to have to contribute from time to 23 l
time 24l MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes, sir, he does.
den cs Hecwteg Comoany 25 i
i 34 l
I CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
He may have to appear and say 2
what he has to say, write further papers and explanations 1
3!
about how he found these things.
MR. VOLGENAU:
Right.
We basically bring those --
5 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
So there is -- you probably 6
have to come to the region, go to headquarters to explain 7'
details.
8 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
But obviously he is 9
involved with this.
Does he recommend the penalty?
10 MR. VOLGENAU:
He would probably make --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
The question is his role.
I MR. VOLGENAU:
Make an initial recommendation but 13 the recommendation for the penalty is made by the regional 14 director.
15 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY :
Does he recommend that some 16 cenalty be imposed or does he recommend the kind of penalty?
17 MR. VOLGENAU:
Generally speaking he primarily i
18 confines himself to identifying the noncompliances and to 19 categorizing the noncompliances.
20 The regional director is more concerned with the 21 nature of the civil penalty.
So it is separate in that sense.
22 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
But you can't avoid those 23 manpower investments from the inspection staff that are part 24 of the -- I think that's inevitable.
Either that or vou seasenm comnany 25 set up a separate staff so the inspector finds something,
5 35 l
1 rings the bell, leaves and here comes a new guy who will do 2i the inspection again and confirm and carry out the enforcement.
3 I think that's much less efficient.
4 To go back to the previous viewgraph, there seems 5
to be more performance appraisal inspectors than there are 6l inspectors.
7 MR. VOLGENAU:
There 's about as many performance appraisal inspectors as there are resident inspectors.
There ' :s 8
9 substantially fewer performance appraisal inspectors than 10l there are other inspectors.
II COP 1MISSIONER GILIUSKY:
They're appraising not just the resident inspectors, they're appraising the whole I2 13 system.
MR. VOLGENAU:
That s right, they're looking at the I#
entire system.
16 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
System and Licensee's 17 performance under it.
MR. VOLGENAU:
Right.
They're a group that includes 18 19 the following types of people.
They're direct measurement 20 teams, which incidentally can be called into action by the resident inspector.
If he says
- if he's a resident 21 inspector for a site that is 80 percent done, and he says, 22
" Gee, I think we've got some radiography -- some welding 23 problems," he would request his regional director to call in 24
- i. ~, w,....no em,,o..n, a performance appraisal direct measurement team to perform 25
i 36 l
jeri 1
radiography on a selected number of those welds to see if the 2
Licensee's radiographers were doing their job.
Okay.
3 Continuing --
4 CHAIRMNT HENDRIE :
So are all of the direct measure-5 ment -- the proposed direct measurement people under that head-I 6 1 ing of performance appraisal inspectors, or do some of them 7
lie in technical support inspection.
8 MR. VOLGENAU:
The great majority of them lie 9
under under the performance appraisal team because although i
10 the regional technical support inspectors will do some direct II measurements.
But in many cases, for example, we just can't 12 afford to buy the equipment and the expertise in each region 13 to do the kind of specialized direct measurement that we would Id like to do.
15 Continuing on with the performance appraisal teams, 16 there is a small group of people who are examining, nationwide, 17 our inspection reports and licensee event reports, effluent reports, exposure reports, and trying to detect patterns of 18 19 deficiencies of licensee performance so that the performance 20 appraisal team, and for that matter, the resident inspectors, or the regional inspectors, can focus on those weak parts of 21 22 licensees.
That's not done today, except in a very intuitive 23 manner.
24 You see, each year, or oerhaps each six months, S m.cs Amuting Cmmany 25 I would like to generate quantitative numbers of licensee
i 37 l
jeri 37 1
performance by area, whether it's health physics, reactor 2
operation, safeguards, quality controlling, general, or what 3
have you.
Now those cuantitative numbers won't be good enough 4
and I would like --
,6 "f CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Look, I understand what you are,
(')
5 d
6 what the aim is, and I think it is a worthwhile aim, but watch 7
out.
8 MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes.
9 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
What you have got in the field I
10 now are fairly experienced people out and in headquarters you 11 have some f airly experienced people who get out and look at 12 the licensees.
13 Your group, from the inspectors on up to you, 14 yourself, in fact, form judgments about the relative perform-15 ance, the strengths and weaknesses of the : 4censees you 16 inspect.
In part, this, indeed, is intuitive but it's a 17 human evaluation in which there are inputs of all kinds.
My feeling is that those evaluations may be better than you 18 own 19 think they are.
20 That is, as a Commission we have certain of the 21 same aspects.
That is, there are -- there's a standards 22 development of fice, your o f fice, Case's, and a batch of 23l others and so on.
And part of the Commission's task is to 24 try to evaluate the performance.
w.cs Retxw reg Comcany 25 It's my considered judgment that by working with I
11 i
I 38 I
you and knowing the people and arguing back and forth through 2
the year about aspects of the agency business that we are able 3
to form better and more mature judgments just as human, think-4 ing beings than we would form if we attempted to devise a 5-numerical scheme for rating yours and Case's shop and the 6
rest and then at the end of the year toting up all the plus 7
bits and the minus bits and see what the score would be.
8 MR. VOLGENAU:
We don't propose --
9 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE: I would have deep distrust of 10 such a system.
II MR. VOLGENAU:
Right.
12 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
And I think, in fact, the race 13 has run for some thousands of years on what we call occasion-ally "value judgments and gut feelings" and so on, and I think Id 15 we ought to not be ashamed or upset or fail to recognize that 16 a thinking person is capable of evaluating a whole scries of 17 intangible affairs in something like dealing with your l
18 licensees, that you will never be able to devise, you know, I9 some sort of numerical appraisal system where you add up a 20 score card and get the right answer.
21 So I caution you to be wary of too much moving too 22 strongly in the direction of these very formalized appraisal 23 teams on the basis that you don' t want a lot of individual, 24 human judgment in the system.
What I am saying is, wait a
%nonmoc-om 25 minute, I believe that individual human judgment appropriately l
i 39 I
averaged over the experienced people in your shop to take 2
out individual, personal idiosyncrasies is probably a lot 3
better than we're capable of putting into computer programs d'
any time in our lives.
For what it's worth, I hold that 5,
thought.
I 6
MR. VOLGENAU:
I certainly agree with you.
I i
7 think it's worth a great deal.
We are not proposing to do
,3[t,g bdb that, Mr. Cnairman.
We aren't proposing to put a bunch of f, f 8l i
i 9
numbers in a computer and try to have a quantitative automated 10!
decisionmaking process.
But what we do feel is that there 11 are quantitative numbers which could form one element in the 12 value judgment that you are talking about.
13 And what we would propose to do -- it's still an Id experimental type of thing, I might add, and we are not going 15 anywhere with it until we are quite confident that it really 16 is a good system.
What we are proposing to do is to form 17 some of these numbers based on whatever we can measure, and 18 I have already outlined that.
We can measure noncompliances, 19 we can measure overexposures and things like that.
We can quantify those things.
And then annually, or perhaps semi-20 21 annually, we would have the inspectors, the section chiefs, 22 and most importantly, the regional directors add their 23 qualitative judgments of these licensees to those figures.
24 It's not a case of measuring one licensee against un cs senm company another.
I don't know how to do that.
It's more a question 25 4
i 40 l
I of probing for v caknesses in a specific area in hopes of 2
offsetting any problems before they occur which might result 3
from these weaknesses.
4 So, it's certainly not just a quantitative measure-5 ment.
Quantitative numbers are just one factoring.
But we 6
do think we ought to go through the self-discipline of this, 7
going over the licensees area by area at least once a year and 8
perhaps more often.
I don't think we have forced ourselves 9
to do this in a systematic way at the present time.
I 10' COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I think, Mr. Chairman, 11 your reservations are in order.
But I think a great deal 12 more can be done in systematically laying out, airing what 13 licensees are doing.
I think it's very hard to give an over-14 all report card.
But certainly area by area, for example, 15 in health physics or other areas, you can take a look.
For 16 example, just looking at licensee event reports, with all the 17 qualifications that you have to attach to that, there are 18 cases where there are -- factors are too different.
19 Let's look at, say, vendors, or regions, or cut it 20 different ways.
And I think well, it's probably right 21 that the judgment of the experienced staf f is probably worth 22 more than any quantitative indicator thar you may point out.
23l But that's not easily accessible nor easily translated into 24 headquarters or to Commissioners or to others, for that
'"r u Henstww) Company 25 matter, or to the oublic, and I think it is useful to try l
ll i
41 4
I I
to lay out performance in some systematic way.
We have been JERI 2
doing that in many ways, in these reports we presents.
And 3l I think that these have got to go on with all the appropriate qualifications.
I don't think we ought to kid ourselves that' 4
5 we can sonehow develop some figure of merit and crank it into 6
a computer, and that will solve our problems.
7 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
With all the reservations 8
the Chairman mentioned and which I share, nonetheless it seems 9
to me that numbers, numbers such as those you are speaking of, 10 can focuse the attention, and bring its judgments to bear II nore quickly.
I2 MR. VOLGENAU:
Actually, the net result of the 13 quantitative and qualitative evaluation may not be a number at Il all; it may be an indicator.
15 COm1ISSIONER KENNEDY:
A flag.
16 51R. VOLGENAU:
A flag.
I7 We do believe that perhaps we have seen a couple 18 of events that we could have headed off.
They weren't signi-I9 ficant safety items but they did form high-visibility public 20 items that we could have headed off had we had a system like 21 mhis in operation.
22 In any case, --
23 COM'1ISSIONER BRADFORD:
Which ones were they?
24 MR. VOLGENAU:
There was a case of a release by en cs n.mmy comsnv 25 a utility into a river and the utility had a pretty good
I 42 l
1 track record, in general, but in this particular area, they 2
appeared to be weak and were identified as being weak by a 31 series of noncompliances that occurred over a period of a 4
couple of years.
5 If we, in our systematic evaluation of the licensee, 6
had gotten on that licensee and said, "You are weak in this 7
health physics area, and had you strengthened it up, you 8l might not have had the release and the bad public image it I
l 91 created."
1 10 That's probably the best example.
II COMMISSIONER GILIMSKY:
I think what you don't want 12 is an elite core running around from region to region turning 13 things upside down.
And that's certainly right.
One has Id heard that is going on in other agencies.
15 But I think that it is useful to try and take a 16 systematic look at what i s happening there just because there are so many reactors, and there are so many variables involved 17 18 and it is such a complicated.ffair that I think you just have I9 to try to think about it as hard as we can, extract as much 20 useful information as we can.
2I MR. VOLGEN7U:
I propose, Mr. Chairman, -- it's 22 still a very experimental type of thing and we'll keep you 23 appraised and be happy to give you our status reports on it 24 and we would certainly seek Commission endorsement.
- cs Accuteg Company 25 CHAIR'n'! HENDRIE :
Move into it, I think, with some
i 43 l
1 caution.
I 2!
'4 R. VOLGENAU:
Yes, sir.
I 3l CHAITOUL'1 HENDRIE :
And one other suggestion that I 4
make for your consideration is that especially through the
~
l Si next couple of years, which are going to be transition periods i
6 in terms of this new aspect, new sort of look at facility 7
inspection, you ought to try to maximize the resident assign-8 ments in order to get a stronger, early start on putting 9
oeople in sites, even though this leaves you, in view of the i
10l limitations on incoming manpower, somewhat weaker on the other 11 pieces than you would like.
12 I think we are going to find ourselves having to 13 explain in some detail the substantial manpower increases even dy w l substantial compared to other Id at these reduced nu.Tbers, stil
( {}
h 15 elements in the agency certainly, in I&E.
The increment from 16
'78 from the present 589 to 666 and the 75 supplement, the 17 increment, whatever it may be proposed for
'79, I think 18 we'll have to explain in some detail how the fairly large 39 level of those increments is compatible with the relatively 20 small number of resident inspectors we will have at sites 21 through
'79.
At least, you know, with this tentative flash 22 we've got here.
23 And I think it would be useful to look at, to recognize the shape of things as such, that it is desirable 24 hcs Reomng Company 25 to squeeze other elements very hard to try to get the people t
i I
44 l
1 out into that aspect and, in effect, sort of recover the 2!
ratio balance between the elements of your program, as you I
3l see t' un best, in subsequent years as people get out of the 4
training mill that you don't these large blocks of manpower-5 locked up in training in particular.
6 I think we're going to have to struggle some to 7
make people be happy with the number of sites that are covered 81 on the one hand, versus the slotting increments that are forth 1
9; coming, and that we will be asking, on the other hand.
I 10l MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes, sir.
I think it's a very good il point.
12 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
A sort of real zero-base way 13 to go at is to say, now, suppose that, for reasons which are la considered good and proper, I was told to try to go ahead and 15 implement to the maximum extent practicable a resident 16l inspector program within the manpower level something like 17 650-odd, 660 level.
What would I do in order to try to do 18 1 that?
And then you can
- don't work too hard on it, but see i
19 sort of the directions you can go.
And then you can stand 20 back and say, well, at least things aren't that bad.
21 Now, I've got some further resources, how would I 22 spot them in in order to sort of repair the places that I 23 thought I would have been hurt worst.
24 MR. VOLGENAU:
Yes, sir.
We are looking at that n,.. nno cc p.,,
25 and, as a matter of fact, there were scme overlays to one of i
U i
45 l
1 the charts.
Since you don't have time to discuss it now, but 2
CIIAIRMAN IIENDRIE :
I think that's for another time.
MR. VOLGENAU:
We can squeeze down on that training 3f 4
base, but when we squeeze down on it, because we get these new 5,
people and we say, all right, you are going to do less traininc 6 i for the near-time and more work in order to get more people on l
7 sites.
When you squeeze it that way, it delays your imple-8' mentation because somehow, sometime you have got to put those 9 1 people on site and if they're not trained, you can' t put them i
10 on site.
II CIIAIIOWI HENDRIE :
I think it imposes several 12 burdens on you in terms of squeezing down as much as you can 13 on other elements in the reactor inspection program and also 14 in terms of the recruiting effort as you go forward, to see 15 if you can't get reasonably experienced and mature individuals 16 who can move through a training phase and into the field more 17 rapidly.
That isn' t, as I well know, a very easy job but you -- clearly you will have to bear down more heavily than 18 19 you might have hoped on that aspect.
20 Well, I'm afraid we have gone about as far as we 21 can at the moment on the subject and I thank you 22 We'd like to turn to the next element of the 23l program immediately after a five-minute chance for the 24 Commissioners to get up from the table, un amn no come m.
25 (Recess.)
l
1 I
46 l
1 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
If we may start again.
In going 2
over the budget books last week, we decided we would like to
$b hear a 1-i-tle more about generic issues from NRR.
r There was noticed a substantial manpower increment 5
in the area called, I guess, technical projects, uhich include n -
6 and I think some further discussion about what's going on in i
7l the area and what it is and how you're dealing with it would 8,
be helpful to the Commissiong in going on with budget markups.
i I
91 So, Ed, if you are ready, why don't you go ahead?
I 101 MR. CASE:
For purposes of that discussion, I l
II brought three of my brightest stars from the Program Support D
Branch :$from-NRR's of-fMrtr, and if they are prepared --
12 1
13 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
If we could have the first slide, Id please.
(Slide.)
15 As you recall from our previous budget presentatio 1, the technical projects activity is broken down into five 16 major areas: topical report reviewr, contract management, 17 non-NRR support, research coordination, and generic issues.
18 I think the focus of our attention today would be in the I9 generic issue area since this is the major aspect of the man-20 21 power.
22 If we could have the next slide, please.
23 (Slide. )
Generic issue activities are those activities o -cs mencom cow nv 25I related to the technical support of licenses, to the evaluatio,n l
[
i 47 l
1 of generic issues, and development of improvements in evalu-2 ation techniques.
3 On this slide, we list the current FY '77 manpower 4[;
allocated to this specific issue of the technical projects 5l category, the FY '78 current allocation, the FY '79 values, I
I 6
which included divisions requests, our level 1 through 4,
as 7;
well as the final EDO mark.
I 8l MR. CASE:
What I have added to this since the I
i 9i last chart is the division requests.
I wanted you to get some i
10l appreciation that there has been a constant winnowing down in 11 this area from the beginning of this budget process.
There
')
12 were people at work at it long before you,)f'.
U 13 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
It raises a lot of ques-Id tions about divisions.
15 MR. CASE:
No, what it shows is there is a lot of 16 generic issues out there needing resolution.
17 C051MISSIONER KENNEDY:
That's what that shows?
18 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
Essentially this was a level 4 division request, also, by the way.
So it's the highest value 19 20 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
I understand.
2I MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
If we get into more specific 22 details --
23 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Let ce point, if I under-24 stood the priorities chart which I have in front of me, NRR
+ - o s. -,no como nv 25 sees this as a lower priority than the u loes; indeed, if I i
i l
48 l
1 am correct, they see it as a lower priority than advanced 2
reactors.
I MR. CASE:
Our priorities were set up that way when 3
I 4l there was an advanced reactor program.
I think, in all honest-f, l
Sf we would shift tech projects above advanced reactors today.
6:
And I don't know --
f 7
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
When did you set the pri-8, orities?
I 9l MR. CRUTCHPIELD:
February or March, initially, i
10l When we were first developing the budget, we decided to break l
Gd Sf 11l the advanced reactor efforg,pp casework, we decided to drop it m\\)
/-
b 12 below casework, and in reality we should have moved the 13 technical projects category up.
14 To some extent, some of the advanced reactor work 15 is higher priority than some of the tech projects work, such 16, as topical reports.
17 MR. CASE:
I don't know that there's any differ-18 ence in priority between EDO and myself on this issue.
19 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
All I was reflecting is 20 what the machine run showed.
21 MR. GOSSICK:
Literally, on my mark, I included 22 their level 3, almost all their level 3, which they rank 23 15 out of 25.
The level 4, which added another 10, their 24 priority would have been 23 out of 25.
4~ o a n.
.,y ccom 25 But the first level 1, level 2, both levels are i
i I
49 l
1; priority set.
2l MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
In recognition of the high levels l
3!
of manpower associated with generic issues, Mr. Case has I
4!
formed a specific group to develop a program for their resolu-5!
tion.
Mike Aycock is the executive secretary of that group, t
6l so I will turn it over to him now, and let him give you a l
7 I little more explanation.
8i MR. AYCOCK:
What I am going to try to do for you i
e 9 1 is to give you some brief comments on what our past practices l
10!
were, our problems, and what accomplishments we did make in 1
Ill the past, a brief description of what our program plan today 12, looks like, and how, in fact, we are implementing that within 13 MRR and have been since February.
And, in addition, the statua 14l of where we stand in that implementation.
I 15 Denny gave you a brief definition of what a 16i generic technical activity is, if we can use that term.
There i
17l a re ma ny te rms, generic issues, or technical activities, or 18 whatever.
Basically, I think, you can break thir.gs down in 19 technical efforts, in general, down into two categories.
One 20 is that it is specifically related to case reviews, operating 2I license, construction permits, routine operating reactor sur-22 veillance, and those activities which support these types of 23 reviews.
That would be technical matters that relate to safet; 1
24!
or safeguards or environmental aspects of nuclear power plant t m a., n my c.,,,,,,,
25 design, construction, or ope ration, and which are applicable i
l
1 1
50 l
I to all or some particular subset of plants.
I 2'
If I could have the next slide, please?
I 3!
(Slide.)
l 4f Generic issues, or generic technical activities, I
5 can be identified from any one of a number of sources.
As 6
you can see here, only one of the sources is within NRR; the 7
rest are outside, the principal one being experience we have 8
with operating reactors.
9 others that provide significant numbers are vendor i
10!
and utj'ity design reviews.
Examples of this would be the II Mark I containment problem or the asymmetric blowdown load 12, problem.
13 ACRS has their list of gene"i-4 rems which they Id encourage us to work on.
15 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Is there some specific 16 list of generic items that you have?
In other words, --
I7 MR. CASE:
Me'll get down to that.
18 COMMISSIONER GILIUSKY:
Is there a significance 19 to being on the list, or is this just in the back of people's 20 minds?
2I MR. CASE:
If you will wait, we will get to that.
22 MR. AYCOCK:
There have been.
23i COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Could we see that list at 24 some point?
s no non.my comp nv 25 MR. AYCOCK:
In the past our approach to the i
I
r i
51 l
jeri i
resolution of these issues was to attempt to accumulate all 2
those that were being identified or were identified to try to 3'
place some target completion dates on ones that were felt to 4
be important and to attempt to track the process and to some- ~
5 how assure all these various sources that, in fact, their 6
concerns were being taken into account.
7 Next slide, please?
81 (Slide.)
9 We have experienced in the past some problems.
One i
10f the fact that manpower does from time to time get diverted was II to higher priority tasks.
Some~ notable examples are the 12 efforts involved with responding to safety allocations that 13 surrounded the resignation of a couple of our employees, some 14 rather sign.ficant operating reactor events; for instance, 15 the Browns Ferry fire, and from time to time, case work.
In particular branches which are heavily hit by that will 16 17 certainly take priority.
18 We also had a lack of a well-structured program 19 that would aid lower-level manas _.s in making decisions on a 20 day-to-day basis as to what they should be working on.
21 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Let me ask you this:
There 22 are not, as I understand it, individuals who are specifically 23 designated as technical projects staff.
24 MR. CASE:
That's correct.
These are the same
+no a. -nno cm nv 0
people who do licenses, who do CFAL reviews --
25 x
v I
i 52 l
I COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
This is an allocation of 2
effort which cuts across the organization?
I 3'
MR. CASE:
All divisions.
4 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
And, in effect, it is a 5;
kind of contingency for dealing with a lot of things, includin-i 6
generic items?
Or at least that is the way it has been used.
I 7!
MR. CASE:
Well, in the past it was more or less 8
a contingency without any firm schedules or firm direction on 9 i which ones to work on, and that's the problem that Mike is I
10l talking about -- in the past.
The new program, we believe, 1
11i l
takes care of those kinds of problems.
I2 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY :
When you run into a Browns 13 Ferry, your schedules go out the window.
Id MR. CASE:
All kinds of schedules have to go out 15 the window with a Browns Ferry situation.
16 But one of the problems, and I guess it's in your I7 number two, we had a number of generic activities which people IO were free to work on when their other priorities didn't call for their attention, and they weren't directed -- all of those 20 who needed to advance generic issue no.
1, to work on no.
1.
21 Everyone might have chosen a different one.
Wasn't a coordina :ed 22 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Your in-house schedules go 23 out the window.
24 MR. CASE:
Fe didn't coordination between the
,o n o.vnno c. m ov 25 branches and divisions, which is necessary in order to move l
1 53 l
1 the projects forward.
2 But despite that, there has been some progress in I
3' the past and we want to talk about that.
4; Isn't that the next chart, Mike?
5l MR. AYCOCK:
Yes.
6 MR. CASE:
We don' t want to damn t.te past too much.
I 7'
Because we were part of the past.
8 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
If we go back over three years, t
9) he gets to my time, that's why.
I 10!
MR. CASE:
I've been there all the time.
II (Laughter.)
12 MR. AYCOCK:
The result of this problem, I think, 13 is that many times when we did try to target completion dates i
for activities that were accumulating on various lists, we Id 15 found that, in fact, the schedules got to be unrealistic and 16 the m.npower --
17 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Did we in the past have a 18 list of projects or generic items tr, work on?
Was there sort I/'
of a one --
20 MR. CASE:
There wasn't a master list.
21 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: Everyone had their own 22 priorities?
23 MR. AYCOCK:
Well, the Division of Technical 24 Review --
- 4., a am.t.m co,,,0,v 25 CHAI RFD.N HENDRIF:
Used to file them as technical i
d I
54 l
1 assistance requests with us.
2 MR. AYCOCK:
We tried to accumulate them in a 3
l 3l package called the Technical Safety Activities Report.
4 MR. CASE-Do we have a copy of that with us now?
5 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
I can remember making charts wud o u t L&j p6l showing how TARS were going to consume the uork of the adult 7
portions of the world's population by 1993.
8i (Laughter.)
9 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
The most recent copy of that is i
10l attached to the information supplied with the special responsea I
Ill to Mr. Pollard's allegations.
I 12 MR. AYCOCK:
It was last published in December, 13 1975.
14 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What is the relation c' 15 our list or the NRR list to the ACRS list?
Are these differ-16l ent and separate?
17 MR. CASE:
What we did -- you're forcing us to get 18 ahead of the story.
We took everybody's list, including the 19 ACRS, the technical activities -- Technical Safety Activities 20 Report, lists the people had in their minds, and we put them 21 all together and out of that have developed our NRR list in 22 priority A, priority B,
-- category A, category B, category 23 C,
and category D.
24 So out of that whole collection, now, we have a list inro Herwvting Comoany 25 and it is the official list.
Now, we are going to meet with i
l' i
55 l
I the ACRS to let them know wherein their list has fitted in in 2
our priorities.
3 COf1MISSIONER GILINSKY :
And who set those priori-ties?
5!
Your Comnittee?
6f MR. CASE:
Yes.
I MR. AYCOCK:
Next slide, please?
O (Slide.)
9 Some of the attempts in the past to accumulate O!
these things, the Technical Safety Activities Report we II mentioned, there's a topical report review program, the tech-1 12' nical assignments -ontrol system was put into effect, and each 13 of these provided some limited capability to track the progres 3 14 along and did 2.id lower-level managers and reviewers in 15 defining what their workloads were.
It did little to tell 16 them what, in fact, the priorities of the various issues g
17l were.
I0 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Basically what they were 19 going to work on?
20 MR. CASE:
No.
They were worked on but not in an 21 organized, systematic way, i
22 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Nobody indicated which were the most imoortant ones?
j MR. CASE:
Right.
%cs n mi.no cmany 25 MR. AYCOCK:
It was done, yes, by division I
l' l
56 I
directors or assistant directors.
But the problem becomes 2
somewhat more complicated when we reorganized into four divi-3 sions, three of which had technical organizations, where I
d previously we had one division that was a mecunical organiza-t S
tion.
i 6
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY :
Well, still, wouldn't you I
7 expect -- at least, I would expect that each one would work 8
on what they thought were the most important projects in 9
their area.
I mean, why would you create problems --
10 MR. CASE:
Because they also required input from 11 other divisions and other support groups in other divisions, 12 and unless they were also working on that project, c would 13 become stymied because of a lack of input from that group 14 So what was needed was to get all of the divisions 15 together, develop a priority list that all of the division 16 directors agreed on, and to allocate their manpower in accord-I7 ance with schedules that they all agreed on.
That's what we IO have done.
I9 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Has anybody else been 20 involved in this?
For example, Steve?
2I MR. CASE:
Not in any direct way.
We kept him 22 informed.
We are at the point now where we are getting --
'3 where he's gcing out for comment from the other offices who 24 are alsc sonewhat involved in some of the technical ascects, woam r,y cowny COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I would think that setting
H i
57 l
tri 1
of the priorities would be a very important part of the 2
whole job.
3!
MR. CASE:
It is.
4l It turns out that the biggest decision is whether l
5 they are a Priority A or a Priority B, or Category A or 6l Category B because of the manpower limitations.
It is going 7
to develop further on -- further on in this story, it looks 8
like the manpower we are going to have in '78 will cover about 9
all o f the Category A activities, a few of the B activitier, i
10l but not. ny.
Il COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Co'.'ering the A's ought to 12 deal with 90 percent of :he problems.
13 MR. CASE:
No, no.
Numberw'..ae tnere are 40 A's, 14 70 B's.
15 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I know; but in terms of 16 dealing with the risk posed by all these.
17 MR. CASE:
We hope so.
Yes, sir.
That's the -
18 the A's are the ones we think should be resolved soonest 19 because of, obviously, one of the f actors or major f actor 20 taken into account was the potential risk to public health 21 and safety.
The ef fect o f those, we should say.
22 MR. AYCOCK:
I think the B's are also considered 23 to be important activities.
It's not until you hit the C's 24 that you get, I think, to the types of things that we feel u o a.catm canon 25 are refinements in t,he process, or give us better understandir.g i
58 l
1 of particular issues or whatever.
2 MR. CASE:
Keep going.
3 MR. AYCOCK:
Yes. Next slide, please?
4 (Slide.)
5; We're trying to indicate in a general way, anyway, i
6 what types of accomplishments were made in the past.
For 7
instance, the ACRS generic items list now lists some 38 8
resolved generic issues.
Another way of looking at it would l
9l be to look at the number of power reactors regulatory guides I
i 10' that have been issued; some 130 of those, some with many Il revisions, and many of those require considerable NRR effort 12 to develop the technical positions.
And another would be 13 the Standard Review Plan.
Id MR. CASE:
Really, they were developed as a result 15 of the generic effort, coming up with a solution which was 16 codified in the Standard Review Plan.
17 MR. AYCOCK:
Next slide.
18 (Slide.)
19 MR. CASE:
There were a lot of accomplishments in 20 the past; they weren't all codified, so you could have a 21 nice, big list.
22 MR. AYCOCK:
However, as you mentioned, there are 23 lists
't have been accumulated which do contain large 24 numbers of activities that either we or someone else thinks smo sm,wy c-n, 25 should be working on.
And this backlog has grown quite we i
It i
59 l
I jeri a bit, I guess, over the last three or four years.
So our 2
new program was developed to try -- attempt to simply reduce 3
the numbers of these activities, the numbers of generic d
issues by resolving then in some timely fashion.
5I The program elements are, one, uniform criteria i
6 for grouping generic technical activities into categories 7
which are indicative of NRR office priorities; two, to estab-8l lish a Technical' Activities Steering Committee (TASC) which 9
vould provide some high-level management control and oversight a
f 10!
to --
l II COtt?tISSIOt!ER GILINSKY :
Who's on this Committee?
I2 MR. CASE:
Each of my four division directors --
13 MR. AYCOCK:
If we go to the next slide, we'll show Id you that.
15 CotetISSluMER GILINSKY :
Isn't that just your manage 16 ment structure.
17 (Slide.)
IO COttMISSIONER GILINSKY:
In other wccds, are these I9 directors really going to be active on this themselves or will 20 then tend to send somebody in their place?
2I 51 2. CASE:
They're required to come.
22 COfD1ISSIONER GILINSKY:
They are required to co.
MR. CASE:
Now, for the day-by-day activities, 23 there's a steering
-- what do you call your group, Blike.
24 n..m,2cem_,;
uno 25l 31R. RUBENSTEIN:
Advisory group.
1 i
60 l
1 MR. AYCOCK:
It's called the review group here.
2, l
MR. CASE:
Mike is the chairman.
It is composed of 3!
i Mike as the chairman, who represents me, and essentially the 4!
I technical assistants for each of the four divisions, technical l
Si j
assistants to the director or assistant directors.
6l So they run the day-by-day activities.
They are 7
the ones that did the winnouing process for us, the directors.
8i l
For instance, they are the ones who went over the list and 9
initially removed the duplicates.
10l COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Who's going to keep track 11 whether --
12 MR. CASE:
We are going to get Mcdonald to set up 13 some colored book.
(Laughter.)
ja MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
We're thinking about calling 154 l
it the draft book.
16l l
(Laughter.)
i 17 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I guess I think it is 18 more important that this group be sort of periodically 19 meeting --
20 MR. CASE:
Oh, it will.
We intend to have a meet-21 ing like every two weeks, as we have blue book meetings.
22 COM31ISSIONER GILINSKY:
Because you don't want to 23 l
just turn this into a mechanical process where you are march-24I ing through this book and these goals -- I mean I think there smo non...no cow,
25 ought to be -- as you are developing information, constantly i
i
Il 61 l
1 reevaluating areas, and deciding what's important, and whether 21 things are really getting done.
l 3l MR. CASE:
And, in addition, how to get around 4
technical roadblocks that the TASC activity manager runs into-5l at his level and doesn't know how to get around.
i 6
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
How do you space that --
7 by the previous chart, it speaks of categories indicative of 8,
NRR priorities.
How do you factor in the priorities of the 9l ACRS and, perhaps, even other elements of this organization?
i 10!
For example, I&E?
11 MR. CASE:
Well, we are going to get comments from 12 the other offices and we are going to get comments from the 13 ACRS.
That's the only way I know to do it.
14 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, let's see, does this 15 list include the ACRS reports --
16l MR. CASE:
It includes all of the ACRS items, yes.
17 They are all included in there.
Now, they may 18 not like some of the priorities that we have assigned to them, 19 or the schedules that developed from such priorities.
20 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
As I recall, one of the 21 items on there had to do with the effects on instrumentation 22 of a nuclear attack.
23 MR. CASE:
That was one of the dissenter's issues.
24 Ne thought there wasn't anything to do at the time and said unc nm,u,no corre 25 so in our report to the ACRS, and I cut remember how they a
i I
62 i
viewed that one.
j_ci 2,
MR. CRUTCHPIELD:
I think they generally agreed I
3 with that.
4 MR. CASE:
I think they generally agreed with that'.
l 5I COMMISSIONER GILINSKY :
So it is not an A item.
I
,j j,,w Le ws r l c r~
- 6 MR. CASE:
No.
In fact, it isn't on our list.,g f
7 It's on the list but it's not being worked on because it is 8l not important enough.
9 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
It would be Category C.
I 10l F1R. CASE:
D.
l II MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
Category D is essentially a 12 pocket to put things that we don' t feel we should ever work 13 on, and the basis for that.
14 MR. CASE: And the basis.
15 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
The documentary basis.
16 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
There's a simpler way to 17 do that.
It's called a waste basket.
18 MR. CASE:
Except they are on somebody else's list, 19 you see.
20 We're an open agency.
21 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
The waste baskets are open, 22 (Laughter.)
233 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I hope they won't be in the 24 book.
ur a s mnno como nv 25 MR. CASE:
No.
i
P i
e 63 l
1 MR. AYCOCK:
Let's go back to the previous slide.
2f (Slide.)
l 3l Just briefly run down the remaining elements here.
i 4
There is a concept of a lead division of the four divisions i
5l which has the responsibility of seeing that a task is accom-i 6
plished.
7 MR. CASE:
Let me point out how that works.
We 81 obviously have a task manager for the division and he reports 9l to at least the assistant director in the lead division.
He i
10l may not even be in that division, but for help in getting the 11 job done, he reports at least to an assistant director in the 12 lead division if he runs into roadblocks.
13 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Let's see, in the interest of Id seein what may be more interesting viewgraphs yet to come, 15 I urge that we be allowed to scan this handout, and shoot 16l forward.
17 Let's have the next slide.
18 MR. AYCOCK:
Let's move on to two slides ahead.
19 (Slide.)
20 MR. CASE:
Good heavens, we've discussed this, 21 right?
22 MR. AYCOCK:
In general, yes.
23 We'll move on.
1 24 Next slide, please?
uno semy comoon, 25 (Slide.)
j
n I
l 64 l
1 MR. CASE:
Now this one, you will have to have some 2
explanation.
3f COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
It looks like a reprocess-i 4
ing plant.
5 (Laughter.)
6l MR. AYCOCK:
This is a flow chart in which I have 7
tried to indicate the process which we have been going through 8i in-house, and specifically the process of making the judgments F
I to priorities and to reviewing and improving our plans for 9 1 as 1
10 ll resolution.
l Il I think it may take a little bit of explanation.
12 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
I think it's clear enough.
It's 13 a proposition in which you are trying to get a' lot inputs.
Id MR. AYCOCK:
We have gotten a lot of inputs.
15 CHAIFLimN HENDRIE:
You'll have to exercise the 16 customary caution, which is, in going from a less-organized, 17 you know, we run this pretty much catch-as-catch-can; caught 18 a man looking as though he weren't harassed, why we gave him I9 a TAR at the moment to carry it to the water cooler.
20 Now, you go over and try to get well-organized, 21 and try to get everybody on board agreed to and so on, and you fairly complex liaison and coordination problem, you'll 22 get a 23 have to exercise a certain amount of judgment that the ef fort i
1 24 l going in now getting fully organized doesn't constitute a s
n.,n. ma c<,,,w,, l 25!
major fraction of the manpower that you can put in to get the I
l 65 l
jeri 1
job done.
2!
MR. CASE:
Well, I'll just point out that we used 3l our existing system for doing that.
We didn't --
4f CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Why don't we move forward.
5li MR. AYCOCK:
I think for the Category A test, 6
we are almost to the point where are through with that exercise.
7 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
You mean, you are through 8i with this?
9 MR. AYCOCK:
Yes.
10 CO"".ISSIONER KENNEDY :
What does that mean?
II MR. AYCOCK:
Down to -- review and approve the 12 test action plans.
They have been reviewed and approved --
13, 2 0 o f them.
14 MR. CASE:
We had a meeting last Friday, was it, 15 where we reviewed and --
16 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
You're ready to start to go l
17l to work now?
l 18 MR. AYCOCK:
Well, I think --
I9 MR. CASE:
Things have been ongoing.
20 MR. AYCOCK:
Most of these have been ongoing.
21 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
I think it's f air to try to get 22 these things scheduled and organized in this uay.
It's a 23; much more orderly layout of what there is to do and what ought 24!
to be done first and so on.
I think we're all going to have On cs Repcw tm Corepany 25:
to recognize, in soite of your best efforts some of these l
i 1
l
C 1
66 l
I problems, in spite of the promises of division heads who think 2
they can whip them, some of these are rather recalcitrant 3
problems, they may be of actually, in many ways, of a low leve i
4!
with regard to reactor safety, the urgent reactor safety i
5j matters, but just very recalcitrant about you will is a full, i
1 6
adequate solution that just clears it away out of everybody's 7
mind.
l 8j So when you come back next year, and say you 9
weren't able to complete schedule on some of these, I may i
10h frown but --
l 11 MR. CASE:
There is an initial schedule that has 12 developed and I hope you all look at it.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I'll only frown if I can't 14 identify the resources that were put on it.
15 MR, CASE:
Well, we're going to have that done, too CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Okay.
I7 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
That's been our problem up 18 to now.
We've had, as you know, great discussions of all the 19 problems and great discussions of all the approaches to them, 20 and then at the end, never any real identification what the 2I resources were that were devoted to them.
22 MR. CASE:
And the output.
.OMMISSIONER KENNEDY :
Right.
The output showed that.
24 MR. AYCOCK: The next slide, please.
%,n.cs Remitwy Company 25 (Slide.)
I
f l
l 67 I
Simply trying to show where we have been and where 2
we are today.
The category proposal was approved in May, the 3
fees in mid-July and actual plans last week for half of the 4l; Category A's; the other half will probably be uithin the next' 5l; week or two.
I 6
That's about all.
There's another slide which 7
simply indicates the magnitude of the effort, the number of 8'
proposals we have got and the numbers that came out at the 1
9l end.
I 10!
MR. CASE:
That's sort of interesting, too.
l e
Il CIIAIRMAN IIENDRIE:
Let me ask, for instance, of 12 130 Category A proposals, these are examined and the examiners 13 say 39 of these are in fact valid Category A activities; Id now, what happens to the other 89 or whatever?
15 MR. CASE:
They are considered for B, and C, and D.
16 COfiMISS10NER KENNEDY:
Obviously, some of the 17 didn't make the list.
18 MR. CASE:
I guess that includes duplications.
19 Does it, Mike, the 130.
20 MR. AYCOCK:
Yes, many of them.
Remember you are 21 getting proposals from four divisions.
22 CO!1MISSIONER KENNEDY:
Okay.
23 MR. AYCOCK:
Many of them vere similar or dupli-24 cated. Some were, in fact, judged to be case work.
In fact, t e ck Retuwtoj Company 25 were not generic in nature.
'l i
l 68 l
1 And should be handled under the normal case work.
2i Or in fact implementation appropriately.
l 3l MR. CASE:
Then this group resolved, where there l
4j was agreement in this agreement, we considered it but not --
Sl where there was disagrecment, they came up to the four divi-l t
6i sion directors and myself and we had somewhat of a democratic 7
process, but since I was at that time acting director as well l
8 as deputy director, I had more votes.
9l (Laughter.)
i 10!
CO!L'!ISSIONER KENNEDY:
Is that the way that works?
l 11 (Laughter.)
12 MR. AYCOCK:
That's all I have with the exception 13 of I have handouts which would include -- there's three meet-14 ing summaries here, one which tells what the Category A's 15 were, the approved Category A's --
16 CHAIRttAN HENDRIE:
Why don't you leave one for each 17 of the Comnissioners and, I guess, the Secretary may want one.
18 MR. CASE:
Along with each TASC action is manpower, 19 and we added up the manpower in one of these sheets.
I want 20 to caution you this is professional manpower rather than over-21 all manpower, so one has to multiply by the 1.4 ratio in order 72 to approach the numbers that we are talking about here.
23 Now, based on looking and approving 20 Category A's 24 we'd look at, based on that, what sort of manpower we would
+,,o s n m o cc,o,w 25 expect for the rest of the Category A's and compared tnat I
l
i
69 l
1 FY '78 manpower on generic activity.
And it eats it all up.
2; And more.
l 3l COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Can I ask you, uhat is 4
" Impact of Coal" --
5 ;t COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I was going to ask that.
I 6f MR. CASE:
One of the hearing boards asked us to 7
prepare the comparison of coal versus nuclear, and we have 8+
done that on a case-by-case, and this is to do it in a generic 9l so it can be used -- isn't that the one?
- way, I
i 101 MR. AYCCCK:
Yes.
I IIl MR. CASE:
-- and used across the board.
12 It's a generic -- you remember the categories, 13 there are safety problems and improving the review process, l'l and one of the sources is boards, and this is how this one 15 l' came in.
16 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
One asks why you were asked 17 to do that.
18 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE : Because the board asked them to.
19 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Why you?
Why not ELA or 20 somebody?
21 MR. RUBENSTEIN:
This is in terms of morbidity and 22 mortality.
23l COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
All right, I understand, i
24 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I think those things ought j
~amvmo ccmo.m to get thrown in together.
Generic items, ACRS items, and 25
e 70 l
I think of them as being safety items.
so on, 1
2[
MR. CASE:
Hell, some pecole do think of them that i
3l way.
4 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Some of these are prepara-5f tions of guides of various kinds.
I 6
MR. CASE:
Most of them are safety.
7l COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
One of them says generic l
8l accident risk study.
What is that?
Does that mean --
i 9
MR. CASE:
Nell, in every environmental report, 1
1 10 we have to say something about Class 9 accidents.
And we i
lij have saying it in overplayed language for the last 5 years, 12 despite the fact that we have now completed Rasmussen study.
13 The feeling is we are going to get caught in some case of not Id having fully explored this issue, and we think we ought to 15 be working on it so we won't get caught.
i 16l COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
So it's really a combi-17 nation of safety -- mostly safety --
i 18 MR. CASE:
Mostly safety, i
19 MR. AYCOCK:
There are really only two environ-20 i
mental issues, I think.
But it does include environmental.
21l Usually this crops up in places where we are having problems 22 in getting cases out the door, other hearings or whatever.
23 MR. RUBENSTEIN:
Started out with a lot more environmental issues.
..~ am n,no c-..,
25 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Good. Gentlemen, thank you, i
a l'
71 l
Let us advance on our morning schedule.
jeri 1l 2l CO't'1ISSIONER GILINSKY :
Could I just ask you one 3l more question?
l 4I Are these listed in some order of priorities?
I I
MR. CASE:
No, they are not.
5; 6
COM?tISSIONER KENNEDY:
Numbers do not indicate 7
a priority?
81 MR. AYCOCK:
No.
I 9
i MR. CASE:
The A's and B's are not the best --
1 10l since we can't start workina on all the B's, we are going 11 to have to prioritize with the B's.
I don't know how we 12 are going to do that, but it has to be done.
13 You have to take into accounts peak-and valleys 14 in manpower.
You can't just look at the total manpower be-15 cause it will ceak --
16f MR. SHAPAR:
For anyone who hasn't met 17 Mr. Engelhardt, he's -- Tom Engelhardt is my deputy.
18 I must say it is with considerable reluctance that 19 I seek to bother the Commission about two positions and four 20 positions, depending on the fiscal year involved.
The only 21 reason I am here is because I feel strongly that my request 22 is justified and I certainly want to be in a position to 23 provide the timely and competent legal services that I think l
24' this Commission deserves and wants.
On.c. Reputog Company 25 In terms of the numbers we are talking about --
i l
U i
72 l
1 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
And always get, I would add.
2 MR. SHAPAR:
I think I have to quarrel with that.
3l You see lats o f papers --
4 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
He won't take a compliment.
5, (Laughter.)
i I
6l COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I've noticed he's always t
7 been that way, too.
8, MR. SHAPAR:
I think you have se'en a lot of staff I
9 papers come up that say "no legal objection."
I think in 1
10l many cases that is all it deserves.
One has to make tough 11 management decisions about when to keep one's mouth, when one 12 thinks one can contribute something.
13 On the other hand, I feel on many occasions, I 14 simply haven't had the time or the resources to provide input 15 in areas that perhaps deserve more input from my office.
16 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I thought that was code 17 for you not electing it, Howard.
18 (Laugh te r. )
19 MR. SHAPAR:
No, not, that is one of the codes.
20 But it also means besides my not liking it, it 21 means in the alternative that I am too lazy to really get 22 into it.
23 Either way, I am covered.
24 What we are talking about -- again, I am very
%,no n.g.,r.,w; Comr*any 25 reluctant to be here to talk about numbers like 2 and 4.
i
P 73 l
1 For FY
'77, we are at 90; that's 56 lawyers and 34 support.
2:
Ar.d we are held now, FY
'73, at 94, and FY '79 at 94.
I i
3!
had hoped to go up to 96 for FY '78 and 98 for FY
'79.
I 4
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY :
Are these lawyers or l
5; support?
Or both?
I 6!
MR. SIIAPA R:
Both, but mainly lawyers.
There's 7
an awful lot o f typing support needed for trial lawyers and I
8:
lawyers who write regulations.
It's completely nonproductive.
I 9l Eventually, we --
l 101 COf'11ISSIONER KENNEDY :
I would be more inclined l
11 to view with sympathy your reclama force of support.
12 f1R. SIIAPAR:
Let me make one more -- I can't change 13 my pitch right now because that would disrupt my whole menta) 14 process.
15 (Laughter.)
16 COMMISSIONER KENtlEDY: Inflexibility has never been 17 your hallmark.
18 f1R. SIIAPAR:
Let me make it perfectly clear that 19 if you keep me at 94 for both years I can do the job.
What 20 I an tel3ing you is that I think that the nibbling process, if 21 I may use that pejorative term, has reached the point where I 22 need to tell you that I think it is impairing -- not so much 23 the quality of the work, that would not be fair -- but the 24 combination of timely input from the legal staff.
o r o %...,2 cc.,w ev 25 Now, the picture that I see is increased effort on l
't t
I 74 l
I the part of the Commission in various areas like waste disposa 2l; and Part 21 implementation, security clearances, export l
3f licenses, where the Commission has decided to expand the effor l
4 These activities, and I only mentioned a few examples, because 5
you are completely familiar with them, are legally intensive.
i 6!
They require a large legal input.
7 So the picture I see, the big picture, is expanded 8l efforts in various areas which require legal support -- and I l
9 don't see where that legal support is coming from.
i 10!
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
But does that go along l
i II with downturn in domestic licensing?
I2 MR. SHAPAR:
Yes.
13 I think that that is a fair question.
I think it's Id the main question from your standpoint.
Forgetting about 15 my parochial interests in this matter, I think if I were 16 sitting at the other side of the table, I think the basic 17l question I would ask is the one you just asked; and that is, 18 with a large part of your manpower in the hearing sections, I9 with --
20 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Which is jus t about half 2I of your office?
22 MR. SHAPAR:
Close to it.
It's 32 professional 23l attorneys.
The cuestion is, with the licensing activity, i
24 1 in effect, stabilizing or going down, why not take some of en.a a. -,ny c -
25 the manpower you need from other areas where you are getting q
i 75 l
1 expansion and use those attorneys?
2l The only answer I can give you is that our justi-3l fication was compiled in some detail based upon a thorough dj analysis of the manpower it takes on these hearing cases.
I 5l; The headline, in answer to your question, is the t
6 carryover; and I have the figures on the carryover and the 7
totals.
8' In FY
'78, we expect to have 28 cases in hearing; 9
17 of those are carryovers and 11 are new.
In addition, we 10f anticipate 400 ooerating license amendments.
IIf FY ' 79, we anticipate 41 cases in hearing, and 30 I
12 of these are carryover, and 11 are new, and 470 operating 13 license amendments.
Some of these operating license amendment s-14 we conser.atively estimated 2 percent go to hearing, maybe 15 far larger -- but 2 percent is the only thing I can honestly 16 j us ti fy.
17 So, visibly the large picture I see, yes, we can 18 do the job with 94 and 94 instead of 96 and 98, but I thought you ought to know at least my own evalution of the impact it I9 20 will have.
21 In sum, I am asking that we keep the requests we 22 had originally submitted as marked by the EDO of 96 instead 23 of 94 for FY '78 and 98 instead cf 94 for FY
'79.
24 One other, I guess, substantive area that may
% a.,n m o co,, ev 25 create a very great drain on our office is if some form of i
i
I i
76 l
1 licensing legislation gets enacted somewhere along the lines 2
what the bill looks like now, like providing guidelines for 3l the states and that type of thing; it would require an enormou.s d'
ef fort on our part.
5; On the other hand, the legislation may not be i
61 enough.
l 7
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Of course, that would 8,
come in fiscal
'78.
9 f4 SHAPAR:
Yes, some in -- I would say some in 1
I 10l
'73 and some in '79; but a good part of it in
'78, yes.
11 cot 1MISSIONER BRADFORD:
Would the impact really 12 be an affront, do you feel, in your own --
13 MR. SHAPAR:
Well, I hear a lot of scare stories Id about intervenor funding to which I'm not particularly recep-15 tive.
I think a lot depends on luck.
My fairest evaluation 16 1 can give of that -- let me put it this way.
Some elements I7 of the intervenor community, if I can use a horror like 18 intervenor community, is that actually it will save time I9 because what they are doing now because they don' t have the 20 money and the competence in terms of technical witnesses, 21 the only way they can put on a. case is through detailed, long 22 cross-examination.
23 And the argument runs, if we gave them money, they 24 could go out and hire technical people and then put on their wo a -,no c-ov 25 own first-class case instead of trying to drag it out of the
f 1
77 l
jeri I
sta f f and the applicant on cross-examination.
2 I don't buy that argument very much for this reason 3l People, I think, make the mistake of thinking that the
\\
4; intervenor community is fungible; it's not.
There are many i
5lj intervenors who come into our cases -- and I think they make i
i 6i a real contribution.
They make the staff defend its position I
7 i in a better way than they have done before.
I think they 8
make a real contribution.
9 It's usually when they knou what their issue is.
I 10f They are worried about ship worms in Barnegat Bay and that's II why they are there.
On the other hand, I'm not naive enough I2 not to know that there are elements in the intervenor communi-13 ty that don' t want a plant even if it is the best-built, 14 safest plant ever designed or constructed.
No matter how 15 pretty the plant is, they're against nuclear power and they 16 don't want the plant in their community and they will seize I7 on any issue and take any tactics to delay it because they 18 feel that delay is the best and only weapon that they really 19 have to effect their goals.
20 So I think it is a mistake, as I started to say 21 in my preliminary remarks, to treat the intervenor community 22 as a general thing.
They are quite different, in fact, in 23 most other areas.
24 Now, whether or not giving them money will delay w a n,n m.no c - o.irv 25 the cases, I have to say that if they are better funded and
U i
78 l
1 they can go out and hire first-class people, and they still 2
don't want the plant there under any circumstances, they're 3!
going to use the assets that they have.
If that is their 4
nativation, you can see what the results will be.
l 5
On the other hand, I think it fair to say that if l
6!
there is a discrete issue they are worried about, a certain 7
design feature, an aspect of the site they think is wrong, 8,
the environmental --
l 9l COh:1ISSIONER BRA) FORD:
I meant to ask you a i
10!
narrow question, which is, whether intervenor budgeting would I
11 have much of an impact on your budget.
If intervenors were 12 more active and better funded, will that require --
13 MR. SHAPAR:
I think the best I can say on that is 14l to the extent they are better prepared to put on their own 15 case, we will have to cross-examine them.
16 On the other hand, it may be very well, as they say, 17 that they won't conduct their own cross-examination to some 18 extent -- I think it's a mixed bag; I can't give you a 19 straight answer to that.
I think it's highly speculative.
20 I would like to say it would mean more -- I need more people, 21 but I can't honestly say that.
22 CHAIRMAN EEENDRIE:
You're clearly going to get --
23 if they are in a position to fund more legal support, pre-24 sumably there would be a greater number of motions for the 4 e n s nnno co-,,
25l boards to consider and so.
I l
F I
79 l
I 1
MR. SHAPAR:
That's true.
2 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
As you say, it is hard to say.
l 3l MR. SHAPAR:
That concludes ny --
i 4
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
All right.
Very good.
5, Ouestions?
6 (No response.)
7, CHAIM1AM HENDRIE :
Thank you.
81 Now, Bill :IcDonald decided not to come; that's I
9 what I understand.
10 f1R. GOSSICK: That's right.
He will take it and Il run.
12 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
There was a question about 13
$1.17 millicn in state program tech support, which was going 14 to get straightened out.
15 Did that get straightened out?
16
?!R. BARRY:
I do not have a pacer for you yet on 17 the breakdown.
What you wanted was a breakdown --
18 We don't have that paper yet, do we?
19 MR. GOSSICK:
No.])
/y (j[20 MRr-GGSSICK: It looked like 5.8 or 5.85, just 7
21 double it.
22 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
In particular; what we asked you to do was straighten it out.
I don't need to know the 23 24 detaila, but I would like to have confidence that you have me a. -,ny co.w an, 25 looked at it and that we aren't double counting or neglecting
l' i
80 l
1 co count some thing.
2 MR. BARRY:
I'll have that for you tomorrow.
3l CHAIFUUCI HENDRIE :
Okay.
So you'll straighten it 4
out.
I don't feel any need to examine the dollar levels in 5l particular.
0l All right.
In that case, we have run through 7
EDO and staff offices.
8; Jim, do you want to talk to us about the Office of I
I 9 1 the General Counsel?
I 10 We sort o f scratched it.
This is the first chance II we have had, this is not precisely a complaint at this, but an 12 original argument which never got presented.
13 MR. KELLEY: I was sick last week and I wasn't here.
Id I understand that the Commission took a quick look at the 15-papers and viewed them with a somewhat jaundiced eye; but I0 we're treating this as an open matter.
There is no other way.
17 gin ritzgerald from my office.
And I guess you've 18 me t everybody.
Jim is the Assistant General Counsel, acting 19 as the Assistant General Counsel in charge of
-- you'll see 20 him later today during the budget review.
He did the budget 21 numbers and that's why I wanted him to be here today.
22 Maybe you would just summarize what it is, where 23 we are and what we want to do.
24 MR. FIT" GERALD:
Fine.
For starters, I'd like to enu %,no c,w,s point out that the budget people interpreted our submission 25 l
81 jeri 1
as requesting 26 slots or personnel.
That was a result of I
2!
looking over our papers and interpreting some of our submissions.
I i
3l We were actually requesting 24 for
'79, an increase of 9 percent, l
4 not 18 percent.
I have discussed this with Bruce Cooper and.
5 this doesn' t af fect their bottom line and where they come out 6
on our request.
They had us as requesting 26 personnel.
7 Right now, the General Counses Office, including 8
one attorney vacancy, hms 14 attorney billets and 6 secretarial 9l billets for a total of 20 personnel.
Plus we have two honor k
10 law graduates who are legal interns.
They are actually func-i II tioning lawyers in our office, but they are not part of our i
12 1 permanent strength.
13 In 1978, we will have 14 attorney slots and 8 14 se cre tarial slots for a total of 22 permanent employees, up 15 2 from the current strength.
l 16 CHAIRMAM HENDRIE:
Why didn't that number agree in I
17 the present and it doesn't agree -- on the '77 people then, 18 should this be 19 or 20?
I9 MR. FITZGERALD:
It should be 20, I believe.
20 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Well, I've got a revised EDO 21 '
letter dated 2/18/77 that says 19.
l 22 MR. FITZGERALD:
When I'm referring to 14 attorney l
23 billets, that would _nclude 1 legal intern, Richard Mallory, 1
24 -
whom we have been considering an attorney, s emne neponen. Inc. l.
25 !
CHAIPM N HENDRIE:
Okay.
Don't explain any more.
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1 a
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MR. FITZGERALD:
And who will become an attorney 2
on October 1.
3}l But in 1978, we will be going up 2 and that increase i
4' will be in 'he secretarial s.'.ots.
Plus we will have 2 legal I
5l interns.
Giving us an effective working attorney force of 6;
16 people.
7f In 1979, we understand that the -- from the personnel 8l people that the interns will no longer be carried as extra and 9i will have to be absorbed into our permanent employee allotment.
10 l Therefore, if the 22 figure that the budget people have II suggested remains, we will be in a position where we would I
I 12 '
have tc go down strength in 2 considering the interns as I
I I3 '
functioning, working attorneys.
Id MR. KELLEY: I gue I could make a couple of i
I 15 l observations.
We are going trca 6 to 8 secretaries.
We need that very badly.
We had a lot of overtime last year.
And a 16 l
lot of paper.
We have now become an office you can't run out I7 18 of your back pocket any more.
We used to be able to do that I9 when we had i or 8 people at the beginning.
Butbureaucratic-f ally now, there's too much paper around and we need more help 20 21 in filing and docketing and the like.
So we are going to be, l 22,
I think, okay, when we up our secretarial support by 2 from I
1 23 l 6 to G.
t 24 !
As to the lawvers, the puzzle here is that aime,e nemne,s. inc. ;
'5 l' essentially we stay level until sometime during
'79.
We have 1
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to absorb these interns as of their anniversary date, I believe..
2l We could stay level.
Let me level with you in that 3l regard.
In terms of what we do, there is an irreducible 3
4 minimum in certain areas and then there is give in some areas.
5' We've go t to do what we are doing in litigation.
And there is l
6!
some increase in our volume of litigation.
And you can't do 7!
it strictly on a numbers game.
For example, this Price 1
3!
Anderson case before the Supreme Court, we've got to write a l
9l brief up there and that's going to take a lot of time.
10 i Generally, we have an incru'se in litigation, I I
I i
l 11 l think is a fair statement.
What it is going to do in the j
12 future is a little bit unclear.
I would guess it will keep I
13 i going up.
14 We have to do an irreducible amount of work in J
l f
15 Commission review.
Once the Commission decides to review a i
16 l case, then we have got a lot of work to do in these big ones i
17 l like the Clinch River decision or North Anna, or whatever.
l 18 You know, we go through those opinions.
19 In the export area, we have some major opinions from 20 last year.
We have the grist in our mill, FOI, things of that i
21 sort.
And we can't nc t do those things.
22 The give I think is in two areas.
There is give l
l 23 on advice on Staff proposals.
We typically comment on a range !
l 24 l of Staff proposals.
And sometimes there is disagreement
? Federal R emners, inc, 25 l between, usually a matter of degree, between us and the ELD.
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84 I
I think in a lot of cases, we don't have to comment 2f at all.
He can simply agree.
I think most of the time we do.
3 I think the Commission is well served to have two legal offices i
4l looking at really major legal issues.
And I think we would use 5l our discretion in allocating the manpower to do that.
6; To the extent that our other work load goes up, 7
our comments on Staff proposals are going to go down.
I think i
3l that's what you will see.
9 The other consideration that I think should be 10 brought to the Commission's attention is in the area of legis-l cL 6 7/,
lation.
We have in the past, and I will ask Carl ht-ahle l
II to I2 l elaborate on this, but I think I can capsulize and say that i
13 !
we have worked on pieces of legislation on an ad hoc basis.
I 'I I worked on the Price Anderson extension, for example. Carl p
15 has done a lot of work on export legislation.
We've also done 16 '
the bulk on that role.
And they sort of meander through the I7 process.
And that takes a lo t o f time.
We have not put together what I would call a really l 18 19 active, comprehensive, first-class lobb~n.g effort, where we 20 are following and really working with legislation on the Hill.
21 Ne simply haven't had the people.
That's one reason anyway.
i 22 There was a historic -- when legislation was trans-23 ferred from ELD over the new office, there was an understanding!
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that what was then called " licensing reform legislation" would l
4e4 nteral Reporters, inc.
5 stay over with Howard because they drafted that legislation over i,
- I
s 85 1
the years and they had the expertise.
And I think the assump-t 2
tion was, well, that eventually will get enacted, and then we 3
will do all the legislative work.
Except we would be working I
4; with them as far as impact upon Staff.
5 What has happened is that the reform legislation 6
is sort of a hardy perennial and now it has grown into modify-7l ing the coordination and all the rest.-
And I think that if I
8l our office is going to take a strong role in regard to that I
9l legislation, we will have a problem with people.
We asked for i 10 l 2 additional men right now.
I II f MR. FITZGER' LD :
That's correct.
2.
I I2 MR. KELLEY:
If you build in the intern factor, i
13 we're actually just asking to be maintained.
But I think the l'I l Commission has to make a judgment as to what it wants our 1
15 office to do in the legislative area.
j l
16 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Again, we are talking about 17 fiscal
'79.
I8 l MR. KELLEY:
Planning ahead, that's right.
I9 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
This legislation isn't some-20 thing you' re going to have to have to do over the next year.
i ej i These requests really don't apply, except insofar as something 4
22 else might come in.
23 MR. KELLEY:
It seems to me -- I would make this N'
observation in that regard.
We have been talking reform legis-i
.a Fame nemtrees. ine.
'S
' lation over the last 4 or 5 years.
The more intense the interest l
I I
i
4 86 1
is on the Hill in what we do over here, the more legislative 2
ctivity there is going to be.
I'm not going to be surprised 3
if what we are looking at -- I certainly don't think it is 4!
going to be happening this fall.
I expect it will be actively' l
Si looked at in the following, maybe it will be enacted next t
6 year, but the year af ter that there will other activity in this 7'
area.
8 The message I want to send is, I don't think we are 9'
staffed to really do a comprehensive job in the legislative I
l l
10 '
area now.
Now, you can make a judgment and say, well, you l
11 l know what you have been doing.
We'll just have to work that i
i 12 way.
But I don't want the Commission to come to m'; office, I
(
13 1 and say. what are you doing on this and that and the other Id piece of legislation if I have got other work I nave to do and 15 it has to come before.
16 l I think litigation does have to come before it, i
17 l Carl, do you want to add to that?
f 18 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Let me preempt you, Carl.
I I
I9 I think we understand better the nature of the request and we 20 running shy on time and on a tight day.
I think we have got 1
21 '
enough to munch on at this point.
I 22 MR. KELLEY:
Fine.
l 23 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
So thank you very much.
i 24 l Other questione before we go to Dick?
4 emer.l Reforters, Inc. !
l 25 We have yet this morning to deal with -- we'll close i
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n I
87 I
this session of the meeting and then move to a public meeting 2i on the exporting of 7/10ths of a gram of low-enriched material.
l 1
wt -
f; -
3 j
CHAIRMAN HEi.JRIE:
So if we may3 the advise of l
4 i
counsel on this meeting.
5 MR. OSTRACH:
Mr. Chairman, this meeting broke into 6
four sessions: the I&E section, the NRR section, ELD, and OGC, 7
and we can treat them separately or all together.
That depends 8
on the degree to which it was a sort of tactical or strategy 9I discussion that you feel would frustrate your budget planning.
10 i
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
It seems to me that the nature f
of the discussions were not qualitatively dif ferent from one I2 section to another and that the whole thing might be treated i
13 as a block, as one session, rhich we would propose to release i
when the 1979 budget comes along.
15 MR. OSTRACH:
Subject to the proviso before it is l
16 !
released, it is re-reviewed to see if there are --
l l
I7 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
That it be scrined to see that l
18 toprivachl we have not done violence to some individual's right 19 and those type of considerations.
O MR. OSTRACH:
I ask for you vote on that.
2I i
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
So ordered.
22 i
end (Whereupon, the meeting was closed at 11:40 a.m.)
l 23 I
24 l I
. r Fetteral Recorters, Inc.
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