ML19281A747

Responds to Re Policy Statement on Reactor Safety Study (WASH-1400).Forwards Testimonies of Jm Hendrie on 790205 & 790226 & Testimony of PA Bradford on 790226

ML19281A747
Person / Time
Issue date:	03/19/1979
From:	Hendrie J NRC COMMISSION (OCM)
To:	Taylor J WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC COMPANY, DIV OF CBS CORP.
Shared Package
ML19281A748	List: ML19281A747 ML19281A749
References
RTR-WASH-1400 NUDOCS 7904040080
Download: ML19281A747 (76)

Text

/

g# "' %,?g UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION gg WASHINGTON, D. C. 20555

{g%

g S%..udaff 00d March 19, 1979

+.

CHAIRMAN Mr. J. J. Taylor Vice President & General Manager Westinghouse Electric Corporation Nuclear Center Pittsburgh, Penns vania 15230

Dear Mr. Tay1or:

u Thank you for your letter expressing concern that the Commission's policy statement on the Reactor Safety Study (WASH-1400) did not place enough weight on the positive achievements of the Reactor Safety Study or the industry, and further urging that additional steps be undertaken to develop and apply risk assessment techniques to improve reactor safety.

I realize that many media reports on the Commission's policy statement were not as balanced as they could have been particularly in regard to the Commission's alleged repudiation of the Executive Summary of WASH-1400.

I believe the Commission's policy statement did not take a new view of reactor safety or of past licensing decisions, but, as you note, it is important that the Commission make clear that its determinations of reactor safety are based on in-depth evaluations of compliance with its own regulations.

We made such a statement when testifying before Senator Gary Hart during a budget review hearing (a copy of my testimony is enclosed), and have said so at greater length before Congressman Morris Udall at the hearing on reactor safety conducted on February 26 (see ray testimony and the remarks of Commissioner Bradford, enclosed).

Your letter suggests that we develop a plan to develop and apply risk assessment to further improve reactor safety.

As you may know, the Risk Assessment Review Group did recommend, in its report, a series of areas where improvements could be made in risk assessment methodology and the Commission has asked the staff for an action plan to implement these recommendations.

MM N

& Your letter also suggests that the Commission risk assessment program include an effort to compare tha risks of nuclear power with those of other methods for generating electricity.

While I do not believe that such comparisons are directly relevant to reactor safety, they are relevant to public policy decisions about energy options.

Comparisons on the scale which you suggest, however, would seem more suitable for the Department of Energy, as it is the Federal agency designated by law to develop national energy policy and plans.

The mandate of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is much narrower, dealing as it does with ensuring the safety and proper use of a single energy option.

For our own purposes, we have done some preliminary work of this type.

In December 1977, the h?C published a draft NUREG-0332, " Health Effects Attributable to Coal and Nuclear Fuel Cycle Alternatives."

In June 1977, we published NUREG-0252, " Environmental Effects of Using Coal for Generating Electricity."

I appreciate having the benefit of your thoughts on these important matters.

i Sincerely,

\\

4C Joseph M. Hendrie J

Enclosures:

1.

Testimony, J. M. Hendrie, February 5, 1979 and February 26, 1979 2.

Remarks of P. A. Bradford, February 26, 1979

TESTIMONY OF CHAIR 4\\N JOSEPH M. HENDRIE, U.S. NUCLEAR REGUIATORY C0f NISSION before the SENATE COSMI'ITEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC KORKS February 5, 1979 Good moming, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. I am pleased to be here for these very important agency budget review hearings. On this occasion I am happy to say that we have a full complement of Commissioners.

Accompanying us arethe Executive Director for Operations and senior members of our staff. The EDO will present testimony on the overall programmatic aspects of our fiscal 1980 budget request, and the Office Directors will present the individual office requests in more detail.

Budget time every year, by necessity, provokes a considerable amount of self-examination as we review the past year's performance while we'try to establish the goals to be met in the coming fiscal year. Today I would like to review for you our major activities over the past. year, and our plans for the future, as reflected in our fiscal 1980 budget request.

Licensing and reactor sarety, of course, remain as central matters'in our regulatory program. Waste management is a major issue before us, as both a regulatory concern and as a national energy policy matter.

Safeguards -- both domestic and international -- continue to be important and high priority matters for the NRC.

Each of these key issues -- and others -- will be discussed in some detail during the course of this testimony.

Eudget - 2 Nuclear Power Plant Licensing and Safaty A substantial portion of our budget for the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation provides for our review of applications for construction pemits and operating licenses, early site approvals, and approvals of standard plant designs. These reviews are made to assure that nuclear power plants are designed, constructed and operated in a manner to meet safety, environmental, and antitrust regulations.

Last year we issued 13 construction permits, 3 operating licenses, and 2 preliminary design approvals for standard plants. During that same time period only two new applications for construction pemits were received.

However, at the end of 1978, 19 construction pemits, 23 operating license applications, and 11 standard plant design approval applications were in varying stages of review.

During the remainder of this year and fiscal year 1980 many more plants now under construction will apply for operating licenses. Moreover, during the last few years there has been a significant increase in review effort per case, especially for operating license applications, resulting from the use of the Standard Review Plans,-and from the new issues identified through operating experience and research.'

Thus, in spite of the decreasing number of new construction pemit applications, our workload in reviewing applications is very large.

In addition, the increasing number of operating reactors has required a corresponding increase in resources to react promptly to operating experience and to process operating license amendments.

Continued

Budget - 3 licensing and operating experience results in identification of new matters that have to be examined carefully to detemine their significance from the safety standpoint. Our licensing staff then detemines the relevance of these matters to each of the 70 nuclear plants now operating, as well as to those plants under licensing review.

Once the applicability has been detemined, prompt action is taken where needed to assure continued protection of the public health and safety.

Looking at reactor licensing in general, the workload has increased sub-stantially over the last several years. To accomodate this significant increaseinworkload,wehavemadetemporaryinternalorganizationkl adjustments to meet our highest priority licensing schedules. As an example, we try to assure that operating license decisions are made in a timely manner with regard to projected plant construction and completion dates. While the flexibility and competence of our staff pemits such reallocation of resources, it is not without penalty. This year, while the temporary reassigments are in force, we will have fewer people working on technical projects than we had hoped, scme standards work will have to slip, and we will make only liuited progress in reducing our license amendment backlog.

Last year, after concluding a lengthy mlemaking process, we published a new licensing fee schedule. The industry has not taken kindly to the new fees and the schedule has been appealed to the courts. At issue in the litigation is the question of direct benefit to the applicant versus broad benefit to the general public. The key to development of NRC's new

Budget - 4 fee schedule was perfomance of a service to an identifiable recipient, i.e. the applicant or licensee.

Costs to the government for these services were calculated and assigned to the various licensing steps in the schedule of fees.

For example, the average license fee for a utility referencing a standardized design for a construction pemit is approx-imately $900,000, and the fee for an operating license for a similar unit is the same.

If ent new fee schedule is upheld by the courts, hRC will recover revenues equivalent to approximately 10 percent of the combined budgets of Nucles r Reactor Regulation, Inspection and Enforcement, and Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.

There has been considerable discussion about the length of time required to license a nuclear power plant, particularly the time consumed in processing an application for a construction pemit. Although hRC's licensing review time has been stabilized, the total time required to issue a constmction pemit has continued to increase.

The NRC target schedules established at the beginning of each review are being exceeded, as illustrated in the charts attached to my testimony, because the amount of time outside of NRC control has increased.

In' calendar year 1976, out of a total of 26 months average time for a construction pemit, an average of four months were not under hRC control.

By calendar year 1978, this had increased to 20 out of 43 months. The delays outside of our control include those associated with securing other pemits --

Federal, State, and local -- as well as applicant-initiated design changes, applicant construction schedule delays and deferrals, court

Budget - 5 decisions, and discovery of new site-related data. We are trying alternative procedures -- such as the six-month accelerated schedule for initial safety evaluations -- to reduce the NRC contribution to licensing time. However, in view of the increasing time outside our control, it is increasingly difficult for us to deal with the licensing time problem.

Turning to reactor safety, I believe we have made sete progress on unresolved safety issues relating to nuclear power plants, i.e. those issues having potentially significant safety implications.

In fiscal year 1978 we completed work on four of these issues and in fiscal 1979 we expect to complete another seven. The resolution of these issues is highly desirable, both to satisfy safety concerns and to reduce the need for ca e-by-case treatment. The additional resources requested for fiscal 1980 will pemit more timely completion of this work.

During the past year, the staff analyzed the safety implications of the rather extensive list of generic issues forwarded to the Congress last January and found that only 17 qualified for a high-priority rating on the basis -

of their safety significance. These issues are discussed in detail in our 1979 Annual Report.

I think that our continuing efforts in all areas of reactor safety have made a substantial contribution to the industry's fine safety record. As ycu know, we report to Congress each quarter on abnor.a1 occurrences,

s Budget - 6 defined in the Energy Reorganization Act as unscheduled incidents or events which the Comission detemines to be significant from the stand-point of public health and safety.

During fiscal 1978 we reported 13 such incidents, of which seven were at nuclear power plants.

The plant incidents included a deficiency in management procedural controls, a design deficiency in a safety-related system, improper qualification of electrical components, insulation failure, worn guide tubes for control rods, cracks in primary system pipes, and overexposure of two radiation protection workers. Considering the size of the industry and the ntrber of plants involved, I am gratified that the nteber of abnomal occurrences was relatively small. However, I do not find any basis for complacency here and we shall keep up our efforts to reduce the nirber of these occurrences.

O 4

Eudget - 7 The Risk Assessment Review Group Report As you know, the NRC established the Risk Assessment Review Group in July 1977, under the leadership of Dr. Harold Lewis, Chainaan of the American Physical Society's Study Group on Light Water Reactors, with four elements to its charter:

-- clarify the achievements and limitations of KASH-1400;

-- assess the peer coments thereon, and responses to these comments;

-- study the present state of risk assessment methodology;

-- recomend to the Commission how (and whether) such methodology can be used in the regulatory and licensing process.

The Review Group published its report last September, and it was provided to the Congress at that time.

After consideration of the Review Group's findings, the Commission issued a policy statement on January 18th stm:marizing its response to the Report.

In the Statement, the Commission accepted the Report's findings and noted its actions as follows, and I quote:

" Executive Summary: The Commission withdraws any explicit or implicit past endorsement of the Executive Su=ary.

'The Peer Review Process: The Commission agrees that the peer review process followed in publishing WASH-1400 was inadequate and that proper peer review is fundamental to making sound technical decisions. The Commission will take whatever corrective action is necessary to assure that effective peer review is an integral feature of the NRC's risk assessment program.

~

budget - 8

" Accident Probabilities:

The Commission accepts the Review Group Report's conclusion that absolute values of the risks presented should not be used uncritically either in the regulatory process or for public policy purposes and has taken and will continue to take steps to assure that any such use in the past will be corrected as appropriate.

In particular, in light of the Review Group conclusions on accident probabilities, the Ccmission does not regard as reliable the Reactor Safety Study's numerical estimate of the overall risk of reactor accident.

" Communication with the Congress and the Public:

Ccmmissioner correspondence and statements involving WASH-1400 are being reviewed and corrective action as necessary will be taken."

"With respect to the component parts of the Reactor Safety Study, the Commission expects the staff to make use of them as appropriate, that; is, where the data base is adequate and analytical techniques pennit.

Taking due account of the reservations expressed in the Review Group Report, and in its presentation to the Cennission, the Ccmission supports t.

extended use of probabilistic risk assessment in regulatory decisionmaking."

The Comission has provided additional detailed instructions to the h7C staff concerning continued use of risk assess.ent techniques and results in response to the specific comments of the Risk Assessment Review Group and has asked the staff to submit by June 30, 1979, detailed procedures to ensure the proper and effective use of risk assessment theory, methods, data development, and statistical a" lyses.

Budget - 9 Inspection and Enforcement As the number of operating reactors and those moving through the con-struction stage continues to increase, the manpower requirements of the Office of Inspection and Enforcement have grown to be the largest in the agency.

In fiscal year 1978, the NRC conducted 3,150 inspections of power reactors (not counting safeguards inspections) and spent 128,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> on site at these facilities. As a result of our fiscal 1978 inspection activities, about 5,000 items of noncompliance were identified and 13 civil penalties were imposed, for which licensees paid approximately

$125,000 in fines. In fiscal 1980, as more reactors come on line and the resident inspector program is further implemented, the number of inspections will grow to nearly 3,800, with on-site time approaching some 156,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br />.

I might note, with regard to the resident inspector program, that we no.

have 22 inspectors assigned to nuclear facility sites:

15 at operating reactors, five at sites with plants under construction, and two at fuel facilities. By the end of fiscal 1979 we plan to have resident in-spectors spectors located at up to 49 sites.

But the periodic relocations required by resident inspector assignments entail a certain personal burden on the inspectors and their families, so that after further experience with the program the Commission may come back to the Congress for additional flexibility in addressing these problems through the provision of incentives.

Budget - 10 Over the past few years, the Office of Inspection and Enforcement has been carefully exploring, through a series of studies, the possibility of quantitative and semi-quantitative approaches to evaluate the regulatory performance of NPC licensees.

Results to date indicate that these approaches may have potential utility for a more efficient allocat5on of NPC's inspection resources, although much work would have to be done before the studies could be utilized, even by IE as routine decision aids. While the results of the first studies have received widespread publicity as " utility report cards," this is far from the case.

A-number of questions concerning tineliness of results, susceptibility to distortion, and uses of the results remain to be resolved.

Hence IE is proceeding with caution in the licensee perfomance evaluation tasli, and has set up an inter-office steering committee to assist in evaluating progress.

~

Budget - 11 Radioactive Waste Management One of the most important regulatory areas for us is radioactive waste management, particularly the interin storage of spent fuel and the ultimate disposal of spent fuel and other high level waste. To ensure that waste management is given increased attention, we recently created a Division of Waste Management within the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. We plan to place a great deal of emphasis on organizing, consolidating, and staffing this new division during the coming year, so that we can be fully responsive to regulatory demands in the waste management area.

For a general overview of these activities, I think at this point it would be useful to provide a brief status report on each of the major waste management programs.

Spent fuel is one potential form of high level waste which figures prominently in public concerns about nuclear power and in policy decisiens concerning the future of the nuclear option.

Last year we issued a draft Generic Environmental Lmpact Statement (GEIS) on interim storage of spent fuel along with a draft regulation for public comment. This regulation provides the technical and administrative requirements for Away-from-Reactor (AFR) storage facilities. We plan to complete the GEIS and the rule this year.

This past November the Commission published in the Federal Register a draft policy statement en licensing procedures for a geologic repository for high level waste, including spent fuel. As currently proposed, there

Budget - 12 are two major steps contemplated for NRC's review of a futurc repositoIy.

Basically, these are a construction authorization and a license to emplace waste. In the event that there are insufficient data prior to shaft sinking to support a construction authorization, a provisional construction authorization could be granted. This would allow shaft sinking but not the construction of permanent surface or underground structures. Procedures for early notification of States and other interested parties and their participation in the review process are included in the high level waste regulation now under development.

For 1980, we plan to issue the final generic administrative regulation for geologic disposal of high level wastes,10 CFR 60, We also plan to complete the development of staff technical positions necessary to begin the first step in evaluating a license application

-- the Preliminary Site Review -for the disposal of spent fuel in bedded salt. A very significant milestone for 1980 is the extension of our development program to consider alternative media. He will look next at basalt and domed salt. We believe these additional studies could be completed in approximately two to three years if they receive adequate support.

Although NRC participated in the Interagency Review Group on Waste Management as non-voting member, NRC staff was involved in the de-velopment of the Subgroup Reports, and we have provided extensive coment on the several drafts of the main report.

Budget - 13 Many reco=endations contained in the report (such as the transfer of management control of commercial LLW burial sites to doe), if coupled with NRC licensing, could have a significant impact on staffing and funding requirements for NRC's waste management program. This is covered in more detail in Mr. Dircks' testimony. We understand that a decision paper is being prepared for the President containing final recomendations and more detailed information

• hat is necessary for implementation of the reco=endations.

After receipt of these documents, we will be able to prepare a more accurate assessment of the impacts on our programs.

We know there is strong Congressional interest in enactment of waste management legislation. Our 1979 authorization bill directed us to ma'.,e a study of options for legislative changes in our licensing authority and we intend to forward our findings to Ccngress in a month. Av.ong the issues which will be discussed are the extent to which NRC authority should apply to existing Department of Energy waste disposal facilities, and if appropriate, the nature of any added authority; and the enct nature of the interface between the NRC, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the States, as regards waste management.

In particular reference to the States, I should note that in recent years we have seen deep public concern reflected in State enactments imposing varying limitations -- in some cases, outright bans -- on the construction of new nuclear facilities. As a practical matter, States

(

Budget - 14 do have at their disposal a number of authorities -- such as land use and general police power. -- which would also allow a State, if so lie inclined, to delay or impede the Federal waste management program.

believe that the States must be given an cpportunity to participate in the licensing process for waste management activities.

In addition to full State particpation in an NRC proceeding, we believe that States should participate fully in doe's site selection procedures.

In this manner, we hope that the public will come to accept the national waste management program.

Section 14 of the NRC's FY 1979 authori::ation bill requires the Commission to study the means for improving State participation in Federal nuclear waste nanagement programs. Our staff met with State representatives at an NRC-sponsored workshop in Atlanta last month, and the recommendations received at that meeting will be incorporated into a report on ways to improve the opportunities for State participation. lie expect to send the report to the Congress by March 1.

Budget - 15 Low level waste is a subject of some concern because of the impending shortage of disposal capacity and the geographic distribution of the existing facilities which has resulted in a great deal of low level waste having to be transported over long distances to burial sites. Last July the Comission wrote to the Department of Energy, infonning it of the present status of commercial low level waste disposal sites and raising the question of whether adequate regionally distributed disposal capacity for the nation's cc=ercial low level wastes will be available at currently operating facilities. We expressed our feeling that standby capacity should be made available, possibly through burial sites Iccated at doe facilities.

For our own part, we are pursuing a regulatory program that will result in publication in fiscal 1980 of improved regulations containing technical criteric. for disposal of ccmmercial low level waste by shallow land burial. Licenses for low level waste disposal are now issued under the regulations for possession of material in Parts 30, 40, and 70 and are subject to the requirements in Parts 20 and 51.

These present regulations do not contain specific technical criteria for shallow land burial.

Deccmmissioning of nuclear facilities is an issue on which we think the Commission's policy and niles need some clarification and improvement.

About a year ago, the NRC initiated a program to reevaluate our de-commissioning policy and regulations, including a conscious decision to involve the public and the States at an early stage.

Public response, especially from the States, has been excellent, and we expect to complete work on our policy statement and revised rules in 19S0.

Budget - 16 Thanks to the enactment of legislation by the 95th Congress, the mill tailings problem seems to be on its way to resolution. The Department of Energy was directed to clean up the inactive sites, using mostly Federal funds, and h7C was granted regulatory authority over present and future active sites. We are currently preparing a generic environmental irpact statement on mill tailings, which will be published soon in draft form, prior to final nilemaking action. In the interim, the NRC is requiring a tailings stabilization and control program at all uranitn mills and also working with Agreement States where mills are located _to make sure that their requirements are consonant with ours.

The newly-enacted bill provides authorization for $500,000 of grant money to assist Agreement States in asst =ing the regulatory duties required by the legislation. The Commission supports this provision and believes such grants would be of mutual benefit to both the States and the Federal Government in nuclear regulation. Unfortunately, we have not included any funds for this purpose in our budget request. In our fiscal year 1980 budget submission to the President, made two months before this bill was enacted, we were not in a position to request funds for this purpose. When it appeared that the bill would be enacted, our budget request had already been reviewed and made final by the Administration.

However, when we are able to fund this program we are confident that it will help the States to assume their regulatory duties.

Budget - 17 Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards Safeguards is an area of prominent regulatory interest, and I believe we are making progress in improving the safeguarding of strategic nuclear materials and of nuclear facilities. To enhance the physical protection of strategic nuclear material and nuclear plants, three new mles became effective last year: one, to clarify the requirements for on-site guards in making a response to alarms (including the use of deadly force); a second to require contingency plans for responding to threats, thefts, and sabotage; and a third to upgrade requirements for the qualification, training, and equipment for security personnel.

Two other proposed mles were published for public comment. One would require a broad.

upgrading of physical protection requirements for materials of high strategic value. The other would require physical protection for materials of moderate and low strategic significance, and would relate the degree of protection to the significance of the material. Adoption of this rule by the Commission will bring us into line with internationally agreed-upon guidelines.

The Commission is particularly proud of the Office of MISS' improvement in dealing with a backlog of materials licensing applications.

For example, in radioisotope licensing our objective last year was to complete 7,000 licensing actions. We actually completed 8,300 licensing actions while reducing the backlog from a projected 2,000 to 1,000 and the average turnaround time from a projected 120 days to 70 days.

This

Eudget - 18 considerable improvement was accomplished by a dedicated staff working many hours of overtime and with the help of a temporary task force which contributed two-and-a-half man-years of effort.

As you may recall, last year we initiated a two-year pilot program to decentralize some materials licensing activities to the regional offices.

The program appears to be going well. S'e will soon be making an interim asses., ment of the program to see what further improvements can be made.

4

/

Budget - 19 Research As you know, the NRC conducts a program of research directed at the confimation of technical aspects of our regulatory process. The research program provides the substantive data and analytical methods needed to support our regulations, safety and environmental guides, and standards, as well as our licensing reviews of nuclear facilities. Last year the Congress authorized the NRC to expand this research effort to include research directed at improving the safety of reactors.

Last April we submitted our plan for this latter program to the Congress, and in fiscal 1979 we plan to initiate research on those portions of the plan having the greatest potential for reducing reactor accident risks.

I think the highlight of the year in our research program was the first successful nuclear blowdown in the Loss-of-Fluid-Test (LOFT) facility.

The LOFT facility was designed to provide a more precise understanding of the performance of Emergency Core Cooling Systems (ECCS). A number of blowdown experiments have been run with the facility over the past two years, but without nuclear heating of the fuel.

In December the first nuclear LOFT experiment was carried out at a core power corresponding to about 2/3 power of a typical reactor. The ECCS performed as intended and cooled the nuclear fuel. The measured fuel temperatures fron the test were lower than the predictions of ECCS performance done for this experiment by our advanced computer code.

This, however was only'the first test in a major program, and improved understanding of the phenomena in the postulated accident sequence will be obtained in the future.

Budget - 20 Waste management research is one of our fastest-growing research programs.

It is required to provide the technical basis for the regulation of radioactive waste management.

It involves work in the development of models and data to pemit computer-aided simulation of the long-term physical, chameical and biological processes associated with the behavior of radionuclides in geological formations and the environment. We are also developing methods for assessing potential impacts and risks.

During fiscal 1980 a major program activity will be modifying the generic methods being developed so that they can be used to assess and compare the risks of high level waste disposal in geologic media other than bedded salt.

Improved and more stringent procedures are being applied for the review, coordination, and approval of research programs and technical assistance activities of our licensing organizations related to the growing waste management program.

Our international agreements for scientific cooperation and exchange of information has brough a number of benefits to our various regulatory research programs. The hRC is participating in a cooperative research program with the Federal Republic of Germany and the Japanese Atomic Energy Research Institute to study that portion of a loss-of-ccolant accident (LOCA) in which the emergency core cooling water refloods the nuclear fuel in simulated tests close to or at full scale. The results of this research will help resolve some of the fundamental questions about reflood flow behavior.

It will also assist in testing the NRC's advanced thermal hydraulics code, which is expected to play a significant role in future licensing evaluations.

Budget - 21 International Activities Another regulatory area in which the past year has brought major changes is that of international activities.

The enactment of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978 last March significantly affected the Comaission's export licensing responsibilities. This Act provides a framework for discharging our non-proliferation responsibilities by setting forth the criteria against which all export license applications are to be measured.

These criteria, as well as other relevant provisions of the Act, have been incorporated in revised Comission regulations -- the new Part 110 -- which codify virtually all of our export licensing procedures.

The NNPA transferred new licensing responsibilities to the Cor: mission from the Departments of Energy and Ccmerce.

In addition, the NNPA requires the Executive Branch to consult with the Ccmission on a nirnber of activitics related to nuclear exports which were previously outside our purview. These include the negotiation of new and revised agreements for cooperation, nuclear technology exports, and requests to retransfer or reprocess U.S.-origin spent fuel.

In the face of these increased export responsibilities,.our goal has been and will continue to be consistent and prompt application of the codified guidelinos and criteria-to all matters which come before us.

Eudget - 22 Elsewhere in the international scene, the Cccaission has continued to expand its cooperation with other countries in the area of nuclear safety and safeguards. Last year we signed bilateral " arrangements" or

" understandings" with the nuclear authorities of five countries, bringing to 17 the total number of such arrangements concerning regulatory information exchange and cooperation. These valuable exchange agreements allow us access to a more extensive body'of experience -- for example, recently we were able to obtain useful foreign data on cracking in large diameter pipes and no::les in boiling water reactors.

In turn, we have expanded our program of international advice and assistance on a variety of regulatory subjects, both directly and though our participation in the International Atomic Energy Agency. Of special significance was publication of the Commission study of ' Health and Safety Considerations in NRC Reactor Licensing and Nuclear Assistance Programs." Its recommendations will lead to an expanded NRC program to assist other countries to improve their nuclear power health and safety regulatory programs.

~

As part of the' President's non-proliferation initiatives, the United States is participating in a domestic Non-Proliferation Alternative Systems Assessment Program (NASAP) and in the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE). hRC's role at this point is advisory. Our staff expr.rts have been reviewing U.S. and foreign papers, a'nd generally lending their advice on licensing, safety, safeguards, and environmental aspects of the fuel cycles and reactor concepts under study. As hRC involvement in NASAP and INFCE progresses, we are responding to doe and other Federal agency requests for hRC review and consultation.

Budget - 23 Improving Regulatory Operations NRC supports President Carter's efforts to improve regulatory efficiency and operations, and over the past year we have sought to benefit from the lessons of our first three years of operation by making irprovements in our organizational structure and processes in a number of areas.

Improving the licensing process continues to be of central interest to the NRC.

Responding to language in our fiscal 1979 authorization bill, we are now completing a comprehensive review of the existing process for selecting and training of Atomic Safety and Licensing Board members. The results of that review will be reported to Congress shortly.

In addition, at the Ccamission's request the Office of the General Counsel is conducting a ;tudy to detemine whether the Cormission's appellate system should be restructured. Among other topics, the study uill examine whether the Commission's Licensing and Appeal Panels should be combined into one Nuclear Licensing Panel with direct review by the Commission of all of the new Panel's decisions.

~

Yet a third study of the licensing process is being conducted by an advisory group chaired by Professor Gary Milho11in of the University of Wisconsin Law School and including members frca NRC staff offices.

Present NRC regulations allow plant' construction to proceed after a CP is granted, even though one or more ierues involved may be in litigation; this is the so-called "imediate effectiveness" rule.

~

Budget - 24 The study group will examine the present NFL licensing process to develop options for dealing with issues arising from this practice of giving inw.ediate effectiveness to Licensing Board decisions.

It plans to provide its final report to the Commission in November of this year.

To increase NRC's efficiency, we have implemented some internal re-organizations and are continuing to work for future changes which,.I believe, will both improve our functioning and hold down operating costs.

In addition, we have consolidated a number of functions re-porting to the Executive Director for Operations into an Office of Management and Program Analysis DIPA), thereby increasing organizational efficiency.

I know that there is continuing concern in Congress over the opportunity for expressing differing professional opinions.

hhile I cannot claim

'that there is no longer a problem within the SPf, I do believe that.we have seen considerable improvement over the past year. There has been an increased willingness on the part of staff to speak out openly before the Commission on controversial issues.

For the longer tem handling of the matter, last fall we completed the development and distribution of an extensive 36rvey of methods for managing internal communications and differomg professional opinions. The resulting report (NUREG-0500) was distributed to all NRC employees and it was also widely distributed

Budget - 25 to the public with a request for co=ents and suggestions. After analyzing the coments received, we plan later this year to circulate a draft of a proposed "NRC Policy and Procedures for Differing Professional Opinions" for comment.

Last year, we issued a memorandum clarifying for staff the question of Congressional contacts. The memorandum noted that the Commission in no way wishes to impede direct communications between the members of the staff and the Congress.

Responding to the letter and the spirit of the Sunshine Act, I would say that we have made significant improvements in the openness of our processes. The number of open Commission meetings increased to 66% in 1978, up from 53% in 1977. We now provide attendees at our meetings with copies of the staff papers being discussed, so they can more readily

. follow our proceedings. Other new aids to public participation include placing an informal transcript of meetings in our Headquarters Public

~

Document Room, allowing recording devices at our meetings, and the limited use of television cameras at Licensing and Appeal Board hearings.

I might also note that we provided procedural assistance to some of the participants in a major environmental rulemaking, and that we are inviting members of the public, on a trial basis, to sit in on our pre-docketing meetings with applicants.

Budget - 26 A final point with regard to operational and organizational improve-ment. Because of the substantial inefficiencies cause by the wide geographic dispersal of h1C headquarters units, we hope that the Congress and the General Services Administration will soon reach agreement on a site for consolidation of the SRC into a single facility so that planning and construction can move forward expeditiously.

m.

S 9

. Budget - 27 The Fiscal 1980 Budget Request At this point, I would like to make some general co=ents on our budget request before Mr. Gossick and other senior nembers of the staff provide you with the details.

My fellow Comissioners and I, aware of congressional and Administration concern over effective and efficient regulation, and the desire for a more balanced budget, exercised care.in determining our program re-quirements for fiscal year 1980. Our objective is effective nuclear regulation at a mininta cost.

In that regard, we are requesting $373.3 million in budget authorization, to be funded in total by a new ap-propriation. It is an increase of about 13 percent over fiscal 1979, largely due to prior year comittments to research programs, and the increased cost of doing business. The request includes funds to support 2,896 pemanent positions, and some temporary employees and consultants.

The basic structure of our program is similar to that presented in fiscal years 1978 and 1979.

There are a few changes. In response to the NRC Fiscal 1978 Authorization Act, we plan to conduct a research program for improved reactor safety as a complement to the confirmatory research required in our enabling legislation. Also in consonance with con-gressional initiatives, we contemplate comitting significant additional resources to work with other Federal agencies in making a more definitive determination of the risks associated with low level radiation exposure.

h'e intend to phase out our current activities in gas reactors as there

Budget - 28 are no funds in the Department of Energy's 1980 budget for a domestic gas reactor program. We will, of course, maintain regulatory support for the high temperature gas-cooled reactor at Fort St. Vrain.

Notwithstanding considerable attention to organizational efficiency, resource requirement's have increased. This is largely due to four factors:

-- inflation associated with the contractual effort and logistical support which affects about 70% of the NRC budget:

-- prior-year comitments to long term projects such as LOFT, 3-D, and BWR-CCFL, which are at phases requiring increased funding;

-- increased program scope in areas such as waste management, and overall growth in the number of nuclear facilities and products to be regulated;

-- the resource needs in NRR for casework, licensing amer.dments, and plant-specific and generic issues.

I might mention that the last factor is the major one contributing to our request for additional personnel.

I would like to touch upon one additional topic. We will shortly be submitting to the Congress a legislative package embodying various changes which would increase the effectiveness of our regulatory operations, and I hope they will receive early and favorable consideration.

2it r;

y, Eudg t - 29 l

I would also hope that the Congress will resume its efforts to enact legislation to improve the licensing process.

Our work on the Administration bill last year taught us a lot, as the Cc=tission provided its individual and collective views during the drafting process.

We will be taking the many views expressed during the hearings last year and our own experiences into account as we consider suggestions which may be helpful to the Congress in approaching this important issue this year.

That concludes my prepared testimony, Mr. Chaiman.

=

hm 1

e

N.

xx Eudget - 8a INSERT TO PREPARED TESTDE.W OF

\\

JOSEPH M. IENDRIE; TO BE INSERTED ArTER P. 8 N

\\ N\\

I would note that a primary goal of the Re' actor Safety Study, as s

established in 1972, was to obtain a " quantitative evaluation of the

~

risk from the operation of a nuclear plant." The Safety Study was, in effect, a " measurement," made by analyzing two typical plant designs, of the effectiveness of an existing system of_ nuclear regulation.

That regulatory system depends on having nuclear plants sited, designed, constructed, and operated on the basis of conservat ive applica-

- tion of sound and accepted engineering principles, on req'uirenents for multiple and redundant safety systens, and on a set of regulatory requirements that are updated to reflect operating experience. Tne designers, builders, and operators of these plants are required to have effective quality assurance programs and their work is subjected to a continuing licensing and inspection process by the NRC. The results of the licensing and inspection process are, in turn, subject to independent review by the Advisory Connittee on Reactor Safeguards and often to examination in public hearings.

This health and safety regulatory system, cuch of which evolved long before the Reactor Safety Study was carried out, is unchanged in its basic principles today.

It does not depend on the ability to make precise quantitative estimates of overall risk -- although that ability would be highly useful and should be developed..

e g

Y

Eudget - 8b s

h'e believe this regulatory system has served us well.

It is an exceptionally rigorous system, and appropriately so in' view of the technology we regulate.

It is our job as regulators to make sure that there is no undue risk from licensed facilities and, while one must acknowledge strongly held views to the contrary, over 400 reactor-years of experience to date give us reason to believe that we are on the righ't track.

~

hhat the Lewis group has told us is that the 'heasurement" of our regulatory system, as reflected in the overall risk estimtes of the Reactor Safety St'udy, is much less precise than had been asserted. The Lewis group did not conclude that.the overall risk estimates were higher or lower than reported in h' ASH-1400, although they speculated on possible factors in both directions, but only that they thought the error bands on those estimates were substantially larger than had been reported. On that account, they recomen '.ed to us that the overall risk estimates of KASH-1400 should be used with great caution -

"should not be used uncritically" were their words -- in the regulatory process or for-public policy purposes. h'ehaveacceptedandareimplementingwithj vigor that recommendation, as well as the other findings and recomenda-tions of the Lewis group. h'e are also, carefully reviewing past regulatory decisions to ascertain whether actions contrary to those, recommendations have been taken.

O

Judget - Sc To sum up, it is important to keep in mind what the Co=tission did and did not do in response to the Lewis Report.

It did reevaluate its

~

. reliance on, and relationship to, the Reactor Safety Study. However,,it did not thereby take a new view of reactor safety. Nor did the Cortission O

take a new view of past licensing decisions that each licensed plant will be so operated as to provide adequate protection to the health arid.

. safety of the public.

9

- p 9

/

e e

a o

O e

e e

e O

e e

S e

e D

a O

TESTIMONY OF CHAIRMAN JOSEPH M. HENDRIE U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AtlD THE ENVIRONMENT HOUSE C0tVIITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS FEBRUARY 26, 1979

Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee.

My fellow Commissioners are with me today to join in the discussion.

I hope that we will be able to answer your questions about reactor safety, about the use of risk assessment in the licens.ing process, and about the significance of the Commission's recent policy statement on the Reactor Safety Study, WASH-1400.

Commissioner Kennedy sends his regrets at being unable to be with us today.

He is opening a symposium today in Tucson on waste management, a responsibility he had accepted long before this hearing was scheduled. We agreed that waste management is a very important subject and that he should be there today.

I should note that although I speak here this morning as the Chairman of the NRC, the press of business and the recent weather problems have not allowed the Commission any real chance to rcview these remarks and present them as a fully collegial statement.

I hope my colleagues will be able to join me in most or all of what I have to say, but you will want to hear from each of them.

Commissioner Kennedy will send you a letter so that his views can also be part of your record.

I will turn now to the first topic in your letter announcing these hearings, Mr. Chairman: What is the basis for the Commission's assessment of reactor safety? The best answer to that is our regulatory system, which depends upon having nuclear plants

- sited, designed, constructed, and operated on the basis of conservative application of sound and accepted engineering principles, on require-ments for multiple and redundant safety systems, and on a set of regulatory requirements that are _ updated to reflect operating experience.

The designers, builders, and operators of these plants are required to have quality assurance programs and their work is subjected to a continuing licensing and inspection process by the NRC. The results of the licensing and inspection process are, in turn, subject to independent review by the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards and often to examination in public hearings.

We believe this regulatory system has served us well.

It is a rigorous system, and appropriately so in view of the technoiogy we regulate.

It is our job as regulators to make sure that there is no undue risk from licensed facilities and, while one must acknowledge strongly held views to the contrary, over 400 reactor-years of experience to date give us some reason to believe we are on the right track.

I am going to outline the essential elements of the regulatory system which gives us our assurance of reactor safety and I will be emphasizing the strong points of that system.

In doing so, I do not want to leave the impression that everything is just fine and that there are no problem areas.

Like most human institutions, our regulatory system is an evolving one and it is certainly not perfect.

As you know, there

- are a number of safety issues, some of which we touched on at your hearing last Thursday, that are in various stages of resolution and that may require changes in plant designs. Steam generator tube integrity in pressurized water reactors, hydraulic phenomena in the containments of boiling water rcactors, stress-assisted corrosion in reactor primary coolant system piping, environmental qualification of safety-related electrical equipment -- tnese are some of the safety issues listed in the report to Congress on such matters. We believe we have sufficient understanding of these issues and have taken appropriate steps in the short term to provide adequate protection of the public safety, but full resolution of them is still to come.

In other areas, we are examining many of our regulations with a view to improving and upgrading them.

Part 100, our siting reguiation, is an example.

Like our regulations, our licensing, inspection, and safety research programs could be improved.

So could the quality assurance programs of our applicants and licensees, which occasionally are found deficient in one aspect or another; and our process of reviewing and inspecting industry quality assurance programs for compliance with our regulations could be improved.

However, I think all these programs are on balance, very good and, judged against past efforts by society to control new technologies, are outstanding.

But again, they are not perfect; they can and should be improved; and we are working to do just that.

. Basis of Safety The ur.derpinning for our safety assurances is our licensing process.

It provides for the issuance of construction and operating licenses only after a multi-level review that includes public participation and input at its key stages.

The licenses issued in accordance with this process specify the framework and necessary details of actions that designers, builders and operators of nuclear power plants must follow in order to provide assurance that there will be no undue risk to the public health and safety.

Compliance with the license conditions is enforced by NRC inspectors during plant construction and operation. This system has been strengthened further with the assignment of resident inspectors at operating reactors, reactors under construction, and fuel facilities.

Licenses are issued for those nuclear power plants which, based on careful and independent reviews by the NRC staff, the Advisory Com-mittee on Reactor Safeguards, a Licensing Board, and if necessary, an Appeal Board or the Commission itself, are found to meet the safety criteria and standards required by our regulations.

These safety standards include requirements for considerable margins between design and operating conditions and for redundancy in primary and backup equipment, in order to compensate for the fact that no body of knowledge can ever be complete enough to reduce uncertainties and

- risks to zero. Thus, although the operation of nuclear power plants is not risk-free, the safety objective of the NRC, as implemented through this licensing process, is to require plant builders and operators to take all those actions considered necessary to assure that the risk to public health and safety is, and continues to be acceptably small.

One of the primary tools in achieving this safety objective is the use of the defense-in-depth concept for protecting public health and safety.

In its more general application, this concept calls for the incorpora-tion of three levels of safety in nuclear plants.

The first level requires that measures be taken to design, build and operate a nuclear power plant so it will, with a high degree of as-surance, operate without failures that could lead to accidents.

The plant is designed to conservative standards so that it will be safe in all phases of operation and have a substantial tolerance for errors, off-normal operation and component malfunction.

Despite the care that is taken in design, construction and operation to avoid equipment failures or operating errors that could lead to safety problems, some failures or errors must be expected to occur during the service life of a nuclear power plant.

The second level of safety requires the provision of measures to cope with them.

Protection for the reactor operating staff and the public is provided by protection devices and systems designed so that expected occurrences and off-normal conditions will be detected and either arrested or

- accommodated safely. The requirements for these protection systems are based on consideration of a spectrum of events that could lead to off-normal operations which the plant design must accom-modate.

In addition, testing programs are required to verify that the protection systems will function as designed.

The third level of safety supplements the first two by requiring design features and equipment to protect the public, even in the event of the occurrence of very unlikely accidents.

The additional safety margins provided by these features are assessed primarily by evaluating the response of the plant to a number of assumed accidents, involving in most instances the assumption of an independent failure of an element of the protective systems simultaneously with the occurrence of the accident they are intended to control.

From analyses of these postulated accidents, a number of sequences called " design basis accidents" are selected as a basis for the design of the additional plant features and equipment that are provided to further protect public health and safety. One of the third-level requirements for all nuclear plants is the emergency core cooling systems that are designed to cool the core in the event of a major instantaneous rupture of the normal plant cooling systems.

Application of the defense-in-depth concept also results in the provision of multiple physical barriers between the radioactivity contained in the reactor fuel and the environment outside the plant.

The fuel is contained in a sealed metal cladding; the clad fuel is contained in a heavy steel

- primary coolant system; and the primary coolant system is enclosed in a sealable containment building.

The defense-in-depth concept is also applied widely in the design and review of many of the individual systems of the plant, leading to requirements for redundant and inde-pendent subsystems and backup systems. These requirements are embodied in NRC regulations, standards and regulatory guides that are based on sound engineering practices established over the past twenty years, and that undergo continued review and improvement as operating experience accrues. Our comprehensive research program provides the technical bases for the confirmation of NRC's safety decisions and for needed improvements.

The NRC Standard Review Plan, first published in 1975 after years of uevelopment, provides documented guidance for the staff and applicants as to current staff positions on acceptable ways to implement the regulations.

It consists of over 1400 pages of detailed criteria and methods used for safety reviews and evaluations.

These comprehensive safety reviews are performed by the NRC staff during plant design, construction, and operations.

Independent safety reviews are also conducted by the Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, anu the results of these reviews are discussed in the public hearings conducted by the Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing

. Boards.

The reviews are designed to assure the proper and conservative application of the Commission's regulations which implement the defense-in-depth concept. The purpose, scope and effect of these reviews in minimizing public risk can best be shown by relating them to the siting, design, construction, and operation phases of nuclear power plants.

Siting The principal NRC requirements for the siting of nuclear power plants are found in our regulations in 10 CFR Part 100 and its Appendix A, Geologic and Seismic Siting Criteria for Nuclear Power Plants.

The siting reviews carried out by the staff in implementing this regula-tion play an important role in assuring that the likelihood of severe reactor accidents due to siting considerations is very low.

For example, the requirements of this regulation, supported by the independent evaluations of seismic and geologic conditions at and near a reactor site by the NRC staff and its consultants, provide the basis for establishing the seismic design parameters for a plant.

The seismic design parameters are required to be conservative enough so that the likelihood of an earthquake more severe than the design basis earthquake is very low, and the possibility of a severe accident resulting from such an earthquake is even lower.

Similarly, NRC regulations require that other environmental considerations that have the potential to cause

. a severe reactor accident, such as flooding, tornadoes, industrial accidents at nearby facilities, and overflying aircraft, be evaluated and designed against.

Design There are many NRC regulations that require the implementation of the defense-in-depth concept in the design of nuclear power plants.

These include the majority of the present 64 General Design Criteria, other Appendices of 10 CFR Part 50, and Section 50.55a, Codes and Standards for Nuclear Power Plants. A large amount of the effort involved in NRC design reviews is for the purpose of determining whether these requirements are being properly and conservatively imple-mented, and we rely heavily on these detailed design reviews for our assurance that we are achieving our safety objective.

In addition to the design reviews performed by the NRC staff, our regulations require license applicants to perform analyses of various postulated equipment, system, and personnel failures.

Independent evaluations of these events on a selective basis are then performed by the NRC to assure that equipment and personnel performance under the assumed conditions are properly described and the accident consequences conser-vatively calculated. These independent accident analyses provide further assurances of the design adequacy of licensed nuclear power plants.

- Construction and Operation Appendix B to 10 CFR Part 50 of the NRC regulations establishes mandatory quality assurance criteria for all phases of nuclear power plant design, construction, and operation. These criteria are implemented by field reviews and inspection by the NRC staff.

Each license for operation of a nuclear reactor contains Technical Specifications, which set forth the particular safety and environmental protection measures to be imposed upon the plant, and the operating conditions that are to be met in order to assure protection of the health and safety of the public and of the surrounding environment.

The NRC's Office of Inspection and Enforcement continues its inspections during the operating life of the plant to ensure that the requirements of NRC's licenses are enforced, that problems arising in operation are well handled, and that valuable feedback from operating experience is made available to other licensees and incorporated into the safety reviews of other plants.

Furthermore, NRC licenses require utilities to test important safety systems periodically and to report failures of all safety-related equipment to the NRC.

I should note that we have some steps underway to improve this process of getting operating experience and testing information out to other licensees.

The results of NRC inspections and reports of equipment failures are routinely made public.

The continuing review of operating experience by licensees and by the liRC staff provides another important contribution to the assurance of nuclear power plant safety. Design improvements, based on this experience, can be incorporated into new plants, and any mistakes in design and construction of operating plants can be corrected.

Even after nuclear plants begin commercial operation, they are not insulated from safety improvements.

There has been a continuing NRC program of improvements in existing nuclear power plants, based on operating experience, new criteria, and better understanding of safety issues through research, testing and analysis. As the number of operating nuclear power plants has increased over the years, there has been a corresponding increase in the allocation of NRC staff resources to the inspection program and to the technical safety evaluation efforts necessary to provide continued assurance of safe operation of licensed reactors.

One of the many examples of the feedback of operating experience to upgrading of safety requirements involves fire protection.

After the Browns Ferry fire in March 1975, an NRC Special Review Group was established to identify the lessons learned from this event and to make recommendations for the future. As a result,

. the Commission's Office of Inspection and Enforcement issued bulletins to licensees and initiated special fire protection inspections.

In response, licensees instituted a number of immediate improvements in fire protection at their plants. A generic task activity was initiated by the staff to develop upgraded guidelines for fire protection in nuclear power plants.

The generic task culminated in mid-1976 with the issuance of a revised Standard Review Plan section on fire protection. At that time we started a re-evaluation of each operating reactor against the new guidelines and we are requiring appropriate plant modi-fications to upgrade fire protection.

The new guidelines have been used as a basis for fire protection review for all operating license and construction permit applications under review since mid-1976.

In summary the NRC recognizes that the operation of nuclear power plants presents some element of risk.

But we believe that our process, which involves a well-developed safety approach, the specification of safety design requirements to implement that approach, and an extensive safety review, licensing and inspection process, gives reasonable assurance that that risk is comparatively very small.

. The safety record so far achieved in the operation of nuclear power plants gives support to the validity of the NRC approach. We have had, at this point, approximately 440 reactor-years of operation of licensed commercial nuclear plants in the United States without an accident having significant effect on the health and safet, of the public. While this experience is, of course, much less than that needed to prove our belief that large reactor accidents have a low probability of occurrence, it is an encouraging record and an outstanding one for a major industrial activity.

NRC's regulatory process has relied and will continue to rely on the

,iudgment of highly skilled engineers and scientists as the source for its safety decisions.

Based on the aforementioned considerations, and without prejudice to any conclusion we might reach in any individual licensing proceeding, we believe that nuclear power plants designed, constructed, licensed to operate, and operated in accordance with our regulations and requirements present no undue risk to the public.

It would be nice to be able to say that there are absolutely no_ problems with respect to the safety of nuclear power plants, that perfection has

. been achieved, and that all risks have been eliminated. This is not the case.

While we believe that nuclear power plants are adequately safe, in the ordinary sense of the word, and that the risk to the public health and safety from their operation is very small, the Commission's intention is to assure that this risk remains very small so that nuclear power can continue to represent a suitable and safe alternative for satisfying a portion of the nation's electrical energy needs.

The Reactor Safety Study (WASH-1400)

The question of risk frcm reactor accidents is not a new one, and I should like now to talk about how the Reactor Safety Study (WASH-1400) and the subsequent Risk Assessment Review Group came about.

In 1971, Senator Pastore,,aairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy wrote to the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, urging that a study be undertaken which would allow the AEC to document in clear terms the levels of safety it deemed necessary in nuclear power plants as well as the levels of safety that were actually present in current design.

To quote from the appendix to the Pastore letter, "One way of accomplishing this objective would be to prepare a report which, by addressing the probability of occurrence and consequences of the spectrum of accidents which could befall a nuclear power plant, would represent an assessment of the risks involved in the use of nuclear plants. Of course, it would also be necessary to compare these risks with those involved in other fields of endeavor in our society in order to put them into proper perspective."

In August, 1972, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission informed the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy that the Atomic Energy Commission had undertaken an in-house study "to provide a basis for submitting recommendations to the Congress regarding the_

extension or modification of the Price-Anderson Act."

The Reactor Safety Study -- WASH-1400 -- thus was sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission to estimate the public risks that could be involved in potential accidents in commercial nuclear power plants.

It was performed under the independent direction of Professor Norman C. Rasmussen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and soon became known as the "Rasmussen Report." The study was done principally at AEC headquarters by a group of scientists and engineers drawn from the AEC, the national laboratories, and universities. The study was started in the summer of 1972 and took three years to complete. A total of 60 people, various consultants, 70 man-years of effort, and about four million dollars were involved.

The study's objective was to make a realistic estimate of risks associated with nuclear power plants, and to provide perspective, to compare them with non-nuclear risks to which our society and its individuals are already exposed. The study used fault tree and event tree methodologies to define potential accident paths and their likelihood of occurrence.

Its focus was limited to large power reactors of the pressurized water and boiling water types, as represented by two specific units, one of each type. These two units were completed reactors, so that the study could deal with the final designs and the as-built plant features.

These units were designed to the safety criteria of the 1966-72 period.

The massive study was released in draft form in August of 1974, and comments were requested from environmental groups, groups critical of nuclear power, lawyers representing environmental groups and industry, government agencies, and industrial organizations representing reactor manufacturers, architect-engineerino firms, and electric utilities.

About 90 organizations and individuals responded with comments totaling about 1800 pages.

The primary focus of criticism'of the Reactor Safety Study related to the numerical estimates of risk and the range of uncertainties attributed to them.

Both the probability estimates and the consequence estimates were subjects of controversy.

In addition, there was considerable and continuing criticism of the manner in which the peer-group review was handled by the study's authors The Executive Summary of WASH-1400 also came in for criticism as being presented to provide a favorable picture of the risks associated with commercially-generated nuclear power.

The Risk Assessment Review Group Cognizant of these criticisms, and at the particular behest of yourself, Mr. Chairman, the NRC organized a Risk Assessment Review Group on July 1, 1977.

It was charged with four responsibilities:

-- to clarify the achievements and limitations of WASH-1400;

-- to assess the peer comments thereon, and responses to those comments;

-- to study the present state of such risk assessment methodology;

-- and to recommend to the Commission how (and whether) such methodology can be used in the regulatory and licensing process.

The Risk Assessment Review Group was chaired by Professor Harold Lewis of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and its findings have became known as the " Lewis Report." The findings were published in September 1978 as NUREG/CR-0400. As the Committee was provided with copies of the report as soon as it was published, I will not go into extensive detail regarding the findings, which I am sure are familiar to all of you. The Lewis Report did come down very hard on three of the most-criticized aspects of WASH-1400 -- the risk estimates, the Executive Summary and the peer group review. To quote directly from the Findings and the Summary:

"We are unable to determine whether the absolute probabilities of accident sequences in WASH-1400 are high or low, but we believe that the error bounds on those estimates are, in general, greatly understated.

This is true in part because there is in many cases an inadequate data base, in part because of an inability to quantify common cause failures, and in part

. because of some questionable methodological and statistical procedures."

"Among our other findings are the well-known one that WASH-1400 is inscrutable, and that it is very difficult to follow the detailed thread of any calculation through the report. This has made peer review very difficult, yet peer review is the best method of assuring the technical credibility of such a complex undertaking.

In particular, we find that the Executive Summary is a poor description of the contents of the Report, should not be portrayed as such, and has lent itself to misuse in the discussion of reactor risks."

On the positive side. one of the important findings of the Lewis Report is that:

"Despite its shortcomings, WASH-1400 provides at this time the most complete single picture of accident probabilities associated with nuclear reactors.

The fault-tree / event-tree approach coupled with an adequate data base is the best available tool with which to quantify these probabilities."

Commission Response After extensive deliberation, the Commission issued on January 18 a policy statement concerning the Lewis Report, in which it accepted the findings of the Lewis group and re-examined its views on WASH-1400 as a result of their report. Copies of this policy statement and of the Commission's instructions to the staff as to actions to be taken regarding the Review Group Report have hen provided to the Committee, and are also appended to this..

I will not repeat the policy statement here.

Rather, I would like to make a comment on the relation of WASH-1400 and the Lewis Report to our regulatory process.

A primary goal of the Reactor Safety Study was to obtain "a quantitative evaluation of the risk from the operation of a nuclear plant." The Safety Study was, in effect, a " measurement," made by analyzing two typical plant designs, of the results of our system of nuclear regulation.

What the Lewis group has told us is that the " measurement" of these results of our regulatory system, as reflected in the overall risk estimates of the Reactor Safety Study, is much less precise than had been asserted.

The Lewis group did not conclude that the overall risk estimates were higher or lower than reported in WASH-1400, although they speculated on possible factors in both directions, but only that they thought the error bounds on those estimates were substantially larger than had been reported. On that account, they recommended to us that the overall risk estimates of WASH-1400 should be used with great caution - "should not be used uncritically" were their words -- in the regulatory process or for public policy purposes.

We have accented and are implementing with vigor that recommendation, as well as the other findings and recommendations of the Lewis group.

. I should like to emphasize that our regulatory system, much of which evolved long before the Reactor Safety Study was carried out, does not depend on the ability to make precise quantitative estimates of overall risk. That ability would be highly useful, and should be developed. but it is not essential to our regulatory system.

Instructions to the Staff

.2 The Commission bolstered its January 18 policy statement with instructions to the staff that I can paraphrase as follows:

-- review the extent to which past and pending licensing or other regulatory actions have relied on the risk assessment models and estimates of the Reactor Safety Study;

-- give special attention to those activities identified by the Review Group as being especially amenable to risk assessment, such as generic safety issues or new regulatory requirements, assessing and revalidating existing regulatory requirements, evaluating new designs, and formulating reactor safety research and inspection ~ priorities;

-- prepare and submit by June 30, 1979 detailed procedures to ensure the proper and effective use of risk assessment theory, methods, data development, and statistical analyses by the staff;

-- prepare a review of current NRC practices and procedures in two areas of particular concern to the Review Group:

the peer review process for risk assessment developments, and the coordination among the research and probabilistic analysis staff and the licensing and regulatory staff. in order to promote the effective use of these techniques;

-- follow Commission-defined procedures in the use of risk assessment techniques during the licensing process; such use is encouraged with full cognizance of the comments of the Lewis Report; and

-- send copies of the Risk Assessment Review Group Report and Commission policy statement to all known recipients of the Reactor Safety Study.

The Commission stated that it would make whatever changes are necessary to assure that effective peer review and interoffice coordination are integral features of NRC's risk assessment program.

Finally, the Commission directed the staff to examine the significance of the technical issues raised by the Review Group and the appropriate courses of action for dealing with them.

The Commission noted that it will address changes that should be proposed in the approved FY 1979 and FY 1980 research program to improve the data base, including that on human behavior.

Staff Actions to Date The staff has begun the Commission-directed review of the extent to which past and pending licensing or other regulatory actions have relied on risk assessment irodels and estimates of the D.eactor Safety Study. A preliminary survey, completed in December, identified many instances where the Reactor Safety Study was mentioned or discussed, but only a few where the staff considered that the RSS played a substantial role in the licensing process.

In general, the survey revealed no general disposition toward primary reliance on the RSS, with only three items identified as warranting reconsideration:

some aspects of the Clinch River application, a staff report on anticipated transients.without scram (ATWS), and d.c. power supply reliability.

The survey also revea-led a wide range of opinion on the RSS within NRC.

Some staff members were very critical of the RSS, while others found the benefits of the RSS greatly to outweigh its flaws.

Because of the subjective factors involved in staff use of the RSS, the review was more carefully refined.

The Director of Nuclear Reactor Regulation and his Division Directors met with individuals responsible for those documents which appeared to involve at least partial reliance on the RSS in justifying either the status quo or a reiaxation of requirements. Approximately 40 cases were reviewed. The discussions focused on the role that the RSS actually played in the anaylsis, whether its use was a determinative factor in the decision, and whether a different conclusion would have been reached today.

Once again, the survey team found no pattern indicating significant dependence on the RSS.for licensing decisions.

Four additional instances were identified where the staff's use of the RSS would not now be in con-formance with the Commission's recent guidance, although primary reliance was not placed on WASH-1400.

Future actions on these matters will reflect the new guidelines.

Reviews of correspondence did reveal numerous references to WASH-1400 estimates of failure rates, principally the probability of a pipe break or a large loss of coolant accident.

The written record generally does not contain a discussion of the uncertainties associated with those estimates, but discussions with the responsible individuals indicate that these uncertainties were considered by the staff and were an element of the decision-making process, albeit an implicit one.

The Director of Nuclear Reactor Regulation will provide specific guidelines to assure the explicit treatment of uncertainties in the future.

In summary, a preliminary view of the use of WASH-1400 in licensing actions indicates that its principal application has been to supplement or confirm the main stream of analyses and judgments 1 reached by the staff.

Past and present regulatory decisions depended on traditional engineering analyses rather than any assumed finality of the RSS. When the final report on these reviews is prepared and documented and the Commission has reviewed it, we will forward it to you.

Where Do We Go From He e?

The Risk Assessment Review Group raised a series of technical issues that will have to be examined and dealt with by the staff.

These issues include questions about statistical methods, the availability and quality of data bases, consequence modeling, human factor consid-erations, earthquakes, fires, and common cause failures.

Work is already undemay on all of these matters as part of our confirmatory research program, and we will soon be considering what additional efforts are needed in order to address all of the areas requiring improvement in WASH-1400.

Because there is a substantial amount of work to be done in improving the data and the methods, I do not believe it would be desirable to launch another full-blown Reactor Safety Study at this point.

Those improvements need to be in hand and agreed to before we will be in good shape to reduce significantly the uncertainties in the predicted values of overall risk. I believe that this effort will take three or four years to accomplish.

However, there are some useful parts of the effort that can be done in shorter time.

For example, we have been making studies of the consequence model to determine the sensitivity of its predictions to various meteorological factors such as rain, plume rise, and wind shear, to the correlation between wind direction and population, and to evacuation modeling assumptions. We would be able, within the coming year, to produce an updated risk curve that would indicate the impacts of these sensitivity explorations with the consequence model.

Beyond that, we will be examining the possibility, and also considering the usefullness and the resources required, of a program of periodic updating of the RSS overall risk curves to indicate the effects of various additional modeling irrprovements that we will be making. This type of effort would help to answer various criticisms that have been made of the RSS and put us in better posture to be ready for a morc complete update of the RSS after several years.

By taking this step-by-step route, we could gradually reduce the uncertainties in RSS-type risk predictions.

In conclusion, I think it is important to keep in mind what the Commission did and did not do in response to the Lewis Report.

It did reevaluate its reliance on, and relationship to, the Reactor Safety Study.

But it did not thereby take a new view of reactor safety..I continue to

believe that our licensing proceedings, standards, and requirements are such that each licensed nuclear power plant is constructed and operated so as to provide adequate protection to the health and safety of the public.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

I think you may want to hear from my colleagues now.

ATTACHMENT 1 January 18, 1979 NRC STATEMENT ON RISK ASSESSMENT AND THE REACTOR SAFETY STUDY REPORT (WASH-1400)

IN LIGHT OF THE RISPs ASSESSMENT REVIEW GROUP REPORT The Risk Assessment Review Croup, chartered by the NRC in July,1977 to " provide advice and information to the Comission on the final report of the Reactor Safety Study, WASH-1400," and related matters,1/

submitted its report to the Comission on September 7,1978.

The RevTew Group, chaired bi Professor Harold Lewis of the University of California at Santa Barbara, 2/ was formed in response to letters from Congressman Udall, Chairman of the House Comittee on Interior and Insular Affairs,

~

expressing misgivings about the Reactor Safety Study (WASH-1400), and in particular about the " Executive Sumary" published with the Main Report.

It was expected that the Review Group's report would " assist the Comission in establishing policy regarding the use of risk assessment in the regulatory process" and that it would " clarify the achievements and limitations of the Reactor Safety Study."

In August,1972, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Comission informed the Chaiman of the Joint Comittee on Atomic Energy that the Atomic Energy Comission had undertaken an in-house study "to provide a basis for submitting recomendations to the Congress regarding the extension or modification of the Price-Anderson Act."

A draft version of the study report was circulated for comment in April,1974.

On October 30, 1975, the Nuclear Regulatory Comission 3/ announced that the final report had been completed.

Criticism of the document following release centered on the method of treating peer coments on the draft report as well as on the substance of the report.

The NRC pYess release accorpanying publication of WASH-1400 praised the report, describing it as a " realistic assessment..., providing an objective and meaningful estimate of the present risks associated with the operation of present day light water reactors in the United States," gave several comparisons to show that the risk from nuclear power was much less than from other man-made activities, and included a statement that "the final report is a sound 1'y based and impressive work....

Its overall conclusion is that the risk attached to the operation of nuclear power plants is very low compared with other natural and man-made risks." 4]

In view of the importance attached to the Reactor Safety Study, within and outside the Commission, both prospectively and after it was made public, the Comission has reexamined it's views regarding the Study. in light of the Review Group's critique.

e g

. While praising the study's general methodology and recognizing its contribution to assessing the risks of nuclear power, the Review Group was critical of the Executive Summary, the procedure followed in producing the final report and the calculations in the body of the. report.

Among the major failings of the study, the Review Group cited:

~

The ' Executive Summary:

The Review Group concluded that "the Executive Summary of the RSS is a poor description of the content's of the report, should not be portrayed as such, and 1

has lent itself to misuse in the discussion of reactor risks."

The Review Group indicated the Executive Summary does not adequately indicate the full extent of the consequences of.

reactor accidents and does not sufficiently emphasize the uncertainties involved in the calculations of their probability.

As a result, the reader may be left with a misplaced confidence in the validity of the risk estimates and a more favorable impression of reactor risks in comparison with other risks than warranted by the study. 5/

The Peer Review Process:

The Review Group Report criticized the RSS staff response, pointing out that in some cases cogent comments from critics either were not acknowledged or were evaded and that, in general, the record of response to valid criticism was weaker than it should ha.e been.

The Report points out-that the lack of clarity of WASH-1400 itself led.to majc u!'#i-culty in tra'cing a line of thought through the study ard crippled many efforts to accomplish responsible peer reviews.

Accident Probabilities:

The Review Troup was unable to deter-mine whether the absolute probcbilittes of accident se,1uences in WASH-1400 are high or low, but believes that the error bounds on those estimates are, in general, greatly unc.erstated.

This, the Report said, is true 13 part because there is in many cases an inadequate data base, in part because of an 'nability to quantify common cause failures, and in part becausa of some questionable methodological and statistical procedure s.

The Review Group also criticized, in some cases severely, various of the calculational techniques in the Study as well.as its laci of clarity.

The Review Group cited the following as major achievements of the study:

" WASH-1400 was a substantial advance over previous a.: tempts to estimate the r isks of the nuclear option.

Q O

O

. " WASH-1400 was largely successful in at least three ways; in making the study of reactor safety more rational, in establishing the topology of many accident sequences, and in delineating procedures through which quantitative estimates of the risk can be derived for those sequences for which a data base exists.

"Despite its shortcomings, WASH-1400 provides at this time the most complete single picture of accident probabilities associated with nuclear reactors.

The fault-tree / event-tree approach coupled with ~an adequate data base is the best available tool with which to quantify these probabilities.

" WASH-1400 made clear the importance to reactor safety dis-cussions of accident consequences other than early fatalities."

The Commission accepts these findings and takes the following ctions:

Executive Summary:

The Commission withdraws any explicit or implicit past endorsement of the Executive Summary.

The Peer Review Process:

The Commission agrees that the peer review process followed in publishing WASH-1400 was inadequate and that proper peer review is fundamental to making sound, technical decisions.

The Commission will take whatever correc'tive actior, is necessary to assure that effective peer review is an integral feature of the NRC's risk assessment program.

Accident Probabilities: The Commission accepts the Review

~

Group Report's conclusion that absolute values of the risks presented by WASH-1400 should not be used uncritically either in the regulatory process or for public policy purposes and has taken and will continue to take steps to assure that any such use in the past will be corrected as appropriate.

In particular, in light of the Review Group conclusions on accident probabilities, the Commission does not regard as reliable the Reactor Safety Study's numerical estimate of the overall risk of reactor accident.

Communication with the Congress and the Public:

Commission correspondence and statements invciving WASH-1400 are being reviewed and corrective action as necessary will be taken.

~

6 O

4 With respect to the component parts of the Study, the Commission expects the staff to make use of them as appropriate, that is, where the data base is adequate and analytical techniques permit.

Taking due account of the reservations expressed in the Review Group Report and in its presentation to the Commission, the Commission supports the extended use of probabilistic risk assessment in regulatory decisionmaking.

The Commission has provided additional detailed instructions to the NRC staff concerning continued use of risk assessment techniques and results in response to specific criticisms raised by the Risk Assessment Review Group.

9 O

G m

e G

e

NOTES 1/

Its charter reads:

"The Review Group will provide advice and information to the Commission regarding the final report of the Reactor Safety Study, WASH-1400, and the peer coments on the Study, advice and reconnendations on developments in the field of risk assessment methodology and on future courses of

_ action which should be taken to improve this methodology and its application.

This advice and information will assist the Comission in establishing policy regarding the use of risk assessment in the regulatory process, in improving the base for the use of such assessments.

It will also clarify the achieve-ments and limitations of the Reactor Safety Study."

2]

The other members were Dr. Robert J. Budnitz (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California), Dr. Herbert J. C. Kouts (Brookhaven National Laboratory), Dr. Walter Loewenstein (Electric Power Research Institute), Dr. William Rowe (Environ-mental Protection Agency), Dr. Frank von Hippel (Princetor University) and Dr. Fredrik Zachariasen (California Institute of Technology).

Dr. Budnitz is presently on leave from the University of California and is serving (since August 1978) as Deputy Director of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.

3f The Nuclear Regulatory Comission was established on January 19, 1975 to carry out the regulatory functions of the Atomic Energy Comission, which was abolished on that date.

4f The press release at the time of publication said that the report is "the culmination of the most comprehensive risk assessment of nuclear power plants made to date.

The objectives of the study were to make a realistic assessment....

The overall

~

conclusion...is that the risks attached to the operation of present day nuclear power plants are very low compared to other natural and man-made risks....

Nuclear power plants are about-10,000 times less likely to produce fatal accidents than man-made non-nuclear activities....

Non-nuclear accidents involving comparable large dollar value damage are about 1,000 times more likely than nuclear power plant accidents....

The chance that a person living in the general vicinity of a nuclear power plant will be fatally injured in' a reactor accident is one in

~

five billion per year....

In the event of an unlikely reactor accident with a probability of one in a million per reactor per year, latent health effects except for thyroid nodules would be such a small percentage of the normal incident rates that they would be. difficult to detect...."

o

2-The NRC Chairman was quoted as saying, "The Commission believes that the Reactor Safety Study Report provides an objective and meaningful estimate of the public risks associated with the operation of present day -

light water reactors in the United States....

The final report is a soundly based and impressive work....

Its.overall conclusion is that the risk attached to the operation of nuclear power plants is very low compared

. ith other natural and man-made risks." The press w

. release went on to say that more than 1800 pages of comments were received from a broad spectrum of people and all were carefully considered in preparing the final report.

5/

Professor Lewis, in reporting to the Commission, said that the Executive Summary was not a summary of the report.

He concluded it was written as a public statement that reactors were safe compared to other risks to which the public is exposed and he stated it should not have been attached to the report and described as a part of it.

G e

e O

9 9

6 s

O

ATTACHMENT 2

.p arco UNITED STATES jo.

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION g

WASHINGTON, D. C. 20555 y,

g Q

pj January 18, 1979 N*~

/

s+,*

OFFICE oF THE SEC RETARY MEMORANDUM FOR:

Lee V. Gossick Executive Director for Operatic -

i Samuel J. Chilk f) f FROM:

Secretary of the Commissio (/q.

SUBJECT:

STAFFACTIONSREGARDINGRIhKAESSMENT REVIEW GROUP REPORT Attached is a policy statement issued by the Commission on January 18, 1979.

In addition, the Commission has provided the following instructions for the staff.

1.

Send copies of the Risk Assessment Review Group Report (NUREG/CR-0400) and of the January 18, 1979 Commission policy statement to all known domestic and international recipients of the RSS.

In the future, copies of the RSS Executive Summary and the complete RSS will be distri-buted only when accompanied by a copy of the Review Group's report and a copy of this statement.

2.

Quantitative risk assessment techniques and results can be used in the licensing process if proper consideration is given to the results of the Review Group.

The staff should use the following procedures re-garding the use of quantitative risk assessment techniques and results pending development of further guidance:

a.

In comparisons of risks from nuclear power plants with other risks, the overall risk assessment results of the RSS (i.e., curves or tables of the probability of occurrence of various consequences) shall not be used without an indication of the wide range of uncertainty associated with those estimates. Any such use should note the difficulty of placing high confidence on estimates that are well below the values set by experience.

_2_

b.

Quantitative risk assessment techniques may be used to estimate the relative importance of potential nuclear power plant accident sequences or other features where sufficient similarity exists so that the comparisons are not invalidated by lack of an adequate data base.

Such techniques should not be used to estimate absolute values of probabilities of failure of subsystems unless an adequate data base exists, and it is possible either to quantify the uncertainties or to support a conservative analysis.

c.

The quantitative estimates of event probabilities in the RSS should not be used as the principal basis for any regu-latory decision. However, these estimates may be used for relative comparisons of alternative designs or requirements provided that explicit considerations are given to the criti-cisms of those estimates as set forth in the Report of the Risk Assessment Review Group.

d.

The RSS consequence model shall not be used as the basis for licensing decisions regarding individual nuclear power plant sites until significant refinements and sensitivity tests are accomplished.

However, the consequence model may be used for relative comparisons provided that such estimates are not the primary basis for such reviews ind provided that explicit consideration is given to the criticisms of the various elements of that model as set forth in the Report of the Risk Assessment Review Group.

The staff shall prepare and submit by June S0,1979, detailed pro-cedures to ensure the proper and effective use of risk assessment theory, methods, data development and statistical analyses by the staff.

Pending review by the Commission of these detailed procedures and the bases and rationale supporting them, the Office Directors will obtain the advice of the ED0's Regulatory Requirements Review Committee should questions arise regarding the implementation of the above instructions.

3.

The staff shall review the extent to which past and pending li-censing or other regulatory actions, including Commission, ACRS and li-censing board actions and statements, have relied on the risk assessment models and risk estimates of the RSS.

The Commission will examine the results of this review to determine whether the degree of reliance identified was and continues to be justified and to decide whether regulatory modifications are appropriate.

.s 6

. 4.

The staff shall give special attention to those activities identified by the Review Group as being especially amenable to risk assessment, i.e., dealing with generic safety issues, formulating new regulatory requirements, assessing and re-validating existing regulatory requirements, evaluating new designs, and formulating reactor safety research and inspection priorities.

5.

The staff shall prepare a review of current NRC practices and pro-cedures in tvo areas of particular concern to the Review Group:

a.

the peer review process for risk assessment developments, and b.

the coordination among the research and probabilistic analysis staff and the licensing and regulatory staff, in order to promote the effective use of these techniques.

The Commission will make whatever changes are necessary to assure that effective peer review and interoffice coordination are integral features of NRC's risk assessment program.

6.

The staff shall examine the significance of the technical issues raised by the Review Group and the appropriate courses of action for dealing with them. These issues include questions about statistical methods, data base quality and availability, consequence modeling, human factor considerations, earthquakes, fires, and common cause failures.

The Commission will address what changes should be proposed in the approved FY 79 and propcsed FY 80 research program to improve the data base, including that on human behavior.

As an addditional action, the staff shall undertake a review of statistical methods and human factor considerations used in risk assessment.

Attachment:

As stated cc:

Chairman Hendrie Commissioner Gilinsky Commissioner Kennedy Commissioner Bradford Commissioner Ahearne James L. Kelley, 0GC Kenneth Pedersen, OPE.

Joseph J. Fouchard, OPA Carlton C. Kammerer, OCA

N.

N

, s N

N TESTIMONY OF PETER A.

BRADFORD COMMISSIONER, U.S.

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE COliMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS UNITED STATES HOUSE' OF REPRESENTATIVES MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1979

Let me begin by stating that I have no fundamental disagreement with the thrust of the Chairman's statement.

Had time permitted, I think perhaps we could have harmonized our views entirely, so while this is a separate view, I do not want to describe it as a dissenting one.

The licensing of nuclear power plants has always entailed uncertainties as to cost, as to waste disposal methods and sites, as to low-level radiation hazard, and as to worldwide proliferation implications.

The Reactor Safety Study was never designed to address any of these, and for these reasons as well as the unsupportable claims of precision that were made on its behalf, it should not have occupied the central place that is has in the consideration of nuclear power.

Like the many overstated projections of demand for nuclear power, the misuses of the Study have been a dis-traction, a contributor to the roller-coaster effect that an industry as complex and capital intensive as this one cannot afford and that sound energy policymaking cannot easily encompass.

In fact, the nuclear power program at its outset was inevitably experimental in nature.

It was an exceptionally carefully conducted experiment if one overlooks Fermi I,

but it was an experiment nonetheless.

The problem was that no one was willing to use such a term in describing nuclear power plants to the public, nor is it clear what would have happened if this had been done.

Instead, a compulsion was felt, of which the. misuse of the Reactor Safety Study is just one of several examples, to simplify, to state the unknowable with certainty, and to put the known in the best possible or not so possible light.

It is this syndrome that I think we as regulators must learn to avoid, both in explicit statementr, and in phrases and comments that invite inferences that we cannot substantiate.

Thus, when we describe our licensing and inspection process and conclude that we believe that it affords adequate protection to the public health and safety, it seems to me that we are making a judgment in which some assumptions and qualifications are best stated explicitly.

For one thing, we do not check everything, or even nearly everything in our licensing and inspections.

Consequently, our program depends heavily on responsible industry conduct, both in day-to-day operation and in quality assurance and quality control.

s For another, we as regulators cannot tell you with precision just what level of protection we have achieved, and you, as the representatives of the public, have not

.... told us, as perhaps you could not, just what level of protection would be " adequate."

The subject of adequate protection of the public health and safety in the nuclear context remains an open one, subject to continuing examination

.and proceedings before us, in Congress, and in the states.

The subject is multifaceted and cannot be laid to rest solely by any assessment of accident risks at the power plants themselves.

Thus, while I am in general accord with Chairman Hendrie's statement, I want to be clear that I think it comes in the introduction rather than the concluding chapters of the nuclear safety story.

While I hope the concluding chapters will be favorable, ue are some time away'from being able to write them.

.