ML19282C816
| ML19282C816 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 04/17/1979 |
| From: | Harold Denton Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| To: | Mcewen J KMC, INC. |
| Shared Package | |
| ML19282C817 | List: |
| References | |
| RULE-PR-73 NUDOCS 7905030157 | |
| Download: ML19282C816 (5) | |
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UNITED STATES y"
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Mr. John E. McEwen, Jr.
Vice President KMC, Inc.
1747 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
20006
Dear Mr. McEwen:
This refers to your letter of November 28, 1978, which has been referred to me for reply.
Your letter noted that the NRR Staff had recently issued Reactor Safeguards Licensing Branch Review Guideline No. 23, Protection of Nuclear Power Plants Against Industrial Sabotage by the Insider cated November 6,1978, and requested that it be withdrawn.
As you know, since the publication on February 24,1977 of 10 CFR 73.55, Requirements for Physical Protection of Licensed Activities in Nuclear Power Reactors Against Industrial Sabotage, members of the NRR Staff and industry representatives have had numerous discussions regarding the measures needed to protect against industrial sabotage by an insider.
These measures include a clearance program, compart-mentalization and the two-man rule.
You may also recall that even before adoption of 73.55 as an effective regulation, both the Staff and the Commission considered in some detail the issues and costs involved in implementing nuclear power plant physical security require-ments against a design basis sabotage threat that included an insider.
In our view, determining the amount and kind of protection against industrial sabotage by an insider now required by 73.55 can be divided into two elements. The first element is an identification of the vital areas and equipment that must be protected. The Staff believes that the list of safety-related structures, systems and components given in Regulatory Guide 1.29, in combination with an assumption that one complete decay heat removal system must remain operational, provides an acceptable method of identifying the plant features that must be protected against industrial sabotage.
(See Revision 1 of Review Guideline No. 17, Definition of Vital Areas, dated January 23,1978).
The second element in determining the extent of protection against an insider is specifying the methods of protecting the vital areas and equipment identified in step one that are needed in order to satisfy the performance requirements of 573.55(a).
It is this latter element that is addressed in Review Guideline No. 23.
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e Mr. John E. McEwen, Jr. Your November 28, 1978 letter raises several specific issues concerning Review Guideline No. 23 on insider protection that are discussed below:
a.
The acceptable options set forth in the Review Guideline reflect the current Staff position regarding the kind and extent of protective measures fer vital areas and equipment needed at nuclear power plants in order to achieve high assurance of protection against successful industrial sabotage by an internal threat of an insider, including an employee in any position.
Such protective measures are currently required by 10 CFR 73.55 (a).
We do not agree with you that the compartmentalization and two-man rule options set forth in the guideline do not provide a viable method to improve security, or that these approaches introduce significantly detrimental safety and operational problems.
Our ongoing review of the licensees' amended physical security plans and our related discussions with them have confirmed our judgments.
As you may know, a number of licensees are currently proposing an appropriate combination of compartmentalization and the two-man rule as a suitable means of providing protection against the insider required by 73.55. Moreover, the KMC study referred to in your letter and discussed with the Staff recommends " engineering solutions" to protect against the insider, such as locking and alarming a motor control center, which we consider to be a specific method of compartmentalization.
In addition, the use of the two-man rule in vital areas of a reactor facility is entirely consistent with current non-safeguards related practices at a number of reactor sites (e.g., procedures for entrance into containment during reactor operation).
These current practices are based strictly on safety and operating requirements.
b.
I regret that you have received the impression thit -h-st Tf has been unwilling to discuss with KMC alternatives ' cotpi rtmental-ization or the two-man rule.
This is not the cr i, as is evidenced by recent meetings with you on these subjects.
Perhar w'at led to this impression is the need for the NRR Safeguards :n aff 'o concentrate most of its efforts at this time on revicwing licensees amended security plans submitted pursuant to 73.55 so as to _omplete our review of these submittals in advance of the currently required implementation date of February 23, 1979.
I'm sure you recognize the need for our timely review of these submittals, which has required us to assign a somewhat lower priority to matters such as discussions of the KMC study.
Consistent with this policy, you were previously informed that if a licensee adopted your suggested approach in developing its proposed methods of complying with 73.55, its submittal would receive priority attention by the Staff.
No such application from a utility has yet been received.
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Mr. John E. McEwen, Jr. Your comment that the staff had not fully completed its evaluation of one of the issues related to insider protection at the time of issuance of Review Guideline No. 23 is correct.
In particular, although we believed that Review Guideline No. 17 (discussed above) provided a fully adequate and conservative basis for identifying Type 1 vital areas, the staff was attempting to develop a generic list of these areas to substitute for the case by case evaluation method of identifying those specified in Review Guideline No.17.
However, because of the urgent need to provide guidance to industry in the remaining aspects of the insider issue, we decided to issue Review Guideline No. 23 before that task was completed. Our efforts since that time to develop an acceptable generic list of Type 1 vital areas have not been successful; therefore, until each plant vital area analysis is completed the staff believes use of Review Guideline No. 23 is appropriate.
c.
That the options presented in Review Guideline No. 23 may have the force and effect of Staff requirements is true in the sense that they reflect our judgment as to acceptable methods for satisfying the requirements of the regulation.
That is, if no acceptable alternatives are proposed by a licensee, it would be the Staff position that one of the listed options in the Review Guideline would be required in order to satisfy 73.55.
However, the Staff position also has been and continues to be that the instances where licensees propose alternative security measures for this purpose that provide an equivalent level of protection, they too would be acceptable.
d.
With regard to your comment that no value impact assessment accompanied Review Guideline No. 23 and that there was no opportunity for public comment on the guideline, you should be aware that such an assessment was prepared prior to approval of 10 CFR Part 73.55 by the Commission in 1977. That assessment included consideration of both compartmentalization and the two-man rule as methods of providing the degree of protection against the insider required by 73.55.
Moreover, there was opportunity provided for the public coments prior to adoption of 73.55 by the Commission.
Issuance by the Staff of the review guideline did not bypass the establisned Ccmission method of rulemaking; rather, it provided information on acceptable ways of implementing a requirement established by that process.
Your letter also made several points concerning KMC rulemaking petitions to the Commission.
Our response is as follows:
a.
With respect to the petition for rulemaking regarding modification of 10 CFR Part 73.55(a), the petition would change the regulation so as to reduce the Commission's flexibility to specify alternative methods for ccmplying with the performance requirements of 73.55.
i Mr. John E. McEwen, Jr. Since the Commission in approving the regulation recognized and subscribed to the need for providing such flexibility in its implementation, we do not see how retaining this flexibility would be subverting the rulemaking process. When the implementation of Section 73.55 has been completed for operating plants, the experience so gained may then permit the Commission to reduce or eliminate the current flexibility in the regulation. As noted in Mr. Minogue's letter to you of November 6, we plan no further action on your petition dated June 9, 1973 until that time.
b.
With regard to your October 23, 1978, motion to delay implementation of the " guard upgrade rule" ( Appendix B to 10 CFR 73), the Staff has recommended to the Commission that your petition be denied -
since, in our view, it did not provide a sufficient basis for delaying implementation.
If the Staff recommendation to deny the petition is approved by the Commission the denial will become effective upon publication in the Federal Register.
I note by our letter that you believe that the KMC study of the insider threat offers the possibility of developing protective measures for nuclear power plants against the insider threat that are both capable of satisfying the performance requirements of 73.55 and more cost-effective than those identified in Review Guideline 23. Although the NRR safeguards staff has some doubt that the assumptions and decision criteria used in your approach are appropriately conservative, I understand that you have been previously informed that we are prepared to review a topical report by KMC on this subject.
In addition, of course, we are prepared to review any licensee submittal under 73.55 that embodies such an approach.
In sumary, I do not agree that Review Guideline No. 23 should be withdrawn at this time since it is now being used by the Staff and licensees to implement requirements currently set forth in the regulations. While the acceptable options identified by the Guideline are not specifically included in the regulations, the regulatory basis for the need and acceptability of the options are based on the general performance requirements of 73.55(a). Thus, the Review Guideline identifies for the NRR security plan reviewer, licensees and the public the specific measures that would, in the Staff's judgment, constitute an acceptable level of protection against the insider threat specified in 73.55.
i Mr. John E. McEwen, Jr. Should you believe that further meetings with me and members of the NRR staff on the insider threat would be helpful I would be pleased to arrange one at a mutually acceptable time.
Sincerely.
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Harold R. Denton, Director Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation p
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Mr. Samuel J.
Chilk Secretary of the Commission U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C.
20555
Dear Mr. Chilk:
On behalf of KMC, Inc. and the utilities listed in Attach-ment A we wish to apprise the Commission of the issuance of the Reactor Safeguards Licensing Branch Review Guideline #23, dated November 6, 1978, pertaining to security provisions for nuclear power plants.
Review Guideline #23 (enclosed as Attachment B),
" Protection of Nuclear Pcwer Plants Against Industrial Sabotage by the Insider," provides three options for the licensee to pro-tect against potential sabotage acts by the insider including:
(1) compartmentalization, (2) two-man rule, or (3) personnel reliability.
These options are not mentioned in the Commission's regulation of 10 CFR Part 73.55 and the issuance of this docu-ment represents a preemption by the staff of decisions on rule-making currently pending before the Commission since, in spite of the document title, our exterience is that Review Guidelines are accorded the force and effect of rules by the staff reviewers.
As such, we believe this document, rather than solving any prob-lems, seriously aggravates reactor licensees' abilities to resolve their outstanding security plan issues prior to the existing February 23, 1979 deadline.
The first two options provided in Review Guideline #23, that of compartmentalization and two-man rule, have been long standing staff suggested generic solutions to the threat of the postulated insider to commit sabotage.
These ideas were first suggested in a draft document, NUREG-0220, " Interim Acceptance Criteria for a Physical Security Plan for Nuclear Power Plants,"
March, 1977.
It was immediately recognized by licensees and dis-cussed with the NRC in a meeting on April 20, 1977, that neither approach provided a viable method to generically improve plant security and that these approaches introduced significant detri-mental safety and operational problems.
In response to staff
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DUPLICATE DOCUMENT Entire document previously entered into system under:
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Attachment B.
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%o UNITED STATES g
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N0Y 051378 MEMORMIDUM FOR: Reactor Safeguards Licensing Branch Division of Operating Reactors, NRR FROM:
Robert A. Clark, Chief Reactor Safeguards Licensing Branch Divison of Operating Reactors, NRR
SUBJECT:
PROTECTION OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS AGAINST INDUSTRIAL "i
SAB0TAGE BY THE INSIDER - REVIEW GUIDELINE #23 l
In order to meet the general perfomance requirements of $73.55(a), high assurance protection of a nuclear power plant against the threat of sabotage posed (1) with the active or passive assistance of an insiaer or (2) by an insider acting alone must be provided.
Common to most scenarios thht can be postulated for successful sabotage by a single insider, is the need for unrestricted access to vital areas
- and unrestricted time in these' vital I,
areas. Consequently, security measures that place controls on access to Vital I vital areas and/or. limit the time allowed in Type I vital areas must be provided to meet the general perfomance objective of 173.55(a).
. e have encouraged licensees to develop security measures to achieve these W
objectives.
High assurance protection against sabotage by an insider may also be pro-vided by security measures that pemit unescorted access to Type I vita' areas to only those individuals whos.e reliability.and trustworthiness has
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been established using additional procedures that,prov,ide a high level of confidence.
l The following measures, when properly applied in conjunction with those
' security measures implemented by the security plan to meet the requirements of 573.55 (b) through (h) provides an acceptable level of protection against sabotage by the insider.
ll
,i General A.
Persons who are granted unescorted access to a Type II vital area (1) must have a need for access and (2) must have been found acceptable through a screening program described in MJSI N18.17-1973 Section 4.3 or the equivalent satisfactory employment record described in Review Guideline #1.
= v9 I vital area (1) must have a B.
Persons who are granted access +
need for access, (2) must have bee a
program described in MISI N18.17-1 DUPLICATE DOCUMENT
- Yital areas are discussed in lev Entire docun'ent previously
- i entered into system under:
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