ML19318C824
| ML19318C824 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 06/13/1980 |
| From: | Harold Denton Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| To: | Ahearne J, Gilinsky V, Kennedy R NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| Shared Package | |
| ML19318C826 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-80-359 NUDOCS 8007020325 | |
| Download: ML19318C824 (6) | |
Text
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UNITED STATES 3
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JUN 131980 MEMORANDUM FOR: Chairman Ahearne Commissioner Gilinsky Commissioner Kennedy Commissioner Hendrie
?/rnissioner Bradford THRU:
William J. Dircks
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Acting Executive Director f' r Operations o
FROM:
Harold R. Denton, Director Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
SUBJECT:
COMPLIANCE OF OPERATING LICENSE APPLICATIONS WITH CURRENT NRC REGULATIONS, REGULATORY GUIDES, AND BRANCH TECHNICAL POSITIONS This memorandum responds to the May 12, 1980 memorandum from S. J. Chilk to W. J. Dircks wherein the Commission requested an estimate of the staff and applicant resources required to identify the extent to which operating license applications comply with all current safety-related regulations, regulatory guides, and branch technical positions, and to document the bases for any instances of non-conformance.
Based on our review of this request, we have concluded that such an effort would require significant additional staff and applicant resources. We esti-mate that about two additional man-years per application would be required by both the staff and each license applicant.
(The staff currently estimates about 11.5 professional man-years are needed to conduct an OL safety review).
In addition, about three man-years would be required at the front-end to restructure the way the staff reviews applications for compliance with those regulations and related regulatory guidance documents that are not normally addressed in staff safety reviews and Safety Evaluation Reports, and to issue additional guidance for conducting and documenting these restructured staff reviews. The problems involved in accomplishing this activity and the bases for our_ estimates are presented below.
The first problem involvi.; the fact that the staff's current review procedures are not directed toward providing a detailed and specific accounting of compli-ance with each and every regulatory requirement and related regulatory guide.
Rather, the radiological safety review of operating license applications is based on the Standard Review Plan (SRP) which incorporates by reference appli-cable regulatory guides and all approved Branch Technical Positions (see
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Conformance with the Standard Review Plan and its references bo"!'Q,Ngcon7my,
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The Commissioners is generally believed to constitute compliance with applicable NRC regulations, although a systematic analysis to establish this congruence has not been con-ducted.
It should be noted, however, that compliance with individual regula-tions has been adjudicated favorably in some previous cases, and contentions have been admitted in some current cases which involve compliance with each of the applicable regulations.
A second problem is that the staff's review is of the audit type; that is, not all plant features are reviewed by the staff for conformance to the Standard Review Plan. Given the nature of an audit review, it is not possible for the staff to demonstrate in detail that an application is in complete compliance with all elements of either the Standard Review Plan or the applicable regula-tions. However, if the results of the audit review are favorable, the staff has felt that it is able to conclude with reasonable assurance that the entire application is in compliance with the regulations and the SRP.
A third problem involves the fact that there are some regulations for which there is no corresponding guidance to reviewers in the SRP. One known example is that General Design Criterion 51, " Fracture Prevention of Containment Pressure Boundary," is not explicitly referenced in the relevant SRP sections.
A fourth problem is that the staff Safety Evaluation Reports have always been written to summarize the results of the audit reviews and were not intended to document all aspects of the review. These reports tend to highlight those areas in which disagreements occurred between the staff and the applicant and the way in which these areas were resolved. Therefore, it is not always possible to find in these reports an accounting of the conformance of these applications to some of the NRC regulations or regulatory guidance that received most of the staff attention in these reviews.
In order to accomplish and document the type of review described in the May 12 Chilk memorandum, the staff would have to complete the following activities:
(1) Review each of the applicable NRC safety regulations, including all sub-parts, and prepare appropriate guidelines for assessing compliance in instances where such guidelines do not currently exist in the SRP.
Develop i
a list of current regulatory guides not incorporated by reference in the SRP and a list of approved staff requirements and positions not yet incorporated in the SRP, such as new staff requirements related to TMI, and a number of staff positions given interim approval by the Director of NRR pending incorporation in the SRP.
(2) Require applicants to address in detail in their license applications their conformance with all current safety regulations, current regulatory guides not in the SRP, the SRP, and other approved staff requirements or positions.
The Commissioners (3) Require applicants to justify any areas of non-conformance with the regula-tory requirements and guidance listed above.
(4) Review responses to (2) and (3) above. This review would be an expansion of the staff audit review to include all aspects of the application that deal with current regulatory requirements and guidance.
(5) Prepare safety evaluations to address each of the matters described above to indicate the degree of confomance and the bases for any areas of non-conformance.
Item (1) involves considerable froat-end work necessary to organize the reviews on a consistent basis. We estimate that about three man-years of NRR staff effort would be required to accomplish this one-time effort. OELD resources would also be involved in this work. We estimate that it would take each appli-cant about two additional man-years to accomplish Items (2) and (3) and a comparable effort on the part of the staff to accomplish Items (4) and (5) for each application.
While we believe a requirement for this form of documentation in the staff safety evaluation reports may be desirable, we do not recommend that it be implemented as a prerequisite for authorizing full power for near-term OLs.
Rather, if the Commission decides to adopt this approach for all new applica-tions, we recommend that a reasonable grace period for implementation be adopted (about Ih years in our judgment) for the following reasons:
(1) We believe that the health and safety of the public is being adequately protected by the current staff safety review process. Although strict compliance with the Standard Review Plan has not been required for the near term OL applications, it was used extensively in the staff reviews of those applications.
In conjunction with the TMI-related requirements, the " normal" staff review that was performed for these plants provides greater assurance of adequate compliance with the complete body of regulatory requirements than for any other plants in operation.
(2) The audit reviews conducted by the staff provide reasonable assurance that the applications can eventually be shown, in detail, to be in compliance with the Commission's regulations and other NRC regulatory requirements.
(3) The manpower costs to NRC and licensees at this time would be very disruptive of activities now underway in response to the changes in regulatory requirements stemming from Three Mile Island.
1 The Commissioners (4) There would be large economic costs in accomplishing these activities on near-term applications before authorizing full power operation because of the extensive delays that would result.
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Harold R. Denton, Director Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
Enclosure:
Background Information on Application of Standard Review Plan ec:
OPE OGC SECY l
Background Information on Application of Standard Review Plan On August 12, 1975, B. C. Rusche, the Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) issued NRR Office Letter No. 2.
NRR Office Letter No. 2 directed s.
that except for clarification and correction of errors, the Standard Review Plan would remain fixed until any proposed change of substance was considered by the Division Directors reviewed by the Regulatory Requirements Review Committee, and then authorized by the Director, NRR.
Mr. Rusche, on June 18,1976,the Divisions of System Safety, Project Management, issued NRR Office Letter No. 9 (Attachment 1).
This Office Letter directed and Site Safety and Environmental Analysis to establish and submit procedures to the NRR Office Director by August 1,1976,NRR Office Letter No. 9 also for documenting the bases for all deviations from the Standard Review Plans.
directed that these procedures were to be implemented on all operating license application reviews by January 1, 1977.
On September 20, 1976, Mr. Rusche issued a memorandum (Attachment 2) to the NRR Division Directors approving the implementary procedure for documentation of deviations from the Standard Review Plans. This memorandum directed that Safety Evaluation Reports issued after January 1,1977, for plants under review for operating licenses incorporate documentation of deviations from the Standard Review Plan.
On January 31, 1977, Mr. Rusche issued a memorandum (Attachment 3) to the NRR Division Directors.
This memorandum withdrew the directive set forth in the c
September 20,1976[ ternate program as follows: memorandum and in its stead issued establishing an a (1) Require the staff to assess the Standard Review Plan, determine any changes needed to assure that its requirements were realistic and practical of achievement, and initiate the actions needed to implement these changes.
(2) Require the staff to implement the policy established in NRR Office Letter No. 9 for all operating license applications docketed after January 1, 1977.
As a result the applications for fourteen operating licenses now in review were not required to be reviewed in accordance with the policy established in NRR t
Office Letter No. 9.
These applications are listed below:
Salem 2 McGuire 1 & 2 North Anna 2 Fermi 2 Farley 2 Zimmer 1 Diablo Canyon 1 & 2 Shoreham 1 Sequoyah 1 & 2 Watts Bar 1 & 2 S
en
2-For all remaining operating ifcense applications the policy established in s.
NRR Office Letter No. 9 was to be implemented as part of the normal review activities for these applications.
We are currently reviewing NRR Office Letter No. 9 to determine if it is feasible to extend its applicability to more plants.
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ATTACHMENT 1 m atopbe,
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.. 3 R. Beineman, Director, Division of Systems Safety 555$
R. Boyd, Director, Division of Project Management f""5 H. Denton, Director, Division of Site Safety and Environmental Analysis
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V. Stello, Jr., Director, Division of Operating Reactors NRR OFFICE LEITER NO. 9
SUBJECT:
Documentation of Departures from Standard Review Plan
- y The purpose of titis Office Letter 1's to establish NRR policy with u....
respect to documentation of departures from the Standard Review Plan
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(SRP).
Use of the Standard Review Plan as a routine tool in our review is "
process was established by Office Letter No. 2 dated August 12, 1975.
This letter directed in part that:
" Standard Review Plans should be used by each NRR project
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m mager and technical reviewer to assure consistent evaluation
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Careful attention to the uniform p.:
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implementation of SRP's by each individual NRR staff member E...
will assure an acceptable level of safety for all plants
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licensed."
E=ri A special problem arises with respect to operating license' reviews
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!.g.-4 reviews of these facilities were not reviewed along the Standard Review Plan guidelines, licensing decisions were and are continuing to be made concerning the acceptability of alternative approaches, y.
These decisions, and especially the bases for these decisions, are of ten not documented in the Safety Evaluations which sussnarize the staff reviews.
The staff spends considerable resources assuring that t..
plants have a safe design prior to authorizing plant operation, but c~
unu the staff accomplishments can be lost if the bases for staff decisions
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- EEE From time to time in the future, we will be called on to demonstrate m
the safety of operating plants and their relationship to current licensing criteria.
It would be extremely difficult and inefficient on these
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Therefc e, in an effort to =4n4=49-e the~ number of plants where this
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duplicative effort may be necessary, I an directing the Divisions of
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Systems Safety, Project Management, and Site Safety and Environmental
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y Analysis to do the following:
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Establish and submit procedures to me by August 1,1976, for documenting the bases for all deviations from the Standard
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Review Plans in each operating license Safety Evaluation.
Special attention should be given to documenting departures
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Implenent these procedstres for all operating license Safety ll.";;i.~ '
Evaluation Reports to e issued after January 1,1977.
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Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
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