ML19344D898
| ML19344D898 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 08/08/1980 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-0775, NUDOCS 8008260288 | |
| Download: ML19344D898 (411) | |
Text
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1 UNITED STATES OF AXE 3ICA 2
NUCLEAR REOULATORY COMMISSION
.s 4
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 5
244th MEETING 6
Room 10u6 7
1717 E Streut, N.W.
Washington, O.
C.
20555 0
August 3, 1980 Tne Subcommittee set, ;crsuan: to no tice, at 9:305 9
a.m.
10 3333333 pgggg37, 11 M.
PLESSET, Chairman, Presiding.
J. C. MARK, Vice-chair. man 12 D.W.
M0ELLER W.
KE3R
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13 M.W. CARBON i
W.M. !ATHIS I4 J.C. ESERSOLE H.W. LEWIS 15 D. OKRENT P. SHEWXON 16 DESIGNATED FEDERAL EMPLOYEIs 17 l
R.F. FRALEY 18 1
l ACRS CONSULTANT:
19 l
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L A '/ E ALSO PRESENT:
21 J.M. JACOBS, Secretary 22 23 24 l
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MR. PLESSIT:
The meeting vill now come to order.
3 This is the second day cf the 244th neeting of the Advisory Committee en Reactor Saf eguards.
i 5
The primary items for today are a discussion of 6
quantitative risk criteria, a meeting with the NEC 7
commissioners and a discussion of proposed ACES positions 8 and actions with regard to several safety-related matters.
9 The meeting is being conducted in accordance with 10 th e Federal Advisory Committee A ct and the Government in the 11 Sunshine Act.
Mr. Eaymond Fraley is the designated Federal 12 employee for this portion of the meeting.
13 A transcript of the meeting is being kept, and it I#
is requeste: that each sreaXer first identify himself or 15 herself and speak with sufficient clarity and volume that he MI or she can be readily heard.
17 We have not receivad any written statements or l
U3 requests from the public to make oral, statement.
MI 3efore we go into the agenda, I would like to just o
20 point out one thing, a very brief item, to the conmittee.
l 21 In your Tab 5.2.1, we received a request from a Mr. Accolage 1
22 (phonetic) regarding some items related to the stes:
23 generators at Turkey Point, and Paul Shevmon is going to
4 take care of this.
! thought you should be aware of it.
25 5 2.
S." E W F. O N :
I thought it was going to be l T'T
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boilerplate, and all of a sudden a recognired my name.
2 (Laughter.)
3 MR. PLESSET:
He will report to us in the near 4
futu re.
It is about the steam generator plugging problem at 5
Turkey Point.
l 6
MR. SHEWMON:
We could bring in San Cnofre and e
7 Point Beach and several others.
3 MR. PLESSET:
Mr. Accolage --
9 MR. SHEWMON:
Are you particularly interested in 10 ths one?
Il MR. 'PLESSET s Pardon?
12 MR. SHEWMON:
I vill catch you later.
l 13 MR. PLESSET Yes, catch me later.
(
14 Now that Prof essor Shevmon is so oriented, we can l
15 l
go on.
The first item on today's agenda is a discussion of 16 quantitative risk criteria, and I will call upon Dr. Okrent, 17 Chairman of the Reliability and Probabilistic Subcommittee, 18 to begin.
19 Dave.
o 20 MR. OKEENT:
Okay. Well, last month we discussed 21 the possibility of inviting a few people in fron outside the d
22 nuclear community to give insight, points of view, comments l
l 23 on things related to the possibility of developing 24 qu an tita tive saf ety goals or quantitative risk assessment 25 criteria and so forth, and we are fortunate in having two b^l s_
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I very well-qualifief indivifuals here today.
2 I will mention that in addition to those who will 3
he able to speak today, we fid invite the chairman of the 4
Council on Environmental Ouality, who could not make it, and a
)
5 Dr. Press, head of the Office of Science and Technology for 6
the President, and in f act Governor Sabbitt, who plays an 7
important role today and was en the Commission.
8 Unfortunately, we were unable to get either of 9 these individuals at this time, but we de have tvc people 10 who have been quite active in this area for a very Il ronsiderabla periof of time, and I think it should give you 12 quite an interesting perspective.
I am not quite sure how 13
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the order was arranged.
I4 I think Gary arranged for us to hear first from 15 Mr. Lave, who, as you know, is a consultant to the ACP.S.
He 16 is an economist who has, I guess, continuing connections 17 with Carnegie.5ellon and the Brookings Institute, so far as 18 I understand it, and has considered questions or risk in a 19 variety of ways and is one of the authors of a principal C
20 reference on emissions from coal-fired plants.
21 We also have Professor Harold Green from the 22 George Washington School of Law, although I de not knov if 23 that is his current affiliation or not.
I will let him tell 24 He has been interested in nuclear power in a variety of us.
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I public point of view, s:seti:es representing members of the 2
public.
3 He was the author of a very interesting article in
- one of the law reviews sometime back on the calculus of risk
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benefit, in which he and another man gave differing points 6
of view.
I think you will find, again, he has ideas that O'
7 will be important for consideration.
9 I think Gary arranged for Lester Lave to be the 9
first speaker.
We have, I guess, until 12:30 this morning, 10 and I think myself we ought to stay a litt13 bit loose and Il see how the things go, leaving ample time for both people to 12 present their points of view and for discussion.
I think 13
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maybe we could ask each speaker first to give us an idea of 14 how he would like to proceed, if he would like to talk for 15 30 or 40 minutes and then discuss the matter, or in what way 16 he feels would be effective.
17 MR. PLISSET That sounds very good.
18 MR. OKEENT:
Lester.
l 19 ER. LAVE: I can stand up and project, if you a
20 want.
I would, indeed, like to talk for about 30 minutes, 21 trying to get out just an outline of what ma terial we could 22 talk about, and then after that go into the various ideas in 23 whatever depth seems appropriate.
24 Let me be;in by emphasiring that the concept that 25 you are after is acceptable risk, and that means that i
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acceptable risk must te by definition acceptable and not 2
necessarily acceptable to a set of scientists or nuclear 3
engineers but acceptable to the public at large.
That 4 changes the complexion of the discussion almost completely
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because what it means is that the concepts have got to be 6
understandable to the public.
7 The concerns of the public have got to be 8
addressed, whether in a technical sense they ceem to have 8
any meaning or not.
That is, it is the public in the end "3
that has to um convinced.
There are a number of Il complexities that revolve around trying to convince the El public.
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U3 For example, there is a kind of a notion that what
%s' 1-4 is required is to convince some plurality of the public --
"I for example, if you were thinking of a referendum on nuclear "3
power in California, then the tendency wculd be to think 17 that what is required is to convince the majority of people 18 voting on that referendum to assent.
l "3
Althcugh there are a f ew cases such as referenda a
20 in particular states that do ask for a plurality cf voters, 21 in general the United States is not the kind of direct 22 democracy that was represented by the Greek city states or 23 the New England town meetinc.
Instead, we are a republic, 24 and wha t that means is our representatives make decisions 25 for us.
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I So it is first of all the representatives that 2
must be convinced.
But in order to do that, va core into 3
this terribly complicated precess that the political 4
scientists describe for us of the influence of various kinds
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0 of pressure ;roups, of small groups around, for example, 6
that are one-issue groups, so that it is more than possible 7
for a small minority cf society to put forward a program 0
which is opposed by the vast majority of society and still 3 get laws that carry that out.
10 This is the kind of circumstance which scmetimes Il gets all of us terribly irritated, but it is the current 12 systen that we work in.
So when I talk abcut acceptance, !
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[J am not necessarily talking about a majority or even a I4 plurality of the pecple.
15 Secondly, what it is that people perceive is 16 influenced a great deal by warring experts, people who may 17 or may not hav r any real credentials to t.lk about issues, 18 who say or may not have the facts but who are heard.
- Again, i
19 this is not science where ve don't care that the vote is 20 50,000 to 1 but the 1 is right, se that is what good science 21 is.
Again, this is a sort of notica where you are in 1
23 the public arena.
Ecmetimes it is who talks 1cudest.
Cften 24 it is who talks fastest.
I de very well in that arena, by 25 the way.
But it does not have anything to do with the basic
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I scientific process by itself.
It h a s to do wi th convincing 2
people at some moment in tine and convincine their 3
representatives.
4 let me diverge for a second and talk about one of 9
5 the characteristics -- I guess I would say perhaps 6
unfortunate characteristics -- of the regula tory process 7
today.
Mainly, much of what I have been saying is not nev 8
to the community.
Perhaps I am saying it in a slightly more 9
forreful way than people have thought about in the past, but 10 it is certainly not new.
Il People have talked fer a long time about making 12 nuclear power acceptable, but having talked about making 13
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nuclear power acceptable, I thin k that the show has been run 14 by a set of engineers, and I do not mean that in a 15 derogatory sense, but a group of people who get something IO done.
'4 hen you are trying to get something done and you are II faced with some question that you cannot handle, then you by 18 and large either assume a solution to it or else ignore it 19 for treatment at a later date and go ahead.
20 The problem is that thinking about acceptance is 21 not something that goes away, and the later date really came g
sooner than anybody was prepared to deal with.
That is, we E3 have a pot that has begun to boil and something does. ave to I
24
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he done about it, and the something will not be done by some l
i 45 cf the former kinds of assumptions abcut technical sorts of
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solutions.
2 For example, any tendency in the past to assure 3
the public that nuclear reactors were perfectly safe was, of 4
course, absurd.
It was sort of a simplistic way of patting 5
the public on the head, and those kinds of errors really 6
,.o m e back to haunt.
7 Another perspective on that is that there is this 8
wide divergence in perception regarding a failure.
For 9
example, was T.YI a demonstration of the inherent soundness 10 of all the planning that went into nuclear safety, or was it Il a demonstration that the whole system is about to fall apart 12 and we kere saved by a gnat's eyelash from nuclear 13 fJ3 disaster?
I assert that those two perspectives have been
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I4 put out by cerious members Of the community, that by and 15 large there is no real way of dealing with that.
16 After the fact one can go through the accident 17 sequ - e and try to decide how much on the brink we were 18 during the operation, but there is not any way of correcting 19 th e perceptions one way or another.
And there are groups of l
20 people who honestly view any failures in the current system, 21 however smsll, as proof tha t the system does not work, and 22 other people who look at failures in the current system and 23 say, oh, yes, that was one tiny part of it that we did not "4
consider in enough depth.
If was not cerious, but of course 25 we will take account of that in our future planning.
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I ould guess that f cm some of the analyses !
2 have heard by Dave Okrent's subcommittee, that there is much
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3 more of a tendency for the NBC to look at instances even as 4
large as !!'I as indicative of small f ailures, ones that have S
5 to be corrected, ones that are perfectly within the system.
O Well, going back to my notions of complexity and e
7 risk assessment, one of the failures in the part has been to 8
try to get as creat a safety level as possible so that 3
esseatially no safety device was too expensive as long as it 10 had some chance of increasing perceived or actual safety of Il a reactor.
The problem with that is that in the course of 12 adn9 ting those procedures over time, the economic advantages 13 of tuclear power have been whittled away in virtually every i4 part of the United States and you are suddenly confronted j
15 with a question of who really does need nuclear power.
IO If the electric 2ty that comes out of i.t is the 17 same p" ice as power f rom other sources, then why is it that 1
18 anybody should be concerned if it happens to be denied?
And 19 there ace two aspects of that, I think, that have come into 20 our pt:esent state.
One is the kind of requirements on 21 varimis add-on devices.
The second one is the availability 22 rate of the various plants, in part due to being 23 sucer-cautious about various sorts of procedures, 24 retrofittin; and so on.
25 I am not ad vo ca tin g th a t in any :rense we throv
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away sone of that caution, but I think that any previous 2
notion that nuclear ;0ver was clearly so superior the t both 3
at:s could be tied behind the back and it would still shov 4
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acceptability issue is the pessible verifiability of safety 3
levels.
By that sean so=e sort of assurance to the 3
public, the decisi:naakers, th a t the saf e ty levels that are 10 claimed really are of that level.
I understand hev Il difficult it is to try and verif y events tha t are alleged to
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13 Nonetheless, until there is an acceptable procedure for
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verifiability, then these probabilities are meaningless.
15 Just a verd : ore about probabilities.
There is 16 some tendency te viev probabilities as bein; ebjectively 1,<
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1 appearing was precisely one-sixth.
2 Sut in the course of doing that experiment, unless 3
you had a very well-manufactured die, it is probable by the 4
time you were done rolling the die that number of times, the A
5 probability would have changed because you would have done 9
something to the corners.
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In a si:ilar way, when one is talking about the S
experience with respect to nuclear reacters today, the 9
assertion tnat we have Kad, what, 200 years of reactor 10 experience without any terrible accidents is viewed by some Il people as being a strong assertion of how lov the 12 probabilities really are.
The problem is that those 13
()g probabilities have changed, certainly yearly and sometimes I4 monthly, because of who it is who is opera /:ing the reactor, 15 the quality of staff and so on and so-on.,
Ihat is not to 16 assert that the probabilities are particularly lover or 17 higher that. that amount of experience vould tell us, but 18 sisply to say that the a mo un t of history tha t we have is nut 19 a fully satisfactory procedure at all.
d 20 In tne verds of the stat 4_stician, the stochastic process is not a stationary one but is, 15 fact, modified by 21 22 experience today.
For example, TZI did a great deal to 23 modify precedures.
In One of the papers tha t was done by
s the NEC staf f, there is a nice discussion about the 25 intermediate goals, benchmarks and so On.
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you are talking about events that are alleged to have a
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probability of 10 there is no way those will ever be 3
verified in practice.
4 What you come down to is a subset of procedures or A
5 intermediate goals which are convincing somehow.
That gets 6
off into an area I am not prepared. to explore today, but I 7
think there is a lot to be er.id in that area about how it is 8
you can define some intermediate goals which are consistent 9
with longer-term goals, and the meeting of those 10 intermediate goals turn out to be convincing to the public II and various decisionmakers.
12 One last kind of statement here.
There is a 13
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notion, which was suggested, to my knowledge, first by I4 Richard Wilson of Harvard and then later by Cyrill Comar in 15 an editorial in Science, saying that risk regulation could 16 be done by setting up two benchmark levels 4 a level of
-6
-6 17 negligible risk, say a risk of 10 per year or 10 per 18 lifetime, and a notion of unacceptable risk, say 1 in 100, l9 of mortality per year, and given that framework, to say that a
20 any risk that was less than this negligible level would be 21 automatically accepted without question by society, and that 22 risk which was greater than the unacceptable level would any 23 simply be put aside by society as unacceptable.
24 That notion is an interesting one.
It is 25 meaningful only insof ar as you have some r?asonably C
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1 unanimous arceptance of the negligible risk level.
- Frankly, 2
I do not see any.
The FDA a little while ago when talking 3
about carcinogens, tried to take what it regarded as an 4
extraordinarily small risk, namely, a risk of cancer, one in
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5 a sillion per lifetime, and say tha t th a t was negligible.
6 The FDA had to back off that as the result of a 7
fair amount of criticism on the grounds that at least 8
emotionally, sone people thought that aven a risk of one 9
cancer per million lifetimes was too high to be tolerable.
10 I wonder whethat there is such a notion of negligible risk 11 which would be universally accepted by the population.
If 12 not, then there is a different kind of regulation or 13
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criteria that has to be done.
I4 Well, remember I am an academic researcher and so 15 I cannot talk to you without outlining some areas for 16 further research, so I beg your pardon and will take no more 17 than a couple of minutes to sketch out a few areas, some of 18 which have been dealt with before.
19 A first question that I think needs some more 20 attention is one of trying to put perspective on the 21 diffusion of reactor technology today. There seems to be a 22 naive notion among some technologists that if you have a 23 bett er technology, you can snap your fingers and within a 24 year it will be distributed over th e verld.
There are a
"'5 large nunber of institutional, econonir and other factors
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that gat in the way of doing that.
2 One of the studies that I thought would be 3
worthwhile is a look at the diffusion of previous complex 4
technologies, not only in the sense of how lon; did it take A
5 them to diffuse until they took over a reasonably large part 6
of their industry, but also what were thE factors that e
7 tended to speed diffusion or to retard it.
There have been 8
a large nu=ber of studies that have been done on 9
technologies such as the diesel locomotive, and along with a 10 number of hypotheses and tests of hypotheces about the Il factors which tended to speed that.
12 A second area for study is to recognire that the 13
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government has vast influences on technologies, particularly I4 nuclear technology, since the government controls all of the 15 materials and all of the underlying technical facts.
So 16 What is important here is to look at in what way the 17 government has influenced the diffusion of previous 18 technologies and to look at what the government has been 19 doing with respect to nuclear technologies to see if there 20 is something that can be lea rned, and to also take a look at 21 the range of instruments that are open to the government in 22 either expediting or retarding the diffusion of a technology 23 and to see how these might be used for nuclear power.
l 24 A third srea that I think has to be explored in 3 : ore depth I mentioned before.
It is this notion of the
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I political institutions of the United States: that is, vo tin g 2
behavior, direct derecracy, who it is that you need to 3
convince, and so on.
One of the notions here is that not cnly does a setting of a risk standard influence people 5
either to be pro or con in terms of hev they would cast 6
their vote in a referendus, but more importantly, it induces 7
them either to be active or passive in the process.
8 That is, as some people remarked, they have not 3
voted in an election for a long time because they do not see 10
- r. gnat's eyebrev vorth of difference between the Il candidates.- If that is so, it is not worth your while to go 12 to the polls.
If you perceive the diff erence in the 13 (J
candidates to be huge, then not only do you go to the polls 14 to vote, but you probably give so=e money and =ay even ring 15 some doorbells.
16 Similarly when you are talking about safety 17 levels, the issue is not whether sonething is either barely 18 acceptable or barely unacceptable. If something is either 18 barely acceptable or barely unacceptable, then you are l
20 probably not going to pet people either to vote about it er 21 to express any strong preferences; but the mere unacceptable
~,' something is to some people, the cre they are going to 23 follow a course of action which perhaps starts cut with
- 4 voting against it in a referendum, and then pessibly going 25 cn to writing their representatives, then possibly peing on
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2 finally winding up with some kind of civil or even criminal 3
disobedience such as sabotage on a reactor.
4 So, there is an area there that has to be studied 5
in terms of trying to figure out what are some of these 6
influences.
7 I also said that acceptability was not simply 8
accaptability to the plurality or even the majority of 9
people.
The no tion I want to pick up there is that there 10 are different audiences for safety criteria.
So far I would 11 have thought that the audience for NRC for safety criteria 12 has been tha nuclear community, with whoever else vants to 13
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come in and participate, but basically the nuclear community.
14 It is certainly true that the way one talks about 16 safety criteria, and possibly also the safety criteria "I
themselves, are going to differ as the audience for those 17 criteria differ.
I was giving the instance of trying to HI talk to the public at large. if one decided to talk with "I
Congress instead of the public a t la rge, then you would have l
20 some different criteria, and so on.
21 Another kind of study here, and I am not sure how 22 seriously I propose this, is that when people of more than l
23 unit dimensional preferences -- that is, their preferences 24 regard not only tha safety of reactors but also what it is 1
25 th ey may or may not be doing to their grandchildren, the s
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cost of their electricity, reliability and so on -- instead 2
of being some set of unique equilibrium, that there are 3
almost always multiple equilibrium.
'Je are trying to decide 4
which of these equilibria we get to.
Some of them obviously 5
are beneficial to somebody's cause, and others are not 6
beneficial to the cause.
7 There is an area of political science called 8
agenda setting, which attempts to see how it is that you 9
migh t ge t to the equilibrium that you prefer rather than the 10 equilibrium that is very far away.
Il Then a final research area here is more of a look 12 in fepth at the way that other agencias set safety levels.
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For example, the FAA and the National Highway Transportation a
14 Safety Administration go about setting safety levels all th e 15 time.
There is remarkably little controversy over what they 16 do.
Of course, we can think back to the interlock device or 17 maybe air bags for automobiles, but by and large, if you 18 think about the regulations that have been issued by them 19 and, better still, by the FAA, it is quite remarkable how 20 little controversy there has been on those.
I think there 21 l
is some good reasons for that th a t are worth exploring.
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Secondly
- if one takes a look at the behavior of, 1
23 for example, the Food and Drug Administratior. in setting 24 tolerance levels for food contaminants such as rat hairs or
S even carcinogens such as aflatoxin in the food supply, you
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see there is also relatively little controversy there.
The 2 FDA has set up some rules in a highly emotional area.
3 Certainly food is a good deal more emotional than nuclear 4
reactors, and they have managed to carry that off reasonably 4,
5 successfully.
Thece are a whole set of lessons there that 6
need to be learned.
7 Finally, there are sometimes implicit, son e tim es 8
explicit safety regulation going on in the areas of national 9
def ense, police and fire, occupational saf ety 'and health and 10 the environment, and there are a number of lessons, I think, 11 that can be learned out of that.
12 Let me get now to try to be more than simply 13 critical or suggestive of all the good things I could do for 14 you if only you.ad $2 million or 53 million, and wind up 15 with some recommendations.
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Max, I think, has been very patient.
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Concerning your recommendations for 2 what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission might do, there is a 3 body of opinion that the Commission should not be advocates, 4 and in a sense -- I am not certain I <now exactly what this 5 means -- but at least it means maybe that it should not try 6 to convince the public that nuclear power is safe, and yet 7 it also, of course, has to regulate it in such a way that it 8 is safe.
9 Do you have any comments on how one treads this 10 thin line as a commission which, on the one hand, certainly 11 must say explicitly or implicitly thac we are regulating in 12 such a way that nuclear power is acceptably safe, and, on
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14 advocate nuclear power.
15 MR. LAVI:
First of all, the example lept to mind 16 of the Federal Aviation Administration, which has by law the 17 mission both to promote and to monitor aviation.
I an not 18 aware of a lot of controversy that has come out of the FAA 19 in conducting its role.
So apparently under some 9
20 circumstances the Commission could have both hats.
21 As far as the NRC is concerned, I would guess that a
22 the NEC need not be an advocate of th e technology, that the l
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It seems to me an agency is not performing its
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3 function if it sets out a set of rules which it believes-do 4 the job and nobody else does.
5 I don't see that as advocacy; I see that as simp;y 6 the agency doing its job.
Its job is to set out rules that 9
7 make nuclear power safe, and un til the public is convinced 8 that that set of rules vill do it, the NEC has not done its 9 job.
10 MR. LE*i!S. Your example of the FAA is a pood one 11 because, I agree, it has the job of pro mo tin g air commerce, 12 and the FAA has through public acceptance cc:e to a level of
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13 saf e ty which it deems adequate and which the public deems us 14 adequate but which is clearly not the ultimate in aviation 15 saf ety.
16 Aviation can be made substantially safer than it 17 is n o w, but at the expense of the other role of promoting 18 air cosmerce.
For example, most -- not all, by any means, air accidents really do occur during instrument 19 bu t most e
20 app roaches.
Just abolishing instrument flying, which would 21 wreak havoc with air transportation, would make it safer.
s 22 Somebody has made a decision that that is not a 23 good way to go.
In fact, the trend in the FAA is to go in 24 the other direction, to produce technical aids which lower 25 the minimus and make really sarginal instrument approaches i [~'
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5 it simply has to be implemented.
6 Other than hiding it, which, of course, nobody o
7 wants to do, there is no other way out if it demonstrably, 8 however lightly, improves nuclear safety.
I worry that 9 perhaps we get too academic about these things, because I 10 think I agree with you on a number of points you made and I 11 sympathize with Dade's comment that if he had a perfect 12 fo rmula, he would not know what to do with it.
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13 We have a tendency, as you said, to say you ought Nss 14 to look at the objective, the needs.
In another world I 15 live in, a military world where people justify weapons 16 systems, they always start their briefing by saying: We l'7 decided on what the objectives were, th e requirements to 18 achieve the objectives, we surveyed the relevant 19 technologies, we selected the proper ones, we recycled to e
20 our needs, and set out exploratory development.
21 It never happens that ~ way.
What happens is from
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I wonder if pe rha ps the objective of --
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the objective of 1 perhaps it is being a litcle crary 2 quantitative standards is best met by a complex -- so 3 complicated that no one can understand it but somehow is 4 def ansible in its main points and dcas not lead to an 5 ultimate formula for 3.10 whatever it is for the number 6 of fatalities per year.
Sometimes that is a good way to go.
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MR. LAVE:
Let me go back to two examples.
The 8 first is the FAA.
If you people have not locked at the 9 FAA's regulations lately you would be astounded what it is 10 they do with standard procedure.
They go through in the 11 sense of the economist of the 1960s a full scale 12 cost-benefit analysis.
13 For example, one recent sta nd a rd t ha t I looked at
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19 property damage that resulted, to take a look at the death 4
20 and injuries that resulted f rom that, te value each death at 21 $300,000, each injury at the medical cost plus less from 22 wo rk plus some paysent f o r s uf f e ring, and then to weigh up Z3 what would be the benefits of a frangible lighting pele; to 24 then oppose that by locking at what the cost of these 25 f ran gible lighting peles would be.
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The FAA then goes and requests, first.of all 6 internally and then f rom Of.3 and then the Congress, the 7' amount of money to do those airports where its calculations 8 show its benefits exceed the cost.
9 My question is how in the world do you get away 10 with valuing lives at 5300,000?
They said: Is that 11 controversial?
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Q.A 14 Every once in a while the Congress asks us about it, we 15 explain about it, the 5300,000 escalates over time, and 16 everybody accepts it.
So that it is not sim ply the FAA's l'7 role as an advocate or the t e ch no logy that gets them where 18 they want to go.
They have this procedure that no other 19 agency in the government, as far as I can tell, can get away 4
20 with that ney use.
21 The other example is SHTSA, the National Highway 4
22 Traansportation Saf ety Administration.
NHTS A tried f or, !
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7 could redesign the car to be safer.
It woul'd cost an awful 8 lot more, but I could do it.
9 It is absolutely crany.
Clearly, it is not so.
10 So what NHTSA dcas is, it has this level of rheteric.
Jean 11 Claybrook goes out and carefully announces if anybody cones 12up with a better scusetrap, they will require it for cars.
/~'h 13 In practice, they don't do anything like that.
In practice,
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They see hov such 15 a new device vould cost, hov =any lives it would save, and 16 what they did, rather than te deny sanctioning of new 17 devices is, they sort of put off a decision en them forever.
18 Think about airbags.
They never turn anything 19 down, but they also do not approve a number of items which 4
20 are not ecst-effective, and I quess I would have thought 21 that th e NEC could be in the same bea t.
That is, while 22 preservin; all the rheteric cf saying, yes, anything that 23 would =ake a reacter safer, we vill certainly require, ve ;o 24 about this business of saying, well, you veuld net want us 25 to put a device en a reactor that had act been fully tested C'
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It would take 45 years to test it 2 th o ro ughl y, but we are going to keep on the job and do.it 3 all.
4 So, there is a way of doing the rhetoric and at 5 the same time not indulging in what are patently absurd 6 actions.
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MB. LEWIS 4 May I make one cynical comment about 8 your two examples?
At least it may look cynical.
9 Obviously, I an not, but as a person who flies small 10 airplanes into small airports, I have noticed that Congress 11 is very receptive to providing money th a t improves large 12 airplanes flying into large airports, because that is what
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15 MR. 1EWISs No further cynical comment.
16 MR. CARBON:
It would seem that some of the l'7 question of public acceptance revolves around this question 18 o f, is one single large accident much vorse than many small 19 ones?
Could you comment on that?
l 20 MB. LAVE 4 Yes.
I think I should be Paul Slovik 21 in commenting on it, but I will put on my social psychology ZZ h a '..
They point out that from simply a physiological j
23 psychology basis, that people get innured to small stimuli.
24 Th e f act that somebody is killed in an automobile accident 25 is so common in society.
" hen it happens to be somebody we
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It is another story on Page 6 2 of the newspaper that says somebody has been killed.
That 3 just does not touch you any more.
4 We had an accident in Maryland last spring where S ten teenagers were killed in a pickup truck.
That did touch 6 people, and it was quite clear that ten teenagers being v
7 killed at one time had a recognition factor for people that 8 ten sincie accidents did not have.
9 So, what Slovik argues is that in our complex 10 wo rld, there is a hurricane some place, and a heat wave 11 somewhere else, and ten people die here or twelve people die 12 there, that the stakes kind of go up where in order to
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13 conmand people's attention, you have to have a fair number b}t 14 of people being killed, and then they will remember that.
15 I think one of the better illustrations of that is 16 that year in, year out, we kill between 100 and 200 miners r7 in coal mines each year, never less than 100.
Sometimes it 18 has been greater than 200.
And yet if you isk somebody 19 about what goes on there they say, on, yes, Fa rmin g to n, that a
20 is where 100 and some people got killed.
That was what, ten 21 years ago now?
22 The fact is that events will stick in their mind, 23 and so they will tend to characterire the industry ' hat 24 way.
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Almost everybody gets killed in accidents where a 2 single miner is killed, and so there is a lot to be said for 3 this business of a single startling event that may kill a 4 lot of people.
There is a lot to be avoided from that.
5 MR. CARBON:
How much of that is touching people 6 truly, and how much is simply newspaper publicity?
w 7 Obviously, they a.re related, and how can you separate the 8 two, or can they be separated?
9 MR. LAVE:
I don't think they can really be 10 separated very well.
After all, there is almost nothing we 11 are going to do about controlling the media so that the 12 newspapers will be with us.
I think a large part of it is 13 the media, the hype that goes on.
On the 6:00 o' clock news, d("%(
1<4 you have to have something new to say, and they certainly 15 are not going to report somebody being killed in an 16 automobile accident, so you search around the world and find 17 an event that killed 100 people, and splash it all over the 18 place.
19 If we did not have that kind of screening media l
20 cove rage, then we would have a very different world.
We do, l
21 and we are stuck with it.
22 3R. 50ELLER:
Your earlier comment -- you made the 23 earlier comment that we should look to the other Federal 24 agencies and compare what different approaches people take 25 and different risks that they have tried to propose.
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5 them that people do not realire that they are there, and 6 that they are using them, and what I refer to specifically i
7 7 are the standards and the risks, associated risk values that 8 the International Commission on Radiological Protection is 9 using.
10 For example -- this is something like Hal Lewis 11 was saying.
They really did not do it in the proper 12 sequence, but we all know for a worker the dose limit is
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They have U4 14 shown through calculations and rationalirations and so forth
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1 average dose rate per year from all of this is routine 2 nuclear operations and should not exceed 50 millirem per
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People are using this s
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MR. LAVE:
Well, I think that there are two things 8 about that.
There are two ways of viewing that sort of 9 calculus.
One way of viewing it in the absolutely worst 10 light is to say that it is a group of nuclear engineers and 11 physirians sitting around pulling numbers off the seat of 12 the pants, not illogical numbers, but just, you knows is
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13 that okay with you?
Well, it is okay with me.
14 I think that if one tries to approach nuclear 15 power that way in the United Sta t es, it is not going to work.
16 The other way of viewing those nunbers would be to 17 try to first of all settle this issue about how much i
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20 on and say, okay, some amount of that is going to be 21 generated by nuclear, and how safe do we want our nuclear 22 technology to be, with sose trade-off between cost and 23 saf e ty, and now, as we start down that path, we are suddenly 24 telling ;eople that th e y a re ;oing to get something for 25 their 50 nillires.
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Okay, so you are going to get something for 3 it.
What does this trade-off look like between 1111 rem and 4 cents per kilowatt hour?
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6 One of the comparisons I have written about lately
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7 is that if the electricity in Texas were half the price it 8 were right now, I think you would have seen f ewer peo ple 9 dying of the heat during the last heat wave.
10 Now, we are not talking about a lot of people 11 there.
F.aybe 50 people would not have died.
Oka y.
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14 So, I think you can begin to pose the problem that 15 var to people, and you can cet some thoughtful responses out 16 of it.
That is, a lot of this consists of posing the l'7 question in a felicitous way, a way t ha t the public can 18 harken on and understand, and it makes some sense to them, 19 and to try and give you some answers about what are the il
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21 kilowatt hour and abstract risks to them, there is a lot to 22 he said for that.
23 I guess I really as fairly trusting of the public, 24 if you can present them with the information and the 25 questions in a way that they can understand.
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! de not want to dispute your 2 statement, Oade, that everybody accepts this ICR7.
I can 3 think of a couple of exceptions.
Professor Sternglass.
I 4 think a' lot of people listen to him.
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Well, I would like to just have a ten-minute 6 break, and then I hope that Mr. Lave and Mr. Green vill bear e
7 with us and continue, but it is tradition to have a break at 8 this time.
9 (Whereupen, a brief recess was taken.)
10 MR. ELESSETT4 Well, let's reconvene.
11 I thought what we might do is have Mr. Green make 12 his presentation, and'after he is finished, we can :: ave (U
13 questions for his and Mr. Lave.
I am sure there are more.
's.
14 Mr. Green, would you like to take over?
15 MR. GREEN:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
16 I am pleased to be here today.
I think there is 17 some significance a ttached to the f act that although I have 18 been in this business for 30 years, this is the first tis? I 19 have ever been present at an ACES meeting.
I think 27 20 cessents vill be f airly brief, unless I get carried away.
21 They vill be f airly brief because when I started to think-22 abou t what ! vanted to say today, I found syself in a state 23 of confusion.
24 My notes indicated that when Mr. Cuittschreiber 25 asked me to be here today, he asked ne to speak about D
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The w ritt en invitation I 2 received as(ed me to talk about quantita tive saf ety goals, 3 and that sent me into a state of panic, because ! do not 4 know what safety goals are.
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5 are.
6 Then I was somewhat relieved when the chairman in 9
7 opening the meeting said we were going to talk about 8 quan tita tive risk criteria, a subject about which I feel 9 much more comfortable.
10 I think it is a useful starting point to note that 11 for the most part the basic safety goals or risk criteria or 12 safety standards or what have you that we work with today in 13 the nuclear area are qualitative and subjective.
We have
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ss 14 verbal formulations such as reasonable assurance, without 15 undue risk, will not endanger, will not be inimical to the 16 health and safety of the public.
17 As a lawyor, I feel quite comfortable with the i
18 verbal qualitative standards rather than quantitative 19 standards.
We lawyers are quite accustomed to dealing with 20 such concepts as whether or not conduct is reasonable or l
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22 man, now reasonable person, would view a particular 23 situation or act in a particular context.
24 I think that the way that I feel comfortable 25 looking at these things in a verbal, qualitative, subjective I
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At the same time, it is obvious that in the basic 8 body of Atomic Energy Ccmmission, Nuclear P.egulatory 9 Commission rules, regulations, and mythology, there has been 10 a use of quantitative standards.
11 For example, unless my nemory fails me, there is
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14 there is a great deal of quantification in Part 20 of the 15 NBC 's rules, just to give you a couple of examples.
16 One cf the things that troubles me a bit is the l'7 confusion that one often hears, not caly in sessions like 18 this in which I have heard some such confusion, but indeed 19 also a t various meetings that Dr. Lave and I have attended 20 in recent years about risk assessment, risk benefit 21 analysis, et cetera, confusion that goes to what I think is ZZ one of the f undamentals of this entire problem.
23 I think we always have to ask ourselves who is 24 assessing risk for whose use and what particular purpose, 25 and 'I think the way you assess risk and the way you OV ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
400 VIRGINIA AVE. S.W. WASHINGTON. D.C 20024 (202)554-2325
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3 For example, there is one mode of risk assessment 4 -- not.-one mode, there are myriad modes of risk assessment.
5 When an individual assesses riska shall I get in an 6 airplane and fly to San Francisco tomorrow, or shall I get e
7 out of bed this morning and walk across the street?
8 I think every human being tends to assess those 9 risks in somewhat different ways, but that is one context in 10 which we assess risk.
11 Another way is the way that a corporation may 12 assess risks of the kind we are talking about when it 13 decides to make an investment of its resources in a
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14 particular area of technology.
A subheading of that, I 15 suppose, is the way an insurance company assesses risk for 16 th e purpose of making money by gambling on its competence to l'7 assess risk well.
18 Another way is the way a legislative bod'y assesses 19 risks when it determines whether or not, for example, to 20 prohibit the sale of fireworks or when it considers whether 21 th e proper age for a motor vehicle operator's license ought 22 to b e 14, 16, 18, or some place in between.
23 Still another is the way a regulatory agency 1
24 assesses risk for purposes of implementing le gisla tive s
25 mandates, and then finally, I suppose, the courts, when 0
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4 I think it is important to keep these things in
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5 mind, and I may come back to this as we go forward.
From 6 the standpoint of the NRC's possible establishment of e
7 quantitative safety goals, standards, criteria, or what have 8 you, I think it is necessary again to distinguish tetween 9 two possible contexts in which we might talk about such 10 goals for standards.
11 One is the development of those numbers for 12 internal use by the NRC, f or the general guidance of the NRC
()
13 staf f and perhaps the Commissioners themselves, and the 14 other is an external application of those goals.
let me 15 talk first about the latter category.
16 Th ere is no reason, it seems to me,why the NRC l'7 could not right now without any further statutory 18 authoeiration adopt quantitative goals or standards of 19 criteria defining how safe is safe enough.
There is no t
20 reason, it seems to me, why the NRC could not adopt a rule 21 that says that if certain numerical criteria are met, it e
Z1 f ollows f rom that that the Commission will be able to make 23 the reasonable assurance, not inimical, will not endanger, i
24 without undue risk, determinations that are presently 25 required.
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1 Such goals or standards or criteria can tak e a 2 variety of forms.
They can be simple or they can be 3 complicated.
They can be unitary, binary, multiple.
They 4 can be pure numbers, or they can be stated in terms of units 5 of time, space, lives, dollars, rems, what have you, or any 6 combination'of those, and if such a rule were adopted, then 7 the question would become in licensing adjudication and 8 regulatory actions whether those particular numbers are met 9 by a particular facility or a particular activity.
10 On the other hand, it is also possible to conceive 11 of NRC's not doing this by rulemaking, and rather simply 12 adopting a set of quantitative standards for the internal D.
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13 quidance of the staff.
So, in terms of purely staff 14 positions, a utility or equipment manufacturer will knov 15 that if certain numerical standards are met, the staff's 16 position will be clearly defined.
17 This would have no binding effect if this route 18 vere taken on the external world.
It would not have any 19 binding effect as f ar as the Licensing Boards or the Appeal e
20 Soard of the Commission are concerned.
21 It ink that at this juncture it is useful to ask 22 what is the utility or the significance of quantitative 23 standards, wha t useful purpose do they serve?
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They would 2 certainly simplify the process of licensing and reculation,
? and they would add a degree of stability and certainty to 4 the entire licensing process.
5 All that industry would have to do is come up with 6 required numbers through the use of a pa rtic ula r e
7 methodology, and the staff': position would then be known 8 clesfly.
On the other hand, if we talk about the,tandards 9 for external *. application, we might ask what the usefulness 10 of that might be.
That is that if a utility meets certain 11 quantitative standards, it will receive a license despite 12 the efforts of anybody, the staff or intervenors, to thwart 13 the issuance of that license.
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14 This would have all the benefits that I have just 15 enumerated, and in addition to that, it would also greatly 16 simplify the totality of the licensing process, including I'7 the procedures before the hearing boards, et cetera.
18 The difficulty with that, however, is, as Dr. lave 19 pointed out, before you can go into that area, you have to e
20 have a number or a set of numbers, th a t is, or are 21 acceptable, acceptable in the public policy sense, and I a
22 would like for a moment now to turn to the question in this t
i Z3 latter sense, at least, the external a;;11 cation of i
24 quantitative standards, to what the establishrent of a 25 quan titative ; al would nean.
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1 The quantitative goal standard, or criteria would 2 sean that a specified level of risk that falls within that 3 number or the range of numbers is acceptable.
This raises 4 the question, acceptable to whom, and a further question, 5 decided.to be acceptable by whom?
Who makes the 6 determination of that acceptability?
7 I would like to'-- I would like to at this
~
8 juncture assert a number of propositions.
! think, 9 incide.1 tally -- I think you will observe that my comments.
10 although I may come at this from a somewhat different 11 perspective, and have somewhat different nuances, the 12 substance of what I am saying is, I believe, very close,
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13 almost identical to the position th a t was taken by Dr. lave 14 in his discussion, the general acceptability of risk.
15 The things that people say about accepting certain 16 degrees of risk of cancer or what have you at the individual l'7 level is an entirely different case than where public policy 18 is involved.
Dr. Lave used, in terms of individual 19 risk -taking, the example, if somebody asked him to take a l
20 one in a million rish of getting cancer, he would refuse to l
21 take it as an abstract matter.
He would refuse to take that i
a E risk, to accept that risk.
The risk would not be 23 acca ptable, he said, without some kind of adequately 24 compensatin7 benefit.
- ve 25 I think the validity of that point that T, r.
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In my opinion, 4 no risk of harm is ever acceptable in a public policy sense 5 unless there are compensating benefits.
6 Moreover, I think in a public policy context we 7 have to be aware that there is a tide running, and there has 8 been a tide running in this country and perhaps in the 9 entire worlf for a long period of time, and th a t tide speaks 10 for the proposition that whatever the level of risk of harn 11 to the environment or life may be, we always want to try to 12 make that risk less, unless there are compensating benefits
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13 for accepting a greater degree of risk.
14 Public policy is always striving to reduce risks 15 to people, and more recently to the environment as well.
16 Ihe third thing th at I would simply mention so 17 that you knov I know it and have not for;otten it -- I knov 18 you know it -- is that risks and benefits are incommensurate 19 in their impact.
There is no necessary relationship between G
20 the quantum of risk assumed by anybody and the quantum of 21 benefit received by anybody.
This makes the problem of a
22 assessmen t of risk and assessment of the acceptability of 23 risk extremely di'ficult, and I would raise with you the 24 question, who are the people who are capable of making these 25 determinations as to whether or not risk is acceptable.
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1 I would respectfully say co you, gentlemen, that I 2 do not think the AORS has that competence.
I think you 3 clea rly have enormous competence to define the quantum of 5
4 risk in nuclear reactors.
I do not, however, think th a t you 5 have very much competence at all to define, to identify 6 benefits, or to place a value on those benefits, or to 7 balance benefits against risk.
8
.N o w, there are certain things that are fairly 9 obvious.
You know, I suppose all of us would say better 10 electricity at lower cost with less impact on the 11 environment is a benefit.
I am not sure that as a matter of 12 public policy, that is a benefit, because in terms of
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13 accepting what benefits public policy wants, you have to ask 14 yourself what other benefits public policy may want that may 15 in some way be in conflict with the first benefit or 16 inconsistent with the first benefit, or indeed, in the more 17 typical case.
18 There are not enough resources available to 19 provide both benefits, and therefore somehow the polity has d
N to make a judgment as to which judgment it prefers, and I 21 simply do not think that that kind of competence resides in a
22 the ACRS.
I do not think it resides in me.
I do not think i
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I do not think it resides in 1
24 any grcup.
I don't think it resides in the Congress of the 25 United S ta tes in a technical or expert judgment sense.
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What I would suggest to you is that it is 2 perfectly legitimate for the ACES to go through this 3 exercise, identify and hang a number on risks, identify and 4 hang a number on the benefits ar you perceive them, come out S with a bottom line, take that to the NRC, which gay remain 6 not accepted, let them go through this exercise, take it~ to 7 the public, let the public shoot at it through the ordinary a processes of public opin' ion and formation of political 9 views, le t the Congress shoot at it, and be prepared to 10 accept the judgment that 'you are wrong on that particular 11 number.
That reflects a risk benefit assessment.
12 What I am suggesting is that the process through.
13 which the acceptability of risk is determined in our society
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14 is an immensely complex process.
It is qualitative, 15 subjective, emotional, and indeed many times, perhaps 16 always, irrational, but that is the way it is done.
17 I am not suggesting that it be done at the ballot 18 ho x.
I am not suggesting it can be-done only by 19 legislation.
It can be done by the NBC, but the NEC does o
20 not have complete latitude to come up with risk benefit l
l 21 assessments reflected in quantitative standa rds that will.be 4
22 publicly acce ptable.
Z3 lat us always bear in mind tha t the NEC is a 24 political institution.
It must be responsive to political 25 reality.
If a Commissioner wants to be reappointed when his A
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t 1 9erm expires, he has got to be careful not to depart too far 2 from the bes ten path of accepted wisdom.
You know, the 3 Chairman can be replaced by the President at any time.
The 4 Chairman has to be careful 1 bout these things.
5 So, all of these decisions have to be based more 6 in political reality than in any kind of objective facts or 7 objective criteria, and one has to be prepared, and not 8 regard it as a tragedy if one comes up with a number and th e 9 number does not hold up.
10 As a matter of fact, I think one of the things we 11 have to recognize in talking about quantified safety 12 standards is that any quantification you come up with is 13 likely to be quite ephemeral.
You know, I suspect that 30 (v~');
14 years ago, if the then Atomic Energy Commission adopted a 15 regulation saying, we hereby define as acceptably safe any 16 nuclear reactor that is painted red, white, and blue, the l
17 public probably would have accepted that.
18 Today, one wonders whether any kind of formulation 19 that the.4RC came up with wo uld find public acceptability.
o 20 Times change.
?ublic attitudes change.
?ublic sentiments 21 about risk benefits and the acceptability of risks change in s
22 an almost mercurial fashion.
There is no eternal truth that 23 goes to the acceptability of particular risks.
This is a 24 dynamic process.
25 I was thinkin; as Dr. Lave described his proposal r~s l
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1 for takinc some quantitative criteria :n a road show to 2 various cities and hold hearings on them, I was thinking, 3 yes, that was a great idea, but assuming you come up with a 4 number, how long vill that number retain validity before yea 5 have to take it on another road show to see how you are 6 going to amend it?
I think this is a fact of life that is 7 very difficult.
8 Reference was made earlier to Richard '411 son's 9 notions about coming up with two levels of safety, a 10 negligible level that would be pronounced accept. ably safe 11 and a higher level that would be pronounced unacceptable, 12 and that is really based on the view that experts, elite
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13 groups such as the ACES or the NRC or Dr. Lave and I somehow V-14 can pontificate and tell people out there what is acceptably 15 sa f e.
16 The difficulty is that they are not going to l
17 believe us.
If they do believe us because ve are so 18 personable or forceful or what have you, their belief in 19 what they tell them is more likely to be short-lived taan
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20 no t, and that, it seems to me, is one of the great traps of 21 a quantified safety standard.
22 I think any attempt to come out with quantitative 23 safety standards rather than the present kind of verbal, 24 subjective standard for safety is likely to be
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25 incomprehensible to substantial seg=ents of the public.
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/'N 1 Substantial segments of the public are ;oing to be sa ying, 2 here again the scientific and engineering priesthood is 3 attempting to cell us some thing, and the only way that we 4 can be comfortable with this is to accept it on the basis of
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t 5 our faith in their judgment.
6 I do not think I have to spell out for you the 7 fact that in this particular era of American history 8 althougn I e xpect less today than five or ten years ago 9 there is a great skepticisa in the United States, 10 particularly on the part of younger people, about placing 11 faith and confidence in any elite or expert person or body.
12 So, the way I come out on this is essentially
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I very strongly endorse and support anything that (O
14 will create a licensing and regulatory structure that will 15 ge t mo re nuclear power plants built safely, more quickly, 16 more efficiently, and more economically.
I think the l'7 development of quantitative safety standards will inevitably 18 contribute to that objective.
I have the feeling that it is 19 better at least at the outset until we have a few years' 20 experience with this to develop such standards solely for 21 inte rnal application within the NRC staff.
1 0
22 Af ter there is some experience with that, and 23 hopefully when the NRC regains -- well, " regains" is a bad 24 word -- gains public confide nce in the way it is running the 25 licensin; and regulatory program, it may then be pcssible to
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1 take this concept public and try to give it some binding 2 effect through a formal rulemaking process.
3 That completes what I wanted to sa y.
I would b6 4 happy to respond to any questions.
5 MR. PLESSETTs Carson?
6 MR. HARKS I certainly would not wish to be felt 7 to be arguing in any way against your point that to push 8 something through to acceptability or to expect it to be 9 acceptable just because some numbers seem to be right is a 10 perf ectly fatuous expectation.
11 You did not mention at all whether or not you 12 would regard it as useful to have developed risk criteria on fT 13 which you say we might feel we are experts -- risk
\\_f 14 evaluations and comparative risk, that is, electricity.
We 15 don ' t knew what value society will put on it.
i 16 It is electricity nevertheless, and you can do it 17 in one way or you ran do it in another, and there could be l
18 imagined a comparative risk associated with the two ways.
19 Is there a value to obtaining, trying to firm up
=.n d 20 possibly not necessarily go on the road with but at least 21 make available such quantities as that?
e 22 MR. GREEN:
Dr. Mark, I have always been skeptical 23 of comparative risk assessments, and without going in to 24 grea t detail, let me give you the main reason why I am 25 skeptical about it.
The kind of comparison you have in mind
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1 is between fossil fuels and nuclear power, where fossil 2 fuels involve laws of life in the mining of coal, involve a 3 lot of dirt and CO and so on, and nuclear power does not 2
4 involve that.
5
' Jell, as one who has studied the process of risk 6 assesraent over a period of many years, I am skeptical, 7 really, about accepting at face value right now the 8 proposition that nuclear power is that clean.
! vould ;cint 9 out that we were burning coal and indeed gasoline in 10 automobiles f or a very long period of time bhfore these 11 fuels were used widely enough and in sufficiently dense 12 populations to begin to produce epidemiological data that
_J 13 they were harmful to life.
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14 I simply, from the standpoint of the public policy 15 analyst, am not now prepared to assune that 50 years from 16 now or 100 years from now we may not fin d to our surprise 17 th a t the low levels of radiation that are now abroad in our 18 environment as a consequence of nuclear power are also 19 harardous to life.
20 I think when you a re talking about alternatives on 21 different time scales and involving different kinds of 4
Z1 considerations, that comparative risk is tri ck y.
You know, 23 I would also point out that with respect to coal and oil, 24 you do not have the probler that is of such concern to Dr.
25 Lave of prolif eration of nuclear weapons.
F.o v do you factor n
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1 into this comparison tha t risk which comes from 2 proliferation or from misuse of uranium and plutonium?
I do 3 not know how you do it in any sense other than ad vocacy.
4 MR. PlESSETT:
Mr. Green, do you think that using 5 less nuclear power and more coal will affect proliferation?
6 MR. GREEN:
Using more coal and less nuclear.
7 MR. PlESSETT:
Less nuclear.
8 MR. GEEEN:
I don't know.
I am not an expert on 9 the subject of proliferation.
I suspect that some years age 10 we let the genie out of the bottle, and it is going to be 11 pretty damn hard to put it in, or at least to keep it in the 12 bottle.
(~J <1 13 MR. PlESSETT Okay.
I will take that as an r
14 answer.
15 MR. CARBON:
On the matter of comparison, don 't 16 You have to take what you do know today about each of the 17 two possibilities and make your best judgment based on what 18 you do know?
19 MR. GREEN:
Yes.
And for that reason, my own 20 public -- my own personal public policy preference is to 21 relyon nuclear rather than on coal.
On the other hand, it o
22 is quite possible that our society as a whole throuch these 23 complex processes of forming judgments on unacceptability l
24 may come out the other way.
What ! do think is important 25 is, if the ACES or some other body like Dr. lave and I makes n
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6 MR. PLESSETTs Paul?
7 MR. SHEWM0h I guess one -- lot me make a 8 statement to see if I understood what you said.
You said 9 risk and benefits are not commensurate.
Does this mean that 10 only one in 50,000 die, and to him the benefits were not 11 commensurate no matter what?
Cr what do those words mean to 12 you?
/"h 13 MR. GREENS Well, let me give you the most V,
14 dramatic kind of example.
You have a nuclear power plant in 15 Westchester County, New York, that provides enormous 16 benefits to the residents of the New York City area by 17 providing abundant, cheap, clean electricity, and if you 18 were going to take the fuel elements out of them and ship 19 them by truck to New Mexico, where you are going to bury 20 them, or something of that kind, you are exposing a whole 21 bunch of people all the way from New York to New Mexico to o
Z2 th e transportation and ultimate disposition of that, and 23 they are not getting any benefit at all from the activity 24 that gives rise to the risk.
25 MR. SHEWMON:
Okay.
A different question, then.
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383 d(m 1 You sort of vent through this list ef people and 2 organirations, none of which vere competent to judge 3 benefits, and I sort of ended up rondering hov -- since 4 nobody can do it, but it gets done, does it sort of happen 9
5 in the middle of the night when nobody was looking, or what 6 was your perception of how it does get done?
7
- 33. GBEEN:
I think it gets done essentially 8 unconsciously or subconscicusly.
Ihat is, every time a 9 public policy decision is made, somebody decides that the 10 advantages of doing something outweigh the disadvantages of 11 something.
That is basically how the process works, and I 12 think the thing that I take sone issue with is having any
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13 kind of narrow group of people consciously come up with a 14 number and saying on one side of this number you have 15 acceptable safety, and on the other side of the number you 16 have unacceptable saf ety.
I'7 Now, I don't have any problem, incidentally, if 18 Congress does that.
All I a= saying is -- all ! vant to say 19 1: ' hat I do not think that they have the competence to co=e 20 up with a nunter that has any eternal truth to it or any 21 objective truth or validity to it.
It is a ;olitical nunber o
22 which, be cau se it is adopted by Congress and signed by the 23 President, is operative for all purposes until it is changed.
24 MR. CK3ENT:
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1 fact, we urged that they develop some thing and bring it to 2 the Congress to see what the Congress had to say, so ve are 3 with you on that.
With regard to the possibility of 4 developing strictly in-house numerical crite ria, I guess I 5 am not sure that that is a workable precedure in the 6 following sense.
~
7 It is my understanding that at least one hearing 8 board has looked at what the staff has done with regard to 9 airplane crashes and so forth, what is in the standard 10 review plan.
When it says 10 to the minus whatever, the 11 magic number, if you get there by a best estimate, you are 12 okay, sort of home free to certain things.
~N 13 And they have looked at other kinds of things, for (d!
14 example, loss of all power, and found that this numbec could
-7 15 he larger than 10 I am told recently -- told the NEC 16 staf f you have to somehow deal with this event, even though 17 you meet the single failure criterion and so forth.
18 The probabilities as computed by the experts come
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21 they had not met, the hearing board says, you got numbers 1
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24 into the process.
25 So, in other words, I do not know that these l
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4 MR. GREENS All I can say to that is, I have never 5 been known to defend the performance of hearing boards.
I 6
(General laughter.)
7 MR. MCELLERs To follow up on Dave's comment, I 8 was a little concerned about the idea of using numbers 9 in-house in the sense that the NRC tries to operate and does 10 indeed operate as an open organization, so any number we 11 used or they used in-house would quickly become known 12 outside, or if they tried to keep it to themrelves, to test
/~h 13 it out for a period of years prior to letting it be known
\\-l 14 outside, th en this would do far more harm than good.
15 So, I am concerned about how that would be done.
16 MR. GREEN:
'd e ll, I am not sure that I am not also 17 concerned, or that I am enthusiastic about that idea.
I de 18 thin k that it would be -- that if we are going to 19 quantitative standards, it would be easier and preferable to 20 try it in-house for a while before taking them public.
I am 21 aware of those dif ficulties.
9 22 MR. KERRs I am intrigued by your ides, and 23 indeed, it would seem to me that one could have a period in 24 which, having arrived at a number, the staff would still on 25 occasion be asked perhaps to defend their decision based on rm t
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1 some combination of criteria.
2 I mean, one would have to adopt a number that was 3 not in conflict with existing standards, and if one did e
4 that, it seems to te the:e ceuld be a defense before a 5 h e a r i'n g board that could either be quantitative er 6 qualitative, and in the meantine, one would gain se=e 7 experience with it.
8 It seens to se it could be verkable without beinq 9 secret or completely forsal.
10
- 53. SHEWMON:
I don't know about the infer:a1 11 f o rm ali ty, but it see=s to me it has t0 he open.
I su;;ose 12 it would be a Rec. Guide or sonethin; like that.
This would S
13 he enunciated as a coal that we would verk towards, and as I At 14 understand the judicial process, theu;h it is certainly open 15 for correction, what the judicial review beard tries to de 16 is see that indeed the agency can docunent that it has lived 17 by its evn rules, and if the beard says it is not consistent 18 in how it applies its rules, that is why they are there, 19 whether we would like what they say or not.
It seems to me 20 it has tc be public.
It just does net have to be blessed by 21 Congress.
It is sosething ycu verk against yourself.
Isn't ZZ that -- where did I go vreng?
23 M3. GREEN:
Ne where.
24 (General laughter.)
25 XE-ELISSE!73 Let me ask Tr-39:0s:3 if he V0uld
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I not like to make a few brief remarks.
2 MR. BERNIRO:
Yes, I would.
/
3 My name is Bob Bernero.
I am director of the 4 probabilirtic analysis staff.
I would like to add to the 5 comment about internal versus external.
I would ' perceive it 6 that any quantitative standard would start its life as 7 perhaps an individual or a group position within th4 staff 8 quite publirly, defending some rationale for regulatory 9 action, and evolve, once again publicly and cpenly, into 10 perhaps a branch position, a regulatory guide, and perhaps 11 even onto the status of a regulation or a Congressional Act.
12 But I think it is a logical point to say that such 13 a thing may not be prudently borne at the Congressional
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14 level or at the Commission level, but rather grow, rather 15 evolve f rom practical use and refinement.
16 That brings me to a point.
I would like to raise 17 a question.
In most of the discussion of quantitative goals i
18 or rriteria or objectives or standards, there is apparent 19 the desire to define a combination of risks and benefits 20 th a t would be judged acceptable or marginally acreptable or 21 not acceptable, leaving for later address whether some 22 individual plant or the totality of nuclear power plants 23 meet the selected goal or standard.
i 24 Is it possible that the proper approach would 25 rather be not to define a standard but to describe as 0d ALDE9 SON RE?ORTING COMPANY, iNC.
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3 course, make comment on, yes, this agency believes that its 4 actions achieving this level of saf ety and a pparently 5 obtaining for the body politic this level of benefits is a 6 sound practice, or no, the agency thinks it ought to be 7 tightening the screws by a decade or whatever.
8 Is it possible the overall strategy ought not to 9 he to strive for the definition of a standard, but rather to 10 strive for the most accurate possible description of 11 achieved risk and benefit, and then let the body politic 12 comment on that and argue for relaxation or intensification
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14 MR. GREEN:
Yes, I think it is -- it is possible.
15 Whether that is wise or not, I am not prepared to say right 16 no w.
I have not thought about it.
17 MR. PLESSETT:
Mr. Lave, do you have any comment 18 on thP.t.
19 MR. LAVE:
Never one not to talk when asked, I 20 think there are two' questions.
One is, descriptively, what 21 is going on?
What is possible?
It is almost impossible in 9
22 the abstract to talk about goals without being able to talk 23 about what the trade-offs look like.
We could get honest te
-12 24 God 10 as the risk level for nuclear reactors at a cost 25 of half a cent per kilowatt hour.
If that were the case, I O
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If we cannot get 10 at any cost, then we had 3 better look again at nuclear reactors, so we have to knov 4 what the nature of the technical trade-of f curve looks like, 5 and there is a lot of difference in my study of technologies 6 between what the technology advocates say about their o
7 technology and what you find in practice.
8 I was wandering around during the Conayis effort.
9 I spent a day out at k*estinghouse and talked to a 10 photovoltaic guy who said they were going to get a factor of 11 60 any day now.
His lab had it, and it was going to come 12 right on stream.
13 I talked to a conservation guy out at
()
14 Westinghouse.
It turns out we were going to use about 1 15 percent as such energy -- and so on and so on.
I got to 16 thin kin g there was no energy problem in the United States.
17 There was going to be so much energy, we are not going to 18 vant any of it.
We are going to be so efficient we don't l
19 know what to do.
So, I wo rry a little bit about the l
20 technology sdvocates.
That is why there is a lot to be said 21 for looking at the gractice, just as you said, to try and o
22 find as closely as we can what are the current risks of 23 nuclear reactors and what are the current benefits that stem 24 from them?
f hat says an awful 1o-about what Ycu can expect 3
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1 in practice.
I think that is a real necessary first step in 2 trying to define what the nature of the trade-offs look 3 like, but that does not speak to the normative issue:
what 4 does the public desire?
If you can define a curve that e
5 would for various prices give you various safety lev els,
6 that is, in one state, the end state of what we economists e
7 and you engineers try and do, to find out what that a technical curve looks like, but we should never deceive 9 ourselves, as Frofessor Green says, that we are the people 10 who are supposed to select where on that curve we want to 11 be.
That is not our job.
12 I hava opinions of it, but I am one of 220 million 13 people who have opinions on it.
And so, our job is to find 4
14 that curve and then to try to get the various sets of 15 decision-makers in society to rhoose the point on the curve, 16 but I have not seen what I think is a terribly convincing i
17 study yet of what in fact are the safety levels for current 18 reacto rs, and I would love to see that.
19 One more thing, going back a ways, in the exchange 20 on risk assessmen t, I think I probably agree more with 21 Professor Green than I agree with Lester Lave on that.
22 (General laughter.)
l 23 ME. LAVE:
The only way that comparative risk 24 assessment makes any sense is when you are comparing i
25 commensurates, and I like coal versus nuclear because you i
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2 same thing.
3 As Professor Green points out, they do different 4 things in different time periods.
There is a now versus 5 later, and so they are not quite as commensurate as you I
6 would like, but when I do it, I try and really go through, 7 and I try and set off, for example, mining deaths from coal 8 mining against mining deaths f rom uranium, and against 9 transportation deaths from both and air pollution versus low 10 level radiation, and then for waste disposal' I try and use 11 CO That is, I try and look at these category by 2
12 catagory to go on through.
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13 Of course, in th e best of all possible worlds, V
14 wha t you would find is one technology dominated another.
15 That is, it had lower risk in every single eategory, at 16 which point, aside from how certain we were, we would throw 17 u p our hat and say we had a solution.
That almost never 18 ha ppens.
19
~4 hat you find is, one is better in some a
20 categories; another is better in others.
You have to make 21 some judgment.
But anyway, the central point about n comparative risks is that you have to make sure you are 23 comparing commensurs ter.
Otherwise, you are just really in 24 trouble.
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1 about is when he goes on and talks about dams, that when 2 those dans are hydroelectric, then in some sense they are 3 quite ccmparable.
When they are ficod control or irrigation 4 or recreation, then they are not quite as comparable.
5 David sees those as being highly comparable.
I 6 see them as not being highly comparable, and so we get to 7 argue about it.
But this comparability is very much in the 8 eyes of the beholder, which is what I think Frofessor Green 3 was telling us.
10 One more point and I will stop for a minute now, 11 and that is, one of I thought the really nice pieces of 12 visdom I got o u.t of Conayis is from one of the operating 13 people, Don Allen, who said, you know, essentially, look,
(
14 suppose you were to do an analysis and find out that nuclear 15 power was 30 percent.cneaper and 50 percent safer.
What 16 would an operating person conclude from that?
17 He said, well, that would mean you would build 60 18 percent of your new power as nuclear and 40 percent as coal, 19 and being an academic, I looked at his as if he had just 20 so rt of fallen out of sight, and said, what are you talking 21 about?
And he said, well, that is your current n calculation.
Five years ago -- ten years ago we did the 23 calculation and oil was the cheapest, so we started builcing 24 oil plants.
25 The fact is that when you are responsible for O
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V 1 delivering power to people, you take any current set of 2 calrulations as indicative cf shat you know right now, not 3 as being true, and certainly not as being true for all time, 4 that therefore every operating person around knows you want 5 diversity.
6 You don't want to put all your eggs in one 7 basket.
You want to have some coal plants.
You want to 8 have some nuclear plants.
You want to have all kinds of 9 power sources out there.
10 I think this is precisely the case right now when 11 we are talking about new capacity.
We should not be talking 12 about only nuclear or only coal, because, first of all, you 13 will not get any utility to put that in, at least no utility
(
14 that is worth a damn.
They are always going to insist on 15 diversity, and we have to take account of that as our 16 counterfoil to the f act that the world does change.
17 It is conceivable that some time in the future l
18 there may be some untoward effect of nuclear that is 19 important that we don't know anything about right now, and 20 that means that there is never a technology where you want 21 to put all your eggs in one basket.
22
.4R. OKRENT:
Maybe I can twit lester a little bit.
23 (Genersi laughter.)
24 MP. CKR EN! s As an economist, I assume you are l
25 interested in an efficient allocation of resources, and so, n
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(~T kl 1 if society is spending a let more money to reduce an already 2 small risk than it is to make big gains en a large risk, I 3 would think you would look upon that as an inefficient use 4 of resources.
I would argue this is reason enough to do a
5 studies of comparative risks so that you know that if 6 society is following the path I have just indicated, it is e
7 not because it does not know, but because it has good 8 reasons.
9 So, to me there is a very good reason for having 10 knowledge of comparative risks, and then doing the decision 11 making in that ligh t.
12 As I say, I have to assume that that appeals to 13 your economic background.
14
.1R. LAVE:
I think that is perfectly right.
If we I mean, if in order to get re-elected the President 15 had 16 were to promise to create a Department of Risk Analysis --
17 'de don't have enough delegates in the National Convention 18 now, but if we had known a year ago, we could have done 1
19 some thing about it.
Anyway, if the Fresident had promised 20 to d o tha t, then I think th a t what David has said is 21 absolutely right, that you would want to use society's 22 resources to first reduce the largest risks, because they 23 are the cheapest lives to buy, and you want to keep on going l
l 24 until lives get to be se expensive that society chcoses not 25 to buy any mora, or at least not f o r this yea r, and it would O'
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1 be a goal for next year.
2 But that is different from saying that risk out 3 there which society currently accepts is prima facie 4 indication that it is willing to accept that for right now.
5 There is a leap tha t goes on f rom getting from one to the 6 other.
I think there is a lot to be learned by studying 7 these things.
But I think -- I forget now who it was who 8 asked whether these decisions get made in the middle of the 9 night.
10 For some of those damn dams in California, the one 11 above Sacramento, I think the decision did get made in the 12 middle of the night, at least in terms of what the public I~)
13 had to say about it.
M 14 Taking a look at that now and saying, well, 15 everybody in the populace has accepted that, so therefore it 16 must be that they think that that risk is acceptable doesn't 17 exactly f ollow.
i 18 MR. OKRENTa I think you are right that -- I have 19 a rg u ed, in fact, that the knowledge of, let's say, what the a
20 historic risks have been, does not mean that they were 21 acceptable or even accepted.
hy point is, they frequently n
22 vece not even known, and they should be.
23 MR. PlESSETTs I would like to address a question 24 to M r. Green.
You know, the re has been some discussion --
l 25 well, I guess, a considerable smount of discussion.
Should
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390 DkJ 1 intervention in nuclear power plant licensing hea rings, 2 should it be funded by the people essentially, and maybe you 3 might even give us a little bit of a value judgment.
Do you 4 think intervention ic constructive, or enough constructive 5 so such a thing migh t be considered?
6 HR. GFEEN I think that intervention in nuclear
(
7 power plant licensing proceedings is an absolute waste of 8 everybody's time, money, and effort.
It accomplishes 9 nothing.
Decisions about the acceptability of nucles: ;over 10 plants should not be made in an adjudicatory hearing 11 context, and it folicws f rom that that I believe that not 12 oc ly would public funding of intervenors be a waste of the
'T 13 public treasury, but it would also =ess up the entire (V;
14 licensing process more than it is presently messed up by a 15 considerable f actor.
16 MR. PlESSETT:
Thank you.
May I ask Mr. lave a 17 questio' ?
You really implied a criticism of Okrent -- of n
18 compa ring oranges and apples.
Xaybe that is unfair.
It 19 seems to me in a sense there is a basic non-commensurability 6
20 in the risk sense, so you start out with this kind of mix-up 21 to begin with.
Am I wrong?
22
- 53. LAVES You certainly do, yes.
23 MR. PLESSETT Okay.
Not that Dave needs any 24 assistance.
l 25
(~eneral laughter.)
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MR. LAVE:
Can I ::ake one comment on the question 2 of funding?
I agree, I think, with everything that i
3 Professor Oreen just said, but I have something that he did 4 not say that I want to add.
Namely, when you look at a e
5 system and you see an ill some place, you do not want to 6 ignore it.
Okay.
And that is that -- I am trying to think 7 of a good medical analogy.
If you see somebody who has a 8 neoplasm on their toe, you don't went to say toes are 9 unimportant and should not govern the way we live, and 1() therefore we will ignore it, or you don ' t particularly want 11 to treat it with some sort of topical remedy.
You want to 12 recognize that there is a problem in the system, that in a f'l 13 democracy or indeed in any complicated system that problems V(
14 with the system surface in very unexpected places and ways, 15 and that you ignore them at your own peril.
16 So, on the one hand, it la incredibly naive to 17 take the hearings on individual reactors at face value and
[
l 18 sa y, yes, the world does rise and fall over whether we i
19 approve this particular reactor and that pa rticula r a
20 configuration.
On the other hand, there is some ill that is 21 there, and I think Professor Green is perfectly correct that o
Z2 we are wasting society's resources in i very complete 23 fashion by focusing on that hearing, because it cannot do 24 any good at that hearing.
25 If the issue is nuclear power, yea or nay, or O)
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\\ J' I safety procedures in general, there is nothing at that 2 hearing that can speak to that issue, but I think the fact 3 is that those intervenors did not see a way of getting at 4 what it is they wanted to get at, at a higher level, talking e
5 about the issues they wanted to talk about, so they attacked 6 where they could attack, a cood legal mechanis=.
7 So, I think that the controversies -- the 8 intervenors is a symptom that there is something wrong, that 9 some segment of of society, a reasonably important one, has 10 a problem, and ve have to find some way insofar as we can of 11 bringing that out in the open and dealing with it in the 12 o p en.
(s-)s 13 I agree.
Let's not have it take place at the t.1 individual reactor level.
That is a waste.
15 MR. GREEN:
May I -- I was going to ask even 16 bef ore Dr. Lave said that to amend and extend my answer.
17 Notwithstanding what I said, so long as the hearing process 18 remains in existence, and so long as it is used by the NRC 19 in a wa y that the NRC has used it, I believe there should be 4
20 intervenor funding.
21 That is as long as the NRC =aintains this fettish o
22 abou t the desirability of public participation in an 23 adjudica tory proceeding, there absolutely should be 24 intervenor funding.
My answer was rather utopian, and 25 consistent with what Dr. Lave said.
I think thst some O
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1 sechanism has to be provided if we are going to take away 2 public hearings.
3 Something would have to be provided to substitute 4 effectively for that, and so what I am really talking about r
5 is what I perceive as a need for broad fundamental reform of 6 the licensing process, and not merely tinkering with it or 4
7 applying bandaids to just ene or two particular phases of 8 the overall mechanism.
9 ME. CKEIXT Let ne talk about what may be one of 10 the bandsids.
I don' t know.
I nave been on this committee 11 for three years, maybe four.
I am not sure.
And I have 12 never heard of a rulemaking except something to do with ECCS f~)
13 wa y back when which -- all of a sudden, there is a rash of v
14 rulemakinos.
Everythinc seems to be going to :Stemaking, so 15 I have not lived through one yet, and as somebcdy who maybe 16 has been at this a little bit longer, and at least who has 17 an o pinion, is it your feeling that rulenakings by their 18 na tu re provide any more useful device for bringing out these 19 things than licensing bcards?
20 ME. GEEEN:
May I ask, for bringing out what 21 things?
22
- 33. SHEWMCN Well, the discontent which lave 23 suggested might be indicative of faults in the systes, and 24 you 11so were referring to, ! quess this is partly a steam 3 valve, partly 1 way for people to be heard that really know
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1 things that the. rest Of scciety should pay more attention to.
2 XE. GREEN:
There is always a choice that an 3 administrative -- a regulatory agency has unless it is 4 constrained by statute, as the N3C is, to do things by e,
5 rulemaking or adjudication.
For exanple, if one looks at 6 the way the Food and Drug Administration operates, if a drug
(-
7 manufacturer vants to get FDA approval of a new drug, the 8 drug manufacturer is required to petitionfer the adoption of 9 the rule approving d.he use of that new drug.
It is not done 10 th ro ugh ad j udica tio n.
11 So, the ronnor, visdes for many, many years on the 12 part of academics and on the part of people generally whom I
'h 13 vill characterire as liberals, whatever that means, is that k's(
14 rulemaking is always to be preferred t0 adjudication.
15 One of the reasons why rulemaking is to be 16 preferred to adjudication is that under the Ad inistrative 17 Procedure A :, there are all kinds of trappings of l
18 adjudication that we now have in the NEC hearin; ;rocess, 19 trials by proceedings, adversaries, discovery, c css i
20 examination, all that kind of stuff, whereas rulemaking 21 permits a promulgation of a rule without -- withcut any d
22 hearing at all, or a hea ring tha t is somewhat different, a j
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23 legislative ty;e 0: hybrid type hearin; rather than the type 24 of adjudiratory hea rin; we nov have in the licensing arena.
25 Now, I 01n100 answer 7000 questi0n squarely.
One O
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1 of the interesting things -- you know, if one were to speak 2 in terms of the conventional wisdom, intervenors in nuclear 3 licensing cases tend to be academics to some extent.
They 4 tend to be " liberals" to some extent, and you would think 5 that they would be dedicated to rulemaking rather than 6 adjudication, but they are not.
They are dedicated to 7 adjudication rather than rulemaking, because adjudication 8 gives them their maximum leverage to frustrate the system, 9 and to try to stop a particular nuclear power plant project.
10 There are in terms of this conventional wisdom, 11 incidentally, a number of remarkable inversions.
The case 12 of nuclear power is really quite inverted relative to the
(
13 case cf other subjects of regulation.
14 Now, in what other -- in what other area of 15 regulation of harardous activities or indeed what other area 16 of regulation generally can ycu find another government
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17 regulatory agency that is regarded as Public Enemy Number l
18 One of the interests, health and safety that it is supposed l
19 to be def ending ?
20 It is a very strange kind of inversion.
But 21 think in general rulemaking is supposed to be faster, more d
n efficient, less troubleso=e.
I think therefore unless l
23 extracrdinary pains are taken on the part of the rulemaker, 24 the NRC itself, to bring all inf orma tion out, et cetera, it 25 does not provide as good a f orum for the airing cf O
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2 That is a long answer, but I hope it is helpful.
3
- 32. SHEWXCNs Thank you.
4 MR. OKRENT:
As you know, if one tries to follev o
5 the quantitative route in the licensing process, whether it 6 is internal or internal and external, there vill aivays be 7 large uncertainties in the estinates and differences of 8 opinion anong menbers of the NEC staff, between the staff 9 and the applicant, between those and other people, and in to f act there vill not be any fundamental law of nature to 11 which you can go to find the right answer.
12 Howodo you foresee a nechaniss that could render
(~)
13 this problem manageable if there is one?
te 14
- 13. OEEENs Dave, I do not see anything 15 unsanageable about it, if you recognize the fact that the 16 function of what I will call law in our society is not to 17 come up with certain objective, truthful answers.
The 18 function is to resolve controversy.
So far as I an 19 concerned, if you could cose up with a rule that is defining 20 your quantitative standards in terns of any reactor being 21 painted with three stripes, one red, one white, and one N.
22 blue, and that vould have public confifence, it seens to se 23 tha t is good enough.
24 It is not necessary :: he precise.
It is not 25 necassary to tie everything up.
All tast is necessary is OL)
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/~V) 1 that what is done be accepted by that constituency out there 2 that we call the public, and the public's surrogates up on 3 Capitol Hill.
i 4
MR. PLESSETTs Let me suggest that both Mr. Lave c
5 and Mr. Green kind of give us successively a kind of 6 summation that we might take awa y with us.
Would you mind 7 doing that?
We will start with you, Mr. Lave.
8 (General laughter.)
9 MR. LAVE:
Before giving -- well, I think a 10 central part in the summation I am about to give is a slight 11 elaboration of a question or two ago which had to do with 12 how it is you get the process, whether you do a rulemaking
(
13 or adjudication, howevt.r you do the process, and I guess 14 that what I would have added is that a large part of the t
15 problem is finding felicitous ways to raise issues, and my i
l 16 problem witn the adjudicatory structure right now is that it 17 is not felicitous.
It does not enable people to deal with 18 central issues and therefore all you emerge from these 19 hearings with is some sort of delay in expressing l
20 expression of discontent.
21 Ar d basically there are two very different d
JZ processes that lead to settlement of th e issues.
One, as I 23 understand it, it is a sort of common law process where one 24 worries through particular cases, and from them emerges a 25 general principle.
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1 principles and use thes as guidelines in making individual 2 decisions.
3 They are v+ry different processes, and I think 4 that as an academic I am committed to ;eneral p ri nci ple s,
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5 but whenever I look at the world, I see you start scople 6 talking about general principles of how safe is safe, or 7 what would you like your drugs to do for you, and so on.
8 You don't ever cet resolution of those, because they are too 9 general. People can't deal with them very well, and I bring 10 those discussions back to reality by saying, I don't like 11 your hypothetical.
let 's talk about real casar-
!f we ever 12 come to a hypothetical like that, then we are going to have
(~)
13 a hard time.
V 14 So, I an not sure what the most felicitous way is 15 of raising these kinds of issues, but I think that an awful u5 lot of emotion and resources and time are being vasted right i
1:7 now using the wrong format.
ni A brief summary of the points I was trying to i
l 19 make.
The first is that to put it in sore or less the
- 3) extreme way that Professor Green just put it, that 21 acceptable risk need not have anything to do with any i
A n objective scientific or engineering facts, that acceptable 23 risk is what peo;Ie choosa to accept, and if for whatever 24 reason they chose to ignore all scientific and engineering l
l 25 data, and to worry about the color of the reactor or whether
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1 reactor operators had Ph.D.'s or were over the age of 40 or 2 whatever it is, ani that that is what made them acceptable, 3 then that is what would make them acceptable.
4 I presume as part of th a t that the ACF.S and the C'
5 NRC would also make sure that these reactors were safe, but 6 whether the reactors are really safe is different fron what 7 the -- what criteria of acceptability there are.
Those are 8 two different issues.
They are not completely separate, but 9 they are two different issues, and I was trying to remark on 10 the complexity of the task of getting accepability of risk, 11 and was trying in the end to set out one suggested procedure 12 by which the public input could be felt.
(~')
13 No, I do not think that that would be a procedure
%s 14 which would work for all time, but you and I have very 15 finite lif e spans, and so, who cares, anyway?
Indeed, one 16 of th.e lassons of the twentieth century has been that we 17 have continuously insisted that risks be lowered, that what 18 was acceptable ten years ago is not acce ptable ncv.
19 There are a number of factors that give rise to 20 th a t.
One is our increasing 1.ncomes.
Another one is just a 21 general consciousness of the various safety levels around.
22 I think there is good evidence within the United States we 23 have managed to inrrease safety levels.
The benchma rk I 24 like to 1cok at there is life expectancy.
Life expectancy 25 has con tinuo usly ir. creased in the United Sta tes, age and sex O)
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/T C) 1 specific, and obviouslyu whatever anybody has to say about 2 the chemicals in the environment or radiation or 3 occupational saf ety a nd health, the fact is that as an 4 overall measure, people in society live longer, and 4
5 therefore must have been saf er at least with regard to 6 mortality as your criteria.
7 So, we are making some progress, but it is also 8 clear tha t people insist on being safer still, so that g whatever criteria you want right now is probably not going 10 to be sufficiently stringent ten years from now.
That ought 11 to be recognired, and that is fine.
That is part of what we 12 live with.
I think that whenever you are holding th ese
- 1 13 sorts of hearings to try and get public inpu t or try and I v l
14 persuade the Congress to aid in this resolution of
(
15 conflicting values, that you need to get as pure an 16 expression as you can of alternatives and the comparative l
17 risks and comparative benefits of the alternatives as l
18 closely as you possibly can, so that decision-makers can see 19 much more about what are the implications, what are their 1
e l
20 choices.
21 I do not think there is anybody around so naive as n to feel that unless technologies are absolutely safe, that 23 v e d o no t went them around, but the question is always, 24 compared to what, and I do better than that.
l 25 MP. GRIIN.
I think I can be very brief in my n.
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1 summary.
Probably two sen tences.
2 Sentence Number One.
The acceptability of risk is 3 a political question, and it is not a question that can be 4 ultimately a'nswered by experts.
e 5
Secondly, the quantification of safety goals is a 6 usef ul thing to attempt but it is dangerous if taken too p
7 seriously.
8 MR. PLESSETT Well, before we recess, I would g like to have Dave Ohrent and then Hal Lewis make a little 10 talk, just a couple of minutes.
11 MR. SHEWMON:
Two sentences, if you can.
12 MR. OKRENT:
I will give nine_to Hal.
()
13 MR. LEWISs You make me feel more guilty than I do 14 for being out for most of this.
I was out for most of the 15 discussion, and now you have called attention to that fact.
l I
16 (General laughter.)
l 11 MR. PLESSETT You are free to rush into a vacuum.
l l
'8 MR. LEWIS:
I have nothing to say.
I do think it 19 is very important to have quantitative safety goals that we 1
e 20 do not take too seriously.
If we take them too seriously, 21 we will not be able to achieve them and get them accepted, 22 and ! agree with what bo th Professor Green and Dr. lave have 23 said, that these things are in the mind of the beholder, and 24 that the acceptability of them is not likely to be widely 25 understood in its deep technical base by the public.
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1 On the other hand, the importance of quantitative 2 goals for the ;;?C itself, I think, is very great in 3 providing some mechaniss for deciding at whatever level 4 where you turn off and where you turn on, and I think that
't' 5 lave's example of the FAA study of the frangible lighting 6 standards was a good one, even though, you know, I was a 7 little bit cynical about why Congress was villing to buy it.
S thin.( :nat the interest in lighting -- frangible 9 ligh ting -- was increased at the ti:e of the San Francisco 10 accident where the 747 took devn a whole batch of lighting 11 standards and ripped cut its belly, but was saved because it 12 h a d, I guess, three hydraulic systems, of which it lost two.
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13 I may be wrong on the numbers there, but I think v
i 14 that is close to right.
So, redundancy saved the plane.
u5 Obviously, one could go in that direction, a echanism for l
16 kncving hev the regulatory agency runs its business through I
17 quan tita tive standa rds is extremely importan t.
The 18 acceptability, I think, is just of secondary importance, and l
l n) depends on things other than the things we can resolve O
g) around this table.
Small comment.
21 ME. PlESSETT Dave, you still have sose ti=e.
He
'6 22 did not use all your time.
23 (General laught.r.)
24 M. E. OKEENT:
~4e still hope to brin; in a package 25 of dccc:ents for the cc:mittee to censider in the Eepte ber
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400 VIRG:N!A AVE. S.W., WASHINGTON. O C. 20:241:221554-2N5
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(J 1 meeting as a possible thing to send to the Commission to 2 think on.
3 MR. PlESSETT -
Dave is very aware of that charge.
4 4
Any other questions of our quests here today from
-9j 5 the committee?
Bill?
6 MR. KERR:
I did not have a question.
I wanted to p
7 say I for one found this a very interesting and stimulating 8 presentation.
9 MR. PLESSETT:
Yes, indeed.
I think we are very 10 much indebted to both of you, and hope that we will see you 11 again, if you do not object to coming back.
'de appreciate 12 i t.
()
13 MR. RAY:
An unimportant observation that I would 14 like to make is that we discuss risk assessment and 15 evaluation f rom the viewpoint of selling som e thin g to the 16 public, to your management, you name it. I think that risk 17 assessmen t and benefit evaluation is an excellent ul engineering tool as a basis for judgment and decision n) against the one alternative versus another in developing a o
20 design, and a very valuable one.
21 MR. PlESSETTs I don't think our visitors would
,o ZZ quarrel with that.
Any other comments?
23 MR. KERRs I was just going to add to Jerry's 4
24 statement, as long as one does not take it too se riou sly.
25 (General laughter.)
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ALDEPSCN REPCRT!NG COMP ANY. INC.
400 VIRGINIA AVE. S.W.. WASHINGTON. 0.C. 20024 (202) 554-2345
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MR. PLESSETTs Very good.
i-2 MR. RAY:
It can get very frustrating.
3 MR. LIWISs That is an inscrutable comment.
4 MR. FLESSETTs Acain, let me thank you.
d
'l 5
I would like to ask the Committee to reconvene at 3.
2
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6 1:00 o' clock if they do not object.
7 i
7 (Whereupon, at 11430 a.m.,
the mesting was 8 recessed, to reconvene at 1 00 p.m. of the same day.)
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ALCERSON AEPCRTING OCMP ANY. !NC.
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O auctz^a arocr2: oar co.e4rss:cs This is Oc :
tify tha the attachec preceecings before the s'
in the matter Of:
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR. SAFEGUARDS 244th Meetina
.ms a.. e.r
.s. o c e. c.4 1.. e..August C, 1980 o.
4 l
Docket Nu=ber:
I 1-
? Lace of ?: oceeding:
Washincton, D. C.
l were held as herein appears, anc tha:
nis is the Original transer e:
thereof for :he file of :he Coc=Lssion.,
i David s. Parker Official Reper:er (Typec)
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