ML20052D593
| ML20052D593 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 11/24/1981 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| References | |
| ACRS-1899, NUDOCS 8205060609 | |
| Download: ML20052D593 (13) | |
Text
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11/24/81 MIh S HE ACRS SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING ON ADVANCED REACTORS 5
ARGONNE, IL SEPTEMBER 17 & 18, 1981 The purpose of the meeting was to discuss safety issues and philosophy regard-ing a commercial size LMFBR plant.
Attendees:
M. Carbon, Subcommittee Chainnan W \\.M C. Mark, Subcommitiee Member
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S. Siegel, ACRS Consultant t'
J. Hartung, ACRS Consultant L. Koch, ACRS Consultant eT U32" M W. Lipinski, ACRS Consultant R. Avery, ACRS Consul tant C '. y'
- a G. Golden, ACRS Consultant k " ~,,'.
,y E. Igne, Designated Federal Employee
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G. Clare, Westinghouse Electric Corp.
T. Ginsberg, Brookhaven National Laboratory E'
There were no written or oral statements made by members of the public.
Attached is the meeting agenda and documents received by the Subcommittee.
Dr. M. Carbon in his opening remarks stated that this meeting is the first real opportunity for the Subcommittee to discuss substantive matters that pertain to a possible LMFBR licensing proceeding. The Subcommittee will attempt to identify safety issues and possible long range research issues applicable to LMFBRs.
Dr. Carbon also stated that the NRC and ACRS wili initiate CRBR licensing soon and that the discussion at this meeting should not be directed specifically toward CRBR because the design is essentially compl ete.
It is hoped that the Subcommittee activities can have a significant influence on the conceptual design of a lerge LMFBR.
A general philosophical discussion by the Subcommittee brought out the following topics that may require further discussion.
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e MINUTES ADVANCED REACTORS 9/17&l8/81 prevention vs. mitigation
- pool vs. loop
- fuel propagation characteristics
- definition of plant operational safety vs. safety and public health The discussion then focused on the fifteen specific items listed in the August 24, 1981 letter from Dr. M. Carbcn to the Subcommittee consultants.
Item 1:
Safety Goals R. Avery, ANL, stated that the safety goals should he the same for light water reactors as that for fast reactors.
In addition, a specific method-ology should be established in determining whether or not a safety goal is being met. Finally, it is his opinion that if a safety goal is not estab-lished, it should not have a profound effect on the final design of the plant.
It was suggested that safety goals should be related to core damage prob-ability which could then be related to the impact on the public or could be used for defining what mitigation schemes may be required.
J. Hartung presented a brief description of the AIF-proposal on quantita-tive safety goals. The values they chose were not rigorously obtained but felt that the numbers would be beneficial in terms of facilitating discussion and that the numbers were " ball-park" values and not unreasonable. The values the AIF chose for the proposed quantitative safety goals are as follows:
- individual risk
< 10-5/yr mortality risk
- population risk
< 1 fatality /yr per 1000 MWe
- cost-benefit ratio
$100/ man-rem
- large scale fuel melt 10-4/ reactor year The numbers are similar to those of the ACRS.
MINUTES ADVANCED REACTORS 9/17&l8/81 It was suggested by Dr. S. Siegel that the Subcommittee include a political or behavioral scientist to provide input in establishing safety goals. An alternate suggestion was to have these nontechnical people attend meetings on an ad hoc basis only.
Item 2: LMFBR Safety vs. LWR Safety LMFBR should be as safe as LWRs.
A point was made that this statement may be too restrictive for LMFBRs.
For example, if a societal safety goal for light water reactors is one person death per year per plant and that in actuality LWRs real risk.is one-tenth of that value, then undue burden is placed on the LMFBR design to achieve LWR comparability.
The Subcommittee should perhaps aim toward safety goals rather than stating that LMFBRs should be as safe as LWRs.
It was stated that as far as the CRBR is concern, it should be as safe as the LWR.
Item 3: Defense-in-Depth Defense-in-depth as a criteria is very good. The single failure criteria partly solves this problem and one needs to consider multiple failures to resolve the issue further.
i In LMFBRs, diversity, as well as redundancy, in shutdown and shutdown heat removal are used.
Item 4:
Quality Assurance The Subcommittee agreed that this matter is an important topic and must be incorporated in the LMFBRs.
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ADVANCED REACTORS 9/17818/81 Item 5:
Role of Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA)
J. Hartung stated that PRA should be used to provide perspective and insight to a particular matter and should help in making decisions.
PRA should be used in conjunction with other engineering techniques to provide the best practical basis for making LMFBR safety decisions.
Item 6:
Inherent vs. Engineered Safety G. Golden, ANL, stated that all. large nuclear plants should be designed to emphasize inherent safety features for public protection.
Such features may also enhance plant protection.
Mr. Golden also stated that designers, including CRBR, have been discouraged from including inherent safety features because of an NRC position either actual or perceived that the reliability of such features cannot be demonstrated adequately.
G. Clare, Westinghouse, stated that in some instance this was true, for example, natural circulation decay heat removal. But ever since satisfactory natural circulation tests were perfonned, e.g., FFTF and the French, NRC should reconsider this issue. The NRC was reluctant to take credit for natural circulation because of the complexity of the system and the un-satisfactory experience by the United Kingdom.
Item 7:
Importance of Passive Safety LMFBRs must be designed for inherent safety features or passive safety features such as natural circulation.
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ADVANCED REACTORS 9/17818/81 Item 8:
Prevention vs. Mitigation The defense-in-depth philosophy provides guidance to the designer to first prevent accidents from occurring and then assuming that if they do occur, it will occur with a low probability because of the prevention features.
The subject of a safety goal is ultimately related to the subject of prevention and mitigation because of the questions of "How safe is safe enough."
It was stated that from the utility point of view one should stress prevention rather than mitigation in the design to prevent a TMI-type incident.
The industry cannot afford the financial and corporate impact of the results of a TMI-type incident.
G. Clare, Westinghouse, stated that he is not part of the Clinch River project office, but has been associated with the project for a long time.
In his overall view of what he had heard thus far, he stated that only very general discussions were presented. He stated that safety goals are being discussed elsewhere, and that of the moment, it is best not to perturb their efforts. He stated that the people with perhaps greater interest in terms of investment and areater knowledge of commercial plant operation are the best equipped to address safety goals.
The following are highlights of G. Clare's comment to the Subcommittee.
- There is no such thing as inherent features, except doppler co-efficient, everthing else he stated is engineered.
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ADVANCED REACTORS 9/17&l8/81
- A set of general design criteria has been used for the Clinch River project.
It is almost identical to the set of criteria developed by ANS 54.1, which is similar to ANSI N-214 and 10 CFR 50, Appendix A.
- LMFBR design seismic conditons govern the design of the piping system, whereas in an LWR pressure governs.
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A discussion on pool vs. loop LMFBR configuration ensued.
It was suggested that this issue may be discusse~d at another Subcommittee meeting in the future.
It was also stated that this Subcommittee can not decide which configuration is best.
Both configurations can be made safe.
During a discussion on design of low energetic core, G. Clare stated that with pessimistic assumptions, the homogeneous core would have about a 600 megajoule energy release, whereas with the same assumptions, a heterogeneous core would have a release of about 25 megajoules.
Item 9: Siting of Early Plants L. Koch stated that early LMFBR plants should be devoid of siting problems to the extent practicable. The way to achieve this objective is to use existing sites or one that is very similar to an existing site so that no new safety issue would be needed to be addressed.
Sites such as Savannah River, i
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MINUTES ADVANCED REACTORS 9/17818/81 Hanford, or Idaho should be seriously considered for early LMFBR plants.
The other sites which should be considered are where LWRs are sited whose character-istics are very favorable. He further stated that he would like very much to see that the licensing requirements not be aggravated by unique LMFBR siting requirements.
Item 10:
Siting vs. Engineered Safety Features S. Siegel stated that it would be wiser to prepare long-range plans for building LMFBRs in significant numbers on one or several remote sites with all their associated facilities nearby, which are far removed from popula-tion areas.
S. Siegel believed that the primary emphasis is to avoid a disabling accident to the reactor because of the financial costs.
Item 11:
Importance of Avoiding Large Accidents, Risk Aversion S. Siegel stated that the safety goal of 10-4/ reactor-year for a large scale fuel melt is appropriate and necessary for an LMFBR.
He added that the aversion with respect to very large accidents, either those which causes fatalities or injury to a great number of penole, or which has very large financial impacts is a real phenomena and should account for it.
Item 12:
Additional Safety vs. Cost, ALARA J. Hartung stated that cost as well as risk should be considered when making LMFBR safety decisions, so as to promote the best practical allocation of societal resources available for improving public health and safety. Cost-benefit analysis should be performed where necessary and practicable to assist l
O MINUTES ADVANCED REACTORS 9/17&l8/81 the decision-making process.
Great care should be exercised to avoid overlook-ing or discounting costs and benefits which are difficult to quantify, includ-ing the cost of accidents and ripple effects which may occur throughout the electrical power industry and society due to serious or potentially serious accidents.
Item 13:
Incorporation of Non-DBA Events in Design R. Avery stated that in considering the core disruptive accident (CDA) as a beyond DBA event, several criteria should be met.
In the apolication of PRA the inclusion of a possible CDA should not lead to an unacceptable risk.
It should be shown that a spectrum of accidents can be accommodated by the system without significant public consequence. This should be done on the basis of a reasonably conservative mechanistic assessment. Similarily, one should be able to show that associated with any CDA the resulting debria can be accommodated by the system without significant public risk.
In both the energetic accommodation and the debris accommodation the absence of signifi-cant public risk implies that there is no serious challenge to containment integrity. Both the ability to accommodate the energetics and to accommodate the debris should be shown independently of any contention relative to the low probability of the event.
This case should be made because of the unprovable nature of any highly reliable prevention arguments.
Item 14:
Sabotage Little differece exist between an LMFBR and LWR except that radiation release may be worse in an LMFBR. Therefore, similar sabotage features that exist in an LWR should be incorporated in LMFBR designs.
4 MINUTES ADVANCED REACTORS 9/17818/81 Item 15: Diversion of Fissionable Materials Th? subject of diversion of fissionable materials includes the entire fuel cycle and international deployment and whether the diversion is perpetrated Ly national or other groups. Work in this area has been reported nationally by the U.S. Nonproliferation Systems Assessment Program (NASP) and internationally under the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE) program. The U.S. work is reported in DOE /NE-0001, Volumes 1-9.
Other topics were added after the discussion of the above items. They are as follows:
- Seismic Consideration
- Man-Machine Interface
- Spent Fuel Storage and Handling
- Field Fabrication In-Core Instrumentation A dicussion on the format of a rough draft report was formulated, and assign-ments made.
The next meeting will be held at the Argonne National Laboratory on October 22 and 23, 1981.
It w6s suggested that the November-December meeting should be held in San Francisco, CA concurrently with the AIF meeting. This meeting is tentatively planned on December 3 & 4, 1981.
NOTE: For additional fetails, a complete transcript of the meeting is available i
in the NRC Fn41 e Document Room,1717 H St., NW, Washington, DC 20555 or from Alderson Reporters, 300 7th St., SW, Washington, DC, (202) 554-2345.
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44108 Fzdctd Register / Vol E Nn.170 / Wednesday. September 2.1981 / Notices a
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F urther ir.formalion with reference to The Subcommittee will then hear 3267) between 8:15 a.m. and 5.00 p.m..
tha meeting can be obt-ined from Mr.
presentatmns hv and hold disensions EDT.
bhn 11. Clark. Adsisory Committee with scpresent.pn es the NRC Staff, the Dated: August 28,1981.
p M:in.icement Officer. National Departrnent of Energy. their consultants.
3,g y gg Endowment for the Arts. Washington, and oil.cr mterested persons regarding Acting Advisory Comminee Management L
D C. 20500, or call (202) 634-0070..
this res icw.
i John II. Clark.
Further information regrrding topics Director. Off cr of CouncilandPonel to be discussed. whether the meeting i
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Operorsons. NatsonalEndowmen:for the Arts.
has been cancelled or tescheduled. the Chairman's ruling on requests for the August 18.1981.
oppoitumty to present oral statements Advisory Committee on Reactor l
[rk Dnc si-2 sue Fded t-3-4t Dos.mj and the time allotted therefor can be swmo coos rssr-ci-as Safeguards. Subcommittee on Grand e
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of this meeting was published August 21.
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relating to the development of liquid Dated; August 27.1981.
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its consultants, and Staff. Persons J
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SMe;uarde. Subcomm!!!ee on Deesy i
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consultants, and Staff. Persons desiring Heat Removal Systerns will hold a 8
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information. One or more closed practicable. these closed sessions will the extent practicable. these closed,
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EXEMirTION 41.To the extent I have determined,in accordance with l.
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The Subcommittee will then hear meeting Dr. Richard Savio (telephone: 202/63b presentations by and hold discussions
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SEPTEMBE 17 - 18, 1981 h4EETfNG DATE:
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- i TENTATIVE SCHEDULE l
ACRS SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING ON METAL COMP 0NENTS WASHINGTON, DC SEPTEMBER 25, 1981 APPROXIMATE TIME I.
Chairman's Opening Statement 8:30 a - 8:45 a II. Westinghouse Presentation 8:45 a - 10:45 a
- BREAK **************
10:45 a - 11:00 a III. NRC Staff Presentation 11:00 a - 1:00 p
- LUtlCH **************
1:00 p - 2:00 p IV. CE Report 2:00 p - 3:00 p V.
NRC Status of High Strength Bolt Failures 3:00 p - 4:30 p in Safety-Related Component Supports VI. Open Discussion and Adjournment 4:30 p - 5:00 p