ML20062F194
| ML20062F194 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 07/27/1982 |
| From: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 8208110276 | |
| Download: ML20062F194 (99) | |
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/ NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION j
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l BUDGET BRIEFING 1
I PUBLIC MEETING Tuesday, July 27, 1982 e
P Pages 1 - 90 Prepared by:
LYNN NATIONS Office of the Secretary 8208110276 820727 PDR 10CFR PT9.7 PDR
F 9
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3
BUDGET BRIEFING 5
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PUBLIC MEETING 7
8 9
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Room 1130, Commissioners' Conference Room 10 1717 "H" Street, N.W.
Washington, D. C.
Tuesday, July 27, 1982 12 The Commission met, pursuant to notice, in public session at 13 2:05 o' clock p.m., NUNZIO J. PALLADINO, Chairmah of the Commission,'
presiding.
- 4 COMMISSIONERS PRESENT
15 NUNZIO J. PALLADINO, Chairman of the Commission l
16 JOHN AHEARNE, Member of the Commission l
3 THOMAS ROBERTS, Member of the Commission 17 JAMES ASSELSTINE, Member of the Commission g
STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT COMMISSION TABLE:
18 W. DIRCKS j
19 H. DENTON i
J. DAVIS E
L. BARRY 20 i
R. DeYOUNG J. O'REILLY 21 l
Rs MIN 0GUE-G. CUNNINGHAM 22 P. NORRY 23 AUDIENCE SPEAKERS:
L. DONNELLY 24 J. BLAHA F. GILLESPIE 25 R. SCROGGINS
e DISCLAIMER This is an unofficial transcript of a meeting of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission held on Tuesda, July 27, 1982 in the Commission's offices at 1717 H Street, N.W., y. Washington, D. C.
The meeting was open to public attendance and observation. This transcript has not been reviewed, corrected, or edited, and it may contain inaccuracies.
The transcript is intended solely for general iaformational purposes.
As provided by 10 CFR 9.103, it is not part of the formal or informal record of decision of the matters discussed.
Expressions of opinion in this transcript do not necessarily reflect final determinations or beliefs.
No pleading or other paper may be filed with the Commission in any proceeding as the result of or addressed to any statement or argument contained herein, except as the Commission may authorize.
4
r 2
1 PR0CEEDI NGS 2
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
Good afternoon, ladies and 3
gentlemen.
This afternoon's meeting is a continuation of the Commission's review and discussion of the fiscal year '84 '85 4
budget estimates and current plans for '82 and '83.
As I 5
mentioned at the beginning of last Friday's meeting, this 6
year's budget preparation approval process is being carried on 7
in accordance with the Court's decision regardi:.g the conduct 8
of Commission consideration of budget matters.
9 Copies of the materials under discussion have been made available to the audience to facilitate their observation 10 of the discussion.
Charts on the Commission and the EDO staff 11 offices and administrative support funding have been added to 12 the material distributed last Friday.
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13
,e At the conclusion of Friday's meeting, we discussed
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the schedule for our remaining budget action that anticipates 15 Commission approval of the budget by August 4th.
I understand that the general feeling is that the schedule is tight but 16 achievable.
During last Friday's meeting, we reviewed the g
resource estimates for the agency as a whole and for Head-18 g
s quarters and regional support of the Reactor Regulation and j
19 Material Safety and Safeguards programs.
a sj 20 When we adjourned we were discussing Inspection and 4j 21 Enforcement, and if we could have chart 12 portraying the I&E 3
22 decision unit summary on the screep, we could pick up the discussion at that point.
23 (Slide.)
c CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
I believe that there are some 25 more Commission questions on this, and I think Commissioner
3 1
Ahearne was in the process of asking some of these questions.
2 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Yes, a couple of questions nn 3
I&E and as we have been having some difficulty throughout. I
)
am not sure whether it is I&E Headquarters or the former I&E, the regional, where the question really lies and that perhaps 5
can be addressed.
One issue is with respect to training.
6 Could you say a few words about how training is going to be 7
handled?
8 In the past I&E Headquarters did have a training g
effort down in Chattanooga and I know the path we have been g ing n at the time had been to actually assist in building 10 a facility down there at the Soddy-Daisy Center at TVA.
I 11 gather that because of some of TVA's decisions, we have now 12 dropped that particular feature of the program, but I would be 13 interested in what kind of a training program is embedded i.n 14 this budget as the agency's effort in regional field activities 15 is increasing and, therefore, less of a contact with Head-quarters by a larger portion of the agency, is there going to 16 i
be an increase in the training staff, an increase in the l
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training function, will it be regionalized, what is the budget
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18 i
assumption?
i 19 MR. DeYOUNG:
The training staff -- we in Headquarters l
I 20 i
run the training.
We call it NRC technical training.
It is 21 not only f,or the I&E and for the regions, itsel f, but it is E:
22 for the NRR people, standards, research people -- we train a lot of different people.
g COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
That is unde; your specialized 24 technical training?
25 l
MR. DeYOUNG:
That's right.
It is called specialized i
1 i
4 1
technical training.
The staff that we have up there now or are 2
supposed to have 19 slots for the training facility.
As you 3
stated, we are no longer interested in having the training facility at Soddy-Daisy because TVA has determined that they 4
will not build the motel / restaurant complex that they had 5
planned to build.
Therefore, it is not cost effective for us 6
to carry people back and forth.
7 Also, it is only about one-third or one-quarter of 8
the people that we train at any one time are involved with 9
the TVA simulators that are at the TVA facility.
We have a planned reduction from 1982 to 1983 of two slots, from the 10 19 down to 17.
11 We also will probably utili.ze parts of the remainder 12 of the people to help with the CAT team approach.
We have to
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provide a CAT team.
We do not have the additional resource i
so we have to find them someplace and there are specialties 15 down there that we may utilize as part of the CAT review.
We 16 are not certain, but we are still looking at it.
f COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Dick, just to break in for 37 a minute, last time you had mentioned an approximate number 18 g
for the people that would be in the CAT team.
I forget whether j
19 that was six or seven, a
aj 20 MR. DeYOUNG:
Six.
A; 21
. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
But I gather 'from what you i*
22 just said, that isn't an additional six somewhere, it is a six collected out of the group that are already here.
23 MR. DeYOUNG:
Right.
The I&E 1982 allotment is 187.
We are supposed to go down to 162, a reduction of 25 people, plus we have to find a six-man CAT team from the remainder l
l
5 1
of people.
2 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
On the training, there is a 3
slight reduction, a stablization, is that based upon an 4
estimate of the work load of people flow through?
MR. DeYOUNG:
No, i t is not.
It is just that we 5
had to find some slots to cut, so we took two out of 19 from 6
the training group.
We thought that we would have larger 7
classes and we would screen the personnel proposed for 8
training a little more closely to see that we didn't train 8
somebody that was absolutely not required to have that training, 10 We had another problem, of course, and that is with re-33 training of some of the people we have for other slots in the agency before we even think about RIF's.
So that will be an increased work load, but we will 13
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have to do that through larger classes.
14 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
Are the CAT teams under reactor 15 construction inspection?
16 MR. DeYOUNG:
They will be.
I 17 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
And you say you are taking three g
l 18 out of specialized technical training to put up there?
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MR. DeYOUNG:
No.
We don't know where we are going
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to get the CAT team yet.
We are trying to find bits and pieces 2
20 8
l of a number of people to provide that coverage for the CAT 21 l
review term.
22 l
Reactor construction, we had 20 slots there.
We have 23 not cut those 20 slots.
Of the 20 slots, nine were supposed to 24 be doing program development, four were supposed to be doing regi nal assessment of the implementation of the I&E Program.
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25 The third-party activity took two people, and the supevision of
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1 clerical were five, for a total of 20.
2 We can't get the CAT team from that group.
We may ge' 3
two of them.
We will cut down on program development, but we 4
will have to find the other four someplace else.
5 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Is it also correct and I am having a little difficulty keeping up with the latest set of 6
answers to questions that I asked, so I am not sure whether I 7
have really identified all of the answers.
But one of the questions that I had asked was, on what is the budget based, 9
with what assumption with respect to accreoitation and I 10 gather from the answer that it was based on the IEEE approach 11
-- yes, here it is -- if industry accreditation is assumed, 12 we estimate that it will require essentially an additional three to four staff years.
So if the Commission opts on the
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industry approach, then you would have to find an additional g
three to four?
15 MR. DeYOUNG:
I think so.
The accreditation, we thought that the proposal that we had would take about three 17 l
staff people.
If we did it with the industry proposal, we 18 thought that would double.
If we did it all within I&E g
j 19 without any help from outside, we thought a dozen or so.
aj COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
On the enforcement I guess I 20 a
f am a little puzzled and perhaps it is because as we now put 21 in an Office of Investigation that there is perhaps a little 22 e
confusion as to what the enforcement function is and perhaps 23
,y. ques ti on then is really due to that confusion.
24 The number of operating facilities will be increasing 25 in the years
'83, '84 and '85.
The regional budget seems to have four people for enforcement.
I&E Headquarters' allocation
7 1
to enforcedent goes from eight to seven.
I am puzzled 2
whether this is an assumption ~that in the future that our 3
licensees will be doing so well that we aren't going to have 4
the need for more enforcement?
5 MR. DeYOUNG:
No, that is not the assumption we have 6
made and I think that might be a wrong assumption.
If our enforcement program is truly effective, there should be some 7
reduction in violations of the regulations as to license requirements.
But there will always be some level 9
personnel, mistakes, things going wrong -- whereby the to regulations are violated or conditions under which the license 11 is violated.
12 So I think that is just a recognition that resources 13 are tight.
We have to find them someplace.
Those allocations for peopl e, I think there are more people involved in g
enforcement.
There is technical back-up, there is technical 15 research on each of the violations.
So it is dif ficul t to 16 apportion them exactly.
The four for the reg' ions, for example, 3
'7 I would dare say in any one region or in any one year, there I
18 are more resources utilized like one man a year to provide g
enforcement back-up.
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I think that must be the enforcement coordinator in 0
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each of the regions.
Jim.
21 t
l MR. O'REILLY:
That's correct.
These are specific 22 positions in the regions entitled, " Enforcement Coordinators,"
23 and they are the people who review packages for policy 24 consistency, train the staff -- these types of things.
25 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
And one region does not have such a person?
l 8
MR. O'REILLY:
No.
The activity level in the smaller 2
regions IV and V is assigned --
3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Doesn't warrant a full time person.
4 MR. O'REILLY:
They have a combined job.
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
I 6
notice there is a reduction of, I guess,10 from the office request, is that correct, 30 to 28?
8 MR. DeYOUNG:
Really five were already gone.
We were 9
carrying them on the books.
They had been allotted to the 10 regions, so it is a reduction of six.
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Let me see if I can understand 11 that answer.
I have a program office request for '83 of 38.8.
12 MR. DeYOUNG:
You call that 39.
Five of those were
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already slated to go to the regions.
So it is 34.
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'4 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
So in other words you are 15 saying that the program office request was not for the office
~6 of I&E, i t included --
MR. DeYOUNG:
Thirty-four of those were I&E, five 37 were slotted to regions, one to each of the regional offices.
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5 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
So should I view the I&E j
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request then really being 34?
20 MR. DeYOUNG:
Thi rty-fo u r.
4j 21
, COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
All right.
So that went down 22 to 28.
Now the regional allocation for emergency preparedness, does that include those five?
23 MR. DeYOUNG:
No, it does not.
We don't count them I
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twice.
25 MR. DONNELLY:
No.
The regional allocation does o
9 include those five, and in the answer to your question as to 2
how the regional number grows., you will see approximately five.
3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
I am wondering then, if I have two columns embedded in here, one is Headquarters I&E office 4
request and the other is regional labelled office request, and Dick has just said that the Headquarters I&E had five in 6
Did those five show it that were slated to be transferred.
as a double count i the regional office request?
8 MR. DONNELLY:
Yes.
They were slated to go the year 9
before and I guess one could debate which office should have to shown them.
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
All right, but at the moment it is true then that it is really a double count?
12 MR. DONNELLY:
In the request column.
13
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CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
On emergency preparedness if
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I4 you go to all the activities that are involved in the budget 15 in '83, I think the office request was 93 and what we gave 16 was 83, but there are a lot of activities in emergency a
preparedness that are shown in the cross-cuts.
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- 7 MR. DeYOUNG
There are really two major activities 18 y
in that program.
One is emergency preparedness and the other j
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is incident response.
That is the duty officers at the response o
center in Headquarters.
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.COMMISS.IONER AHEARNE:
Obviously part of the problem 3
22 is just trying to understand all of the labels.
For example, on the answers, the revised answers, that we just received to 23 a set of my questions, page 23 of the revision, this is g
addressing the fact -- this now addresses the emergency prepar-25 edness increase and for '83, the increase is 5.1, for '84, it 8
10 is 3.8 and for '85, it is 4.5 in the regions.
But on page 2
eight theoretically the breakout of the total resources in 3
the regions it is 6, 5 and 5 for emergency preparedness.
So the anomaly I have here is that, is that really saying 4
that there was.9 scheduled in '837 Was it really that small?
Was there essentiall.y almost nothina scheduled in 6
the regions for' emergency preparedness?
If this is an accurate reflection then --
8 MR. DeYOUNG:
That is an accurate reflection.
9 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
So it is basically the five that were transferred away so the additional six that you have 10 lost really represents an absolute reduction?
It is in no way a transfer to the regions?
12 MR. DeYOUNG:
Yes.
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13 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Bill, was this based on a relative priority sense or the sense of emergency preparedness 15 actions are not sufficiently well along?
16 MR. DIRCKS:
It is tasks within that general heading, a
there were people, for example, bits and pieces of people j
37 coordinate with FEMA, instead of 1.6 man years that the 18 y
of fice requested, I think we said, "Do it with one."
It is j
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just a general attempt to spread the resources.
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COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
I don't mean this in a i
f pejorative sense, but is this " green-eye shade" budgeting?
21 22 MR. DIRCKS:
When you ar,e dealing with the type of budgeting we go through and you justify everything in terms
,3 of man loading, I think it turns out to be " green-eye shade" budgeting.
25 COMMISSIONER AHERNE:
I guess my other questions
d 11 1
relate more to Jim.
We have a sheet and I think it was given-2 out by Len last time on regional opera +,'fons.
The preoperation-al testing line staff years, is that-based upon a forecast of
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3 the reactors that will actually be coming up to -tha t s ta ge ?
4 I notice that you go up some from ' 82 to ' 83 and 5
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you drop quite substantially from '83 tc '84 and start coming 6
back u'p in '85.
7 MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir.
This is our assessment of t
8 the workload for the regions developed by the regions.,
s COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Based upon,best es'timate of 10 when reactors are going to be coming into tha t tstage?,
MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir.
11 MR. DONNELLY:
We used the aime fuel loadibase that 12 was used in the rest of the agency's ' budget and then worked j
backwards from those dates and the pre-op number represents 14 the number in that fiscal year'which precedes the fuel load' 15 date by five months.
r' is COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
And since th.d type of
.j
,7 inspection that is done there is not that dissimilar <from other I
inspections that you do, the people who a*e allocated can 18 i
7 shift back and forth, is that correct?
i 19 l
MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir.,
That is correct.
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5 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE':
Your i tems 11, '12 and 13, 20 J~
is this again rather than an identification of in,1viduals, 21 i
22 these are es timates of the workloads that will be swept up under this --
23 MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir.
24 i
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
So where it says, " people,"
25 it really isn' t people --
i f
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12 MR. O'REILLY':
Yes, FTE.
2 CHAIRMAN 4ALLADIN0:
It says, " people."
3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Your lab technical line, are these the people wh,o run the mobile labs?
I 4
MR. O' REIL 1.Y:
Yes, sir.
5 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
How many labs do we have now?
.a l MR. O'REILLY:
In the larger regions we have an 7
average of two 3aboratories, mobile laboratories.
In the 8
smaller regions, we have one.
g 9
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
So you have about eight?
MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir.
10 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
And theEe is just one person per lab?
12 MR. O'RE.
There are more Leople involved in 13
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,this, but they are part-time.
Obviously, there is some
- }
supervision, a supervisor supert,ising a laboratory and he f
e fs would also be supervising severdi related functions, environ-i 18 mental information, environmental inspecplo'rts and part of that 4
fhnetion would be attributed to the surarvision of the j
37 i
laboratories.
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COMMISSIONE,@ AiiEARNE :
And,the out year, the j
15
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.'assumptihn is that the, level of effort required to do this l
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5 20 wcrk -- is it that the, abs are now utilized to full capacity J
o e
j 21 and de are n'ot going to get any more?
Or that the workload t
22 is stablized or 'that we dah' t have, enough resources to go 1
beyond that?
l 23 MR.,O'REILLY:
No, sir.
We are still experimenting i
with the laborat'ories..We have this last year put into oper-25 ation the NDE laboratory that Region I is evaluating and plans a
l
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i 13 for expansi,on of their area are not included, but if that works 2
out well, we would come back.to the Commission looking for 3
more resources to support that activity next year.
Without a lab, we also have. a lot of other testing 4
equipment in the other regions and have been done that not in a situation that would require a very capital intensive 6
vehicle like this laboratory.
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
How much lab technical work, 8
people to do that, are we getting by contract?
9 MR. O'REILLY:
Region I has contract support to to assist them in the conduct of some of their measurements involving construction, welding, radiography.
So in that area, I don't know the number, but I can obtain it if you 12 like, but that is contract support.
~
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13 MR. DONNELLY:
It is a quarter of a million.
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'4 MR. O'REILLY:
With regard to radiological expertise, 15 we do not get contract support.
We have our own people do 16 that.
The support is just in the servicing and calibration sj and repair.
37 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
So it just the NDE lab.
18 MR. O'REILLY:
That has the large number of actual j
19 g
contractors technically supporting the NRC.
U COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
I similar question just to 5
21 g
check and.I imagine it is the same answer, on the preoperational 22 testing.
Reactors under construction, a significant drop off 23 in the people looking at the staff years allocated to-reactors under construction, is that again geared to the
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completion of construction?
MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir.
It goes up and ops and down
14 in construction.
2 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Significantly?
3 MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
So by '85, you would expect 4
a demand of almost one-third of what you would have in '837
!iR. O'REILLY:
Almost exactly, yes, sir.
6 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Two and a hal f.
Could I ask the difference between the line of number three, reactors under 8
construction, and number fif teen, increased inspection at 9
construction sites?
So MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir.
Item 15 is the new initia-tive of programatically through our increasing the amount of g
inspection effort directed at construction sites.
We are 12 planning to provide additions to out co,nstruction/ inspection 13
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force of approximately 0.3 man years per site in fiscal year
'83, and 0.5 applied to the construction sites that would 15 exist at that time in '84 and '85.
16 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Are you saying though that as far as the functions they will perform, that it will be j
37 very similar to the ones in three?
18 g
l MR. O'REILLY:
No.
These people will be concentratec j
19 a
more in the area of -- not just relating to our current QA 0
roblems, that is a different issue -- these people will focus 4j 21 on additional inspectior.s in the area of QA, QA implementation I
i 12 and the facilities under construction.
These are in addition 23 to the other items.
1 l
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
But they could be included?
We 24 show ups and downs in others.
Why couldn't this be included 25 in three?
15 1
MR. O'REILLY:
It could be.
2 MR. DONNELLY:
It could have been.
It was just a 3
choice of calling it out separately in the budget process.
It could be up on that other line.
4 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
The problem is though reactors 5
under construction looks like it is going down and then you 6
add on top of it and it certainly is not going down as much 7
if going down at all.
It seems like an artificial division.
8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
That is why I wondered what 9
it was.
That is a good point.
Would I gather by the fact that in your two staff 10 years allocated across the five regions for contract manage-ment, that indicates you don't really see contracts being a 12 growing part of regionalization?
Let me ask it a different way.
As you know technical f
14 support comprises a large, a very large part, of the operations 15 at many Headquarters' offices.
These Headquarters' offices 16 are shif ting functions to the regions.
Is th.ere an implicit f
assumption that the regions will not pick up an increasing g
requirement for technical support?
18 y
MR. O'REILLY:
No, sir.
We are receiving this j
19 contract money not at the ratio as Headquarters.
We expect to aI 20 i
receive more of the staff at the beginning, but we will be 4
y 21 receiving substantial contract support similar to the support i
22 provided Headquarters that will be run by the regions so we will need that type of numbers to monitor those types of 23 l
contracts.
24 l
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We will still be maintaining some contracts at 25 Headquarters that lend themselves better to centralized
16 monitoring and procurement and they will provide the services r
1 2
to the region.
3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Maybe I am misreading this, in the past NRR and NMSS I think, have been heavy users of 4
program support money.
These are now areas shif ting or 5
beginning to shif t out into the regions.
But the explanation 6
here is the contract management is reduced to reflect the level of contract review effort more consistent with that of I&E Headquarters.
I wondered whether that is really 8
9 appropriate?
10 MR. DONNELLY:
What we budgeted as an estimate, one professional staff year per million dollars of contract money that was planned in the budget to go to the regions, 12 the experience on the part of the program offices managing 13 T.
those funds was that it was closer to $1.5 million per man.
The reduction, if I understand it correctly, reflects the 15 reduced effort associated with the 1 per $1.5 million versus
?6 1 per $1 million.
3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
My guess is and this is j
,7 e
obviously down in the drips and drabs of tiny numbers, that first you have a minimum amount of time that you have to spend j
19 on contract management in order to understand the comolexities i
of contract management.
In the Headquarters, if you are look-d 3
Ing at $5.million dollars or $10 million dollar lumps, then 21 a
that kind of averaging works out., But if you are out in the 72 region where you may in many cases be below the $1 million 3
dollars, it is not going to equivalently say, "Well, we will j
just have a person spend a third of his time on it."
Secondly, consistency with I&E Headquarters' program I
J
17 support may not track as you are picking up more of the NRR 2
and NMSS area.
I am puzzled by the percentage of supervision /
3 clerical / administrative support which at least in the regional operations' chart, seems to be running about one-third, 4
33 percent, staff y6ars.
Initially, that seemed very low, 5
one out of every three persons is in supervision / clerical /
6 administrative support.
7 MR. O'REILLY:
The regions have been operating at 8
a higher ratio because of their size.
That is a problem.
We 9
have looked at the number carefully and we stayed with the 10 number that we have been able to live with in the past, and we have accepted the new rates that the other offices have 11 been using when we accept their FTE to accomplish that function 12 So our overall number will be, coming down in that 13
(
regard., but we do need at least with the size that we are'now 14 additional resources to cover the number of functions.
That 15 is one of the problems you run into.
I feel certain that 16 you recognize in the field, it performs almos.t every service 3
for its personnel.
j 47 5
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
Which number would that compare I
8 with on an agency-wide basis?
For example, on one of the j
19 charts we show management direction and support and we show g
20 administration and they add up to almost one-third of the 2
A f
21 agency.
72 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Len, what is our agency 23 average?
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
It depends on what you want to count, and that is.why I was saying, which one of the headings agency-wide would this compare with or which combination of
~
18 agency-wide --
2 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Do we have something that 3
compares with this supervision / clerical / administrative support?
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
Yes, we have it on the new cross-4 cut.
We have balance of administrative support, for example, for '82 is 399 and then management direction and support is 6
645 and that is roughly one-third of the agency budget.
I am not saying that that is an action that is going 8
to be followed.
9 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
I am not sure if it is a 10 comparable number.
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
That is what I don't know.
Is g
it a comparable set of numbers.
12 MR. BARRY:
As Jim said, the ratio is higher in the 13
~
/'
fi el d.
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
It depends on what he counts 15 there as compared to what you count elsewhere.
16 MR. BARRY:
His numbers have to include, of course, his administrative support as well as his clerks, supervisors.
~
37 We have a director of Administration.
18 g
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
It might be interesting to j
19 y
compare two sets of numbers prepared on the same basis.
j 0
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
On inspection modules and i
21 a"g a i n I am not sure whether it is a question to Dick or to 22 Jim, I had asked the question whether there was any assumption 23 made under revision of inspection modules and the budget to me appeared to be based on continuation of the present 24
(
inspection practices and I asked whether it was correct.
The revised answer does not answer whether that is
19 correct or,not.
2 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
We were having trouble getting 3
responsive answers.
MR. DeYOUNG:
Which page?
4 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Revision 3, but it does 5
go through a lengthy description, but really my question wasn't 6
whether we had a program to revise the modules because by now I am convinced having been here for four years we do have a 8
program to revise modules.
Now how well that program is going 9
to work is always the open question, but the program does to provide it.
My question was really a more technical budget question.
Are the load factors assumed the same?
In other 12 words, what an inspector is assumed to be doing, are the,re 13
/
any major changes embedded in that?
MR. DIRCKS:
Will we ' gain any more efficiencies from 15 the new module?
16 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Yes.
3; MR. DIRCKS:
That's the question.
37 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Or conversely, do we have 18 g
under here the assumption, the modules don't change and the j
19 g
efficiencies don't change, then the assumption is that out 20 through '85, will still be running at maybe 60 percent of Aj 21 what the program would say should be inspected.
E
~
22 MR. DONNELLY:
I don't know.
All I can say is 23 that the assumptions with respect to level of effort per reactor and so forth did not change.
If the program does not g
change, I think you have to come to the same conclusions.
25 MR. DeYOUNG:
I think it will change.
I think we are
20 trying to revise the modules on the basis of the importance 2
to safety or the detection of. violations and so forth.
Our 3
program, we are revising it, so that if you really consider it as an inverted pyramid, the first part of that program we 4
will say must be done each year by the field and it will be 5
done 100 percent each year.
6 We continue to climb up that pyramid and say if 7
you have additional time, you do these things and part of the 8
modification of the modules that we are attempting now is not 9
only to improve some of the modules but eject some of the 10 modules that we don' t think are very effective.
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
What I think you are saying, 33 Dick, is that the budget is based on no change, but that you have a program which may or may not have significant impact 13
/,
on the out year budget.
14 MR. DeYOUNG:
That's right.
15 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
In an answer to my question 16 on quality assurance and this was with respect to a cross-cut 3j g
page and I don't think there has been a revised answer -- no.
CHAIRMAN PALLADINC:
What page?
18 COMMISSIONER AH2aRNE:
Page 37.
I was asking what j
19 g
kinds of people were the staff years, whether they were 20 specifically allocated to quality assurance or are they h
21 c'onstruction/in'spection staff years now labeled as QA and the i
22 answer I get is, "The~ resources included are estimates of those 23 construction / inspection activities associated with the review and evaluation of the applicants' QA program."
How are those 24 l
estimates arrived at since a significant question, obViously, is the amount of effort that the agency is putting into QA l
21 1
inspection, I wonder what weight I should give to these 2
estimates.
MR. DeYOUNG:
I am lost.
3 MR. DONNELLY:
People in I&E who are working on the current QA program work with us, my staff, to try to best 5
estimate the amount of resources within the construction 6
program that we could say are clearly focused on the quality 7
assurance work being done at the site.
I don't know the 8
precise definition of that and how they arrived at that g
number.
I can get it for you.
18 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
The problem that it leads to 10 is not really being able to know whether or not those are good numbers or approximately good numbers or within factors 12 of two since whether we have adequate resources into quality 13 j'
assurance is a big issue and if I look out here, it is the 14 regions who are really carrying the weight, obviously.
15 I would be interested if you could give me some 16 Sense.
What I am trying to do is to figure o,ut if we really f
have a solid amount of effort located on quality assurance or g
is it a rough guess which could be off so maybe we have half l
i 18 2
that effort?
i 19 l
MR. DeYOUNG:
I think it is a rough guess.
I sj 20 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
My last question relates to 4
21 page 24 an,d this is the NDL under emergency preparedness.
I 22 am still not really following the answer completely.
I do gather that the budget, the million dollars in '84 and five 23 million dollars in '85 and we would be estimating an additional four million dollars in '86, and that the cost and scheduie 25 would be based upon going into 80 sites.
22 1
MR. DeYOUNG:
That's correct.
2 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Now the absence of a number 3
fo r ' 87, I am just assuming that those are approximately right, 4
so this works out to about $125,000 per site for the estimate, 5
is that correct?
MR. DeYOUNG:
That's roughly correct.
6 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Is there embedded in there 7
some assumption as to the utility would be picking up a large 8
part of the cost at the site?
9 MR. BLAHA:
Those, sir, are preliminary estimates 10 ending study that is starting very soon.
It is more of a 11 wedge or a place holder in getting this started in '84 with 12 another planning figure in '85 that would be refined as a result of this study.
So I don't think.we have a specific 13
/'
answer.
14 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
What I am trying to see is 15 whether or not we really have the dollars beginning to be
'O identified in the budget which would fund the NRC contribution 17 j
to the Data Link were we to want to do it and the Congress to 18 approve.
g j
19 I think what the answer I just got is, "No, it is not a
there."
4 MR. BLAHA:
We have a modest start in '84 with j
21 another larger increment planned in
'85.
~
22 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
R'i g h t.
But the larger 23 increment isn't based upon any calculated amount that it would 24 cost to put in a Nuclear Data Link system and the number of 25 plants that might be required and the pro rata share that we would try to get the utility to pay.
23 MR. BLAHA:
Not a detailed analysis of that level, 2
that is correct.
3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
All right.
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
But you are trying to put 4
80 in under $125,000 per unit?
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
No..Let me say what I think 6
we were just told and if it is wrong, Jim or Dick, correct it.
7 They foresee that if we go ahead with the Nuclear Data Link 8
there would be 80 sites at which this is accomplished.
They 9
foresee that if we go ahead with the Nuclear Data Link we 0
ought to start putting some monies in the budget so they have
$1 million dollars allocated and $5 million and $4, but that g
should not be treated as an estimate of dollars per site.
They 12 are independent.
13
{'
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
What are we going to do with
$10 million dollars ?
I thought' we were going to buy equipment.
15 If we are not, then --
16 MR. BLAHA:
I think it is not based.on an estimate of a
h 17 dollars per site as much as we would have a difficult time convincing you that that was the defensible logical number.
a COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
You are.
j 19 l
(Laughter.)
s 0
1 MR. BLAHA:
For that reason.
i i
f
- a 21
. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
What was the question you 22 thought you were going to have difficulty with?
23 MR. BLAHA:
Convincing you that whatever the estimate i
was is a firm number.
24
(
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
Do you mean the $125,000?
25
[
MR. BLAHA:
Yes, because the study hasn't been done 5
24 1
yet and the details haven't been worked out which is why we 2
thought it prudent to put a larger amount in for '84 when 3
we couldn't defned specifically why we needed that larger amount.
So we are being very modest in '84.
4 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0:
I am misunderstanding, what are you going to do with this $10 million dollars over the three 6
years if you are not going to buy or help install COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
They are, but the point that 8
Jim is making is he can't show that it is going to be $125,000 9
particularly given that there are some estimates that go up 10 to several million dollars.
MR. BLAHA:
The number in '85 may be slightly larger or smaller depending upon~the' study and the results of that 12 will be starting soon, so the '85 number we would expect to 13
/'
be updated based on a detailed plan which the Commission and
'4 Congress would approve.
15 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
But it so happens here, your 16
$12 5,000 per and your $10 million dollars --
f COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
That's how I got it.
37 MR. DeYOUNG:
It is a guess.
At this point it is a 18 guess.
j 19 g
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
I think that exhausts my 20 questions on I&E.
4 21
. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
Jim, did you have more?
22 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
Let me follow up with a t
23 Data Link question on what John just raised.
As I had under-stood the earlier Commission proposal that had actually been included in the '82 '83 budget request, it was for implementa-25 tion over a two year period of time.
Now we have gone to the
25 1
prototype system, and it appears that the implementation once-2 the prototype study is done is stretched out over a longer period of time, that is, more than three years.
What is the 3
basis for stretching out the implementation once we do the prototype study and assuming that that leads the Commission 5
and the Congress to support implementation of the Data Link?
MR. DeYOUNG:
I thought it was about a two year 7
period, about a two and a half year period.
A few sites 8
will be completed in 1984 and then all of them --
g COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
In '86 and
'87.
MR. DeYOUNG:
That is about two and a half years.
10 I don't think we have changed that much.
Some of the'later 11 ones will drag out and some of the early ones will have 12 problems and we will go cautiously at the beginning.
COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
On construction, quality 14 assurance, quality assurance inspection for reactor construc-15 tion, looking at page 45 of the cross-cut charts, it appears 18 that at least in the regions the QA inspection effort goes up I
i substantially from '82 to '83.
Is it fair to say that at g
17
(
least so far that is the major element in our construction 18 g
QA response?
j 19 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
What are you looking at?
aj 20 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
The regions on page 45 of i
21 the cross-cut chart.
~
22 MR. O'REILLY:
The increase is the increase I discussed earlier, that is, the programmatic upgrading to focus 23 I
on attention to QA during facilities under construction 24 during those years.
That is the delta.
25 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
Is that as far as our 7
a
26 I
response so far to the construction QA problem, that is the 2
one tangible element that we have so far which is a substantial 3
increase in regional inspection effort.
MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir, 0.3 man years per site in 4
'83 and 0.5 in '84 a'nd '85.
5 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
When you add up the 6
rgional and I&E inspection efforts for reactor construction 7
in '82,
'83, '84 and '85, and you add up the regional IE 8
vendor inspection efforts in the QA area, you end up with a 9
greater effort in the vendor area than you do in the reactor 10 construction area.
For example, 39 to 33 in '82, 43 to 37 in
'83, ij 43 to 42 in '84, and 44 to 34 in '85.
12 MR. O'REILLY:
I wasn't involved in the development 13
/'
of these cross-cuts and what is involved in the cross-cut is the definitions that go into and that was the problem with 15 12 that we discussed earlier.
I just don't know what was 16 intended.
I can tell you what types of people we have.
To respond to your question. I can tell you that
[
p in 83 in the area of construction inspection activities, 18 that there will be in the regions 166 inspectors and j
19 i
supervisors involved and in '84, 130, in '85, 111.
Those 20 8
are numbers that would be loaded with the support for those 21 peo pl e.
22 The problem exists in operations.
I could give you 23 those numbers, also.
In '83, there would be 341.
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
What are you talking about now?
24 MR. O'REILLY:
These numbers are getting away from j
25 l
those cross-cuts.
You hav.e to put them in certain categories l
27 1
and it is a definition problem and that was the problem that 2
we had a little earlier.
CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0:
What are the numbers that you 3
are quoting?
MR. O'REILLY:
These numbers count from the break 5
down of the actual assignments in more detail before you go 6
into cross-cuts.
These are total numbers.
In operations, 7
there was 341 in
'83, 387 in '84, 421 in '85.
In the vendor 8
program, there is a total number that you looked at in one 9
line before and is close to 38 people in the vendor program.
COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
All right.
Because if you 10 look at the QA cross-cut, at least 'the impression I had was 11 that greater effort was being put in the vendor side than on 12 the reactor construction side, and I guess I wondered if I
that represented a judgment by the staff that unfortunately 14 that is where the more significant problems were.
15 MR. O'REILLY:
No, sir.
Those are the numbers.
I can give you some total numbers.--
16 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
So it is a problem more l
with the cross-cut approach.
i
=
18 i
MR. O'REILLY: -- o f jus t ins pectors and in ' 83 --
j 19 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
If they aren't different, is a
aj 20 it a distribution within the total number we got?
l 4j 21
,For exampl e, under power reactors under construction, 2*
22 maybe there is an error in the distribution between vendor inspection and the others because if it isn't, there is 23 something wrong in the distribution among the major headings.
24 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
I guess the impression I 25 have from what Jim was saying is that when you look at those
I 28 1
breakouts for QA for reactor construction, it may be somewhat-2 of an arbitrary breakout, that in fact, it is better to look 3
at the total inspection effort for reactor construction than it is --
4 MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir.
5 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
But at least for vendors, 6
this may be a much closer approximation of the total effort 7
in the vendor area.
8 MR. O'REILLY:
That is correct, yes, sir, who all 9
are put in the category of QA.
COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
I had a little difficulty
- o in getting a sense from the big chart of the regional operations area how the changes in numbers of inspections per 12 year as we go from '82 to
'83,
'84 and '85 in these different 13 categories stacks up in terms of whether it is an increased s
amount of effort over what we are doing now or a decreased 15 amount of effort or about a level amount of effort.
I wonder is if you could just touch on each of those categories there and mention sort of qualitatively where we are going?
g 37 MR. O'REILLY:
The level of inspection activity 18 i
i per plant for the activity that that plant is in with a j
19 g
few exceptions remains the same.
We will have more operational 20 l
inspections next year because of the numbers of reactors 4
21 i
a that will.be entering that phase.
s*
22 So as you see the number, changing, that number is forced totally by the status of the plants and our independent 23 assessment of where they will be next year.
In addition to that number, we are applying the 25 additional 0.3 in fiscal year '83 to add a new emphasis to
l 29 our QA inspections, so that would change that number if you 2
look at the totals in '83.
3 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
That is for reactors under construction?
4 MR. O'REILLY:
That is correct, reactors under 5
construction, so if you consider that addition plus the changes 6
due to the changes in schedules, that basically would be the amount of resources we would be applying in the inspection 8
fi el d.
9 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
So basically it is a level effort with the exception of construction where there is an to increased emphasis.
MR. O'REILLY:
Yes, sir.
12 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
I think that covers my 13 questions on I&E.
14 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: ' Tom, did you have any 15 questions?
COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
No.
16 f
CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0:
I wonder i f we could --
37 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
I have another question.
18 g
3 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
Go ahead.
j 19 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
This again is sort of a g
20 combination, Dick and Jim, the fuel facilities and materials ij 21 line in I&E Headquarters, it is dropping drastically.
It is 22 17 in '82, 12 in '83, 9 in '84 and '85 and the regional
~
line is 31 in
'82, 30 in '83, 27 in
'84.
Does this 23 represent that there is just not that much work or does it represent the conclusion that it is lower priority?
i 25 MR. DeYOUNG:
I think it is a part of both.
The work
30 has reduced somewhat and the priority compared to some of the 2
reactor kind of construction activity and QA initiatives is 3
somewhat less.
I think the regions stay about the same.
They drop slightly.
4 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
They drop and then they go up 5
slightly.
6 MR. DeYOUNG:
But there is a major reduction in 7
Headquarters.
8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
But that wasn't your request.
9 That was Bill's decision.
to MR. DIRCKS:
That's true.
I just think that when we were faced with the need to put more people under QA and beef 3,
up other areas, we took it out of that account.
We felt as 12 though we had a pretty firm ceiling there, so we just moved 13 resources around.
I think it is a priority decision at this point.
Jim has something to add.
15 MR. O'REILLY:
In the field activities, the reduction 16 is more in some of the phasing out of some of the fuel facilities and not in the materials program.
37 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
I wasn't really questioning 3
the number in the field.
It was that there was a substantial j
19 g
drop in Headquarters and no increase in the field which had to be a conclusion that the work wasn't there or it was of i
21 g
joder priority.
i 22 MR. DIRCKS:
As was mer.tdoned, the field sort of 23 stays about where it is.
Headquarters, I think, our view was that it was a priority problem and also if you look at 24 l
Headquarters' function these days is to develop inspection programs and appraise how the regions are doing.
I think it
31 was just a
- decision that we have to defer new regional appraisa' s 2
and new program development during this per:od of tight 3
resources.
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
You would have to defer it.
5 MR. DIRCKS:
I would hope as we always do in the 6
budgeting process that somehow or another we can get back in 7
out years.
^
9"**
8 MR. BARRY:
Commissioner Ahearne, in answer to your 9
question a while ago on the ratio of management direction and 10 support to the entire force, in fiscal year '83 in the budget, it will be four program offices with an average of about 12 six percent overhead to the staff.
In the regions, it would laverageabouteight.
In other words, there will be an 13 eight percent overhead factor 1ike Harold Denton and his g
immediate division directors and immediate support office 15 to the total number in his staff.
16 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
That is different from what is reported here.
You are reporting something different.
18 MR. DIRCKS:
It is a different way of putting it.
j 19 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
That's all right.
I i
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
What I was really looking at l
2o was in the chart that you gave out, I was really taking a ratio 21 gj of number 20 which has supervision / clerical / administrative 22 support and I was looking at what percentage that was of the 23 total.
24 MR. BARRY:
That includes all the clerks and admin 25 type people also.
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
Shall we try to go on to a
32 1
Research?
The next three slides,13,14 and 15, relate to 2
research.
Slides 13 and 14 show the total resources and major 3
planned accomplishments for research.
The staffing levels decrease through fiscal year '85 while program support rema' ins fairly level except for a $15 million dollar increase in '84.
5 (Slide.)
6 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0:
You can see where the increases 7
in program support funds are primarily the more large scale 8
tests of pipes and corrosion, evaluation of system behavior 9
during transients, human engineering effects, risk assessments, source term, severe accident data and Semiscale programs.
jo Then if you look at Slide 15 you see the summary 11 in terms of decision units.
12 (Slide.)
13
- =;
CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
The decision units showing the
.g-14 largest decrease in staffing are facility operations, siting 15 and health and loss-of-coolant accident.
The program support l ev el increases for most decision units with the largest 16
{
increase being reactor and facility engineering.
This increase a
is offset by large decreases in LOFT and LOCA.
18 E
Depending en your wishes, maybe keeping slide 15 on i
19 l.
would be the best basis for asking questions.
Who would like aj 20 to start?
Would you like to start?
4" 21 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
I have a couple, i
22 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
All right.
COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
One question I had is on 23 Mod-5. I guess what I would like to hear a little bit about is 24 fgg what we intend Mod-5 to do and how much it is going to cost us,
'r 25 what kind of contributions will we expect to see from the
l 33 1
industry on that and what we are doing to make sure that we 2
g) don't get into the situation where we are running another 3
large scale research project and not getting cost effective 4
results from it.
MP.. MINOGUE:
If I may, I would like to answer your 5
last question first.
The size and complexity of these 6
facilities we put it at the bottom end of the group that you 7
would call large, expensive, complex facilities.
So don't think of it as being equivalent to the LOFT.
It is a much 8
simpler facility.
10 It is a facility of a type of which a number have it been built over the years wasse major function is to assess thermal hydraulic transients and the way this is done is by g
doing tests in simple configurations with heated sections that 13 h
simulate the thermal hydraulic behavior of the core sectior.s 14 and the other system components.
15 Then you use that to validate your codes.
So it 16 should be seen as something that is coupled with code 17 development ar.d code validation.
These facilities are also used as test beds for instrumentation.
18
.I There are several of them around and the origin j
of the term Mod-5 reflects this.
Semiscale is a Westinghouse 20 1
l 3
configuration with some broad PWR applicability.
It was 3
21 j
funded by NRC and it goes back to what I call, "the old days."
22 FIST which is also mentioned in the budget document is a GE 23 configuration.
It has been funded in a mix among EPRI, GE and 24 NRC with NRC paying about 40 percent.
' k@
M d-5 would be a B&W configuration with some 25 applicability to the CE plants reflecting the different
l 34 I
system configuration.
What we contemplated would be that the gg3 2
funding ratio would be the same as it wa-s for FIST which se=
3 seemed a fair split among the three organizations.
The total cost which you asked about on a year by year basis is 4
$7 million in '83 of which $2.8 would be NRC, $13 million in '84 of which $5.2 would be NRC and $6 million in '85 6
of which $2.4 would be NRC -- that is just 40 percent.
Beyond that from past experience, you would 8
expect continued operation and these are useful facilities 9
of broad applicability to design easy change out and basically to do a lot of tests on a very cost effective basis.
The split of the different parties though might change in out years because the relative interest might shift.
12 The alternatives that we considered were in effect 13
- e build no facility and try to get this kind of data and y
14 insights by looking at other sources of information.
15 Second to look to a modification and the GERDA facility which 16 is a B&W facility with a strong German interest.
Third would f
be Mod-5 which would be a new facility built next to Semiscale.
37 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
Completely new?
y 18 MR. MINOGUE:
Yes, sir.
It would be new in the j
19 sense that the piping would be all new.
Much of the a
i j 20 building with the exception of either raising the roof or d
21 g
lowering the floor is already there and the support. facilities 22 would be there already.
The loop itself would be completely new.
23 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
So mod doesn't mean modifica-24 dEh tion?
'r 25 MR. MINOGUE:
Not any more.
I think that is the
35 1
origin of it, but no, this would be a new facility.
Simply k:5s to use the GERDA loop would cost a lot of money.
As to what q
2
+:+
3 we do if we are unable to make an appropriate arrangement with industry. I think this is going to be a very tough call 4
because there is a two-way balance here.
There are regulatory 5
actions you can take, too.
You can build this facility and 6
get a better understanding and maybe impose a less stringent 7
regulatory solution or you can go with a lesser program 8
with fewer insights in a closed type of regulatory solution 9
so it is really not a very straight forward matter.
It isn't a go/no go.
to If we were unable to reach appropriate accommodation, I think what we actually do might be a mixture of regulatory 12 actions and research actions.
- g; I hope I have answered all your questions.
=
MR. DIRCKS:
You might want to hear from Harold 15 because a strong push came from NRR.
16 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
Before I get to that, I have f
to ask a question which if that answer is given in another 37 form will follow.
Bob, could you give me an example of where 18 g
we built a big facility and so it lead to a reduced regulatory--
e j
19 g
(Laughter.)
j 20 MR. MIN 0GUE:
On a large scale in the sense in which ij 21 I take your question, there are no such examples.
There have 22 been a lot of applications in the regulatory process but it 23 ends up pages and pages of laundry lists of mini-actions and mini-modifications and guides.
- jf; A general across the board shif t, the recently
=~
25 initiated' action to revise Appendix K would be the first such
36 1
example and that is. sometime off before it is done.
2
{jt COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
You were referring to 3
Harold.
4 MR. DENTON:
We have strongly urged that research provides such a facility.
The ACRS has supported it.
I 5
noticed in their comments on research, they reiterrated their 6
agreement in this area in the Midland letter.
We met just last 7
week I believe with the owners of all the B&W plants in 8
operation and under construction.
I frankly am somewhat 8
disappointed I think B&W is still trying to resist the need 10 for additional experimental data and we are convinced that it n
is needed and in the absence of some verification facility, there will probably be regulatory actions taken to compensate for this lack of knowledge.
(hh COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
What you are talking about 14 is regulatory actions over and above those that are presently 15 in effect rather than a possible relaxation of the ones that 16 are now in effect.
17 MR. DENTON:
We have given the working group, I think, 18 almost a year to try to work out an approach using either
[
analysis or experimental methods to solve some of the staff's 2
19 y
problems.
I think in the last meeting some progress continues c
20 8
to be made, I think, and they much prefer, I think, to use l j h
the loop that exists at Alliance rather than participate in 21 l
22 an NRC facility.
23 MR. MINOGUE:
An evaluation team went out and 24 inspected that loop within the last month or so and we got
! (hN some, I would say, guardedly optimistic feedback from that.
25 EPRI which is another party to this that we haven't touched on i
37 1
has not made a firm. commitment to participate nor have they 2
made a firm statement they won't partici*pate.
I think whether 3
they come in or not would be very favorably influenced if we 4
went to the GERDA Loop.
They would be much happier about a joint program that was built as the FIST project is on industry 5
property and run by industry research people.
COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
The second question I had 7
had to do with the overall staffing levels, levels for the 8
Research Office.
As I recall the '82 and '83 agency budget 8
had some substantial reductions in the staffing of the 10 research office as a result of the consolidation standards in research.
i, Now we are seeing a second and a third round of 12 reductions as we go out from '82 to '83 and from '83 to '84 th. 5 and I wondered what the impact of those reductions were going 14 to be on the office.
Does this reflect a lessening in the 15 work load or are there things that simply are not going to be 16 done?
17 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
I think the question should probably be directed to Bill.
18
}
COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
That's right, since this j
was a reduction.
8 20 a
COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
When the request came in --
l 21 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
Probably both of you.
22 Bill, maybe you could explain why you made the reduction and 23 then Bob can tell us what the impact is likely to be.
MR. DIRCKS:
There may be three involved in this.
24 l QE (Laughter.)
25 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:
I think I took two off.
If you
38 1
can explain the first part, I can explain the second.
2 (g)
(Laughter.)
3 MR. DIRCKS:
Again I think the impact will be 4
favorable.
Again we are dealing with very tight personnel resources and I think we just had to -- we will be cutting 5
corners.
There is no doubt about it.
When you cut back on 6
the staff and the program level remains the same, we run 7
into a great number o f dif ficulties.
But again we looked 8
at it from the overall agency standpoint where we had other 8
competing priorities and you heard all about them already.
10 This is another area and it is not something you can say 11 that if you eliminate this, you are going to lose that function.
It is just a matter of trying to cut back and hope jhp that we can keep the thing going in one piece.
14 MR. MINOGUE:
I would like to answer, also, and 15 my answer will compliment Mr. Dircks'.
I will tell you where 16 we won't take the cut because it reflected in the previous 17 cut from consolidation which was a total of about 32 when the dust settled.
18
}
A large part of that was a significant scrubbing j
of administrative support services within the office and 20
}
by consolidation between the research and standards activities f.
21 and more efficient use of personnel and we have wrung that out 22 pretty hard.
23 The cut we are talking about here and I recognize that it was just imposed on us fairly recently, but the plan 24 (h
I had to deal with that breaks into several categories.
- First, 3
we had already been considering ourselves in an effort to run a
l 39 gg t
1 tight ship, some organizational shifts that would'el'iminate c=
2 two branches.
That would take out two SES positions and-also "s
Q5
'x gss 3
might enable some minor consolidation of secretarial support.
Second, we are looking first through the whole list 4
,a of standards projects for candidates for elimination.
These 5
would be specific tasks that may be couldn't stand.the hard scrub as to need and specific areas of standards that we_
7 are looking especially hard at would be the updating aqd further 8
work on material control and accounting standards as one group, a
transportation standards as other and third, the work with the industry standards programs that are systems standards, to future plant type standards, work that in the past we have not had a good experience with a high degree of usability of the 12 product.
The last part of the answer and this _would be a 14 continuation of the trend that was reflected in the previous 15 32, there is a slow shift in the nature of the Office of i
Research.
We are moving away from having in-house'rearecwly'-
16 f
based technical experts in some field and working more to the 1
g 1
2 direction of broadly based research managers, guys who 'are l
i 18 i
quick to retreed and move into new problem areas.
l j
19 a
That is sort of an on-going process so as narrow li 20 technical specialists depart for greener fields and we have 8
g had a fair number of these leave, we don't replace thela.
It is 21 22 a combination of all those to make this cut.
I think jt'is a very reasonable figure.
I accepted it given the agency 23 constraints across the board and the severe problems, the FTE 24
-;; problem, I feel we should be asked to do our share. 25 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Actually the dollars expended 1 1
\\ 40 / j 1 in '85 are actually. less, at least projected to be less, than j-y (fjj ' they are in '82andyoua#ehWgtobuy*1ess;)c,esearchwith 2 1 ,t g 3 those dollars and you may no.h reed as many people to handle .) -(, 4 that. 4 3 ,i / 3 5 COMMISS!03ER AHEARNE: The dollars in '84 are \\ E s ta'r.'tially'more and the peopl e number, the pro'j'ected to b se 6 cut.,to 260 -- 7 CHAIRMANPALk.kDINO:, That's the best way to get more J \\ 8 h efficient.l 1 8 COMMISSIONER AinARNE: If you really want to draw 3 that li'ne, you slhould go farther in '85. to t ' \\ 11 M R.S MIN 0GflE (7 hat is a little misleading. CHAIRMAN PALLkDINO: 'fou' can' t af ford to go up and .s 12 'g 3 dow1. -[ 13 5;=7 c HR. MINOGUE: We have a number of types of programs 14 and :the ' doi ~iars tsugervised by a single man vary all over the place because yod'are dealing with a big facility where you 16 \\ . 16 rely heavily on la atory management. One guy can handle 17 multi,Mllions of dollars' worth of projects. In some of the t waste areas and so on we'n3ve much more microstructured type ,. 18
- }
l program. The dollars of research are quite different, so it 2. 19 d
- i doesn' t lend to that type of analysis.
l h 20 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: However, you can' t go too far f 21 on that because when you have a big multimillion dollar i 22 project, you still have to look that the pieces are being 23 coordinated and it is money being well spent. As a matter of 24 fact, sometimes it is a bigger challenge than a lot of little i ones. MR. MIN 0GUE: But we tend to put that burden on the
i l 41 1 laboratory management. That is what we pay them to do. 2 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: I am thinking in terms of Wll results. 3 MR. MINOGUE: You track it very closely and I 4 think we have met some real successes in LOFT in terms of 5 getting the costs down and much more predictab's in terms 6 of scheduling, but that hcs largely been by tracking the way 7 things are going and if things look wrong, we don't go to the 8 guys who are doing the work, we go to the management of EG8G g in light of operations office and make them straighten it out because that is what we pay them for. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I was thinking of following 11 it, tracking it. I wasn't disagreeing with you except that 12 I don't go quite all the way because sometimes that principle 13 _g_ doesn't work as far as it ought to. 5.y 14 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: The last question I had 15 related to LOFT. As I understand the budget proposals particularly for the latter part of '83 and then into '84 and 16 I '85, the money that is in here would be sufficient to fund g 17 our share of the work if there is a LOFT Consortium put 18 -i together. Basically that is the assumption that is made here, f. is that basically right? I* 20 MR. MINOGUE: Yes, sir, except that it is not an 21 assumption in the sense that it is not a share of the work. E It is a commitment to provide a certain level of funding. 22 If costs are not controlled by the LOFT Consortium management that will be their problem, not our problem. We have signed 24 r no open ended contracts. 55f 25 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: So this is a fixed limit to
42 1 our financial contribution. 2 g MR. MIN 0GUE: Yes, sir. 3 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: If the Consortium does not 4 develop and I don't know where that stands right now, is it 5 the idea that you use this money for decommissioning and decontamination? If so, how much money would that cost and 6 how does this relate to that? When would we have enough 7 money to pay that off ? MR. MINOGUE: The assumption is that the money would 8 go for decommissioning and decontamination which in the budget to as we developed it without the Consortium, we assumed that ij that would begin in '86. CHAIRMAN PALLA~ DIN 0: Without the Consortium? MR. MIN 0GUE: The decommissioning activity would begir i 13 ihi in '86, so there was no money in the budget other than for 14 unloading fuel and things like that, but not for any 15 significant activity of decommissioning through '85. If the 16 Consortium were not to go forward then the appropriate thing 8 l g 17 to do would be to forward fund particularly with the '85 money. 18 some of the decommissioning activities and perhaps even start somewhat earlier. j 19 j That is a fairly controllable thing as to when you 20 j start as long as you have waited a certain number of months l f you can start when you want to. 21 22 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: What are total decommis-23 sioning or decontamination costs? 24 MR. MINOGUE: That depends on the condition of the k facility. The estimates that I have used and these are not blsed on the figures that I would care to defend against a 1
43 1 hostile audience range from about $15 million up to about $90 million, the imponderable being what,is the condition. ,.= 2 C:~ Right now, it is very clean in spite of doing all these 3 horrendous tests, the system is in very good shape. 4 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: When was the last test? 5 MR. MIN 0GUE: The last test, the L2-6, may very well 6 contaminate the facility. Now the extent to which it is 7 contaminated and the extent to which you can by bleed and feed 8 and other measures reduce the hard plate out is pretty imponderable. So we don't know the exact cost. If we run 9 L2-6 wisely, hopefully it will be in the $15 million dollar range. If we have severe fuel failure and local fuel melt, 11 it will be much, much higher. 2A COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Those are all of my 13 ggg questions. 55 .14 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: John. 15 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Bob, in the material that you ~ 16 ize, the funds requested could be reduced and the remaining 17 { funds would provide for program closeout and some decontamin-18 -i ation and decommissioning. I am not sure why you would be f. reducing it, why you wouldn't then just keep all those funds l' 20 and allocate them. 21 MR. MINOGUE: I think there is a problem 1n timing i here. We discussed it, and one situation would b* that the 22 consortium costs were strictly an add on and any incremental costs in the consortium would just be red lined out of our 24 as budget and I think those words probably reflect that. T@f 25 COMMISSIGNER AHEARNE: The issue here was that if the Consortium doesn't materialize, why would not our plan "B" take
44 1 whatever monies we had and put it towards decontamination and 2 dyy decommissioning. 3 MR. MIN 0GUE: Yes, sir. That was the final decision. 4 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: That is not what the words 5 say. MR. MIN 0GUE: I am sorry about that. Maybe it is a 6 problem of QA in handling all of this voluminous documentation. r 7 At an early stage we discussed it in terms of if the Consortium doesn't go, the money is turned back and we go back on the mode 9 that we run the NRC program and begin decommissioning in '86. 10 We talked about that and as the Chairman reviewed the budget, the final decision and that is what my remarks just now are n based on, that no, we really shouldn't do that. If the Consortium doesn' t go, that we should begin some decommission-5hb ing activities or forward fund the decommissioning activities 14 in '84 and '85. 15 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Now the concept in the 16 Consortium, what link would remain between that facility and 17 the NRC? Who would own the facility? g 18 MR. MINOGUE: The facility would be owned by DOE as it is today. They own it already. But we would be relieved of 19 j any responsibilities that we might have as users of the 20 a facility for decommissioning or ultimate disposal costs. We j f. 21 really would be relegated to the position of being a buyer of 22 time. 23 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: We are the principal respon-24 sible for the facility, aren't we? hs MR. MINOGUE: We are now, yes, sir. Part of the 3 agreement participation in the LOFT Consortium would be the
45 1 negotiation of the hold harmless clause that would relieve us f the responsibility that we have now a,nd hand that back to c 2 C:-- DOE as part of the package. 3 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: In that regard, are we 4 sure now that we have sufficient controls to make sure that 5 there is say a lag in setting up the Consortium? We are not 6 going to be stuck with paying the costs of maintaining the 7 operability of that plant once our tests are done? That is, 8 everyone is on notice that once are tests are done either the Consortium is in effect and takes over responsibility or we g go to a reduced mode? 10 MR. MIN 0GUE: Everyone is on notice that if the 11 Consortium issue does not come to a head within the next month 12 or month and a hal f, and it appears that it will, it has been 13 moving forward well in terms of moving towards resolution, ,.m 5fi5 14 that we are going to go ahead on the basis that terminates operation as a test facility in February or March and I have 15 forgotten the exact date. ~ That is well understood and further, the funding is l 17 limited. The authorization bill that is working its way 18 l through the conference process has an explicit dollar limit on j 19 the amount of money we spend on LOFT. That dollar limit is the Yj 20 amount of money that would be involved in finishing the NRC d test. It would not allow for any stand-by fully operable status 21 i: which, of course, is very costly. 22 There is one qualifier to what I have said. We have 23 set aside as part of the commitment that we have made to DOE and have actually spent a large part -- almost a million g_ ='- 25 dollars worth -- of program planning money that gets charged i
46 1 against the $57 million limit for Consortium tests. It is . =. - 2 part of the staff support that we agreed to provide. CC ~~ COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: If it falls apart when would 3 we have to start initiating action on the decontamination a'nd 4 decommissioning? 5 MR. MIN 0GUE: In a formal sense, not for several 6 years. 7 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: How about putting in monies 8 for the advance planning? g MR. MIN 0GUE: There is money in there for advance pl anni ng. There is money in there for removal of fuel and 10 some preparatory activities. 11 COMMISSIO'iER AHEARNE: When would we have to start 12 taking the actions such as going to cont,ractors or allocating 13 sta f f -- _= 5 14 MR. MIN 0GUE: That is right now because the first 15 step is to start pulling fuel and you would be doing that next spring. We are now operating on a mode of terminating 16 i operations over the next year. We will start laying people 17 8 off the first of October. That is going on right now. In 18 fact, I think a lot of it has already been done. f. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: In developing the research aj 20 budget, we did not have the benefit of the ACRS input. It came 21 later. Do you have comments on that or do you want,to ask more detailed questions? 22 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Yes. I have a whole bunch 13 of detailed questions on that. 24 JE6 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: All right. Maybe I will wait 5@" 25 and let you pick it up. I have a few but I will follow up,
47 1 but I do want some attention to the ACRS comments. 2 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Before we get to the ACRS ggg 3 comments, could we go back to a question that Commissioner Asselstine asked relating to some of the reductions and focus 4 upon the staff reduction. I noticed a substantial amount of the staff reductions are in the facility operations area 6 to the extent that I believe this piece of paper and I wondered what will be cut in that? In theory, that had been an area 8 where the agency had been putting increased emphasis. 9 MR. MINOGUE: Of course, the safeguards stuff is in that division. It is in that decision unit. I must admit 10 that there is an element of " glitch" here and the best way to answer this is to lay it out right up front. 12 We got a request and the amount is really not that 13 25 large if you look at the total budget. Where would you take .g= '4 a reduction of this amount if it were taken and it was 15 allocated without much careful thought as to what the areas 16 would be that you would actually reduce. In answer to Commissioner Asselstine's comment, I 37 i gave you what I would call the straight answer as to the 18 g areas that we would focus on for potential reductions and the j 19 g only one of those that is in that division is the safeguards 20 s stuff. I think those figures were not that carefully thought 4 21 though. 22 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Are you talking facility operations? 23 24 Yes. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: jf; MR. MIN 0GUE: Yes, sir. r 25 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: That includes two important ~
48 1 items, human factors and I&C, Instrumentation and Control. 2 () One of the comments often being made is'that Instrumentation 3 and Control deserves some more thorough and detailed attention. 4 MR. MIN 0GUE: We are not cutting that area, Mr. Chairman, nor are we cutting human factors. 5 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Then what are you cutting? 6 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Since you are taking an 18 7 percent cut, my concern is where it is going to be as the Chairman just mentioned. 9 MR. MIN 0GUE: I have explained the areas where we to would actually cut. In the course of pulling these sheets together, we get a lot of quick requests and sometimes they n are n t handled as well as they should be. 12 MR. GILLESPIE: There was a basis as quick as it EM was that we had when we were working through that and that 14 decision unit is cada up of safeguards, instrumentation and 15 control, human factors including QA and occupational health. 16 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Right. 17 MR. GILLESPIE: There are right now 12 people in the Safeguards Branch which are about evenly split, and this is 18 ( ! the logic we went through in rapidly doing it, which are about j evenly split between material control and physical security. t 20 I think we are looking at a drop of five. f 21 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Eight. 22 MR. GILLESPIE: Eight all together, but now look at 23 occupational health. Again it was considered in our rapid 24 thought process at the moment to be chiefly a standards group h working on what might have been -- on a snapshot of the 3 moment -- some lower priority standards, regulatory guide
49 1 revisions and that was the genesis of that. 2 (yf MR. MIN 0GUE: These are the ACARA guides. They are 3 detailed guides for specific material activities. In fact, 4 we have a meeting scheduled in the next few days with Mr. Davis to look for alternative ways of coming at that. It is now 5 Part 20. 6 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Frank, embedded in here is 7 the assumption of taking a reduction of five in safeguards? 8 MR. GILLESPIE: Embedded in the thought process 9 behind that initially was that, that is right. to I think if you look at the safeguards budget
- j numbers, you will see that we have only budgeted one million dollars for that planned accomplishment.
But I think we are being very consistent even to longer term planning for many 13 jhi months ago and we came up with that budget level. We are 14 reducing that budget level by a half. 15 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: You are at 51 now or least the 16 '82 FTE would be 51, now did you say that there were 13 on i t 17 human factors,13 on I&C, and 13 on occupational radiation protection, that they are evenly split and then 12 on 18 safeguards? j 19 i MR. GILLESPIE: No. I went through it quickly in 20 l a my mind because there is a Division Director and a Deputy lf Director and it is not a matter of dividing by four: There is 21 22 a hierarchy. l 23 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: You said those three were all 24 equally divided. (@P MR. GILLESPIE: It is about 12 per branch. We have 3 12 man branches.
50 1 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Now what do you do when you 2 $g get to '857 3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: You are down to 43. 4 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Yes, you are down to 43. MR. GILLESPIE: I think what we have done is 5 recognized the budget levels that we already put in ourselves 6 and when we had the people cut, we matched up the people cut 7 with the budget reductions we had already put in -- allocations. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Even admitting that which'I am 9 not sure is quite right, how did they come out? Does 10 Safeguards go down by five? 23 MR. GILLESPIE: We didn't have to get into that much detail so we didn't. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: So you dtdn't do that. Ehh MR. GILLESPIE: What I am saying is the thought 14 process behind it was within that decision unit, there was 15 available if we really looked at the work a possibility of 16 the eight people. I 17 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: The reason I was asking was g l $ 18 because you said that I&C and human factors were not going to i go down. j MR. GILLESPIE: It was anticipated that the loss E 20 } would come from safeguards and occupational protection. f. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I guess what you are really 22 saying is that you were given a mark and now you looked at 23 where would it be most realistic to take that mark? MR. GILLESPIE: That's true. 24 (h? MR. MINOGUE: We were given a mark and a few hours 3 to just give our first indication of where we would take it.
51 1 It looked to me like fine structure. I wasn't actually 2 Q directly involved in this. I was out of town at the time. 3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I understand that. 4 MR. MINOGUE: What was done was as Mr. Gillespie 5 has presented it, that was the reasoning process. Since then out thinking has matured and, for example, we have identified a couple of branches that could be eliminated 7 so there are two positions. We have identified a whole 8 new area -- 8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: But it isn't a bottom up 10 construction, top down reduction? 11 MR. MIN 0GUE: It came from Mr. Ross who was acting as my deputy and we were implementing Mr. Dircks' mark. In 12 fact, when I got back from my trip the first thing that I h found on my doorstep was Karl Goller madder than hell because 14 he read it the came way the Chairman did, and I gave him the 15 same answer. I told him to calm down. It will come out in 16 the wash. We are not going to cut that area, but he had the i 17 same reaction. g COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Now along with that 18 } reduction and let me go back and preface, if I look at the l dollars in program support and we had that lengthy discussion 2 20 a before, there is a five and a half percent increase on all research dollars. ~ 22 MR. GILLESPIE: The research dollars are as presented 23 in the given years. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: For example though when I 24 lo k at a number that is $13.5 million in '83 and it goes 25 to $16.8 million in '84 and I see that that is a $3,300,000
52 1 increase, I should understand that embedded in there is a 2 (jh percentage of inflation? 3 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes, sir. That is in there. 4 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: When the number stays the same, you are getting less for your money? 5 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes. 6 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: In this area you have.just 7 been talking about, you are going to take reduction of about 8 eight people in facility operations and you increase the 8 funding by about 25 percent. 10 MR. MIN 0GUE: And you will find that funding in human factors and instrumentation and control. There was
- j a basic underlying logic that was in the standards area that we would seek this round of cuts and the standards work 13 jgp is people intensive.
14 MR. GILLESPIE: It is hard to look at our numbers 15 and say we are looking for a five percent increase and call 16 that a level program. We have projects that are coming to i 1 term and are ending on a given year and a new project with 17 g a separate deliverable is starting the next year. So you j gg are not going to see that nice five percent increase on a g 1 i steady workload basis. j 20 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I understand that. In g siting and health you go from 31 people in '82 to 22 in '84. 21 22 What is the drop? 23 MR. MIN 0GUE: There are significant areas of reduction there. The environmental program in particular 24 hhr is just being wound out. This is also an area where we l 25 have some of these narrow specialists that I talked about
53 1 and as they are finding greener pastures, we are not tending 2 (y) to replace them. 3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: So are you saying that the 4 major drop though is due to decreasing areas in the environ-mental program? 5 MR. MINOGUE: Yes, that area is basically being phased out. 7 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: What are the assumptions? 8 MR. MINOGUE: It is the same problem and I am sure 8 that Harold would make the same comments, many of these 10 environmental issues have been thoroughly laid out, they are it well understood, they are handled smoothly in the licensing pr cess and any specific problems that arise are likely 12 related to the application and that is the Applicant's problem. 13 fhp That is not our problem. 14 In terms of research needs for the Agency, we see 15 this as an area not only of no growth, but appropriate for 16 Zeroing in on. = 17 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Are you going to go to the ACRS next? 5 18 ? COMMISSIONER AHEARNE:
- Yes, j
19 l CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I have a feeling that we are i 20 a going to have a fair number of questions on ACRS and I was 21 going to s'aggest that we take a five minute break. 22 (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.) 23 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: We will reconvene, pl eas e. 24 Commissioner Ahearne can lead off with questions relating to 53; ACRS. 2s COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: We will get back eventually to
54 1 the basic question that the Chairman opened with which really 2 (y addresses the recommended changes, but ret ma ask some more 3 specific questions which were addressed in some of the 4 responses. The ACRS makes the statement that staff states 5 and this is on design against sabotage. It is your response 6 page 43 and it is their page 3 of their report and they say, 7 "The staff states that budget constraints have limited the 8 extent to which they are developing a regulatory policy on 8 possible design approaches to prevent sabotage." 10 Now the response doesn't really address the next 11 question. The question is, does research believe that we should be developing such approaches, but that budget constraints are preventing it. ih I ask the question because of the way the ACRS 14 statement was made. 15 MR. MIN 0GUE: No, I don't believe that. Let me give 16 you a fairly long answer if I may. I do not believe that we 17 should be developing approaches for design to reduce vulner-g 2 18 ability to sabotage now even if we had a lot of money to throw i 19 ( There is still a question of the appropriate 2 20 l timing of this kind of work. Let me make an important 21 differentiation here. You can talk about design to reduce 22 vulnerability sabotage in terms of physical separation and 23 things that lend themselves to access control. You can ta'k 24 about something a lot more subtle that relates to how l h systems interact with each other where you are really looking 25 at the design of interactive systems in a way that reduces
55 1 vulnerability. That is the area of dispute. We have alrrady 2 done a lot of work aimed at the question of physical separation gg-a w and access control. 3 The problem is that we have a lot of other ongoing 4 problems that are a logical first step and I think are more 5 urgent to any kind of general sabotage reassessment. These 6 are the control systems interaction studies, the general 7 issues of C&I response and C&I systems as part of the general 8 response of the combined systems to accident situations. g The work we are doing on common cause failure modes, the devel-opment of event trees and so on that take this into account to and we recognize many common cause failure modes of the same 11 sorts of things that a saboteur might attempt. 12 To me, the logic of doing an o,rderly job demands
- =1 that you concentrate now on these broadly applicable questions
== 14 which I just enumerated and then recognize that from that 15 at a later stage with taking advantage of many of the 16 insights that you got from that, you should now go back l and apply that methodology ta the issues of sabotage protection. g 2 I So the debate here is one of timing rather than 18 g resource availability. I think if this were not a new j 19 disagreement, the same issue was discussed last year with.he e n [ 20 ACRS, and we simply do not agree on the appropriate timing 21 of this work. I think it should wait several years,and they n: don't. 22 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Then specifically, you disagree 23 with their statement that the staff states that budget 24 7 :: constraints have limited the extent.
==r 25 MR. MIN 0GUE: I have never made that statement to
56 1 them. Others on the staff may have. I can't sp;ak to that. 2 tjj) I have given them the same explanation I'just gave you and 3 I have not heard any rebuttals or counter arguments or any 4 specific discussions as to where that is wrong. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: So that your staff has not 5 been arguing with you then? 6 MR. MIN 0GUE: No, sir. I don't know for a fact that 7 all of my staff agrees with me though. 8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I am not asking for a poll. 8 Perhaps the same kind of a question, the ACRS on page 4 which to is now addressing the response on page 44, my question was, "Research should explain why the SSMRP Program shouldn't ij include a limited probabilistic seismic safety s+udy of a BWR," g and the answer is, " Current plans do call for such." (]h MR. MINOGUE: Yes. 14 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Is this a lack f understand-15 ing on the part of the ACRS? 16 MR. MIN 0GUE: They raised this as a comment in an l 17 earlier stage. I find their arguments persuasive. Arlotto and I went out and talked to the people at Livermore and we took 18 [ steps to include a BWR element in the study, and it has been 19 y initiated. It may be that we just failed to get the word 20 m back to them. I don't know. I don't remember this being f discussed when I met with the ACRS, but they did make this 21 c 22 point. 23 If I can go back to the Chairman's earlier general comment, you have to recognize that the feedback that we get 24 ((3 n the research program from ACRS is not a unique event. It 25 goes on all year long in various subcommittee meetings and so
L 57 1 on. Many of these issues you see in tais letter had actually 2 [jjy been raised earlier in a different conte'xt. I found them 3 persuasive on the BWR issue, and we did add it to the study. 4 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: In talking about their comments on damaged fuel, their comment is that they don't 5 recommend the work planned at the NRU and your answer is 6 that the budget does not include any funding. 7 MR. MINOGUE: That is correct. That program has been eliminated. 8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: So this is then another 10 example where their understanding of your proposal was incorrect. 11 MR. MINOGUE: This is a very dynamic process and g a lot of their feedback carries a lot of weight. The decision jff on NRU was not solely because of their feedback. It certainly 14 has some bearing. The elimination of tle NRU tests from the 15 action program actually was carried out in an internal 16 reassessment. It related more to interfaces between us and NRR i 17 as we are working hard to develop a fully cost effective 18 program here in which the ACRS comment was taken into account. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: You make a statement or a 2 19 j statement is made in the answer on looking at the PBF, 20 a saying that phase two of PBF testing would in all likelihood 0 21 l would not take place if foreign funding does not develop. 22 MR. MINOGUE: That is correct. 23 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Is that equivalent to saying that -- I guess it doesn't really say how much foreign funding 24 d_5 25 MR. MINOGUE: The amount of money reauired to do it
58 1 would be, and Frank can corre ct me if I am wrong, but it is %gg3 on the order of $5 million per year. We have already 2
== 3 received cash in hand payment from the British for $2 million. We have received indications from a number of other countries 4 that they are interested in making contributions. The likelihood of getting a full funding of phase 6 two from foreign contributions is significant, I think. 7 Further, in the course of this ongoing process 8 because we are actually working on the Severe Accident Plan 9 right now, EPRI has taken a very strong position of support for 10 the type of tests that only PBF can do. They have argued for improvements in the operation and reductions of costs and so on. 12 So there are other sources of. potential funding, =" but within NRC, itself, and given the competitive demands for = 14 resources and the use to whic: we would put the data and 15 recognize that there are some severe experimental limitations 16 to PBF which I will elaborate on if you want, I don't think l l g the program can stand beyond phase one without a broader g a base of support. If we hit the test of cost effectiveness, 18 y then we simply don' t need it. l j 19 l a COMMISSIONER AHEARN_': What budget assumption do a i j 20 you have? d 21 MR. MIN 0GUE: The cost of running the facility is 3!' 22 around $16 million per year. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: In the budget? 23 MR. MIN 0GUE: The assumption in the budget would f53 do phase one and would not do phase two with the exception, of '~ 25 course, there are some close out costs and things of that type.
59 1 I think the numbers were in the answer that we sent you. 2 (jy COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: No. 3 MR. MINOGUE: Frank, can you give me the exact 4 numbers. I have them in some notes here, but I would rather let Frank tell you, the figures allocated tor PBF. 5 MR. GILLESPIE: The budget assumption is that we would 6 only put about $4 million dollars into that in '84 for our 7 contribution to PBF phase two. 8 MR. MIN 0GUE: That is for phase two, but phase one 9 is $7 million in '84, and that is in the budget. 10 MR. GILLESPIE: As in the budget. MR. MINOGUE: The final stages of phase one is ij $7 million and what I have here in front of me is $4 utilion g NRC money that would be a cost that you would incur if you iIf) shut the facility do.in. It would be close out costs or if 14 we got outside funding for phase two, it could be allocated 15 j to phase two which would leave a $5 million shortfall. 16 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: How about for 1985? I h 17 MR. MINOGUE: For '85, the figure I have here is $6 million with the same general constraints though. I 18 19 i y for PBF would be what? 20 a MR. MIN 0GUE: That I don't know. We don't have a f 21 firm estimate on that. It is an estimate in terms of the 22 decommissioning costs and there are also people involved l 23 and severance pay and things of that type, the same sort 24 of thing that we are going-through now with LOFT. These are t@ estimates. COMMISSIONER AHE*.RNE: But you are saying that as far
60 1 the budget at the moment is concerned, it is consistent with
== 2 no phase two? C ~ MR. MIN 0GUE: That is correct. There are dollars 3 in there that could be used for partial funding of phase tw'o 4 to the tune of $4 million in '84 and $6 million in '85 as I 5 understand it that if there were no phase two would still be 6 required to pay close out costs, but that is an estimate not 7 based on tne figure we have negotiated with BG&G or the 8 Idaho Operations Office. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: What is the time in which 9 the decision has to be made whether to go to close out or can you elaborate on this ? 11 MR. MIN 0GUE: Really early next year and I think it 12 is unlikel, we will go that mode. We ar,e getting strong 13 foreign interest. We have gotten strong statements of 14 interest f om EPRI. I think it is very unlikely that we will be in that mode. 15 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: In the LOFT and that is page 16 i 49, you make a statement that under the proposed Consortium g 17 Agreement, NRC's contribution to the decontamination and 18 -j decommissioning of LOFT is fixed and is based on the I 18 I, probably icwer cost of decommissioning to DOE standards. j 20 From that should I infer that the DOE standards for d 21 decommissioning are sufficiently weaker than ours, that I t h e r e f o r.e, it would cost less? 22 MR. MINOGUE: The DOE practice, and I am going to 23 answer you very carefully, let me first tell you what I 24 assumed we would do if it were our facility, we would
- 2_
5s? 25 decommission it to the same standards, the standards to be
61 1 demonstrably related to what we would require a licensee 'to ggs 2 do, that there were elements in our regu.lations that allowed uz= 3 for special handling of remote sites that that could be taken care of. DOE practice in Idaho, the Snake River Plan is 4 covered with it, is to lock the door and go away, and that is 5 a fact. I think the reference to standards here was perhaps not the best choice of words. 7 What we were trying to reflect is the reality that 8 when DOE completes operations on facilities on that site and g recognize that is a national reactor testing station and it is a very remote site, it is a very large dedicated site, 3g they have generally been in a walk-away mode, and we have 11 always assumed in our budget planning that the NRC would find 12 itself unable to do that, that we would,have to stand up and '3 -g-decommission it just as we would require a licensee to do. 'h= 14 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Interesting. The ACRS had 15 made a comment on page 14 of their -- MR. MINOGUE: Commissioner Ahearne, may I add, 16 { DOE, i tsel f, I was told by Dr. Ross the other day has I estimated the decommissioning costs at about $7 or $8 million 18 5 dollars. That is substantially less than the lowest figure j 19 that we felt in our estimates. tj 20 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: What kind of estimates did 4 21 we have? MR. MINOGUE: I answered that earlier, from a low 22 of $15 million up to something like $90 million depending on 23 the condition of the facility. 24 f]; COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: The ACRS had made a comment ~r 25 towards the end of their paper in which they basically
62 i 1 questioned the '85 funding level. As we have discussed in ggg 2 the previous meeting, the '85 funding level as the chart w 3 shows decreases and it decreases significantly from '84. The issue that they raised is that perhaps inappropriate to 4 decrease that much because you are now talking several years, can you really identify. 6 So I made a comment that I agreed with the ACRS 7 and I didn't think we were prepared to identify in detail 8 the program for '85. The answer is the current funding 9 request is in accordance with the overall guidance provided to by the PPG and the EDO program guidance. So I interpret that to say that you were given $195 million dollars for '85? 12 MR. MIN 0GUE: I really can't answer the question that ggg way. That isn't the way these numbers were developed. What = we are looking at here is the end of an era. As we get out 15 of the business of running big facilities and as we answer some 16 of the questions that require facilities, I hope to God the s cost of the research program will come down substantially. } g I COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I understand that. My 18 y c question was, were you given $195 million dollars by the EDO l j 19 l for the budget level for '857 e aj 20 MR. MIN 0GUE: I don't remember. We developed the 4 l l 21 budget requirements based on what we perceived as being the l 5* 22 user needs and then compared that against the EDO levels, i the past experiences, and then they tend to get close. 23 MR. BARRY: In the guidance that we provided
- j5; which was meant to stay within that l evel, was 201.
25 'r ( COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: For 1985? l
63 1 MR. BARRY: For '84, I am sorry. gg 2 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I am talking about '85. w MR. BARRY: It was less than that. 3 MR. MIN 0GUE: Let me stress that the way we developed the program is we do not begin with a number and 5 then a program to match it. We try to look at regulatory 6 needs and develop a program to meet the needs. I then 7 compare that against the number and if I am on che high 8 side of it, I do some hard prioritization and scrubbing and g I get down below it. So if we come in at the EDO level that doesn't mean that I developed a program. 11 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: No, I understand that. But 12 it does mean that that was a controlling factor and then I 13 -g; was going to ask Bill if it was, what his rationale was. 5= 14 MR. DIRCKS: My rationale. I think we were just 15 taking a general decline in research as a given and we just assigned numbers along that line. 16 MR. MIN 0GUE: May I add te that? I would feel very 17 free the way we work together if I did that scrub of comparing 18 E against the EDO mark and doing some hard prioritization and f I couldn't get under that figure with a program that I felt I aj 20 met real needs, I would come back and ask the figure to be E 21 raised and I would have some confidence that would get i carefully considered. That has not proved necessary. 22 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: If you couldn't get him to raise it, you would come back here? 24 cc-MR. MIN 0GUE: I would raise it with the Commission Ts? 25 if I felt it was a major area that was absolutely necessary.
64 1 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I gather you are not raising 2 (y it? 3 MR. MINOGUE: Absolutely not, no, sir. In fact, 4 I think our first cuts were very close to the ED0 figure. 5 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: My last question, I guess, goes back more towards the Chairman's questions. CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: I was interested in the fact 7 that the ACRS does exhort us not to go as low as $195 million 8 and thinks that we ought to be about $201.5 and it makes some 8 minor adjustments in the way they would spend the money and to you may have answered it in the process of answering the it earlier question, but I was interested in what your feeling was with regard to the raadjustments they suggest and the 12 total amount? 13 hhi I was looking at ease of following the table on 14 page 15 of their report. 15 MR. MINOGUE: Let me answer the second question 16 fi rs t i f I may. I think there is a fundamental difference 17 of view between us and the ACRS regarding the long term g 18 trend. When I have a long range program that shows a down !I turn, I think that is real, and they don't. I think that 3 19 j is sort of a fundamental di fference of opinion. 2 20 8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: They did agree with some f reduction. I 22 MR. MIN 0GUE: Yes, and we have a lot of back and 23 forth. We are looking at the hole in the doughnut here. There 24 is enormous amount of agreement between us and the ACRS and
- hhI we are looking at some areas of disagreement.
25 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Of course.
65 1 MR. MIN 0GUE: I definitely feel that they have 2 (jy a different concept of long term directi'on than we do. The 3 other comment that I would like to respond to is they think 4 in terms of these dollar amounts as how much they love some 5 particular subject area as a measure of love and I look at the dollar amounts as an indication of how much is required to 6 do the necessary -- 7 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Do you want to defend the 8 ACRS as a former member? 8 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I am just trying to search to for the truth. 33 (Laughter.) MR. MIN 0GUE: If I may finish my comment, I look at 12 it more in terms of how much is required to do a specific 13 [hh task. Quite frankly, I pay a lot of attention to their 14 specific technical comments on program content because I 15 learned from experience that it is almost very good advice. 16 I don't pay a lot of attention when they make up i 17 these numbers because that just tells me how important they 18 think an area is. When they say, "Put more money into i t," they say that they think it is important not that they have j some well defined tasks in mind that they think that money i 20 } ought to be spent for. j CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: They show an increase of 21 22 $1.5 million in facility operations which includes two 23 important programs, at least two important programs, the 24 Instrumentation and Control and the Human Factors. They show (h under risk analysis, I think, a $3 million addition and they 25 show under advanced reactors, $1 million addition.
66 1 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Challenge that last one. 2 MR. MIN 0GUE: I can discuss it. 3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I was just joking. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I was wondering if you had any 4 comments on whether any of these we should be adding. 5 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: For example, in facility 6 operation one of the reasons that they give for an increase 7 is a program directed towards human failure and maintenance 8 and testing. 9 MR. MINOGUE: The difference in dollars is to actually safeguards work because they don't tend to look at the bucks in terms of specific tasks. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I am not sure about that. 12 Your reduction was, but they are saying.that here is where you ought to put more dollars. ..y 14 MR. MIhlGUE: I just got this letter a week or two 15 ago. As we go on to implement the program and look at the 16 specific program elements in that area, I will be going back f and monitoring this letter again for that kind of advice. g COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I was really just trying to 18 y raise -- certainly there are many people who advocate j 19 increases and decreases in programs because of affection for a nj 20 them, and it is just not restricted to the ACRS. I am 4* 21 questioning whether all of their increases and decreases l 22 here are really just because they have affection for them. They seem to have some specific reasons. For example, the 23 one I just raised as a question. s@g MR. MIN 0GUE: The exact dollar value of the change 25 they suggest, I find generally does not tie back to
67 1 sum reality. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Clearly, the exact dollar 2 69 ' " ~ value they fel t pinned a t $209.9. 3 MR. MIN 0GUE: The indication of an area that we ought 4 to work more on I take very seriously. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Maybe you want to look at their 6 speci fic commen ts on the increases and that might give you a 7 better sense of what they are trying to say. 8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Part of the dif ficulty I guess realistically and I know for myself although I can't g speak for the others, I have to try to come up with a vote 10 on the budget. You have proposed one budget and the ACRS has 11 come in and said, "No, here are some suggestions." I guess I 12 can't say that I will just pass. I have to take a position 13 cne way or the other. If you don't have a position on theirs, _g_ =a 14 could you think in the next few days you could make -- MR. MIN 0GUE: On this one specific point? 15 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Yes. 16 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: For the '85 budget on research, l 17 '84 and '85. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: They have addressed a few f specific areas where they have said to put in more money 19 l I l j 20 or take out money. d CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: On '84, at least their total 21 i comes out about the same and we have time to readjust the l 22 I details, but on '85 there is a fundamental question of whether l 23 l we go for more money. 24 MR. MIN 0GUE: The problem is they haven't developed 25 these numbers in terms of any specific tasks or things that you l l
68 1 do.
== 2 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: But, Bob, as you pointed C..... out when I asked you on some of the cuts in your program 3 in the budget that you proposed, ther'e aren't specific tasks ei th er. This is characteristic of a budget unfortunately. 5 I am not saying that your budget is any different than anybody 6 else's budget. When you are going into the final stages of 7 the budget, there are a lot of cuts and adds and reductions 8 and all you can make are approximate statements. 9 I guess I would like to get some sense where you would come out either in agreement or disagreement in what to they have recommended. They have recommended two things, 11 one, some reallocation and second, going back up to a higher 12 level in '85.
- =;
In the absence of a comment from you, then I have 2.". 14 to sort of guess myself. 15 M,R. MIN 0GUE: We can certainly provide to you in each of these 'PS reallocation areas some reaction or 16 f commentary based on such facts as are in this letter to support your position. 18 g s COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Yes. l j 19 MR. MIN 0GUE: From our own knowledge from discus-a fa 20 sions, but in some cases, of course, I have a very clear d 21 understanding of what underlies these numbers, but the g a advanced reactor thing, for example, I know exactly what 22 they have in mind. So we can deal with that. 23 l CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: What do they have in mind? 24 pjh MR. MIN 0GUE: What they are talking about is a ~;~ 25 risk assessment and a future reactor component beyond the CRBR.
69 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: I think that would be very 55 2 helpful. Lz==3 3 MR. MINOGUE: I can certainly do that within the next day or so, we can give you some feedback on these 4 differentials. 5 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: I am asking if possible -- 6 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: It is a PRA of the CRBR. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: What was that? 8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: What they say is we 9 recommend that the NRC Safety Research Program include a PRA 10 of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Is that under advanced reactors or PRA? 12 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: It is under advanced reactors. 13
- 2; MR. MIN 0GUE
Yes, that is my understanding. .e. 14 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: That is very specific. 15 fir. MINOGUE: I know exactly what they have in mind. 16 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Our schedule is tight. We were trying to get the Commissioners' suggestions on where to mark j 37 up if possible by Thursday evening. 18 g COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: But the answers got slipped. j 19 a CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: But you had the draft answers. aj 20 (Laughter.) ij 21 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I had the option of signing 22 the letter last night to some of the answers and I sat down 23 with Jim and said, "This isn't responsive. That isn't responsive." So I didn't sign it until today. I was trying d5ig to be helpful to you. But I still feel that that is the target. 25 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Certainly I will be aiming [
70 1 for Thursday. c.= 2 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: I will accept them Friday, EM but what I am saying is if you could get something down to 3 us in the next day or so. MR. MIN 0GUE: We certainly can do that. It won't 5 be an 80 page document, a page or two. 6 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: We are not looking for an 80 7 page document. 8 MR. MIN 0GUE: We can certainly hit the high spots. 9 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: If you just marked up that page, take a xerox and mark it up, and then put any rationale 10 attached to it. 11 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: This is a difficult question 12 28 given already your previous response about the variability of 13 g project size. Do you have any rule of thumb on the number of 14 staff managers you need per million dollars? 15 MR. MIN 0GUE: No, I really don't. I hadn't tried to come at it that way. I think in a more homogeneous 16 program, that is a good approach. I have used it in my I previous job for tech assistance to standards, I used that 18 kind of approach, but here I don't think it would work. i 19 l COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Those are all my questions. I I i 20 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Any other questions ? 4 s 21 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Let me ask one. quick 22 question on advanced reactors. Of the program support money i you identified for HTGR two functions, one, issues related to Fort St. Vrain and second, issues related to possible 24 fpg follow-on plant. What is the approximate break out? Is most r 25 of the effort on Fort St. Vrain?
71 1 MR. MINOGUE: Surprisingly enough, it turns out 2 ((g a substantial percentage of it is Fort St. Vrain related work. 3 We got from Harold a very long list which totals of the $2.5 4 million, probably half of it is stuff that comes out of Fort St. Vrain. We tried to do it in a generically applicable way. 5 But about half of it comes out of Fort St. Vrain. 6 The other part is HIGR specific risk assessments 7 and the development of criteria, general design criteria 8 and siting criteria, specific to HTGR's based on the lead 9 plant design concept as has been developed. 10 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: So if the Congress does what it usually does directs that we spend more money in i3 that area, then that would have to be absorbed? MR. MIN 0GUE: I don't believe so. This is part of 13 tif5 a rather carefully crafted agreement am9ng all parties. 14 Instead of having a $5 million dollar program, we have agreed 15 on $2.5 million dollar level. It is aimed at what they call 16 preapplication review and I just identified what that is. 17 The commitment is to do generically applicable work. If this flows out of Fort St. Vrain that is good for me. Maybe we 18 3 can use it to support a licensing problem, but it is y ligitimately generically applicable. 2 20 8 This is an agreement among all parties that is being honored by all parties and I don't expect any-mandates 22 to increase the level. 23 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Sounds good. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Maybe with a change in 24 .hr ngressional staff we won't get those kind of mandates. 25 (Laughter.)
72 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Widespread support. 2 gg MR. MIN 0GUE: I can assure you that it has very 3 widespread support. I noticed with some interest that 4 Congressman Udall was going to the annual HTGR technology bash and I think that reflects the perception on his part 5 that these are inherently safer reactors and he would like 6 to see them act die or at least not die because of any 7 inaction on the part of the regulatory staff. 8 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: All right. Any other 9 questions? 10 (No response.) CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: There are several other j, areas that we have not addressed and to help address them 12 we did prepare slides 15A,15B and 15C.. Slide 15A relates 13 q}) to the Commission Offices, ISB to the EDO offices and 15C to 14 the administrative support summary by category. 15 (Slide.) 16 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I thought we might see what 5 17 questions we have on any of those. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: My first question comes 18 3 under EDO. j 19 1 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Shall we go to ED0 and have slide ISB? 4 h (Slide.) 21 22 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Let me ask a question on AE00. 23 I noticed that the ED0's program support dollars are larger than the AE0D's request and in asking about it I was told, 24 (fp the answer to my question 28, it funds a reactor events analysis of construction and vendor program data base which was i
l 73 l originally requested in I&E and has now been transferred over 2 to AE0D. =- 3 In reading the write-up on resource changes, I am left puzzled by whether you have embedded in here coding of 4 all old LER's. I asked another question, whether the coding of LER's was included in here and was told, "Yes, it is only 6 funded in AE00." But there are some 25,000 old LER's and the last estimate we received at how much that would cost 8 was something like $2.5 million dollars if they were going to 9 be coded and I wonder whether under the budget assumption, is to the assumption that we will not code, not put in the AE00's new system on the old LER's and only use it for future ones? g MR. SCROGGINS: The budget assumption does assume 12 full operation of the sequence coding sy. stem in AE0D. I 13 qg think part of your question that I can't answer right now '4 is the question of the old versus the new, but the full 15 funding for the sequence coding system and the intent to move 16 from I&E was to try to consolidate all of this in one location. j 37 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I see that. 18 g MR. SCROGGINS: I can't give you a specific answer j 19 i on that. 20 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: But given the response that d 21 all of the coding is embedded here and given that the previous g 22 estimate was that it would cost -- that the best estimate 23 was probably an underestimate-- $2.5 million dollars to code the old ones, then I am puzzled by what the budget assumption
- 35; is, and I would conclude that it probably means that we have 25 made a budget assumption and we will not incorporate the old
74 1 LER's. 2 (j) MR. SCROGGINS: There was no b'udget assumption made-- 3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Implicit. 4 MR. SCROGGINS: It would be by AE00 and I would have 5 to go back and get a specific answer to that question. MR. DIRCKS: I don't think there were any budget constraints on Carl Michaelson. Whatever decisions he made are 7 in here. 8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I would appreciate your findins 8 that out. Another question is on state programs. I noticed to that although we have a big regionalization, the state is programs office goes from 27 in '82 to 23 in '85. I wondered why there isn' t more. g MR. DIRCKS: Why there isn' t more movement? 13 gjh COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Yes. It seems to be a very 14 large state programs office. 15 MR. DIRCKS: Ron is saying that some of it has 16 al ready gone out, so I guess we didn't reflect it in the '82 g 17 and '83 changes. 18 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: I missed that. MR. DIRCKS: Some of the positions had already been l j regionalized in '82, so we didn't pick it up in '82 and '83. l ? 20 l COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I was not comparing '83 to 21 l '84. I was comparing '82 to '84. 22 MR. DIRCKS: We didn't regionalize enough. I just 23 don't know. I think we were again dealing with a small staff 24 with real individuals and I think we were not pushing them ' h:i into a move this early. So I think it is that type of an 25 explanation. ( l
J 75 1 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: But you have 27 or that is the 2 (y current estimate for '82, but if people ' move then you would be j 3 down to your 23. 4 MR. DIR C KS : Yes. There is another element in there which has that Jerry Salsbins/ Price Andersor function which 5 is embedded in here, so they not only have -the state programs, 6 they have the Price Anderson operation. So there.is going to be 7 a number in here and I am not quite sure what the core number 8 is. It is not all state liason/ state agreements in here. 8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: It is a collection function. 10 MR. DIRCKS: It is a collection of functions, 33 right. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: The only other question I g had really referred to ADMIN and since that is your last 5fhi chart, maybe someone else had some questions. 14 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: I have a question on ELD. 15 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: All right. Why don't you go 16 ahead? E 17 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: I have to look out for my 4 18 own comrades. } COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I think a lot about them, too. ! j COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: Well and favorably, I am i 20 } sure. 21 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: As I understand the office i l 22 request, basically the office request was to reflect the 23 trans fer of the regional attorneys and then basically to stay level in number of attorneys from '82 to '83. Now Bill, your 24 kh proposal or the Chairman's, reduced that down by nine more 25 positions, down to 100. What I would be interested in hearing I
76 1 is first, Guy, what. your projections are for the change in 2 (-) workload from '82 to '83 and second, par'ticularly on case-j 3 work whether you aren't projecting either a level load or an 4 increased load over the next year or so since you all tend to 5 lag a little b:t being NRR, I think. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Could I make an observation 6 before you even answer? In '83 part of the drop off was 7 adding three to the OGC. Now it is my understanding that 8 you have assigned to OGC five people on detail. 9 MR. CUNNINGHAM: That is not correct, Mr. Chairman. 10 That concerns me that you have that impression. ti (Laughter.) CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: All right. Let me finish 12 the paragraph and if that is all wrong, yes it is my impres- @)) sion that you have them on detail to OGC and they said, "Well, 14 as long as they can be assured of that, that would be all 15 right." I said, "Somewhere along the line if it is going to 16 be a constant practice, we ought to make some trans fers," 1-7 and that is the three that you will see higher in OGC and g 18 three of the nine that you see lower. MR. CUMMINGHAM: We have a total now of three 2 19 l detailed to OGC. It has never been higher than that. 20 l" Bill Parler -- ,j CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: See, I picked the right number. 22 Somehow, I didn't go all the way to five. 23 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Michael assures me that l 24 they are doing the work of five. (f5 MR. BLUME: That's right, Mr. Chairman. 25 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Okay. Go ahead. I
1 77 1 MR. CUNNINGHAM: It is only three and we had a clear ~ 2 (j) understanding at the time Bill Parler, t'he first of those, 3 went down there that he would be able to return after six 4 months. We subsequently changed that agreement to he could ~ return upon selection of a new General Counsel and staffing 5 of that office with its supergrade SES complement. But I had expected all along that he would return and hope very 7 much that he would. 8 The other two were detailed to help out because of 8 the OGC attrition and if it is necessary for ELD to reduce in 10 size according with your mark on the budget, we would antici-33 pate that as OGC recruits, they would look to ELD and there would be some movement. g CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I would hope so, too. 13 Ef{$ MR. CUNNINGHAM: But now to get to Commissioner 14 Asselstine's questions about the workload. I understand the 15 two halves of the question to be the same thing, and that is 16 the hearing workload. While there has been some decline i 17 in what we anticipate for next year, that has been offset 18 by gains. Specifically the declines come in the area of } cases like Bailly and Black Fox which has been terminated, 1, Scaggett because of the relocation of the plant will not be ! {= 20 litigated until some time in the future. 21 j On the other hand, we have cases that we expected 22 to complete in '82 such as Shoreham and Indian Point which 23 will go into '83 and will continue to demand resources, cases 24 such as Zimmer which was completed has now been reopened which , (f! will require additional resources. There is a possibility and 25 this is the biggest problem we have is these intangibles. L
78 1 There is a possibility that Diablo will be reopened. ($ There is a motion to do that. There is a possibility of 3 hearings in the TMI steam generator repairs, the Point Beach 4 steam generator repairs, and we anticipate another wave 5 of spent fuel pool expansions. The last go around about half of those cases involved hearings. We had made a policy decision, NRR did, to prenotice an opportunity for hearing 7 in all spent fuel pool expansion cases. Experience with 8 about half of them resulted in hearings. 8 Some of those requests are on the way in now and 10 I would anticipate hearings in '83 on them. So that at 11 best, we have about an even trade off in workload. COMMISSItNER ASSELSTINE: And at worst, an increase. 12 MR. CUNNINGHAM: And at worst; an increase. (h5 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: In your out year budget 14 workload assumptions, do you make any assumption about changes 15 due either to legislative reform or administrative reform 16 within the agency? 8 17 MR. CUNNINGHAM: No. j 18 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: There is one assumption that i e all characteM sucally make and that is what we are doing j j 19 i now is possibly the reference point. I went back and looked ! j 20 l at the reference point some time back and tried to relate it g 21 3 to what I thought the situation was and I don't remember the 22 j numbers, but ELD had been growing for several years and I 23 think part of it may have been related to the activities 24 associated with the aftermath of Three Mile Island. h My impression in looking up to the out years and the 25 workload of hearings is that 95 for the out years was not all i
79 1 that bad. 2 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Could I ask Len a question %gg3 = 3 related to that? As I recall, Len, the book numbers that ELD showe'd 4 in most years were not the actual numbers. ELD was always 5 substantially over hired. 6 MR. BARRY: Yes. The book number for a long time 7 was 95, the ceiling for a long time was 95, and we usually 8 had 100 to 105 actually on board. 9 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: When? MR. BARRY: 1977, 1978, 1979. 10 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Before TMI. 11 MR. BARRY: Before TMI, yes. 12 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I thought your looking back g ;. at your reference point, the book might not have been
- . W I4 accurate.
15 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: If they are not going to main-16 tain accurate books, you are not going to come out with accurate answers. j g a (Laughter.) 18 C CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I use that basis quite a j 19 g bit and I also don't ignore anecdotal data. Some of the 20 indications are that perhaps we don't need as many people in d 11 ELD has we have. g 22 MR. CUNNINGHAM: I can't respond to anecdotal data that has not been particularized. 23 24 ~ And I don't know how to vote COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: on it. i 25 j CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I agree. I think it is primar-ily looking at the staffing level over a period of years. I
80 l did make the adjustn.dnt for the three to OGC and I thought 2 that was a reasonable number to come up with. 3 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Was then the reason that you incrased -- You see, I thought part of the loan from ELD to 4 OGC was because OGC was having difficulty filling slots. MR. CUNNINGHAM: My understanding was that 0GC -- 6 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: The report that I received from OGC is that they have been working characteristically at a 8 level of 30 and that they have been getting help from ELD. 9 There has been perhaps additional help because of their
- o open positions.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: The help from ELD has been recent, the last several months. It was presented to me in the 12 situation that they were in worst straits than we were, but 13 g}g I tried to make the point that we were not a bottomless pit, 14 that I didn' t feel that I had the burden to solve their 15 personnel problems on a long term basis. 16 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I will go back and check on 5 17 the history of what they have been getting from you by talking to both of you together, 18 g COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Was the basic reason that j 19 g you increased 0GC three because they -- 20 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: No. I started out by saying Aj 21 that we have a lot more litigation and we have a number of very 22 important litigations coming up that we are going to have to 23 handle and I think they are going to stretch over a period of time and that is the way it started. d5; Then I learned that they had this 30 and I said 25 that it gives me even more reason to move it up to 28.
81 1 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: If you get reduced six _.m.- 2 to seven people from '82 to '83 and your workload stays the W: same or increases, what is going to give? 3 MR. CUNNINGHAM: We will accomplish every task that 4 is given to us. The question is how quickly they do it and 5 how well you do i t. I should point out that after the Beville 6 hearings and we got into the real crunch to adhere to a time 7 line, the Office of the Executive Legal Director had a policy 8 that we would not seek extensions of time to file pleadings. When I took over my present position, the Chairmen g of each uf the Boards, the Appeal Board and the Licensing Board, told me that they had noticed that as a result of that 11 policy that there was a decline in the quality of the plead-12 ings. We got them filed, but if you have less people to do 13 the same amount of work, you don't do it as well,
- =;,
e 14 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Yes. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Any other questions? 15 ot until I get to ADMIN. 16 I CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: Let's go to Administration. 17 (Slide.) 18 E COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Just basically my question f. of Administration and it was referenced in my question that I '8 20 sent out to the staff, there is a very sizable reduction in d: 21 the number of people in ADMIN and the words that go along with i it let me to ask whether this was a warning that we were out y on thin ice and were about to break through or whether it was we are going to close the Monument. 24 as: COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: The what? 'd# 25 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Washington Monument.
82 7 1 MR. DIRCKS: Let me start off. I think we have had gg a tendency to dip into ADMIN because we have been protecting 2 3 program offices and we have been going into ADMIN or the EDO staff offices when we need personnel. We did it 1sst year 4 where ADMIN took a significant cut as a result of the budget revision. We are doing it again this year. [ 6 My view is we have reached a point where we have no choice but to cut back on services. I think we have just a reached the end of our ability or our efficiency dividend 9 and we will have to take a look at where we can take some real cuts or do business in a different way. io Pat is faced with this assignment. She is going g to have to look at perhaps the area of technical information 12 and instead of doing it by direct government employees, we 13 qgg will have to look at our contracting a lot of that work out. 14 We have to look at where we assign CRESS units. We have done 15 that through a centralized area. 16 There are services we provide. In security, we provide -- and I am dealing in small numbers. j g 2 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I guess what I was really y 18 3 raising the question and probably more to alert my colleagues j 19 e since when this comes home to roost I won't be here, but I 20 am wondering whether you are raising such issues as there 5 21 g no longer will be guards outside, one day they will, find E 22 that the Chairman will have a driver that he can reach but the other Commissioners will just not be able to get a car 23 when they need it. dei We will find that we will have asked for a meeting 25 ~~ down here and the time lag of people to get here will get
83 1 increased because Bill Dircks won't be able to come down by 2 qyg car either or the Office Director. 3 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: We will be consolidated by 4 then. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I doubt it. 5 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I hope. 6 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: They will find a situation 7 where they will get one of these big packages that have to 8 be rapidly reproduced and it won' t be able to. We will go 9 out to a contractor to get it down and in a couple of days to we can get it back. 11 Are you really alerting these other people that this is what they ought to recognize may begin to happen here? 13 jji MR. DIRCKS: We may be poor but we are not going to 14 be foolish. Undoubtedly Commissioners will notice very 15 little reduction in services. I think where we take reduction 16 in services will be that the staff will get fewer services. 17 Maybe NRR will have to wait until certain documents are run of f for them. Maybe the Personnel will take a little 18 more time to process a personnel action. Maybe a contract j 19 l will be delayed. I think that is the area. 20 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: It is a good thing that John i 21 i Davis has already lef t. i 22 MS. NORRY: There are limitations on our ability to 23 contract out for one thing. There are some areas in which 24 we are simply just not able to do that by law and by regulation. __sji So contracting out is not the only answer. I have a basic reservation about increasing the contracting out option too
84 1 much anyway because you lose some direct control over your (h) services which if I am going to provide the services I would 3 like to have the degree of control that enables me to provide 4 that. But as Bill said, the Commissioners will still have 5 drivers and those kinds of things will go on. We are going to have to cut back though in every area that we can. But it is 7 limited where we can cut back. I can't afford to cut back 8 too much in the area of personnel, for instance. This whole sta f fing plan that is facing this agency in 1983, I am going 8 to to need every personnel resource that I have to deal with labor relations and to deal with how we get people from here 11 to the regions and those kinds of questions. 12 So when I look at the areas where I have some options 33 at. i?5i they get ever more limited and there will be cutbacks in 14 services. People will have to wait longer for things and 15 so forth. Our basic jobs will get done because they must 16 get done, but there will be an impact. 17 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Just remember that I had j h 18 alerted you. s COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Pat, on the personnci 3g reductions sla ted f rom ' 82 to ' 83, I guess one of the things 20 } that concerns me is the agency went through the effort a j 21 couple of years ago to get a lot of people on board now in g permanent slots lik'e the telecommunications people. They 22 previously had to be temporary employees not full-time 23 24 permanent employees. 27= Similarly, some of the other parts of ADMIN that i S?? 25 fairly people intensive like the CRESS units that are are
85 1 fairly efficient ways of doing business, are some of those 2 things in jeopardy? La MS. NORRY: There is a problem there. We have a 3 fairly well-working rr.achine that is in support of the licensing effort, for instance, which involves CRESS, which 5 involves reproduction, which involves the provision of 6 editorial services -- all of those things work well. 7 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: I suspect that they are 8 much more efficient than if you had to contract out. MS. NORRY: If we have to start taking bits and 9 i P eces of that and contracting them out, you are interfering to with that well-working machine, that is right. 11 We will obviously try to find those parts which 12 will not impact too heavily, but we are just not going to be 13 able to do it without some impact. 14 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: I would like to make an 15 observation. It may be that Administration as we define nisuation here is not W Hgh place to take some of 16 I these, but if you look at our management direction / support / l g 17 admi ni s tra ti on, it does constitute about a third of our 18 E budget. f It seems a bit inordinately high to me and what is a l j 20 more, it is projected to go up. 4" 21 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: A lot of that is not -- i CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I say it may not be the right 22 place. Maybe we are looking too hard in one place, but I think as far as we can we ought to try to look at opportuni-24 ga ties for efficiencies and take advantage of them. 2g COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Let me ask a question about the CRESS unit, Pat. Is that pretty much now devoted
86 l to NRR work? 2 MS. NORRY: The bulk of it is, yes. ,jgy 3 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: How many people are in that? 4 MS. NORRY: We have 18 people. 5 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Occasionally they do other 6 things. I know Forrest used them extensively on the Safety 7 Goals. 8 MS. NORRY: Yes, we do have some available for 9 other work, but the majority of them are devoted exclusively 10 to NRR. CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: Any other questions? 11 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Not of ADMIN, I have a 12 question of Len and Bill and then I have a question for Bill f@) and you. ~ 14 (Laughter.) 15 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: The question ter ten and 16 Bill, I have a revised answer to the first question I asked which is the '83 '84 dollars and the revised answer which i 37 is now revision one -- 18 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: It is not responsive either. j 19 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: I just wanted to focus on j 20 one part of it. It is a question to be contracted as a f precise projection of NRC's future requirements and given a 21 22 5.5 percent inflation rate if OMB informal guidance is assumed, then approximately $15 million dollars in additional 23 program support funds would be necessary to stay even with 24 55; fiscal year ' 83. From that, should I assume that although 'r 25 you have a fairly detailed calculated budget, that we ought to
87 1 conclude that unless werkloads significantly decline, there c=- 2 (;; is going to be a problem in getting at the program support 3 particularly if inflation is worse than 5.5 percent? 4 MR. BARRY: If you look at our program support 5 baseline in '83 and you subtract some of the things that should be subtracted such as LOFT came down, there was good reason for NRR to come down about $10 million and there were 7 some plus es, too. But when you did those minuses and pluses, 8 then you put a factor of 5.5 percent in there, you really 8 needed to increase your program support in '84 by $15 million 10 dollars. 11 You will notice that in program support it goes ap ahnut $15 million dollars between '83 and '85. So in 12 my judgment we came out just about even: 5h5 If on the other hand you said but some of the 14 programs really were program increases whichever of thosa 15 particularly in research you would care to look at where you 16 see increases and say that they were programatic increases not i 17 inflation, then you would need additional funds. j j 18 But it is hard to discern how many of those were , e increase in workload and how many were inflation. g j COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: So I think what you are 20 ) saying is I should not assume that at the moment you can 21 l forecast that unless inflation is 5.5 percent, we are in 22 troubl e ? 23 MR. BARRY: That is correct. 24 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: The other question, Bill, hhs are there any significant reclamas that the office directors 25 wanted to make that they did not make that you know of?
88 1 MR. DIRCKS: No. They didn't make aty to me. I 2 (yy think they came in and discussed the original mark and we 3 agreed on certain changes. They were all satisfied and I 4 think they were all here and they supported generally the mark. 5 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: So you don't know of any 6 major pains? 7 MR. DIRCKS: No. 8 COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: All right. Joe, do you 8 know of any -- a similar type question -- in the Commission 10 level offices? CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: Yes. I had some and I n modi fied one. COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Given the budgat we now 5h5 have in front of us, was there any major pain there from 14 the Commission offices? 15 CHAIRMAN PALLADIN0: I don't think so. The principal 16 one was the Boards, SECY, also. I could identify areas j 17 where SECY could make some changes. Let me look at my list and I will be able to tell you better. I think those were 18 19 j COMMISSIONER AHEARNE: Those ques tior.3 were more 2 20 for completeness. (Laughter.) 22 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Any other questions? 23 (No response.) CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I would like to make a couple 24 kh? f closing remarks. I would appreciate your suggested 25 changes to the budget and they can be as brief as you want to
89 1 make them. I would urge in consideri.sg making them that we (hh maintain the target that I set for us. You don't have to 3 agree, but I still urge that we not show continued growth 4 and that we do level off in the outlying years and consider 5 slight reductions. We don't want to oc too far because we will have considerable work well into the future either in 6 the form of caseload or in the form of operating reactors. 7 So I am not calling for a big turn around, but I 8 do think that we need to peak out somewhere and I think this 8 is a good time to think of it. 10 Then what I would do is take the suggestions and 11 I may come back and talk to you, but try to get by Monday and I guess that is the second, get te you a suggested voting 12 device and I will probably have talkea to each one of you 5 51 before you have to vote so we can make some adjustments as 14 necessary. 15 We still can see if our notation votes can converge 16 by the fourth. If they don't converge by the fourth, then 17 I think we will have to convene and try to hammer it out. j 18 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: I won't be here until the h s fi f th.
- [
19 j. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I appreciate that, but there 20 ) is so much on the fifth that I hate to consider adding l 21 i another one. If I think I am losing on an important point -- 22 (Laughter.) 23 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: You are leaving on Monday. 24 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: I am leaving actually on 25 Sunday. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Sunday. Well, if you have any
90 1 thoughts on the budget, let me know. 2 v=- Qy Anything more? 3 (No response.) 4 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Thank you very much. We will 5 stand adjourned. (Whereupon, the Commission meeting was adjourned at 4: 50 o' cl ock p.m., to reconvene at the Call of the Chair.) 7 8 9 10 11 12 e$$$oe ~ GC ~ 14 i 15 16 17 2 18 g Q j '19 i 2o d 21 3 i 22 23 24 E= D 25
A NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the NUCLEAR REGULATGRY COMMISSION in the matter of: BUDGET BRIEFING Date of Proceeding: Tuesday. July 27.1982 Docket Number: Place of Proceeding Room 1130. 1717 H Street, N.W. Washington, D. C. were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the Commission. Marilynn M. Nations Official Reporter (typed) {.3 G.t.L (<-,0 :YC 'l' G,v ) Official Reporter (Signature) 9
l O. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMISSION CllAIRMAN'S BRIEFING TO Tile COMISSION ON 1 FY 1982-1985 BUDGET ESTIMATES i s
D e DECISION UNIT
SUMMARY
INSPECTION AND ENFORCEMENT FY'1982 l CURRENT RECOMMENDED l_EVEL ESTIMATE FY 1983 FY 198'l FY 1985 S_$_ JL PS $ DECISION UNIT _SL PS $ _SL f,L$_ SY ) REACTOR CONSTRUCTION INSPECTION 20 $0.3 20 $ 0.7 21 $ 0.9 21 $ 0.9 REACTOR OPERATIONS INSPECTION 28 1.7 22 2.0 22 1.9 22 1.9 ENGINEERING AND QUALITY o ASSURANCE 40 0.8 35 0.6 35 0.7 35 0.7 I "kATR 17 0.9 12 1.4 9 0.9 9 0.6 ENFORCEMENT 8 7 7 7 3.0 28 2.3 27 3.3 25 7.0 $. 39 EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS SegCIALIZED IECHNICAL IRAINING 19 1.6 17 1.3 17 2.3 17 1.3 AGEMENT DIRECTION AND MANUPPORT 24 0.1 21 9.1 20 0.1 20 0.1 l t SUBTOTAL IE 195 $8.4 162 $ 8.4 158 $10.1 156 $13.0 RecloNS 693 0.8 704 3.3 722 2.8 738 2.7 12 TOTAL 888 $9.2 855 $11.7 830 $12.9 894 - $15.7
RESOURCE AND PROGRAM
SUMMARY
RESEARCH FY 1982 RECOMMENDED l_EVEL CURRENT ESTIMATE FY 1983 FY 1984 FY 1985 _3y_ PS $ SY PS $ SY PS $ SY PS $ 286 196.8 271 195.2 260 209.9 260 195.0 PROVIDES TECHNICAL BASIS FOR RESOLUT10N'0F PRESSURIZED THERMAL SHOCK ISSUE IN FY 1984. e PROVIDES SUPPORT FOR AND CONFIRMATION OF REGULATORY POSITIONS ON STEAM GENERATOR IUBE INTEGRITY, e EQUIPMENT QUALIFICATION, SEISMIC SAFETY MARGINS. AND REACTOR MATERIALS AND COMPONENT AGING. SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNICAL RESOLUTIONS FOR THE ISSUES IDENTIFIED IN THE LONG-RA e IlUMAN FACTORS PLAN. l CONTINUES EXPERIMENTS TO EVALUATE SYSTEM BEllAVIOR DURING TRANSIENTS (INCLUDING SEMISCALE AND s FIST). INCLUDES NRC SHARE FOR CONSTRUCTION OF SEMISCALE MOD-5 (B&W CONFIGURATION). e 13
NUCLEAR REGULATORY RESEARCH - CONTINbED i CONTINUE DEVELOPMENT OF IMPROVED PRA METHODOLOGY AND SUPPORT TO SEVER 5 ACCIDENT POLICY e DETERMINATION AND SAFETY GOAL. DEVELOP THE TECHNICAL BASE FOR COMMISSION POLICY DETERMINATIONS ON SOURCE TERM BY EARLY FY 1 e AND SEVERE ACCIDENTS BY FY 1984 (INCLUDES RESEARCH ON DAMAGED FUEL, CONTAINMENT LOADING AND INTEGRITY, FISSION PRODUCT RELEASE AND TRANSPORT, SEVERE ACCIDENT SEQUENCE ANALYSIS AND IMPROVED SAFETY SYSTEMS). l e CONTINUE TO SUPPORT Tile INTERNATIONAL 2D/3D PROGRAM. e COMPLETE NRC-SPONSORED LOFT TESTING BY MID-FY 1983. PROVIDES FUNDING FOR NRC SHARE OF Tile LOFT CONSORTIUM BEGINNING IN FY 1984 ($10M/ YEAR FOR 3 YEARS). e CONTINUE RESEARCH EFFORT TO SUPPORT THE CRBR LICENSING DECISION. 2 1 4 14
DECISION UNIT
SUMMARY
RESEARCH FY 1982 CURRENT RECOMMENDED LEVEL ESTIMATE FY 1983 FY 1980 FY 1985 DECISION UNIT _SL PS $ _SL PS $ SY _3_$_ _SL PS $ IlEACTOR AND FACILITY ENGINEERING 59 $ 33.1 58 $ 37.0 57 $ 40.5 58 $ 42.8 FACILITY OPERATIONS 51 13.0 47 13.5 42 16.8 43 17.1 TilERMAL HYDRAULIC IRANSIENTS 10 16.3 10 21.7 10 27.5 10 22.6 SITING AND HEALTH 31 9.3 23 9.0 22 11.0 23 11.7 RISK' ANALYSIS 51 16.0 49 15.9 48 19.3 11 9 22.2 AC IDENT EVALUATION AND ITIGATION 23 33.1 25 47.2 24 11 5. 11 23 38.6 LOSS-0F-COOLANT ACCIDENT 8 1 11. 6 7 11.1 6 10.5 5 9.2 LOFT 4 42.0 2 15.0 2 17.5 2 10.0 ADVANCED PdACTORS 3 7.5 3 12.7 3 9.5 2 8.5 WASTE MANAGEMENT 2 11 11.9 2 11 12.1 2 11 11.9 23 12.3 MANAGEMENT DIRECTION AND $UPPORT 22 23 22 22 TOTAL 286 $196.8 271 $195.2 260 $209.9 260 $195.0 is
i a PERSON.NEL
SUMMARY
COMMISSION OFFICES a ~ FY 1982 RECOMMENDED l.EVEL CoMMISSioH OFFICES CURRENT ESTIMATE FY 1983 FY 198'l FY.1985 COMM 31 31 31 31 SECY '10 36 36 36 ACRS fl0 38 '38 38 ASLBP 11 7 52 Il8 t ll i ASl.AP lit 17 15 15 OIA 27 27 27 E7 GC 25 28 28 28 PA 16 16 16 16 PE 18 18 18 18 CA 9 9 9 9 01 29 112 ' ~ 11 2 11 2 TOTAL M 31l' 367 3DF l s ( L. L...a
4 PERSONNEL
SUMMARY
EDO 0FFICES FY 1982 RECOMMENDED LEVEL EDO 0FFICES CURRENT ESTIMATE FY 1983 FY 198'l FY 1985 s EDO 18 18 19 -19 ELD 113 100 95 95 SDBUCR 7 7 7 7 IP 30 28 28 28-SP i 27 23 23 i23 IUi 133 125 i 121 121 - AEOD 33 33 37 '37 TOTAL 361 33'l 330 330 g.
t .t q AD'MINISTRATIVE SUPPORT
SUMMARY
i FY 1982. RECOMMENDED l_EVEL CATEGORY [dl RENT ESTIMATE EY 1983 FY 19811 FY 1985 E TRANSPORTATION - PERSONS , ll .ll . lj . ll TRANSPORiATION - TiilNGS .5 .8 .ll . li REllTAL OF SPACE 6.2 6.3 8.0 -8.0' TELECOMMUNICATIONS 8.6 , 9.3 9.3- '9.6 POSTAGE- .9 1.0 1.0 1.0 EQUIPMENT RENTAL 1.1 1.1 1.0 .9 PRINTING AND Rs. PRODUCTION 2.2 2.7 2.6 2.6 GUARDS 1.Il
- 1. Il
- 1. Il
- 1. Il SECURITY INVESTIGATIONS
.8 1.0 1.0 i 1.0 DCS (CURRENT CONTRACT) 2.3 2.5 3.0 6.5 OTiiER SERVICES 5.0 11. 8 11. 7 (1. 7 SUPPLIES ~AND MATERIALS l.5 1.7 1.7 1.7 TRAINING .9 .9 1.0 1.0 EQUIPMENT PURCilASE l'. 3 l'. 3 1.Il
- 1. Il SUBTOTAL (llEADQUARTERS) $33.1
$35.2 $36.9 $110.6 ADP 5.8 6.l1 7.0 7.1 Babf' REGIONS-ADii 5.3 6.'ll ' 7.5 7.8 isc TOTAL $'l'I. 2 $'18.0 $51.11 $55.5
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