ML20126J667
| ML20126J667 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | 05000000 |
| Issue date: | 05/14/1984 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS (OPA) |
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| References | |
| FOIA-84-393 S-6-84, NUDOCS 8506100671 | |
| Download: ML20126J667 (5) | |
Text
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UNITED STATES fi
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Office of Putdic Affairs
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Washington, D.C. 20555 No.
S-6-84 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tel. 301/492-7715 o
Remarks by Victor Gilinsky Commissioner, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission presented at a Seminar on Nuclear Power at Swidler, Berlin & Strelow Washington, D. C.
May 14, 1984 U.S. NUCLEAR POWER -- LARGER OPERATING COMPANIES A CONDITION FOR SUCCESS There is a widely shared feeling that there is something seriously wrong with the way we are going about the business of building and operating nuclear plants.
U.S. nuclear power technology has become the standard for the world, but it seems to be faring better abroad than at home.
What are we doing wrong?
And what can we do about it?
The standard industry view has oeen that the problem lies with excessive and changing safety regulation.
- Lately, criticism has been levelled at electric utility management which failed to maintain control over nuclear construction projects.
Utilities on the verge of bankruptcy have in turn blamed their designers and builders.
Many of these disputes will likely end up in the courts.
In the meantime, a look at the complex details of problem projects only confirms that each found a unique path to trouble.
If we are going to do something about the situation, we need to understand the underlying difficulty.
Fragmented U.S. Utility Structure No fact goes further to explain the problems of nuclear p)wer in the United States, or is more important to 1
confront, than that we have nearly sixty utilities in charge of nuclear power projects.
Of the countries with the next largest nuclear programs, and which seem to be doing well, France has a single utility, and Japan has eight such utilities.
Even this understates the difference.
In Japan, two powerful utilities -- Tokyo Electric and Kansai Electric --
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set the pattern for the others.
In the U.S.,
several dozen utilities, including rather small ones, started on nearly independent courses more-or-less simultaneously in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
Each of the utilities was, in effect, on its own " learning curve".
As most of the utilities built only one or two reactors, few of the potential economics of scale in the U.S. program were realized.
Then, in the late 1970's, the environment for nuclear power became more complex and demanding -- in technical, economic, financial, and political terms.
The penalties for inexperience and error became greater, and a number of the late entrants were not skillful enough to avoid them.
It is significant that almost every one of the troubled projects which have been in the news lately -- Diablo Canyon, Grand Gulf, Marble Hill, Midland, Seabrook, Shoreham, South Texas, WPPSS, Zimmer -- is the first commercial nuclear project for the utility in charge.
Construction Management There are important differencea, as well, in how nuclear construction projects have been managed.
In the U.S.,
the reactor manufacturer (say, G.E. or Westinghouse) supplied just the nuclear fire box, so to speak, less than 20 percent of the plant.
The rest was typically designed by one of a dozen engineering firms, which may have also been in charge of construction, on a cost-plus basis.
The many possible combinations led to a profusion of designs.
And where utility management was not sufficiently strong or experienced, project responsibilities became confused and costs spiraled out of control.
By contrast, in Japan, the reactor manufacturer builds a complete nuclear plant, relying to be sure on related contractors but staying very firmly in charge.
Is it any wonder that they can do this in less time and with fewer workers than is usual in the U.S.?
It is worth keeping in mind that the safety standards at these plants are no less strict than at U.S. plants.
In France, the single utility, EdF, buys the reactor from one French manufacturer and does its own overall plant design and construction.
As a result, the French have a high degree of standardization -- because they have reduced g
the number of decision centers to a minimum.
U.S.
reactor manufacturers did take overall responsibility for the first dozen U.S. plants.
I expect that manufacturers will insist on a larger role in future plants, and that this will eliminate many of today's construction problems.
It will also facilitate a greater degree of commonality of plant designs.
We are also not going to see
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l 'I any more small inexperienced utilities getting in over their heads.
If nothing else, their bankers won't allow it.
Operation of the Existing Reactors x
Which brings me to my central point:
the problems of assuring safe and economic operation will not be solved as readily as those of construction; their solution will require structural changes in industry.
It is worth keeping in mind that the future of nuclear power is likely to hinge, more than anything else, on the performance of the plants we have.
For obvious reasons, an operating nuclear plant requires special care.
The shift to expensive and highly sophisticated nuclear technology requires a new style of l
utility operation, one that puts a much greater premium on anticipating and avoiding problems rather than correcting them after the fact.
A utility like Commonwealth Edison, or l
Duke Power, which has half a dozen or more nuclear units, can more easily gear its organization to accommodate the special demands of nuclear power.
But many companies which have only one or two nuclear units tend to be organized around the much less disciplined requirements of their non-nuclear plants.
As a result, they have more difficulty in devoting suitable management attention to nuclear operation.
There are about forty such companies.
(We have only three utilities with as many nuclear plants as Taiwan Power or Korea Electric Power.)
Some have managed very well; a few have even done an outstanding job.
But too many utilities with small nuclear programs have donc poorly.
One of the most critical areas faced by companies with small nuclear operations is the personnel problem -- how to attract and retain qualified and experienced staff.
This is much more difficult in a small organization.
A review of several plants nearing operation -- Shoreham, Diablo Canyon, Grand Gulf -- revealed that none of them had any operators with previous licensed experience.
A company with several operating plants would naturally have started up a new plant with a core of experienced operators.
The same thing is true in other areas.
Each nuclear utility needs to support a large technical and administrative overhead to deal with the various safety demands, but most utilities lack sufficient scale to justify an operating organization with substantial depth and in-house expertise and equipment in specialized areas.
The result is often excessive reliance on contractors who lack a long-tern i
f commitment to the plant.
I might add that performance comparisons with foreign plants are not altogether reassuring.
A telling index of safety performance in the frequency of scrams -- emergency e
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- shutdowns.
The Japanese rate is about one-tenth that of the U.S.,
a reflection of more careful operation.
Consider also average plant load factors -- the fraction of the time the plants are operating.
For 1983, Nuclear Engineering places the U.S.
in eleventh place (out of thirteen), ahead only of Spain and India.
If the U.S. plants achieved the same load
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factors as the Japanese plants achieved in 1983, they would have produced 28 percent more power.
If they achieved the Swiss standard, the figure would have been 61 percent.
I have discovered that while our technology is held in high regard abroad, our operating practices are not.
Dealing with a substantial number of poorly performing utilities, each with its special problems, also strains and distorts the regulatory system.
The utility-sponsored Institute of Nuclear Power Operations has helped to upgrade
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operating performance, but we need another big step forward in cooperative industry efforts if we are going to get solid, consistent performance.
I am convinced we need to expand the scale of utility nuclear operation.
New Operating Companies What are needed are new organizations which transcend individual companies, which are responsible for operating and maintaining the nuclear plants owned by the individual companies with few reactors.
There are several possibilities for this.
An example may clarify the thought.
Imagine a separato company formed by half a dozen electric utilities in a particular region to manage the operation and maintenance of their nuclear plants.
If a dozen or so units were involved, the combined personnel, training, operating procedures, emergency response, quality assurance, and license adherence management load would be heavy enough to enable a strong organization to be set up with really good specialized people involved.
A factor that may case such an arrangement is that the nuclear parts of utilities are already almost separate companies.
There are other possibilities.
We might have large companies operating power plants for their smaller neighbors.
In some cases, existing utility holding companies could form operating companies to operate the plants owned by their subsidiaries.
Or we could imagine a new entity organized by a manufacturer.
Obviously, many hurdles have to be cleared before such organizations could be operational.
The whole legal basis for this kind of thing needs to be developed, the organization and financing structures have to be carefully thought through.
A not-inconsequential aspect of this is how it relates to state and federal economic regulation.
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o There has been industry discussion of such an approach and I sense some support for it.
What is needed is for someone in the industry to grab the ball and run with it.
Regulation In concentrating on changes on the industrial side rather than in the regulatory scheme, I do not mean to say that safety regulation is not a significant complicating factor in the picture.
The effects of safety regulation are pervasive -- hardly anything in the nuclear industry is untouched by them.
It is also true that the overly bureaucratic and intrusive regulatory system gets in the way of the efficient industrial application of nuclear power.
You might say the utilities and regulators are running a kind of three-legged race.
The utilities also often get the wrong feedback from the regulators in response to safety problems.
The NRC's uniform requirements are driven by the performance of the worst utilities.
In practice, the result is too prescriptive and severe for many of the utilities, but not nearly tough enough for the ones that created the problem.
Ifighly prescriptive, lock-step regulation is not the best approach.
The difficulty is that so long as too many of the utilities are performing poorly, the right answer cannot be to give the utilities more discretion.
That is what is wrong with the various proposals for regulatory " reform" put forward by the industry and the Department of Energy.
Reform has to start at the other end.
The key to regulatory reform is a demonstration of more effective utility self-regulation.
And the key to such an improvement is a strengthened structure for nuclear operations.
The question that is being asked about us abroad is, do we care enough about nuclear power to make the necessary industrial changes to assure its success here for the future?
That is the challenge.
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