ML20198B651
| ML20198B651 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 11/01/1985 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-1463, NUDOCS 8511070135 | |
| Download: ML20198B651 (143) | |
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'"' UN11ED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS SUBCOMfiITTEE ON REGULATORY POLICIES AND PRACTICES
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Barbara Jo hhite 4-1407 LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D. C. PAGES: 1 - 135 DATE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1985 I
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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2 3 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS SUBCOMMITTEE ON REGULATORY POLICIES AND PRACTICES 6 Nuclear Regulatory Commission Room 1046 1717 H Street, N.W.
7 Washington, D. C.
8 Friday, November 1, 1935 9
10 The subcommittee met at 8:35 a.m., Dr. Harold W. Lewis i i
I 11 presiding.
I2 ACRS MEMBERS PRESENT:
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-) 13 l DR. HAROLD W. LEWIS 14 MR. CARLYLE MICHELSON 15 16 l l l 17 l
18 19 20 21 22 .
23
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e PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONERS' ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1985 The contents of this stenographic transcript of the proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at O. '
this meeting accepts any' responsibility for errors or inaccuracies of statement or data contained in this transcript.
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hj300101 2 1 DAVbw 1 PROCEEDINGS 2 DR. LEWIS: The meeting will now come to order.
3 This is a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Reactor 1 4 Safeguards Subcommittee' on Regulatory Policies and 5 Practices.
-6 I am Hal Lewis, Subcommittee Chairman, and the 7 other ACRS member in attendance is Carl Michelson.
3 8 The purpose of the meeting is to include 9 discussion by AEOD on SECY 85-208,.the Incident 10 Investigation Program, along with Subcommittee discussions
_ 11 on a proposal by OBP and - ASLBP for an accident investigation
~
12 and organization within ' NRC.
13 Tony Carpucci, to my right, is the cognizant Staff 14 member for this meeting. The rules for participation ~have 15 been announced in the Federal Register on Tuesday, October 16 22nd.
17 We have received no written comments from members 18 of the public and no requests for time to make oral 19 statements from members of the public.
20 There, I've done it.
21 Really, this is just to pursue the ancient 22 question of how one ought to go about learning from 23 operating experience. There have been proposals over the
'( )
24 years as to ways to do it. There was, as we all know, in 25 the authorization bill last year, a requirement that NRC ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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()DAVbw 1 look once again into the question of setting up an 2 independent organization.
3 Brookhaven was tasked to make a study and 4 reported back that there be an independent accident 5 investigation office set up within the NRC, not external to 6 the NRC but reporting to the Commission.
7 ACRS, if I recall. the history, supported that 8 proposal. In about that period, the Staff decided to do 9 things somewhat differently and set up an incident 10 investigation system of its own, which was different from 4
11 the Brookhaven proposal, but also different from the old way 12 of doing things.
O i) s 13 In my personal view, it was a commendable step in i
14 the right direction. But in sdme people's view, including 15 mine, probably not going far enough, but nevertheless, ACRS 16 did write a congratulatory letter saying, you know, good 17 show. '
18 .e're here, in part, to find out how that 19 worked, the first case in which it was really used and to 20 explore the alternate suggestions which have been made.
21 Among them, one that we've never really discussed at any 22 length, is a proposal by Judge Cotter of the Safety and 23 Licensing Board, suggesting that the membership of these 24 boards provides a fountain of wisdom and a resource which
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$2 9230 01-03 4 1 really considered that with any . seriousness.
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-2 So I think the right way to get cracking on this 3 is, ask AEOD to start the ball rolling,.to ask what your 4 views are and how did Davis-Besse go, in your view.
5 The. floor's yours, Jack.
6 MR. HELTEMES: I'm Jack Heltemes of AEOD. With 7 me today is Wayne Lanning of AEOD. Wayne has been 8 designated or set out to direct our further development and
-9 future implementation of the Staff investigation program, 10 which we know as IIT. Wayne was also a team member of 11 Davis-Besse. If we get into some questions on what happened 12 at Davis-Besse, both Wayne and I have some experience, and
() ' 13 then hopefully, he can answer your questions.
14 Dr. Lewis, j ust picking up on the history, which 15 I thought you very well gave, the Brookhaven report did 16 recommend an independent office within the agency reporting
. l'7 directly to the Commission. The EDO, Mr. Dircks indicated
. 18 that he didn't think such an office was needed, and he 19 indicated some of the potential impacts and problems with 20 setting up such an office, but at the same time, he 21 indicated that certain improvements he thought could be 22 made, including the Staff investigated serious operational 5
23 events. He laid out those potential improvements, his
- 24 program, if you will., in a SECY paper, 208. That's what 25 we're prepared to go through and discuss with you today.
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9230 01 04 5 1 Then we thought we would respond to any questions 1)DAVbw 2 .that you had with regard to Davis-Besse. So we put together i 3 a few Vugraphs. With your permission, I'll just go through 4 the Vugraphs and explain them. The first just indicates 5 . that. the Staf f proposal was defined in ' SECY 208. This 6 proposal was dated June 10th. It was signed the same that 7 'the EDO sent a team to Davis-Besse.
8 The Staff paper of the 208 paper had been under 9 development for quite sometime and it was just ready for 10 signature at the same time that the Davis-Besse event 11 occurred. And in the 208 paper, the EDO committed that he 12 was prepared to implement that program from that moment on.
, () 13 Thus when the Davis-Besse event occurred, he immediately 14 sent.a team to investigate what exactly happened.
.15 The program really has two initiatives. One is, 16 the first one, events with clear and serious implications 17 regarding safety. The commitment is that an interoffice 18 interdisciplinary team would be established by the EDO and
~
19 sent to the site. Now the recommendations to send the team
) 20 would normally be made by the Director of I&E or NRR or by 21 the regional administrator, to the EDO. The~ objective of
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22 the team is to determine what happens, the principal causes
- -23 as to why it happened and develop findings and conclusions 24 for possible follow-on action.
[ () 25 Indeed, that's what happened in the case of i
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2 The team is to focus on the event'and will not 3 normally thoroughly explore or investigate all of the "what 4 if" questions. They won't review the design or the 5 regulatory base for the plan beyond that. necessary in order 6 to investigate the event, nor will they determine possible 7 violations of NRC requirements.
8 The other initiative that the EDO set up was to 9 say that events with lesser significance but with potential 10 safety implications, headquarters personnel, trained 11 technical people'will augment the regional inspection, in 12 order to get a broader, deeper focus on some of the generic
() 13 implications, and that investigation would normally be 14 documented 'in the region.
15 MR. MICHELSON: Jack, could I interrupt for a 16 moment with a question? In the Brookhaven report and other 17 places, there are numbers, like there might be 8 to 24 18 significant events a year. In the SECY paper, I think it's 19 two to three that would be investigated by headquarters.
20 All the rest, I guess, would be investigated by the regional 21- office.
22 Are those the numbers you're thinking of?
23 MR. HELTEMES: As I said, the new program has two 24 new initiatives. One is the IIT. The estimate for the IIT
() 25 is on the order of two to three per year. On the second i
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( ) DAVbw 1 initiative, the broader augmented inspections, the estimate 2 made at the time was 20 to 30 events per year would warrant 3 an augmented inspection.
4 MR. MICHELSON: I must have lost the terminology 5 here. I thought the SECY paper talked about the major 6 events to be looked at by the IIT team.
7 MR. HELTEMES: That's correct.
8 MR. MICHELSONt The lesser events will be looked 9 at by the regional offices. Now you're talking about 10 inspections. Do you mean looking into the lesser events?
11 Is that what you mean by inspection ?
12 MR. HELTEMES: What I was covering was that the
() 13 new program really has two new initiatives. One is the 14 IITs, and the number that was estimated for IITs was on the 15 order to two to three per year. The other initiative was 16 that regional inspections would be augmented by Headquarters 17 personnel, and so it would be a combined investigationm of 18 the event, Headquarters and regional. But the results of 19 the investigation would be reflected in a regional report, 20 and those augmented inspections were estimated to be on the 21 order of 20 to 30 per year.
22 MR. MICHELSON: I guess my only confusion is on 23 the word inspection versus the word investigation. Do you 24 mean a regional investigation of an event? That's different O
(/ 25 than a regional inspection by quite a bit.
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9230 01 07 8 1 MR. HELTEMES: It's a regional investigation of (x.)/ DAVbw 2 an event that's reflected in a regional inspection report.
3 The documentation comes out ac an inspection.
4 MR. MICHELSON: It will come out as an inspection ,
5 report. I know what they normally did in the past. I'm 6 trying to determine now what to expect. It will not be a 7 regional investigation report, but rather it will be buried 8 in an inspection report?
9 MR. HELTEMES: We' re talking about the label.
10 MR. MICHELSON: I hope we're talking about a 11 report, an inspection report versus that report, but it can 12 be quite different. Inspection reports do not contain
(")
(_j 13 detailed data, an examination of what happened, you know.
14 It's an entirely dif ferent kind of report.
15 MR. HELTEMES: The intent here is to have an 16 investigation report with the augmented team, to have people 17 augment the region, to give a broader report, a broader 18 investigation than would normally be done.
19 MR. MICHELSON: I can expect on these remaining 20 events of lesser significance to still see event reports at 21 the same general approach as might have been produced by 22 headquarters, a major event, but covering it much less 23 extensively; is that correct?
24 MR. HELTEMES: I want to say that is correct.
O(_/ 25 MR. MICHELSON: It's not clear in the SECY ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(,DAVbw 1 paper what the region's going to do.
2 MR. HELTEMES: It's going to be clear in the 3 procedures. The procedures aren' t yet written. The manual 4 chapter will lay down the concepts and the principles. Then 5 that will be implemented through procedures, and the 6 procedures now are being written.
7 MR. MICHELSON: That is one of the difficulties I 8 had without the manual chapters.
9 MR. HELTEMES: Without the procedures you can' t 10 really judge the thresholds, the content and so forth. We 11 have Davis-Besse to hold up as an example of an IIT, but I 12 can' t very well give you a good example of an augmented ,
() 13 inspection. There have been some, but quite frankly, the 14 details of the program are still evolving.
15 DR. LEWIS: I infer from your Vugraph, page 2, 16 that any of the regional administrator directives by I&E, 17 NRR or NMSS can declare an event took the IIT approach; is 18 that true?
19 MR. HELTEMES: Yes.
20 DR. LEWIS: So now it is really up to the 21 judgment of any one of those four entities.
22 MR. HELTEMES: Did you say four? Would you give 23 me four?
24 DR. LEWIS: Your Vugraph says regional
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25 administrator or directors of I&E, NRR and NMSS. I'm just ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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s,)DAVbw 1 trying to find out if an event occurs, and say the director 2 of NMSS says, in my view, this requires an IIT. Does that 3 put the mechanism into motion? How can somebody say no?
i 4 MR. HELTEMES: If it's an IIT, the EEO can say 5 that. If it's an augmented inspection, then he can do 6 that.
7 DR. LEWIS: I see your Vugraph.
8 MR. HELTEMES: On page 2, it's referring to the 9 --
10 DR. LEWIS: Oh, the lesser significance events.
11 I see. I'm sorry.
12 MR. HELTEMES: The difference between the two is 13 that EEO does not follow on the recommendation inspection.
14 DR. LEWIS: With either the program office 15 inspector or regional administrator.
16 MR. HELTEMES: That's right. And it's the same 17 through office directors then. So your statement is 18 correct.
19 So anybody can identify it to the EDO.
20 MR. MICHELSON: I've lost your last statement.
21 As I understand it, the EDO isn' t even involved 22 in the lesser event, so they don't recommend to the EDO.
23 MR. HELTEMES: Then the augmented inspection.
24 MR. MICHELSON: Any of these four can ask for 25 it.
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()DAVbw 1 DR. LEWIS: Now that's the augmented. I'm trying 2 to go back to the IIT.
3 MR. MICHELSON: Oh, you shifted gears. I'm still 4 trying, to make sure I understand this.
5 DR. LEWIS: Fine. We're on track. He just 6 explained that misunderstanding about the augmented 7 inspection, but the IIT, I just wanted to make sure. The 8 EDO, of course, has the authority, but somebody, and I 9 supposed in practice anybody can say to him, hey.
10 MR. HELTEMES: In practice, AEOD would be 11 watching over the situation. If we really saw something, 12 we'd either directly to an office ourself or directly to the
()
im 13 EDO.
14 DR. LEWIS: But it says here the recommendation 15 will normally originate with the program office or the 16 regional administrator.
17 4 MR. HELTEMES: That's correct.
18 MR. MICHELSON: Why can' t the AEOD recommend that 19 the inspection be performed or an IIT set up?
20 MR. HELTEMES: As you may or may not remember, 21 the AEOD is not deep into real time events. We already have 22 three offices that follow events in real time. That's the 23 region, first of all, NNR and IIA, and the AEOD's normal 24 activities is to focus once the LER comes out. So we have
(~
(_)/ 25 tried to put our time and attention on the more thoughtful, ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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()DAVbw 1 longer range type of analysis than to get deeply involved in 2 immediately responding to operating events as they occur.
3 MR. MICHELSON: The point is, of course, some of 4 these operating events that occur may not appear to be all 5 that bad on the surface, but on deep reflection, you can see 6 some real problems with it. Even after your deep reflection 7 on a current event, you apparently can't initiate an IIT or 8 recommend the initiation of an IIT.
9 MR. HELTEMES: If we, sometime later, saw some 10 real implications to it, then we would undertake our own 11 study, and I think we have. We would send our own people to 12 the site,to do an analysis of it. If the time has passed
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(_) 13 for an IIT or the time has passed for an augmented 14 inspection, we would undertake to flesh cut the study 15 ourselves.
16 MR. MICHELSON: That was another point you just 17 made which is not at all clear to me from the SECY paper.
18 That is, whether or not you could still go after the study 19 events the same way later. The way the SECY paper read, 20 this was for the purpose of having a single coordinated 21 approach for the investigation and having decided that no 22 investigation was needed, it wasn' t clear that you could 23 then initiate one yourself anyway later.
24 It's not at all clear from the SECY paper that 25 we can do that. And I'll have to see the manual chapter for ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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()DAVbw 2 MR. HELTEMES: Sure, we haven' t gotten into some 3 of the principles.
4 MR. MICHELSON: But it is your understanding that 5 you can still initiate your own event investigation.
6 MR. HELTEMES: Absolutely.
7 MR. MICHELSON: That's good. It wasn't clear.
8 MR. LANNING: Unless it it's a IIT 9 investigation.
10 MR. MICHELSON: Well, it wouldn' t be an IIT, 11 because it's too late for that.
I 12 MR. HELTEMT;S: He's saying there wasn't an IIT, 1
r^)s is_ 13 l there wasn't an augmented inspection, and yet on reflection, 14 we saw some real safety concerns associated with it then. f 15 Can we investigate that? I'm saying, yes.
16 ! MR. MICHELSON: In the same way, I realize that 17 you wouldn't be able to command the resources of others, 18 necessarily, but you certainly would have to at least 19 command the cooperation of the other offices and the 20 regional office, in order even to do it.
21 Would the regional offico come back, for 22 instance, and say, well, gee, we already decided that wasn' t 23 worth investigating. How come you fellows are coming in 24 now?
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(_) 25 MR. HELTEMES: That has not been a problem ever ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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()DAVbw 2 MR. MICHELSON: Now that this formal mechanism 3 has been set up, I just wante,d to make sure it didn't bypas 4 your prerogatives of doing your own formal investigation.
5, MR. HELTEMES: I'll make sure it doesn' t.
6 MR. MICHELSON: I'll reserve judgment until we 7 see what the manual chapter says.
8 DR. LEWIS: You've probably got a whole sack full 9 of reserve judgments.
10 MR. MICHELSON: I've got a whole lot of them.
11 DR. LEWIS: This is really a nontrivial issue. I 12 agree with Carl, the idea of the IIT is to preempt
() 13 independent office investigations of the incident. In fact, 14 if every office were to say, even though there was an IIT, 15 we feel that we, NRR, or we, NMSS, ought to investigate it, 16 because we see some implication they didn' t see. Then it is 17 back to the original arrangement which this is intended to 18 forestall.
19 So I would certainly agree that AEOD is in a 20 ! rather unique position, in terms of these things. But 21 unless it is spelled out in the rules, it is going to go by 22 the wayside, befause the clear purpose of this operation is 23 to coordinate the activities of the agency into the IIT and 24 everyone else stay away, and that includes you.
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(_ 25 MR. HELTEMES: I certainly agree with the first ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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("/'DAVbw s-1 part of your statement. The intent is to get a very prompt 2 thorough coordinated investigation.
3 DR. LEWIS: And one that's disconnected from 4 regulatory issues.
5 MR. HELTEMES: That's correct. Not a particular 6 licensing view, enforcing view or any particular view at 7 all. It is to find out exactly what did happen and to bring 8 that to the surface.
9 DR. LEWIS: Since you're already interrupted, 10 which is, of course, inevitable, there's one thing that you 11 said about not reviewing the licensing basis of the design 12 of a regulatory base for the plant.
n
(,) 13 of course, I understand why that's there. On the 14 other hand, in the analogy which I always carry in my head, 15 which is the aviation analogy, one of the things in every 16 NTSB report is to make sure that the pilots and the airplane 17 j were properly licensing and certified, and that generally I
18 speaking, the whole operation was a legal operation when the 19 accident occurred.
20 I assume that what you mean there is that you're 21 not going to reopen hearings on whether, you know, there 22 really should have been a higher estimate of the earthquake 23 probability or anything like that. But certainly, the fact 24 that the plant was operated legally is a relevant issue.
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(_/ 25 MR. HELTEMES: I would say yes, absolutely. The l
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{ DAVbw 1 point here was, we weren't going to go back and reopen the 2 whole aspect of the plant. You're forced to go into some of 3 the licensing basis. When you look at particular items of 4 equipment, such as systems, for example, you go back. But 5 the idea was not to reopen the whole issue.
6 7
8 9
10 11 12 O
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9230 02 01 17 1 DR. LEWIS: Fine. Go ahead.
()DAV/bc 2 MR. HELTEMES: I'd like to proceed to the next 3 viewgraph, talking about the concept of the IIT's. The team 4 leader is selected by the EDO. Only the team leader would 5 be an SES level and not have any direct personal, deep 6 involvement in the licensing or inspection of the plant.
7 The thought there is to get someone who has the 8 capability to manage the team, who has the knowledge of 9 incident investigation but has particular technical 10 knowledge, 11 DR. LEWIS: I see the SES level is a guarantee 12 that the person has management capability?
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(,) 13 MR. HELTEMES: It's an attempt. I didn' t say 14 guarantee. It was an attempt to make sure that the person 15 has a management ability to direct the effort to coordinate 16 the necessary interface type activities to communicate 17 clearly the results.
18 DR. LEWIS: All right.
19 MR. HELTEMES: The number and composition of the 20 team, in our view, would be tailored to the event, as I'll 21 get into. We plan to have some preapproved rosters of both 22 team leaders and team members. And, of course it's our 23 principle that the team would get to the site as quickly as 24 we can, so the team members would have to be automatically 25 relieved.
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( DAV/bc 1 DR. LEWIS: Just out of curiosity, Jack, never l
l 2 having been a real civil servant, at least since World War 3 II, how many SES people are there in NRC? Thousands?
4 Hundreds? Tens?
5 MR. HELTEMES: It's on the order of hundreds.
6 DR. LEWIS: A hundred?
7 MR. LANNING: Some 240.
8 DR. LEWIS: So it's a large pool. I just didn' t i
9 know. It could have been 10 for all I knew.
l 10 MR. HELTEMES: Thank you, Wayne.
11 The team members would be selected on the basis 12 of their technical knowledge. They need certain system
() 13 knowledledge and their component knowleidge, and certain 14 operations knowledge. It's our intent to have an NRC 15 licensed personnel with every team, and that we would have 16 human factors type of experts on teams.
17 But we think the size the composition of the 18 teams just has to be varied.
-19 MR. MICHELSON: How do you know aheaa of time 20 what kind of a team you need? You just learn that an event 21 occurred at Davis-Besse and you have to send the team almost 22 immediately, before you even know the details of the event.
23 How are you going to determine the composition of your team 24 before you know what kind of involvement?
() 25 MR. HELTEMES: We probably can't. The thought is ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC, 202.p_75%_____ _ Nadonyjefoyg_ _ _ _ _ WM
9230 02 03 19 jlhDAV/bc 1 to send these three types of expertise or talents, if you 2 will; systems components knowledge, operations knowledge and 3 thi human factors knowledge, and then adjust the team 4 withtime.
5 MR. MICHELSON: Do you intend to have a human 6 factors person on every team?
7 MR. HELTEMES: Our hope is to have someone that 8 has specialized knowledge or can at least handle that area.
9 MR. MICHELSON: Good.
10 MR. HELTEMES: We anticipate establishing a 11 formal training program for all people on the roster and, 12 here, again, this is one of the things that's not flushed 13 out, but I can talk in general that we see the need for 14 , accident investigation courses, courses such as how to l
15 inte rv iew.
16 NTSB, we understand, has such a course in just 17 ! how to interview. We also see the need for certain training 18 on how the program is to be conducted to be able to put 19 together a manual governing IIT's, how the investigation in 20 general should proceed, what's the end product.
21 MR. MICHELSON: Just for review on this training, 22 are we talking about a couple of manweeks of training? A 23 couple of manmonths? Do you have some feel for how it's 24 1 done?
m 25 MR. HELTEMES: Well, we haven't put it together ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 02 04 20 1 so I can' t talk about it. I would suspect it's on the order
()DAV/bc 2 of several maaweeks.
3 DR. LEWIS: Just try to visualize the mechanics 4 of setting up a training program and setting up criteria and 5 rules and to train, you have to have trainers and trainees.
6 Trainees are probably easy to get, I'm just wondering where 7 the trainers are going to come from; whether in fact the 8 proc'edures will be invented out of whole cloth here.
9 Or, there are a limited number of people out in 10 the country who have experience investigating large 11 commercial accidents. Are they going to be the trainers?
12 What do you visualize?
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() 13 ! MR. HELTEMES: That's our hope, that what we' re 14 doing is talk with people who are currently putting on 15 training courses to see if we can adopt those training 16 courses for our needs, and have them give the training; 17 hopefully, in specialized training courses for our people.
18 DR. LEWIS: Who out there has training courses of 19 this kind?
20 MR. HELTEMES: One that we're currently talking 21 with is Ontario Hydro. They have a two-week course in 22 accident investigation set up for their own people. And a 23 number of U.S. people have gone to it.
24 The first week of the course is really looking at
() 25 the procedures to management support and considerations like ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 02 05 21 1 that. The second week really goes into some case studies of
)DAV/bc 2 how do you go about watching an investigation of certain 3 incidents.
4 The course comes to me highly recommended. Wayne 5 and I are going up to see them to talk about it. They seem 6 willing and anxious to talk with us from the telephone 7 discussions. Perhaps we can have their trainers, if you 8 will, train our people.
l 9 MR. MICHELSON: Is that nuclear-oriented 10 training?
11 MR. HELTEMES: That's some of the questions we've
- 12 really got to get into.
() 13 i MR. MICHELSON: The port system is pretty good, 1 14 too, but it's not nuclear-oriented and a lot of it would be 15 l of lesser value.
16 MR. HELTEMES: That's why we've got to go through 17 some of this, and we've got to get a copy to MTSB and see 18 what they have in the way of accident investigations. Our 19 hope is that we will take advantage of what's available, to 20 see if we can tailor it to exactly what the composition and 21 timing and whose going to give the training, we aren't sure.
22 We will get the training as best we can.
23 DR. LEWIS: I'm just having a disconnect in my 24 head on how one goes about training people. I can
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1 procedures and which forms to fill out.
2 But how you train people to be alert, wise, 3 observant and have perspective in the midst of heat, that 4 tends to be developed before you get at people.
5 I know people who are untrainable.
6 MR. HELTEMES: The next point is really to focus 7 on the principles of the team to collect documents and the
- 8 factual information that's associated with it. The way this 9 came out in Davis-Besse is the interviews were transcribed.
10 In view of the records, the team plant procedures, the i
11 printouts and the team utilized cameras to take pictures and l
l 12 tape recorders in order to make sure the factual information l
() 13 was not lost.
14 MR. MICHELSON: In the case of Davis Besse, did 15 you have anybody on the team as consultants or whatever from 16 outside of the agency?
l 17 MR. HELTEMES: The team was composed only of NRC
! 18 personnel.
19 MR. MICHELSON: Is that generally what you have 20 in the mind for the future as well?
21 MR. HELTEMES: One of the four items I haven' t 22 ' gotten to, one of the considerations, is the extent to which 23 we have outside people.
I 24 MR. MICHELSON: You know, when you look at this
() 25 whole package, it clearly does not address the question of ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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) 1 independence. The Davis-Besse team was not an independent 2 team, in my opinion. It certainly was closely weld to the 3 Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its practices, its past 4 decision-making, and so forth.
5 It was clearly wed to the regional office that 6 was responsible for the inspection. It was clearly wed to 7 the local plant and the resident inspectors, and so forth.
8 It was wed to the process.
9 To what extent did somebody give an independent 10 critical view of what they found, and the practices they 11 found, and so forth, at the plant? Where did the 12 independent j udgments come from?
() 13 I realize that AEOD was independent, so to speak, 14 but I'm not convinced that I&E participation was 15 ! independent participation. I'm not convinced that the NRR l .
16 participation was independent.
17 i My idea is independency is quite a bit different I
18 l than most people's, but " independent", to me, means I did 19 not have a past association with the decision-making 20 processes that put in place what was there.
21 The only restriction in this document, the SECY 22 paper, is that these people have not had a direct 23 association. I assume that means that the members were not 24 the project manager on that project, and so forth. That's (O ,/ 25 what I assume they meant.
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- ') DAV/bc 1 Clearly, all NRR people have worked on
'w/
2 instrumentation and control and they had a direct 3 association with what happened to the instrumentation and ,
4 the valve aspects of this. You know, it's by nature, the 5 inspection process, the regional representative, clearly, 6 the region was responsible for the inspection, how could 7 this not be an independent checkout of the region?
8 Maybe the region fell down on their inspection 9 processes, I don' t know.
10 DR. LEWIS: Carl has a good point. What you 11 really want are people who have no incentive to pull the 12 wagons into a circle, whether or not they'va had prior
() 13 involvement. And he's absolutely right about that.
14 That is a problem. In fact, I want later, when 15 we get past the factual collection, the use of the facts is 16 where that's probably more important than in the actual 17 collection of facts.
18 It would be interesting to spend some time 19 talking in the specific case of Davis-Besse about what has 20 happened, now that the report is in. But we'll come to that 21 in time.
. 22 MR. MICHELSON: The presence of outside I 23 participants on the team would certainly help to alleviate 24 this kind of concern. And I find no provisions in here that
() 25 say: There shall be an outside member. But, rather, there ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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f]DAV/bc 2 DR. LEWIS: In fact, Carl, for the last eight 3 years, there's been an incentive for some people believing 4 that an outside agency was a better way to do the job.
l l
5 MR. MICHELSON: And we're not addressing it at l 6 all?
i 7 DR. LEWIS: This is, to put it coldly, NRC's
! 8 efforts to fend off the threat of an outside agency and it's 9 only fair to see if they can do it and maintain 10 credibility. That's what this is all about.
11 MR. HELTEMES: The statement that it's not
- , 12 overdressing it is a bit of an overstatement.
() 13 MR. MICHELSON: Well, it doesn' t require that one 14 team member be from the outside. It only says that you can 15 have on site facilities if you wish.
16 MR. HELTEMES: It says: The extent to which we 17 can get outside people has to be determined because we've 18 gone to some outside organizations and they don' t wish to 19 participate.
20 So the question is who can you get that wishes to 21 participate, that's useful?
22 MR. MICHELSON: I was talking in terms of 23 consultants now that you hire, not in terms of asking for 24 designated representatives, or whatever. That's a dif ferent
() 25 concept.
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!( )DAV/bc
- 2 people, can you say they're independent?
3 MR. MICHELSON: Sure. If they' re the right 4 kind. You've got to hire somebody whose not been associated 5 with the NRC's decision-making process.
6 MR. HELTEMES: Can they be associated with the 7 nuclear industry?
8 MR. MICHELSON: I think that's a fine point. It 9 think the point is it's like all other outside 10 representation on any kind of a team or committee. It's an 11 attempt to make sure that a more objective view is also 12 heard.
A l (_) 13 MR. HELTEM3S That's exactly our objective here, 14 to make sure we have objective people, that they're given 15 the right scope, the right training and the right mission.
16 So we're together on the objective.
17 DR. LEWIS: There's a delicacy about whether 18 outsiders are brought in as members of the team or as 19 consultants. Consultants have no status, whereas members of !
2O the team have some status. That, again, will have to be 21 spelled out in the details.
22 MR. HELTEMES: Going on.
- 23 DR. LEWIS
- To the extent that you can, go on.
i l 24 MR. HELTEMES: Yes, sir. The next one is talking i
! (~%
l () 25 about procedures for sharing sufficient information. The l
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()DAV/bc 1 thought here is that there has to be an information flow to
'2 other elements of the agencies in order to assure the safety 3 of other facilities. If they have to be shut down, orders
-4 and bulletins go out. It's just a recognition, for example, 5 that other facilities may be subject to the same initiating 6 calls or same condition to assure the flow of information so 7 you'll actually be protecting the f acilities.
8 The 'next one talks about the team will issue a 9 single comprehensive report. And, here, Davis-Besse serves 10 as a model. That report was issued simultaneously to the 11 Commission and-the EDO. It was placed in the PDR with 12 backup information.
() 13 The backup information was the transcripts, for 14 example, the evide..:e collected, items like that. The 15 follow on actions were specified by the EDO. For example, 16 in the case of Davis-Besse, it takes the Davis-Besse team 17 and translates that to action by the other offices, and the .
18 corrective actions are implementation of the follow on 19 actions.
j 20 We will follow existing procedure, including the
! 21 CRGR review and new generic type requirements.
22 DR. LEWIS: Let me understand that a little bit 23 more clearly. The existing procedures involve carceling out 24 the business according to the specialties of the various
() 25 divisions. Does anyone believe that there is a blockage l ace. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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H 9230 02 12 , 28 DAV/bc 1 point at that level, that the then various offices would 2 receive as part of their job the correction of one of the 3 items and then would just go back and do things in the old 4 -way and reinterpret that particular part of it?
5 You don't worry about regulatory infractions and 6 generally take a punitive approach?
7 'You know, once you start taking what might be a 8 splendid report -- I don' t want to judge one way or the 9 other -- and turning it into the usual procedures for
^
10 correction,you'veruntherisk'dfhavingo$sentia11y IL negated everything you've done before to take an integrated 12 approach to the problem, which is, after all, what the IIT'
~
O 13 is for.
-14 'I worry about that but, again, we'll see how it a i ,
s 15 works in practice. I think that's what's happened in
$6 Davis-Besse, hasn' t it? There's a list of -- what is the 17 number? Some very large number. ,
118 MR. MICHELSON: Forty-one.
\Y ._..
19 DR. LEWIS: In fact, you know, when you said that
- a few weeks ago, Carl, I went and counted and you were
20 4
21 absotutety right. Better than 2 percent accuracy. But V .
there are 41 thi..ngs that are parceled out to the
^
22 ,
- ~. .
- 23 Commission. So, at that point, all coherence goes away of 24 the response of tht' agency to the accident. Or should I not O ,
25 worry about rhse2 ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. ,
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.9230 02 13 29 1 'MR. HELTEMES: I don' t agree with your h)DAV/bc s_
2 description of the process.
3 DR. LEWIS: Well, you know, if I take a sentence 4 and assign the verbs to one group and the nouns to another 5 group and the prepositions to another group, I'd begin to no 6 longer have a sentence. .That's what worries me a little 7 bit.
8 MR. HELTEMES: The concept clearly is.to take all 9 the items that warrant any followup action, all the 10 important items found by the team, and to define those and 11 make specific offices responsible for closing out those, and t
12 then to set up a mechanism by which that closeout will
() 13 occur.
- 14 That's -what the EDO has done, defining what has 15 to be done and deciding whose responsible for it. And 16 defining a system for closeout.
17 DR. LEWIS: I understand that, Jack. My problem l'
18 is that when, af ter Three-Mile Island, which was admittedly l 19 a worse accident than Davis-BeJse, I think most people would l 20 admit or agree to -- maybe we can debate that -- but I was l 21- concerned about the fact that the action plan had some 200 1
22 odd items in it, which we' re still counting these days.
23 I would feel that if a response to an accident 24 that has a few causes has 200 -- I think it was 211, or
( )' 25 something like that, although it later got pared down -- has l ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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( ' DAV/bc 1 that many corrections, it means that people have lost the 2 forest for counting trees.
3 ' And if 41 things come out of Davis-Besse, I come 4 back to wondering what the view of the agency is on the root 5 cause of the accident. Or does it believe there were 41 6 root causes of the accident? I'm worried about the forest, 7j the tall pole in the tent.
8 MR. HELTEMES: I think you have to draw a 9 distinction between the cause of the accident and things 10 warranting followup action; 41 or whatever the number is was 11 things thought to have been identified by the team that 12 somebody should pay attention to.
( 13 And they're not related to the cause, if you 14 will. They're the implications and the lessons coming out 15 of this.
16 DR. LEWIS: That's just the point I'm worried 17 about because the point of the whole issue involved in 18 investigating operating events is to learn the lessons and 19 to see what extent you can sort of scrunch down the 20 probability of things like that happening again.
21 If you were to go to any given plant that didn' t 22 have an accident, tomorrow, you know, if you had picked 23 Davis-Besse the day before the accident, a substantial 24 number of things would be found wrong, just inevitably.
s/ 25 Ar the NRC on any given day, you'll find a number ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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'9230 02 15 31 1 of things that are wrong.
Q DAV/bc 2 If I look under the hood of my car on a given 3 day, I find a number of things that are wrong. But, in 4 general, they're not the cause of an accident. But if there 5 were an accident and I went down and looked at everything 6 that was wrong, I'd generate a long list.
7 I'm worried about separating out the things which 8 actually caused the accident from the background of things 9 that are wrong with the plant, unless one feels that a plant 10 must be in perfect condition at all times.
11 I know we must say that but we know in our heart 12 that it isn' t true for any re organism. That's what I'm O 12 worried enoue.
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 ACE-FEDERAL R.EPORTERS, INC.
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9230 03 01 32 1 MR. HELTEMES: In the case of Davis-Besse, the
()DAYbur 2 team went in and looked only at the event. We are not 3 looking for everything wrong with the plant. The focus was 4 very tight, what went wrong on June 9th to cause the ,
5 particular transient that was under the investigation.
a 6 So the focus is very narrow, and the teams are 7 starting to go through and highlight the cause. But the '
s 8 emphasis is: how do you prevent similar types of transients 9 from occurring in that facility or other facilities? What 10 are the lessons really learned here to be understood and 11 applied throughout the industry?
12 That is the focus that this really attempts to
() 13 have, to step back, if you will, and identify those things 14 warranting particular attention in order to see if action 15 needs to be_taken in this facility or any other facility.
16 That is why it is broken down into plant specific or generic ,
17 items, in order to get a general improvement in the industry 18 with regard to a particular . transient that happened with 19 Davis ^2sse. '
20 DR. LEWIS: I guess I am revealing a state of 21 mind which I don' t share with everybody for some strange 22 reason which I don't understand,'which is that it is better i
23 to take a few things and, by golly, make sure they get done 24 than to take 41 things and make them into a program plan
() 25 like the TMI action plan, which we will still working on ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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()DAVbur 2 MR. HELTEMES: No one is arguing that, 3 Dr. Lewis. Particularly I am not arguing that. I am not 4 talking at all about the team plan, whether that was good or 5 bad.
6 DR. LEWIS: I am chastising you about the action 7 plan. I have chastised lots of people with no effect.
8 MR. HELTEMES: I am here to talk about 9 Davis-Besse and the IIT.
10 DR. LEWIS: Got you.
11 I am worried about 41. It is a step down from 12 200.
() 13 MR. MICHELSON: Let me pursue this point a little 14 d if ferently. The Davis-Besse report attempts to go in and 15 look at what happened and report on what was found.
16 You want to get this out in a timely fashion.
17 You can't take months to do it. So you have to turn it out 18 as quickly as you think you have got your facts in order.
19 The problem that I have is that really you don' t 20 know the root causes, for instance, of some of what happened 21 at Davis-Besse by the time it is necessary to put out a 22 re port. So you say what you can, and you look at other root 23 causes later.
24 There are several action items here, and you are O
(_/ 25 f still looking at the root causes. So clearly it is an ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230'03 03 34 1 admission that not all the root causes are in the report, or (sJDAVbur 2 at least it appears to me to be so.
3 So what I am wondering is, is there going to be a 4 follow-up report or a supplement or an amendment or 5 something, and is there a commitment -- shouldn' t there be a 6 commitment always to follow up the initial report on the 7 incident with a final report?
8 Because a lot of these items now make very 9 interesting reading. I would like to know the answers to a 10 number of these items.
11 How am I going to find them out except on a 12 piecemeal basis unless there is something in a consolidated g~s
(,) 13 final report?
14 MR. HELTEMES: The concept clearly is you have a 15 team go in and dig very deep into the event to determine 16 what happened, determine why it happened, and make certain 17 findings and conclusions, and to get the report out early, 18 and then to take those things warranting follow-up action 19 and to spin them off into a particular office, a particular 20 organization and tell them what needs to be done, make an 21 assignment, and then track that to make sure it is done.
22 MR. MICHELSON: When will it be reported?
23 MR. HELTEMES: The concept is you have the team's 24 report and you have the August 5th memo, which I think you
() 25 are looking at now, which takes that team report, spins it ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 03-04 35 1 off into those items warranting follow-up action.
'(]') DAVbur 2 Now, the observation you make is quite correct, 3 that at the time the team reports, finish their report and' 4 gave it to the Commission, all the root causes were not 5' thoroughly pinned down at Davis-Besse as to why certain 6 equipment failed. Indeed, they are still being discussed 7 today.
8 Here it is November, I guess it is, and so 9 consequently that August 5th memo assigns action to 10 particular offices to follow up on certain pieces of 11 equipment data where there is uncertainty, as reflected in 12 the team report, in or, der to close out that uncertainty.
() 13 So if you are interested in a particular piece of 14 information or how did it come out, you could use that 15 August 5th memo track exactly who is responsible for closing 16 out that item and who is going to be knowledgeable about 17 it.
18 And so through a contact, you know, and write 19 that person, and then you will get a full description of the
. 20 final root cause of what happened and the corrective action 21 taken by the utility.
22 MR. MICHELSON: If I go back and read the 23 Brookhaven report, for instance, there was considerable 24 criticism of the problem of not ever reporting the root
() 25 causes, and so forth. Of course, this was an attempt now-ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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()DAVbur 1 to correct that. You are now going to report root causes as 2 part of the reporting process, but what I am saying now, all 3 the root causes were not yet known and unavailable to put in 4 the first report.
5 Where am I going to read about the rest of the 6 root causes? Is there a commitment for the agency to report
- 7. the root causes of the Davis-Besse accident in some kind of 8 readable form?
9 I don' t have to go call this guy, call that guy, 10 find this memo, find that memo. I want to go pull out a 11 piece of paper that closes out on it someday.
12 DR. LEWIS: I share Carl's concern.
(~
(,)j 13 Just to put it a little differently, in any NTSB 14 report af ter all the f acts are laid out there is a 15 statement. The probable cause of this accident was such and 16 such, contributing causes were so and so.
17 Carl is asking what the mechanism, I think, is 18 for generating that paragraph.
19 MR. HELTEMES: That paragraph appears in the 20 re port.
21 MR. MICHELSON: You don' t even know them yet.
22 Are you --
23 MR. HELTEMES: The probable cause of the event is 24 in the report as a general conclusion from the team, f3
's_/ 25 MR. MICHELSON: I think the NTSB sort of reports
~
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9230 03 06 37 1 take about eight or nine months.
({)DAVbur 2 DR. LEWIS: They come out much later.
3 MR. MICHELSON: You can' t in two months' time 4 know these, and if you are going to put out this kind of 5 repcrt in two months -- which I think is needed. Don't l
6 misunderstand me. I think you have an obligation, and it 7 should be a requirement that there be a final report or 8 supplement or something that finally ties this thing 9 together at the end of the work on these 41 items.
10 DR. LEWIS: We are ,in consonance on that, you 11 ~ know. I was putting it differently. I am concerned that 12 the end result was this. list of 41 things, and then you are
()
n 13 asking whether there is going to be a later thing which 14 perhaps after these are investigated simply comes back and 15 says the root cause was so and so. But Jack says it is 16 alre ady in the report, I think.
17 MR. HELTEMES: No. What I said was the general 18 probable cause of why the event occurred is in the report.
19 MR. MICHELSON: That is right, it is in there.
20 What you think, your best judgment at the time the report 21 was issued is what you are talking about, and now will that 22 judgment change as this other work is done.
23 Well, you are asking people still to look into 24 the root causes. You are asking the utility to give its
() 25 report on root causes. When that is all done, do I have to ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 03 07 38 1 go find -- do I have to make my own determination of root
()DAVbur 2 causes, then, or can I pick up a document?
3 MR. HELTEMES: The concept here has no provision 4 for yet another report on Davis-Besse.
5 MR. MICHELSON: I think that is a basic 6 deficiency in the concept because one of the obligations, 7 one thing I thought everybody agreed to was that you will 8 know -- the best the agency can understand you will finally 9 know what the root cause of this event was. It is not in 10 that report.
11 MR. HELTEMES: There is some controversy on that, 12 though. If you listen closely to Mr. Miller, for example, a
() 13 very experienced investigator of nuclear accidents, he will 14 say don't emphasize root causes, emphasize corrective 15 actions. Don' t go in and try to focus so tightly.
16 What you really want to do is get out and tell 17 people what it is you should do to minimize the same 18 potential event from occurring. That is what we have 19 at' tempted to do here.
20 For example, on the isolation valves there is a 21 bulletin that will be issued, probably in the next few 22 weeks, which will be focusing on the corrective actions 23 stemming from the work done to investigate why did those 24 valves fail to open at Davis-Besse. So we have flipped
() 25 over, if you will, to emphasize the corrective actions, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 03 08 39 1 what needs to be done within the industry to help prevent a
()DAVbur 2 similar serious event from occurring at another facility.
3 MR. MICHELSON: How do you decide on actions 4 before you have decided what the cause was?
5 MR. HELTEMES: The people who are preparing the 6 bulletin have been very deeply involved in the root cause 7 analysis and the actions that have taken place since the 8 event.
9 So they follow that very carefully, and of course 10 the bulletin will give some history on what happened. There 11 is extensive documentation that is available for anyone that 12 wishes to pursue those valves, as you are undoubtedly r
13 aware.
14 MR. MICHELSON: Let me ask you this: have you 15 received yet the licensee's engineering report on root 16 l causes?
17 MR. HELTEMES: I understand it is in the agency.
18 I understand that 11 engineering reports have been received 19 by the agency.
20 MR. MICHELSON: Now, they came in after this 21 report was issued no doubt?
22 MR. HELTEMES: Yes.
23 MR. MICHELSON: Now, somebody is going to look at j i
24 all these root causes. That may or may not change some of l
() 25 the views that are submitted in here, yet you have no I
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9230 03 09 40 1 commitment to put out a final report.
()DAvbur 2 It is very confusing. I think it is a basic 3 fallacy in your process not to finally close out, you know, 4 in some way, in report form, on an event that is important 5 enough to issue a document like that, which was not a cheap 6 thing to do. It took a lot of people and the investigating 7 team, and so forth.
8 That was what I consider a preliminary reporc.
9 It is a report which you understood the best you could. It 10 is a very good report, but it is not a final report.
11 MR. HELTEMES: I think we are talking only about 12 mechanisms.
/T is ,) 13 MR. MICHELSON: That is right.
14 MR. HELTEMES: There is no question that things 15 will be documented. There is no question there is going to 16 be action taken and that things will be closed out.
17 We are talking about collecting all that into a 18 report or is it all documented and available to people that 19 are interested?
20 DR. LEWIS: Well, Carl is worried, as I am, about 21 the mechanism tar focusing in the end. It may be it can be 22 worked out as people get experience, but all natural forces 4
23 within an agency have a tendency to keep that from 24 happening. Therefore, unless some explicit effort is made
) 25 to do it, it is not going to happen.
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c:
-9230103 10 41 1 If we can do things perhaps through ACRS to
()DAVbur 2 strengthen the hands of those who want to make it happen --
3 .one wonderful thing about having a two-man subcommittee is 4 that we are either unanimous or we are hopelessly divided, 5 and on this one we are unanimous.
6 MR. HELTEMES: Should I go on?
7 DR. LEWIS: Yes.
8 MR. HELTEMES: The next one talks about the 9 investigation is not to be until the plant is placed in a 10 safe and stable condition.
11 This is, of course, important where you have a 12 very serious long-term event such as Three Mile Island,
.() 13 where there is a regional response team on the site, and the 14 point just is that we are not going 'to begin the 15 investigation until -- the accident is over before the 16 investigation begins. But we hope the interface is a 17 natural one and a very close one -- to have long time 18 periods between, I should say, getting the plant in a safe 19 and stable condition.
20 MR. MICHELSON: Normally, who makes that decision 21 that it is now okay for the team to go in?
22 MR. HELTEMES: I thought at this time that the 23 director of the regional response team would give the okay 24 for the investigation to begin.
() 25 DR. LEWIS: Could you remind me what the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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()DAVbur 1 responsibility of the regional response team is? What is 2 their assignment?
3 MR. HELTEMES: I am not deep into that topic, but 4 my impression is that they are an agent of the agency and 5 they are to act on behalf of the agency to take those 6 actions necessary to assure public health and safety.
7 DR. LEWIS: In other words, to manage the 8 recovery from the accident?
9 MR. HELTEMES: From the standpoint of the NRC.
10 DR. LEWIS: I am just really trying to find out 11 whether they are in effect taking over the plant. You 12 recognize that this is a different subject?
([ ) 13 MR. HELTEMES: It is, and someone better 14 qual'ified than I is available to discuss it.
15 DR. LEWIS: Because the whole question of the 16 role of this agency in emergency response has been a 17 difficult and open one for a long, long time. It is related 18 to Carl's question of who decides when it is safe.
19 MR. HELTEMES: We will cover that in the 20 procedures.
21 MR. MICHELSON: But your thought is right now it 22 would be the regional office?
23 MR. HELTEMES: The director of the regional 24 response team.
() 25 our next item talks about enforcement action ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 03 12 43 1 remains the responsibility of I&E and the regions.
()DAVbur 2 Information is to be referred to OI or OIA as appropriate.
3 From Davis-Besse one item was referred to OI. It 4 was on training. OI concluded the event really didn't 5 trigger their threshold.
6 Going on, the next item is this freezing of 7 conditions, if you will. The objective clearly is to have 8 the plant disturbed as little as possible, and hopefully the 9 equipment will be in tae as-found condition when the team 10 arrives.
11 Of course, there has to be the qualification that 12 whatever actions you need to take to assure that the plant
() 13 is in a safe and stable condition needs to be done. We 14 recognize that. Certainly, the procedures and the concept 15 allows for that.
16 Change valve positions. Do whatever you have to 17 do to make sure that the plant is in a safe and stable .
18 condition.
19 DR. LEWIS: Of course, I agree with that. I find 20 it amazing that at this point one is noticing that one 21 should leave the evidence as intact as possible. That was 22 certainly not done at Salem and apparently it wasn' t an 23 agency policy until now. .
24 MR. HELTEMES: We are certainly formalizing it. l h l
(~/
(_ 25 We are going to develop some standard language that can be ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 03 13 44 o
I ,DAVbur 1 contained either in confirmation letters that go out or 2 orders.
3 But what we are saying is when you formulate in 4 IIT this is one of the things you are going to get. ,
5 DR. LEWIS: It is just that everybody who reads 6 murder mysteries on airplanes knows you should leave the 7 corpse alone. This agency didn' t know it.
8 MR. HELTEMES: The next item talks about some of 9 the issues and questions that we have to focus on. We 10 haven' t done that yet, but we recognize that.
11 The first one is inviting outside representatives 12 to participate. We have already talked about that. We just
() 13 have to think about that more and investigate that more.
14 MR. MICHELSON: I think there is two aspects to 15 this outside representation. I think the one perhaps that 16 is addressed by the bullet is asking INPO, for instance, to 17 participate.
18 Then the other aspect, though, is assuring that 19 there is an outside member of the team who is an NRC special 20 employee, so to speak, as opposed to a representative of 21 INPO or a representative of industry.
22 My earlier remarks were relative to having an 23 additional person on the team who is an NRC special employee 24 but who is independent of the NRC operation.
( 25 MR. HELTEMES: Could you elaborate -- a special ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 MR. MICHELSON: Well, yes, that is the same thing 3 as the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.
4 I am thinking now in terms of Judge Cotter's 5 suggestion. He brings in somebody off of his roster of 6 special employees. They are just like ACRS members. They 7 are special government employees on a part-time basis.
8 That is more what I had in mind.
9 DR. LEWIS: You are exactly right. It is an 10 important distinction because in the party system, as 11 practiced by NTSB, the point is that once somebody is 12 brought in to be a party to an investigation he is then ,
() 13 representing NTSB. He is not representing Boeing or whoever 14 his normal employer is.
15 Well, you can at least make it formally that way, 16 and you recognize the previous connections. But that is my 17 point, you bring him in for his expertise to work for you as 18 a member of the team.
19 That is what I was alluding to much earlier on, 20 whether a person is a consultant, in which case his regular 21 employer is his dominant concern, or whether he is actually 22 part of the system, part of NRC, and whether the special 23 employee -- I don't think you meant that particular term, 24 but you meant his responsibility is to this agency.
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( ' ;DAV/bc MR. MICHELSON:
1 That is the correct term, 2 "special government employee".
3 DR. LEWIS: Rig ht. And there are certain 4 responsibilities that go with that.
5 MR. MICHELSON: And there are certain obligations 6 that go with that.
7 DR. LEWIS: I think this has to be looked at in a 8 little more detail, because if they then have to sell all 9 their stock and every utility in order to participate in 10 investigations, that might be a little too much to ask; so 11 there are some delicacies there that need to be explored.
12 But, in any case, to the extent possible, their
() 13 allegiance should be directed to the investigation and not 14 to some outside agency.
15 MR. MICHET SON: So there are two types of 16 representatives in there.
17 MR. HELTEMES: We appreciate your comments. The 18 point I just have to leave it at is that this is one of the 19 things we'll have to look at more. Providing subpoena power
'20 to the team, this is something that's been talked about.
21 NTSB, as you're well aware, has it. Whether or not we need 22 it is something we ought to investigate with our legal 23 staff.
24 MR. MICHELSON: Is it automatically understood
() 25 that the subpoena also involves testimony under oath?
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[v'DAV/bc 1 MR. HELTEMES: It does to me.
2 MR. MICHELSON: I notice in some places that part 3 was omitted in the SECY paper. And I just wondered, if you 4 , subpoena somebody, can they now testify under oath?
5 MR. HELTEMES: That's linked in my mind.
6 MR. MICHELSON: It is in mine, too, but I just 7 wanted clarification, 8 DR. LEWIS: I'm not a lawyer but sometimes one 9 subpoenas papers, and things like that, and never 10 testifies. So there's some broad meaning to the term.
11 But, incidentally , this set of three bullets, it 12 says consideration will be given to above them. That means
(^T 13 that you' re considering whether to include these powers in
(_j 14 the manual as you write it, or it will be considered on a 15 case by case basis?
16 MR. HELTEMES: No. It's three subjects that we 17 need to address.
18 DR. LEWIS: So you are considering whether these 19 things should be included in the proposed set of rules?
20 MR. HELTEMES: In the program, that's correct.
21 The third one is the authority to preempt 22 parallel investigations if they interfere. The thought here 23 is that industry might have some investigations going on, or 24 some other organization outside the agency.
(~~
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()DAV/bc 2 equipment, try to get the investigation done as thoroughly 3 and quickly as we can.
4 DR. LEWIS: Is there any argument against giving 5 them the authority to preempt parallel investigations?
6 MR. HELTEMES: Certain people have raised 7 questions about if an FBI investigation is going on, or some 8 other type that we didn' t even think about quite frankly.
9 DR. LEWIS: Then you have to talk to the FBI and 10 work out a modus operandi.
11- MR. HELTEMES: We only had certain types of 12 investigations going on in our mind.
() 13 DR. LEWIS: Well, you cannot by law preempt FBI 14 authority.
15 MR. HELTEMES: That's how we got into a subject 16 or discussions we had no intent to go into, because we 17 certainly didn' t mean that.
18 DR. LEWIS: But, you know, other than that, 19 specific investigations by EPRI, INPO, other offices of NRC, 20 what is the argument against giving the IIT the authority to 21 preempt those?
22 MR. HELTEMES: Quite frankly, at Davis-Besse, for 23 example, there was a TAG team, a transient assessment team.
24 They had a number of INPO people with the team. And they
() 25 conducted a parallel investigation. There was no ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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()DAV/bc 2 even sure if this is going to be a problem.
3 DR. LEWIS: But, you know, if you have the 4 authority to preempt -- you don' t need to preempt, but it at 5 least forces the other people not to do things that 6 obstruct.
7 MR. HELTEMES: We've just got to think about what 8 is the problem to worry about and make sure we get that 9 problem.
10 MR. MICHELSON: Can you envision, you know, a 11 utility not letting the NRC do whatever it wants to do in 12 terms of an investigation, since the NRC holds the power to shut them down and keep them shut down, and so on and so on?
()~ 13 14 I don't think there's any doubt that you get the 15 person's attention, because until you're satisfied, the 16 plant doesn' t start back up; which is the case, as I 17 understand , for Davis-Besse. It won't start up until you're 18 satisfied. I don' t think they' re going to do anything to 19 interfere with g'iving to you whatever you need at any time.
20 MR. HELTEMES: That's why this is a consideration 21 to be given. I say again, to figure out the problem that 22 could come up and make sure we address that problem 23 _specifically.
24 MR. MICHELSON: That's what I can' t really
() 25 imagine, since you hold the cards.
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9230 04 05 50 1 MR. HELTEMES: It has not been a problem.
()DAV/bc 2 DR. LEWIS: Human frailty is an unplumbed depth 3 or an unscaled height, whichever you prefer.
And I'm going 4 to say my prediliction would be: Give them the authority 5 and they don' t have to use it if there's no problem. But it 6 doesn' t hurt to have it to the extent that it's legal for 7 this agency to do so. And that has to do with issues of 8 public health and safety.
9 But I'm sure that many, many books and newspapers 10 stories have been written about other companies that 11 obstructed investigations into their affairs, even though 12 they had a lot at stake; whereas, it can never happen in the
() 13 nuclear industry, I'd just as soon be armed.
14 MR. MICHELSON: That's a little dif ferent 15 problem. We' re not talking about individuals obstructing 16 the NRC investigation but, rather, another whole 17 investigating team causing a problem.
18 DR. LEWIS: Well, there are many manuevers 19 possible in this world. I'd just as soon be armed to deal 20 with them.
21 MR. HELTEMES: The next chart talks about the 22 status, where are we now. We believe that the Davis-Besse 23 event will serve as a pilot. The report we would present 24 you as an example and a number of procedures were developed, O)
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2 example, we would follow the same type of procedures.
3 The EDO proposal was approved by the Commission 4 on October 16th, as you' re undoubtedly aware, and we have 5 been allocated three PIE this fiscal year. One of those PIE 6 will be Wayne to develop and implement the program.
7 By " implement the program", we really mean the 8 manual chapter, personnel, procedures, language that would 9 ensure freezing of equipment and study selected 10 considerations.
11 And one of the first objectives that Wayne is 12 working on currently is to develop a program plan laying out
(]) 13 what needs to be done, whose going to do it, what's the 14 anticipated schedule for'the activity, what's the end 15 product, how does this fit together?
16 So Wayne has that in progress right now. And , in 17 the SECY 85-208, we talk about early '86. But there was a 18 substantial delay between the submittal of the proposal to 19 the Commission and their approval -- and early '86 would 20 probably slip to mid '86 -- develop a program plan to see 21 how it does fit together to get a good target on the end 22 date.
23 But, quite frankly, our activities, we did go 24 slow for a number of months because we did not know -- as
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9230 04 07 52 1 discussions, and we did not want to invest an awful lot of
( )DAV/bc 2 resources in the wrong direction. And to make sure it was a 3 fully approved activity before we really started to run.
4 Throughout this time, we tried to make sure we 5 really did have the capability and plans to respond to any 6 of that if it did occur.
7 But that's where we are right now. That's a 8 brief runthrough of SECY 208 and the staf f's proposal.
9 DR. LEWIS: How do you see...there's something a 10 little bit bizarre, although certainly fine to have AEOD 11 charged with the responsibility for writing the programs and 12 procedures that will guide the entire agency in its
() 13 investigation of accidents. That's an exhalted role for 14 AEOb, not that it isn't well-deserved. I understand that.
15 But what role do you see AEOD playing in the program itself?
16 That is, after the rules are written?
17 Do you see AEOD as playing an active role in 18 l every incident investigation team, or only as making rosters 19 and letting the EDO select from them for the specifics of an 20 incident?
21 Do you see AEOD apart from its long-term role in 22 just looking at this system and trying to understand it?
23 It's an open-ended question what role you 24 envision for AEOD.
( 25 MR. HELTEMES: I'll give you my personal answer.
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()DAV/bc 1 lie envisage a deep and continuing role in each 2 investigation. We would anticipate that a number of the IIT 3 staff would go with each team and pa'rticipate with each 4 temu. And do a debriefing and be deeply involved in the 5 investigation to make sure that what took place was what we 6 thought was proper to take place.
7 We would be in a continuing role in the 8 implementation of each team.
9 DR. LEWIS: So that's what you expect to 10 recommend in the procedures that you' re writing?
11 MR. HELTEMES: That's what PIE is. It's not j ust 12 development, it's a continuing FTE, its implementation of
() 13 the program; that's forever.
14 DR. LEWIS: So it's essentially been preapproved?
15 MR. HELTEMES: Yes.
16 MR. MICHELSON: Is there any provision that AEOD 17 be a member of every team?
18 i MR. HELTEMES: That was what we were talking 19 about.
20 MR. MICHELSON: It was the SECY people that led 21 me to believe that you'd be a member of every team.
22 MR. HELTEMES: Well, the SECY paper does not 23 discuss whose on every team. The team will be tailored.
24 What I'm discussing now, the FTE allows for participation in 0
k/ 25 each team to make sure.
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%J 1 , MR. MICHELSON: It just wasn't clear and won' t be
-2 clear until I see the manual chapter as to how the teams are 3 composed. But it'wasn't obvious that AEOD would be a member 4 of every team.
5 MR. HELTEMES: The IIT type activity is to be a 6 continuing one. We anticipate -- I anticipate -- that some 7 member of the IIT staff --
8 MR. MICHELSON: You have responsibility for 9 administration of the program, but that was maintaining the 10 rosters, and so forth, not necessarily going on each team.
11 MR. HELTEMES: I'm saying going on each team.
12 MR. MICHELSON: That's what I'd like to see in
() 13 the manual chapter. I think it ought to be clearly spelled 14 out there. It is not yet clear.
15 MR. HELTEMES: The extent to which other 16 personnel participate, of course, cannot be determined until 17 the future.
18 MR. MICHELSON: The one problem I have with the 19 SECY paper was that it appears that the report that's 20 produced, this type of report, the Davis-Besse report, it 21 will be a team report. It isn't clear what happens if one 22 member of the team disagrees with the report.
23 For instance, let's say the AEOD member 24 believes that this thing is a white-wash and thinks the
() 25 situation is considerably dif ferent. To what extent can ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 that member and his organization go off and do their own 2 thing?
3 Or, are you committed because the other three 4 members of the team voted acceptance of the document? Are 5 you then prepared to accept the document?
6 MR. HELTEMES: You're getting into a hypothetical 7 situation. .
8 MR. MICHELSON: It could very well be a practical 9 one.
10 MR. HELTEMES: It has not been a problem.
11 Davis-Besse is very much a team report. 0400 as a team 12 wrote the report and signed off on the report. You're O*
13 geseu1atine teet some eeem in the fueure, gerhees one of ehe 14 team members has a different viewpoint from the rest of the i 15 team members. That's liable to come up and we'll just have 16 to consider how we handle that. There's always professional 17 differing opinions routes to go and there's other mechanisms 18 for a person to be heard and make sure his views are known 19 to other people that have to act on the report.
l 20 So I'm not sure if you' re af ter a procedural 21 question.
22 MR. MICHELSON: It's a much deeper ' question. I 23 was just hitting at the surface. The deeper question is, as l 24 I understood it, one of the original reasons for setting up O 25 AEOo was ee grovide en indegendent eve 1ueeien, ene1reie end i
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9230 04 11 55 Ooav/hc 1 eve 1=eetoaorovereeteeveae=taaeveaaeeoiehereeoe 2 the agency. That was my original intention, or s
3 understanding rather. c 4 I assume that that type of charter still exists, s
5 that you are still doing an independent analysis and .,
6 evaluation of all operating events you wish to look into.
7 Nobody teds you which events you have to look intor Even 8 though a report like this Davis-Besca report is issued, if 9 you, fo},any reason, were to disagree with what's in this 10 report, there was nothing preventing you from going ahead 11 and doing your own continuing investigation andIproducing 12 another reporr.
O 12 Is that set 11 the cese2 14 MR. HELTEMES: We,will pursue any safety concern 15 we see, no' matter where it is. t
+ .
16 MR. MICHELSON: You know, it's not clear in the n+
17 SECY paper to what extent it changes-the AEOD charter.
18 MR. HELTEMES: The charter has not been 19 modified.
20 MR. MICHELSON: They remain silent on the issue 21 but, rather, they now indicate we have a coordinated team 22 approach to an accident investigation on the part of the 23 agency. The inference to me was that whatever that team
.w.
24 determines is the final word of the agency.
25 MR. HELTEMES: W6-covered this earlier and I said ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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-9230 04-12 57 1, ;DAV/bc 1 if we had a safety concern involved with the plant, we would 2 go on and p~ursue it.
3 MR. MICHELSON: Even though it wasn' t assigned to 4 you as an action item? .
5 MR. HELTEMES: It's part of our charter. Our 6 charter has not been modified.
7 DR. LEWIS: It's very interesting. The IIT 8 system is also not really in place. So it's a very 9 interesting test of AEOD's role. If, indeed, the conjecture 10 that an IIT concludes that something did not contribute to 11 an accident and AEOD subverts the agency by going en record 12 as saying that it does, that will be a very interesting test C
13 of will and structure within the agency.
14 And that's of course just the sort of thing for 15 which the independence of AEOD to the extent that it exists 16 was set up. Freedom and independence, you never know how 17 strong they are until you really challenge the system with 18 them. That hasn't really happened yet in any way that 19 hurts.
20 21 22 23 24
() 25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 05 01 58 1 MR. HELTEMES: Only because there hasn't been a
(}DAV/bc 2 case yet. We're making a distinction between aid and 3 capability.
4 MR. MICHELSON: I'm just trying to clarify in my 5 mind that you still think that you are independent, that you 6 can go after any safety issue you wish, even though a 7 decision has been made on the part of the agency.
8 MR. HELTEMES: I agree to the former part of that 9 statement. Asserting our independence that we can look into 10 any safety issue that we think necessary, we take it up, we 11 do our analysis and we do our own reports.
12 The fact that IIT went out and wrote a report is
() 13 not the agency speaking whatsoever. It is the second part 14 of your question. That's the team speaking. That's a 15 coordinated agency response, but it is not the agency.
16 MR. MICHELSON: But it sounded to me, when you 4
17 used words like "It's the coordinated agency response ," it 18 sounds to me like this is an agency report.
19 MR. HELTEMES: It's a recommendation or thoughts 20 to the EDO and the EDO acted on it.
21 DR. LEWIS: But, the EDO has in the end, you
' 22 know, there is an institutional point missing here. I'm 23 fuzzy about whether it happened at Davis-Besse but NTSB 24 issues a report, by golly, it's an NTSB report, signed off
() 25 by the members of NTSB. It is that agency's position. It's ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 05 02 59 1 in writing. And then the regulatory agency, which usually
()DAV/bc 2 is the FAA, may choose to junk it when it issues its agency 3 position.
4 An IIT report, you're absolutely right, is not an 5 agency position. It's a team report of a coordinated agency.
6 response. At some point, the EDO has got to either approve 7 that report or not.
8 MR. HELTEMES: That's the August 5 th memo.
9 DR. LEWIS: He d id.
10 MR. MICHELSON: He endorsed it. And as far as 11 I'm concerned, that's now the company position or the agency 12 position.
() 13 MR. HELTEMES: Sure.
14 DR. LEWIS: Now there's a very interesting point, 15 because.I confess that I never read my mail as well as I 16 should , but in the team report, there is a sentence about
'17 the root cause of the event. And it says:
.18 The root cause was lack of attention to detail 19 in the care of plant equipment.
20 Then it spells it out. But then it says:
21 Further operator interviews made clear that 22 equipment problems were not aggressively addressed and 23 resolved beyond compliance with NRC regulatory 24 requirements.
() 25 So here is now an agency position that even ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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-9230 05 03 60 yINDAV/bc 1 though their regulations, it's the responsibility of the a 2 licensee to go beyond the regulations and do better than the 3 regulations.
4 I don' t quite understand the logic of saying this 5 is the set of regulations with which you must comply but, in 6 our heads, we have stronger regulations to which we really 7 expect you to comply.
8 I think this has slipped by inadvertently but I 9 find it a very amusing sentence, because there has been for 10 a long time a concern that the NRC regulations are so 11 miserably detailed and specific and demanding that no
- 12. utility has any incentive to do any more than just barely
() 13 pacify the NRC, to comply and stay in business.
14 And, here, this accident report says that that's 15 not enough, by golly, you've got to do more.
16 MR. HELTEMES: In the maintenance area, the 17 agency does not have detailed, descriptive, definitive 18 requirements.
19 DR. LEWIS: Well, this report says equipment 20 problems were not aggressively addressed and resolved beyond 21 compliance with NRC regulatory requirements.
22 So it seems to suggest that there are NRC 23 regulatory requirements which were complied with. It says, 24 but they didn' t do enough more than complying with them to I) 25 prevent the accident.
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-923005 04 61 DAV/bc 1 I find that a fascinating sentence. I suspect, 2 when it was written and approved, nobody really understood 3 the implications of it. And I don' t want to harrass you on 4 this but if that was approved by EDO, then EDO'_s position is 5 that, at least in the maintenance area, you must go well 6 beyond the NRC regulations to prevent accidents.
7 In which case, one wonders what the regulations 8 are for, but .that's for another subcommittee meeting.
4 9 Fascinating.
10 Okay, you' re finished with your report?
-11 MR. HELTEMES: Yes, sir, I'm done.
12 DR. LEWIS: We've interrupted you. What do you 13 think, Carl?
14 MR. MICHELSON: Let's have a break and then out 15 discussion.
16 DR. LEWIS: Let's have a break, and then let's f
j 17 have a discussion. I'm a great believer in not sitting at a 18 table for more than an hour and a half.
19 MR. HELTEMES: If you want us to remain -- ,
- 20 MR. MICHELSON
- Oh, yes.
21- DR. LEWIS: Let us then declare a seven-minute i
22 break -- oh, hell, a 12-minute break, until 5 after 10. And 23 then we'll simply have an open discussion of what occurred.
24 (Recess.)
25 DR. LEWIS: How can we have a round table with a ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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~9230=05 05 62 jDAV/bc 1 table of this strange shape?
%)
2- Let's then have a round table on what we've just 3 discussed. I do notice that we haven' t -- apart from your 4 very interesting presentation, Jack, we haven't said 5 anything-about the ASLP proposals. And, of course, we don' t 6 have that here to talk about it.
7 But just out of curiosity, what is your response 8 to their proposal?
9 MR. HELTEMES: It's been a while since I've even 10 read it, quite frankly. We were so tied up in our own 11 activities, I have not studied it.
12 DR. LEWIS: I've not studied it but let me try to I) 13 summarize it. And if I'm wrong, I'm sure somebody will 14 shout it at me. Generally speaking, they say that the 15 panels they have are a resource of people who know the 16 nuclear business, who are accustomed to taking testimony, 17 accustomed to ferreting out the truth with their contending 18 views that exist and they already work for the agency. And 19 they already have a tradition of independence of the 20 regulatory arm of the agency even though they' re a part of 21 it, and why the heck not use them as the roster people --
22 instantly available to investigate accidents?
23 I think there exist cynics who point out that the 24 licensing business is going to start decreasing pretty soon
() 25 and that they may need work. But, leaving that aside, one ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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- 1 .of.the merits, in your view. -
(hDAV/bc 2 I think that's a fair statement of what they 3 pr,opo sed . Am I wrong, Carl?
4 MR. MICHELSON: I think that's right. They also, 5 - of course, have the power of subpoena, taking testimony 6 under oath and, presumably, they are quite competent to 7 handle licensing safety issues and operating event. safety 8 issues.
9 DR. LEWIS: That's in effect what they say. Do 10 you have any response?
11 MR. HELTEMES: Not really. The Commission looked 12 at it so we don' t have a response or any viewpoint to give h -13 you.
14 DR. LEWIS: We've probably not given it a fair i l
15 shake in terms of consideration. That's my personal view.
16 I'm not advocating it but, certainly, it's a formal proposal.
17 that's been made to the Commission. Did the Commission I
18 simply table it?
19 MR. HELTEMES: All I know is we have a staff 20 requirements memo that came back on the SECY 208 paper, 21 which in essence said: Go ahead. It's a rather clean 22 approval of this, theoretically to totally clean.
23 MR. CAPUCCI: Commissioner Bernthal also had a 24 proposal on the table, too. There have been a bunch of
() 25 proposals for this type of organization. The fact is the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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19230 05 07 64 DAV/b'c 1 Commission then decided on the SECY 208 proposal and that 2 seems to be it.
3 DR. LEWIS: Essentially, by implication, it's a 4 . negative vote on all other proposals.
5 MR. CAPUCCI: In my view.
6 DR. LEWIS: So we probably shouldn't even then 7 worry about it unless we want to propose it as an 8 alternative.
9 MR. CAPUCCI: The only reason that this appeared 10 on the agenda -- I'm talking about administratively -- is 11 one of the assignments our subcommittee got from the full 12 committee to look into, this was assigned prior to the
() 13 ' approval of SECY 208. One of the members suggested that our 14 subcommittee look into this and come back with some 15 comments, opinions as to what they thought.
16 DR. LEWIS: But that assignment to us then was 17 OBE and not to worry very much about it. So we should 18 probably go back to simply talking about what is in place 19 and how to give it the best shot at working in a 20 satisfactory way; regardless of any prejudgments any of us 21 may have about whether an internal agency can work at all, 22 you still want to give it its best shot. Then see how that 23 comes out.
24 I didn' t take many notes but the three things
() 25 that I wrote to myself were a concern, which Carl also ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 going to appear after the information that is being 3 developed now in the af termath of what you might call the 4 flash report, is developed; that is, whether there will be 5 any change in the bottom line.
6 I now have, courtesy of our diligent and 7 defective designated federal representative, the bottom line 8 from the team report. And that's been endorsed by the EDO.
9 It is the licensees lack of attention to detail in the care 10 of plant equipment. It suggests that this licensee has a 11 particularly bad record in that regard.
12 So that may stand as the root cause, although I
() 13 am very amused by the bottom sentence, which I think was not
- 14 really understood'when it was approved. That may stand or 15 it may turn out that there is some other root cause. And I 16 guess Carl raised, and I'm also concerned that when the 17 rules are written that there be a provision that either 18 requires the EDO or the Commission or somebody -- it doesn' t 19 matter who -- to make a statement, you know, within the 20 next year, either saying "on further investigation", which, 21 of course, takes longer, "we now reconfirm that this was the 22 root cause, or we have found that there are modifications 23 that need to be made in this paragraph."
24 Or some mechanism like that. So it doesn' t j ust
() 25 go by default and get overtaken by other events. Is that ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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's_f DAV/bc 1 approximately your feeling, Carl?
2 MR. MICHELSON: Yes. I think it's essential that 3 you finally close out. If you're claiming that we are 4 reporting the root causes, root causes admittedly aren't yet 5 known. The licensee is still looking for his, and his 6 reports are now in your hands. That may or may not modify 7 your views here.
8 But some kind of a closecut, either as a 9 supplement or as a new document, however you want to do it, 10 but I believe there's an obligation, as does the NISB, I 11 think, to put out a final report that says:
12 This, in our opinion, is the final root cause of 13 this event, af ter several months of investigation.
14 MR. HE LTEMES: I think that will be covered in 15 the SER Davis-Besse, for example. All the engineering 16 evaluation reports.
17 MR. MICHE LSON: Why should there be any 18 resistance to an obligation to put out a supplement to the 19 report which finally closes this business out? Why do I 20 have to chase an SER or a memo or some damned thing to find 21 out wha t really happened?
22 DR. LEWIS: It could be a one-pager or a half a 23 pager.
24 MR. HELTEMES: The mechanics of it is that we put C)
\' 25 together a team and send the team to the site, do the ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 That's the report. Then the team is disbanded. The team 3 has no continuing relationship whatsoever.
4 DR. LEWIS: That's fine, but in the NTSB case, 5 that's also true. But then, eight months later, a year 6 later, two years later, it depends on the complexity of the 7 event, the NTSB as a corporate body issues the final report 8 which says the probable cause of the accident is so-and-so.
9 ,
So the team is not making the determination.
10 It's the validation of the team report by the EDO which is 11 the responsible statement here and the EDO is not disbanded 12 eight months later.
/G
\/ 13 MR. HELTEMES: No, but there is the SER. The SER 14 would take into account all of the engineering evaluations 15 and all the corrective actions taken. And it presents to 16 the public, to the agency and to the utility why it's safe 17 for that plant to resume. There's no parallel.
18 MR. MICHELSON: That might be an inch thick and 19 I'm interested in reading one page out of it.
20 DR. LEWIS: We don't want to bury it in paper, 21 that's the issue. The whole point of this exercise, which, 22 God, I do remember began in 1977, before TMI, the whole 22 point of this exercise was to get to a concise statement of 24 the root cause that can provide strategic guidance on what O 25 needs to be fixed.
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x/ DAV/bc 1 And as Carl says, why could there be any 2 resistance to issuing it?
3 MR. HE LTEMES: The program just does not have any 4 features or any mechanism right now for doing that. There 5 are certainly provisions to make sure that corrective 6 actions are indeed identified and taken. There are 7 certainly provisions to make sure that root causes are 8 documented and corrected. And so we're talking mechanisms, 9 format, if you will, it strikes me as opposed to the 10 existence of the information, documentation and availability 11 of that information.
12 MR. MICHE LSON: The concern, of course, is always b)
13 that of things f alling into cracks and the advantage of 14 putting out a final report obviously is that you can pull 15 your thoughts back together again and make sure that some of 16 these items haven' t fallen into cracks , and document the 17 fact that you've gone through this. Here is the final 18 bottom line.
19 DR. LEWIS: The important thing is not to bury it 20 in paper, in part for the guidance of the agency, and in 2 .* part for the edification of the public, which has a 22 legitimate interest in what's going on here. Something that 23 is understandable'and reasonably clear.
24 Let me ask the question dif ferently. Your
\ 25 assignment now is to write the manual chapter and the set of ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(-) DAV/bc 1 procedures. You could, within your assignment now --
2 ' correct me if I'm wrong -- you could write a statement 3 saying: Within the following year, the EDO shall issue a 4 concise statement validating the original estLmate of 5 probably cause of the accident in the IIT report.
6 You could write that if you wanted to.
7 MR. HE LTEMES: In good faith, I couldn't, I don't 8 believe.
9 DR. LEWIS: You don' t think so?
10 MR. HE LTEMES: Not because I've been told really, 11 that the principles and the concept is defined in 208 It's
. 12 too much of a stretch in my mind. It's a different
[)
'/
'- 13 concept.
14 MR. MICHELSON: We can write to the Commission 15 and tell them they ought to do this.
16 MR. HE LTEMES : For sure, we understand your 17 viewpoint.
18 MR. MICHE LSON: Maybe what we're asking is do 19 you foresee any real problem with doing it that way as 20 opposed to leaving it lay in all the various NRR and I&D 21 papers and the memos and whatever?
22 DR. LEWIS: Jack seems to feel he doesn' t have 23 the authority within his present assignment.
24 MR. MICHE LSON: He probably doesn't.
( 25 DR. LEWIS: So we can write the Commission.
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2 MR. MICHE LSON: The question in my mind is: do 3 you see any problem, any real problem with'doing it that way 4 as opposed to leaving it in various bits and pieces?
5 MR. HELTEMES: I see mechanics problems. The 6 real issue involved is the team to do that because it's an 7 updating to a team report.- So you're talking about a final 8 team.
9 MR. MICHE LSON: Do you see a problem with the 10 team for this purpose?
11 MR. HELTEMES: Tremendous resource problems.
12 MR. MICHELSON: We're not talking about a
,#\
kl 13 tremendous resource though, since the work will have been 14l done. It has to be done as a part of these 41 action 15 items.
16 MR. HE LTEMES: But it won't be done by the team.
17 You're talking about the team having a continuing 18 involvement in the plant, a continuing involvement in the 19 review of these documents, and being very knowledgeable as 20 to exactly the corrective action. And that will take a very 21 long period of time and a lot of resources. And these poor 22 people have demanding real time jobs.
23 DR. LEWIS: We're having an information 24 disconnect here because I don' t believe that we' re talking O 25 about redoing the investigation through the IIT. We're ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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( DAV/bc 1 talking about somehow keeping the glue that was formed when 2 the IIT was formed, keeping it from dissolving in the rain.
3 That is to say, maintaining to some later date some kind of 4 coherence in the agency response to the accident.
5 It doesn' t take -- let me put it dif ferently.
6 If, say, within a year, it takes a major expenditure of 7 resources for the EDO to reform in his head a coherent 8 picture of what's happened in an incident that's been 9 investigated within the past year, then there's something 10 fundamentally wrong. I don' t think it takes any major 11 expenditure of resources .
12 We' re asking for the EDO to within a year -- I'm 13 just inventing that time. We'll obviously talk about it --
14 to, you know, say that there was a preliminary report by the 15 team -- not by the agency, but by the team.
16 I have validated it, assuming that he has, as a 17 find report and that indeed, after all the things that were 18 suggested for deeper looks at the IIT report have come in, I 19 feel that there has been no change in my position that 20 such-and-such was the probably cause of the accident.
21 If he can't say that without an expenditure of 22 resources, then the original resources were wasted.
23 MR. MICHELSON: That's right. He ought to know 24 that in his own mind. And, therefore, it's just a matter of O 25 documentation. I don' t care if you want to make it a ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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o)DAV/bc 1 letter. I would make it a supplement.
2 DR. LEWIS: Fine, I could care less.
3 MR. MICHELSON: But, clearly, at some point in 4 time, he must finally pull this thing together and say:
5 Yes , the team was right. Or, No, the following things have 6 now come to light that indicate that something dif ferent was 7 the problem.
8 ' And I'd like to see that documented for 9 posterity.
10 MR. HELTEMES: I say again everything is 11 documented. I say again you're talking about the form of 12 the document. You're talking about another, yet another, 13 report. You're not arguing, as I understand it, that it 14 won' t be documented, that it won' t be done, that it won' t be 15 available to the public and yourself and anyone else.
16 You're only talking about the particular cover or the 17 particular format of how it is done. You're asking for --
18 MR. MICHE LSON: We' re talking about whether you 19 can find it or not.
20 MR. HE LTEMES: I would hope that isn' t the issue, 21 whether you can find it or not. I submit that you can find 22 it. ,
23 DR. LEWIS: Well, it goes beyond that. And it's 24 a concern which I've expressed earlier. After the team is 25 disbanded, the agency reverts to its normal balkanized ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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~9230 05 16 73 DAV/bc 1 state. If that's the final disposition of the operation, 2 then we've really not accomplished a great deal. We've 3 accomplished something but not a great deal.
4 Somehow, you know, the continuing preemption of 5 the individual interests of the agency by the interests of 6 the agency as an entity has to be reaf firmed from time to 7 time. Every now and then some state tries to pass a law and 8 the courts say no, this subject, by golly, was preempted 9 when you formed the United States. It's a federal 10 responsibility.
11 And this requires continuing affirmation, just as 12 the preservation of the Union requires continued 13 affirmation. We're simply beating on you on this makes no 14 sense at all because this isn't your responsibility, because 15 I do think that the answer to Carl's question is clear:
16 Yes, there is resistance because you're nervous about it 17 and, therefore, our role is, if we agree uanimously, it's 18 wonderful to have a two-man subcommittee -- if we agree 19 unanimously, we can report to the committee that it would be 20 a good idea to send a letter to the Commission emphasizing 21 this point.
22 And since we're not hopelessly divided on this 23 question, we can easily draf t such a letter.
24 O 25 ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2300 06 01 74 DAVbw' 1 MR. HE LTEMES: Let me point out that the 2 mechanism of the EDO was set up. He makes the provision in 3 the memo that he's going to review this periodically, and 4 that he requires a written report in six months regarding 5 the disposition and status of each of these projects.
6 There's no question here that there's follow up, that 7 there's close out, that there's visible evidence that 8 there's tracking, et cetera.
9 The only question, it seems to me, with all due 10 respect, I do take issue with your statement that all this 11 is for naught.
12 DR. LEWIS: I didn' t say that.
O- 13 MR. HELTEMES: That's the way I heard it.
14 DR. LEWIS: You can't take issue with things I 15 didn't say. Well, you can, but not on my time.
16 MR. HE LTEMES: If you didn't say it, then we 17 don't take issue.
18 DR. LEWIS : Okay.
19 What we need to do is -- well, let me say it a 20 little differently. It is the same problem. We start out 21 with a team ef fort, four people, whatever number, focusing 22 on a ,given event, doing a very find job of pulling that 23 event together, getting out a good report, telling us what 24 happened, up to the point of their knowledge at the time of O 25 ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2300 06 02 75 5-) DAVbw 1 issuing the report. That was great. That's a real good 2 start.
3 Now we take off in 41 different directions with 4 action items. Each of these is somewhat dif ferent. There's 5 41 of these, heading out in all directions. Now somehow, I'd 6 like to see a final closure on those 41 items back to not 7 necessarily a team. However, you want to se t it up, I'd 8 like to see a closure on those 41 items in some final 9 coordinated or thoughtful way, so that they aren' t just 10 hanging out there in space. They never seem to get back 11 together by the procedures. I'm just staying, shouldn't 12 they come back together. That would be my recommendation, 13 that there would be a final report.
14 MR. HELTEMES: I understand. That's the subject 15 we're talking about. All 41 would be close out, and your 16 auggestion is that we close it out as an interval package.
17 DR. LEWIS: In fact, that can happen before all 18 41 are closed out. We're still closing out items on the TMI 19 action pland. To this day, we' re doing that. And you know, 20 it wouldn't hurt the Commission to put out a statement on 21 TMI saying, in retrospect, we believe that the root cause of 22 that accident was such-and-such.
23 MR. MICHE LSON: I'm reasonably sure that some of
- 24 your earlier opinions on what happened at Davis-Besse are 7-( "/
25 subject to alteration with time, as better knowledge comes l
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j 2 surprised if you were dead right, right off .
3 It's possible,.but I would be rather surprised.
4' So I'd like to see some modifications or whatever 5 your final thoughts are on this.
6 MR. HELTEMES: You'll see all that.
7 MR. MICHELSON: In 41 pieces, because there's 41 8 action items.
9 MR. HE LTEMES: If you wait for 41 pieces to be 10 done, it would be a very long time, but if you take it at 11 some interim point, then you'll say, well, please put out a 12 final report.
O 13 MR. MICHELSON: I think you can use your judgment 14 as to when you think it's closed out. I think some final 15 time limit ought to be placed, though, on when you report, 16 maybe one year. At which time , if you're still not done, 17 say so. And then Supplement 1 says , we' re still working on 18 it, and Supplement 2. I hope these things can be closed out 19 in a year.
20 DR. LEWIS: In the NRTB case, they issue a final 21 report, and they simply wait until they have a view on the 22 probable cause. The poin t is that they are serving a 23 different purpose. They're really serving the cohering
, 24 purpose entirely. You see, the reason we believe that the U
25 IIT report has to be issued early, with the supporting i
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2300 06 04 77 y-s< DAVbw 1 documentation and all the information is that it has to 2 serve a guidance to the regulatory organization, NRC, on 3 what to do about the event. In the NTSB case , they don' t 4 have that requirement, because the FAA is doing that ,
5 anyway. FAA is taking care of the regulatory needs. So 1 6 we' re running into one of the issues that comes up when you ;
7 have something which it ;one within the regulatory 8 organization.
9 We want the IIT report out early to serve as 10 guidance, and yet if we didn' t require it for guidance, we '
11 could say the IIT report should not be issued until, by 12 -
golly, supplementary investigations are mado, and they're O 13 damn sure within reason, of course, about what the probable 14 cause or root cause, whichever the fancy words you like is, 15 of the accident. So it's this urgency because of being 16 in the regulatory organization that is producing this j 17 dilemma, but it's issue to fix, by issuing a supplementary 18 cohering statement later.
19 MR. MICHELSON: It is generally agreed, I think, 20 by everyone, that we do need to document the root causes, [
i 21 that's been the whole argument all along. I contend that 22 the Davis-Besse Report does not yet document the root 23 causes. It speculates on what they might be. It points out 24 in here, the Licensee hasn' t even finished yet. There fore ,
O 25 this is just an interim report.
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2300 06 05 78 DAVbw 1 So I think you need to get a report on what the 2 root causes of the event are.
3 MR. HE LTEMES: We've been over this many times.
4 You're not saying that it won' t be documented, I hope, 5 because we all agree that it will be documented. We all 6 agree that it will be available.
7 DR. LEWIS : We're talking coherence.
8 MR. HELTEMES: You're talking, should they be 9 documented and closed out as an integral set, or can they be 10 closed out and documented and available individually. And 11 the program today is set up individually.
12 MR. MICHELSON: Tha t's right.
O 13 MR. HELTEMES: The question is one of format and 14 timing, because as soon as you come out with interim
. 15 reports, you'll say that that's not the final report. So 16 there'll have to be either a series of reports, or you'll 17 wait a very long period of time. You'll wait until the last 18 item is complete.
19 DR. LEWIS: No, not necessarily. Really, not 20 necessarily. There are always open questions remaining when 21 an NTSB report is issued. But we're really talking more
- 22 than format here. We're talking about philosophy, about how 23 the agency, as an agency, is responding to an event by 7g 24 conducting an investigation and coming to an understanding V 25 of probable cause, instituting corrective actions, which may ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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Y DAVbw 1 be many, but at the same time retaining a philosophical 2 po sition , in which it understand that there really is a --
3 or at most, a few *-root causes of the event. Keeping that 4 in mind all the way down the line, instead of abandoning 5 that when the IIT is discussed.
6 MR. HELTEMES: It's not abandoned. The process, 7 in the regulatory sense, switches over to the restart of the 8 plant, and all of the efforts right now are directed towards 9 identification of root cause, in order to ensure that the 10 corrective action has properly been taken and ef fectively in 11 place before that plant goes back in operation. All that 12 would be documented in the regulatory process. It's all O 13 available. The 5054P letter, the response by the Licensee, 14 all the engineering evaluations, the SER, that the Staff 15 will give. It's all in an integral sense, if you're talking 16 about root cause analysis, a corrective acticn taken as a 17 result of those. Or in the SER, I suspect, it would all 18 come together.
19 DR. LEWIS: There's no point in beating on each 20 other, because we do have a communications disconnect her.
21 When you use the word "intregal," you're thinking of a large 22 bound volume, and we're thinking of a succinct statement 23 that feeble minds can understand.
24 Wo simply have dif ferent concepts.
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2300 06 07 80 DAVbw 1 of the SECY paper, item 9, on page 3.
2 It says, "Each IIT will prepare a single 3 comprehensive report which would focus on a description of 4 the event, factfinding, identification of the root cause or 5 causes of the event and findings and conclusion.
6 My point is that that single comprehensive report 7 does not yet adequately address route causes. It does l
8 address these other aspects; fine. So now you have to file 9 a supplement later to finally identify the root causes.
10 That's all I'm saying, and you're saying in here, you're 11 going to do this. You have a single comprehensive report.
12 I think that's necessary, but I don't think this is yet O 13 complete. '
14 DR. LEWIS: Again, there is no point in beating 15 on each other, but all the things that you listed, Jack, are 16 regulatory documents required to start the plant up again, 17 the 5054F letter and all this. Those are regulatory 18 things. We're thinking of keeping through the whole process 19 the concept of an investigation, which determines the root 20 cause, which is disconnected from regulatory issues and not 21 letting that vanish when the IIT vanishes from the scene.
22 But we really can address that question in a letter to the 23 Commission if we want to, in which case, you will then know 24 if they take us seriously, that you have the authority to O 25 write such a requirement in the thing. Then if you don' t ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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! 2300 06 08 81 DAVbw 1 let it af ter we have written the letter, then we will fight, We don' t need to fight. l L 2 L
3 This is assuming we can get this through the 4 Comittee, because we agreed to reconenend it. If you want ;
l 5 to draf t it, fine, or I'll draft it.
6 MR. MICHELSON: I'll let you use your usual 7 eloquence.
i 8 DR. LEWIS: Ah, shucks. Does this sort of l 9 deserve Class VII elegance or Class VIII elegance?
I i 10 MR. MICHELSON: I think it's a fairly important ,
I l 11 point. I believe the conunission must decide that that's 12 what they want to do before Jack can write anything 10 13 clearly. It's not wit.hin the scope of the SECY paper, so we 14 think their only choice is to write the Commission and point 15 out the oversight, as I would call it.
16 DR. LEWIS: I am, as I said earlier, very amused i
l 17 by the statement in the root causes of the IIT report, ;
l 18 because it really contravenes overall agency policy, and I'm 19 sure it slipped through.
20 One of the problems with the agency, of course, 21 in generating as much paper as it does, in that there are l
l l 22 some parts of it that probably never should be signed off 23 on. Unfortunately, rarely does anyone notice. !
l 24 MR. HELTEMES: I must say that the team worked O 25 very hard and very long and the report was put together very i
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2300 06 09 82 (O> DAVbw 1 quickly in the final few days. It was not reviewed, even 2 within the agency.
3 DR. LEWIS: I never heard anybody say that it 4 wasn' t a good report. I think that's generally on the 5 record. And I've not mentioned it here, but I think it's 6 generally agreed that they did a splendid job. Le t's put it 7 on the record. And in fact, we are also on the record 8 having commended the Staf f for having done this.' So that's 9 all fine.
10 The qu9stion is, where are we going from here?
11 And how are we going to institutionalize things?
12 MR. MICHELSON: Can we now discuss the 208?
13 DR. LEWIS: Whatever.
14 MR. MICHELSON: I have a few questions for 15 clarification, just to go through them in the order th>y 16 appear. On page 2 of the paper, at the top of the page, we 17 talk about setting up the regional-based investigation for 18 the lesser significant events, and it says there may be one 19 more headquarters technical expert. Are you, in your NRC 20 Manual chapter, going to cover how it is decided that you 21 need headquarters participation and how you select 22 headquarters participation?
23 MR. HELTEMES: The manual chapter that will be 24 drafted will cover the appropriate equipment as to both O 25 these activities. And the answer is, we'll almost certainly ace. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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, \_/ DAVbw I address this initiative, in terms of the characteristics of ,
2 the event that we think would warrant this type of 3 trea tment .
4 MR. MICHELSON: I just wanted to make sure on l
l 5 page 3, at the top of the page, the idea was here that you 6 would have on your team a person with detailed knowledge of 7 the plant, such as a resident inspector, was given by l
8 example. Towards the end of that same paragraph, it says,
- 9 "However, there ,must be freedom for significant direct 10 involvement in licensing inspection of the plant by these 11 team members."
i 12 How is that possible for a resident inspector not
> r~
l khJ 13 to have been involved?
r 14 MR. HELTEMES: We're wrestling with that question l 15 ourselves right now. There's two schools of thought. One l 16 school of thought is that you want the team to be the most 17 knowledgeable team that you can assemble. And if you're 18 really talking about knowledge, then the resident inspector 19 can add a great deal of capability to the team.
20 on the other side of that coin, the question is 21 one of independence. We want the team to be as independent 22 as we can, and therefore, to the extent possible, the team l
23 members will be selected on the basis of their technical or 24 operations expertise, contribution to the investigation and
() 25 their freedom from significant direct involvement in the I
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i i x / DAVbw 1 licensing inspection of that plant and the activities 2 directly associated.
3 So it is a consideration in their selection. The 4 thought being that if you have a large enough team, I don' t 5 know what that iday be, but five people, for example, one of 6 which is the resident inspec to r. It's not really reasonable 7 to assume that one out of five is going to dominate the 8 team, is going to take over and be able to write the 9 findings and conclusions of the team in a way to suit his 10 own purposes, if you will, trying to reflect a lack of 11 independence of the activity. So the team, acting as a 12 team, can, if you will, provide the independence as a team, O
\- 13 even though perhaps one member of the team may not have as 14 much independence as you might like to have.
15 DR. LEWIS: Well, Jack, those of.us who have 16 dirty minds and who have chaired many committees, are aware 17 that if there is a member of a committee who is very 18 knowledgeable about a subject, the other members 19 automatically go into a format, in which they say, I don' t i
20 have to study that, because Joe knows it. Therefore, the 21 presentation cf information to the group becomes, not even 22 subtlety, becomes biased by the existence of an expert.
23 When we sit around this table as ACRS, if one of 1
24 us knows about the design and construction of widgets, the
' '/
2S rest of us turn to him for widget information. So it's not l
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DAVbw I a matter of the guy dominating the writing of the report.
2 It is a question of biasing the selection of information 3 that comes to a person. So I must say my reaction is a 4 little bit liike Carl's. I would keep the resident 5 inspector off the team. ,
6 MR. MICHELSON: Even though he could be a very 7 valuable member, I realize there is a real problem of 8 balancing, getting the best expertise versus maintaining a 9 higher level of independence, and I am really uneasy about l 10 having this much, a person who is directly responsible for 11 inspecting that plant is now sitting on the team that is 12 passing judgment as to what happened. It might very well be O
l
\J 13 things he overlooked himself. And depending on his 14 objectivity, and so forth, he may or may not.
15 DR. LEWIS: He should certainly be interviewed, l
l 16 but he should not be on the team.
17 MR. HELTEMES: Your comments are well-taken.
l 18 MR. MICHELSON: I think this is one thing we 19 ought to put in our le tter. We do not believe in the l
20 resident inspector being on the team.
21 DR. LEWIS: It depends on whether we want to make l
! 22 a list of 41 items.
i l 23 MR. MICHELSON: No, but this one bothered me.
i l 24 MR. HELTEMES: It doesn't say he will be on the
( 25 team, l
l l
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k-)DAVbw 1 DR. LEWIS: But it gives a very bad EG.
2 MR. HELTEMES: Let me say again, this is subject 3 to a lot of discussion, and at no time did I say he would be 4 on the team. Your comments are in line with many comments 5 we are getting now. NRR has said the same thing in 6 writing. They didn't think that the program manager nor the 7 resident should be on the team. So we have never said that 8 the resident will be on the team. What was said is, that 9 the rules permit that, but we're thinking very seriously on 10 it. In the first case, Davis-Besse, we did not have the 11 resident on the team. As you know, the team interviewed 12 the resident on the record.
O k- 13 I also said that the procedures used in 14 Davis-Besse would be used if something occurred later 15 today.
16 DR. LEWIS: But the EG isn't in the SECY, and 17 it's probably a mistake. You should say EG, a recently 18 fired SRO or something like that.
19 MR. HELTEMES: It's one of the things we are 20 going to have to sort out in the procedures. Maybe there 21 won' t be a universal approval. I'm just reluctant to go 22 that f ar too .
23 MR. MICHELSON: My next comment is on Item 15, 24 page 4, where it talks about the AEOD. The AEOD will, O
O 25 essentially, do the administrative business associated with ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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\-) DAVbw 1 it. It doesn' t really make any mention of what else, if 2 anything, AEOD would do.
3 I would like to have seen, but it is not here, a 4 reconfirmation of AEOD's independence to look into aspects S of the event, and so forth, because the general flavor you 6 get out a SECY paper is now, we're going to produce one NRC 7 report, one approach, one investigation. Then when the 8 follow-up came from Mr. Dircks' memo, it was quite clear
- 9 that you went for months on this, as far as action items.
1 10 But I'd really love to see somewhere a reconfirmation of 11 AEODs rights and privileges, if they still exist, to look 12 into anything these wish. -
13 MR. HELTEMES: My assurances aren' t good enough?
14 MR. MICHELSON: I would like to see. I would 15 have liked to have seen it in the SECY paper.
16 MR. HELTEMES: The thought didn' t even dawn on 17 us.
18 MR. MICHE LSON: In your mind, there may be no 19 doubt.
20 MR. HE LTEMES: The question never comes up.
21 MR. MICHELSON: It will, because perhaps , let's 22 assume that this takes precedence over a previous 23 agreement.
24 MR. HE LTEMES: We have a manual, a chapter
(
That manual chapter has 25 assigning certain responsibilities.
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/ DAVbw 1 now been modified.
2 MR. MICHELSON: I'm very anxious to see that it 3 isn't modified.
4 MR. HE LTEMES: There are no plans to modify it.
. 5 DR. LEWIS: Don' t be quite that complacent about 6 that, because I really believe that the underlying purpose 7 of this operation is to coordinate the agency's reponse to 8 an event in that one thing. So I wouldn' t take for granted 9 any of the authorities placed in people before this.
10 I agree with Carl, it's good to spell this out.
11 12 O 13 14 15 ,
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 a
25 1
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( DAVbur 1 MR. MICHELSON: I think our committee letter 2 should mention that we assume -- well, this one might be 1
3 more important than the one I gave before. -
4 DR. LEWIS: When we hit 41 --
5 MR. MICHELSON: I think it is important that we 6 assume that AEOD's previous rule is still there and if they ,
7 wish they can look into these matters.
8 DR. LEWIS: That is what it says right there. It 9 says "AEOD role."
10 MR. MICHELSCN: So that one would really put - me 4
11 considerably at ease.
12 The next comment is on page 5, at the top of the 13 page. This again gets back to the question of the augmented 14 approach, wherein a reasonable administrator will look at
, 15 certain events -- let me refresh my memory. 7 16 MR. HE LTEMES: It is the augmentation approach.
17 MR. MICHELSON: Yes. This is the lesser events.
18 If -- let's postulate for a moment that AEOD has 19 a particular problem that they have been pursuing and that J '
20 an event occurs in which you clearly feel this a very 4
21 important event from the viewpoint of the train of thought 22 we are assuming. Apparently, you cannot go to the regional 23 administrator and tell him to initiate an investigation.
24 You could go and tell him and point out what your thoughts 25 are , your concerns , and then decide.
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k.e DAVbur 1 If he decided that it was on a sufficient basis, 2 then he would proceed. If he decided not to proceed, then 'I 3 guess we would get back to this question of can you on your 4 own proceed.
5 That was my question again. It isn' t clear from .
6 this that you can go ahead and proceed with investigating 7 anyone.
8 MR. HE LTEMES: My manual chapter giving me the 9 authority.
10 MR. MICHELSON: Again, that gets back to the same 11 point. It would clarify this one for me, too.
12 On page 5, in general, one of the questions that-O 13 I wondered about, these follow-up action items to 14 Mr. Dircks, who puts together that memo to Mr. Dircks? Are ,
15 you responsib.l.e as the administrator of the program? -
16 MR. HE LTEMES: I put together the arguments.
17 MR. MICHELSON: Wo uld that normally be the case 18 and it would be in the manual chapter that all these action 19 items , recommendations would come to you and you put 20 together a memo?
21 MR. HELTEMES: That is not completely clear.
22 MR. MICHELSON: Do they all go individually to 23 Mr. Dircks without screening through anybody?
24 MR. HELTEMES: Mr. Dircks requested us to be his
( l 25 agent in this regard.
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\_- DAVbur 1 MR. MICHELSON: To put together action item 2 letters?
3 MR. HE LTEMES: Yes. My understanding and 4 impression is that if there was an IIT in the future we 5 would have the same rule, to put together the action items.
6 MR. MICHELSON: Even if you weren' t a member of 7 .the team, you would still put together the action item 8 le tter?
9 MR. HE LTEMES : That is my impression.
10 MR. MICHELSON: Perhaps we will see that in the 11 manual chapter.
12 MR. HE LTEMES: We will have to think about it.
13 It is a reasonable thing. It is an assignment of .
14 responsibility.
15 MR. MICHE LSON: I think it ought to be 16 prescribed. I think it is well that there be a follow-up to 17 these sort of action items, but it isn ' t clear wha t the 18 intent it, as to whether the EDO gathers the 41 items and 19 one of his secretaries puts together a memo or just what.
20 MR. HELTEMES: My impression is that it is going 21 to be a routine operation by the IIT staff.
22 MR. MICHELSON: I think a fair amount of thought 23 needs to be given to putting together an action item 24 letter, getting the items down to the important ones. I
/~%
25 just wondered who gives it that kind of engineering ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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() DAVbur 1 judgment.
2 I think you could do it.
3 MR. HELTEMES: We think it is set up for us to 4 do.
5 MR. MICHE LSON: I would like to see it.
6 Okay, the next question, I had a real problem 7 with the first sentence in the conclusions because I don' t 8 think it is correct.
9 DR. LEWIS: It is false.
10 MR. MICHELSON: It is completely false. "We 11 believe this reflects the intention of ACRS. "
12 I went back and read the ACRS letter. I in no
,e w
\- 13 way agree that this reflected it.
14 DR. LEWIS: You are absolutely right, Carl. I 15 just noticed this, and I am quite angry about it, and I 16 don't think we should beat on Jack because he did not write 17 this, but we have a rule at ACRS saying that we are not 18 supposed to interpret the intent of ACRS in writing a 19 letter, and we are probably more capable than the staff, and 20 to have SECY which interprets the intent of an ACRS letter 21 incorrectly is unacceptable.
22 But that is not your fault.
23 MR. HE LTEMES: It may be, Dr. Lewis. Don' t j ump 24 away. You may want to beat on me. I am responsible for O'
25 this paper.
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\ ) DAVbur m 1 DR. LEWIS: Okay, then I will beat on you.
2 First of all, even if it did represent the intent 3 of the ACRS letter, the intent of the ACRS is only visible 4 before the letter is written and once the letter is written 5 it is supposed to speak for itself. l 6 So nobody should say anything about our intent.
7 We don't usually know our intent when we write a letter.
8 The letter is the document.
9 Having said that, this does not reflee.t the 10 intent of the ACRS letter which endorsed the BNL repoort, 11 and this also does not reflect the intent of the BNL 12 report because both of those made a to-do about an i 13 independent body.
l 14 EDO, when that report appeared, specifically 15 rejected the principal recommendation of BNL, which was 16 endorsed by ACRS, and it is simply a misstatement to say 17 that this thing which results from rejection of the ACRS and 18 BNL recommendations conforms to the intent of the 19 recommendations. It is simply not true.
20 So we are beating on you.
21 MR. HE LTEMES: Yes. I understand.
22 DR. LEWIS: This is too late. It is water over 23 the dam. This is there.
24 But if we are in a court, we can say something 25 about that.
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9230 07 06 94 DAVbur 1 MR. HE LTEMES: I must point out that the 2 important part in our mind was the last part of the sentence 3 regarding needed improvements in event investigation.
I 4 The focus is -- your comments and your 5 recommendations were directed towards needed improvements.
6 We read the Brookhaven report and talked about the concept 7 of the principles that they had involved regarding needed 8 improvements.
9 It was our sincere attempt -- and we thought we 10 accomplished that -- to take those and embody them in this 11 program.
12 DR. LEWIS: It is our judgment, the two of us 13 voting unanimously as usual, that you have not correctly 14 interpreted the intent of the ACRS.
1 15 MR. MICHELSON: One of the needed improvements we 16 clearly stated was that this has now got to be elevated to 17 Commission level. You did not meet that intent with the j 18 SECY paper, and therefore the statement is misleading. You 19 uid not meet the intent of that aspect.
20 The only thing you met was the intent that 21 everybody expressed, that something ought to be done. Sure, 22 it meets that intent.
23 MR. HELTEMES: I would say it went beyond that 24 point.
O 25 MR. MICHE LSON: But you see, for instance, the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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's/-DAVbur 1 question of the elevation to Commission level, you didn't 2 meet that. Therefore, why can you make the statement?
3 MR. HEUTEMES: We certainly incorporated the 4 provision of independence, and we thought the issue was one 1
5 of independence.
6 MR. MICHELSON: I think what you should have said 7 was, you should have made this a more lLmiting statement 8 regarding the need for independence. If you had said that, 9 I might have thought it a little better..
10 But you see, you ignored completely the elevation 11 of the organization. That was a major consideration of the 12 entire ACRS memo.
O/
13 DR. LEWIS: When a general retreats, he never 14 says he is retreating. He says he is trading space for 15 time.
16 I said earlier a cynic'-- of which I am not one, 17 of course , but I do know some cynics who would say this --
18 that NRC has done the minimum necessary to relieve the 19 pressure for an independent organization, and I am not 20 saying that tha t is a fair statement. The world isn ' t 21 fair. But it is true to say to the Commission that in 22 ef fect we are now doing what BNL and ACRS really meant us to 23 do.
24 That is overstepping your bounds and also not O 25 true. That is our judgment. We have a right to judge what ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 MR. HE LTEMES: Yes, sir.
3 MR. MICHELSON: Along the same lines, the next 4 paragraph, the middle of the paragraph, you conclude: -
5 "Thus, independence from previous licensing inspection 6 activities will be achieved."
7 I simply disagree with that because of the 8 composition of your teams, and so forth. You will not
,9 attain independence, as was discussed a little earlier, 10 about resident inspectors being on the team and that sort of 11 thing.
12 You just didn't make the case, in my opinion at
!3
13 least, to say that this is a truly independent body, even 14 though it is stated in your conclusion.
15 MR. HELTEMES: The intent clearly is for us to 16 pull together an independent team having allegiance to no 17 organization, having allegiance to no viewpoint. It is to 18 take a fresh systematic discipline to look at what happened 19 the way they see it.
20 MR. MICHELSON: That is a great objective. Now, 21 did you do that? ,
22 MR. HE LTEMES : You have to judge Davis-Besse. i 1
23 Did we do it?
24 MR. MICHE LSON: I don't think we are judging one 25 case. I think we are judging the SECY paper in this case ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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\ DAVbur 1 and the intent for the future.
2 MR. HE LTEMES: The SECY paper is a commitment, if 3 -you will, on how we intend to run the program.
4 DR. LEWIS: But it has in it, Jack, a reviewing 5 phrase at the end of that very same paragraph because the 6 job was done with substantial improvement. Everyone agrees 7 that it is a substantial improvement. There is no question 8 between us about that.
9 But it has been done with a minimum realignment 10 of existing office responsibilities, and precisely the issue 11 over the years has been to realign existing office
'12 responsibilities and the investigation of significant 13 operating events within the constraint given in that last 14 phrase.
15 This is what you have been doing, but there 16 remain reservations in some people's minds about whether it 17 will turn out to be enough.
18 I am not saying we don' t want to make it work as 19 well as we can. We want to be constructive about this.
20 MR. MICHE LSON: But we don't want to overstate 21 it, and I think it is overstating it.
22 DR. LEWIS: Is tha t 5 ?
23 MR. MICHELSON: It says: "Thus, independence 24 from previous licensing inspection activities will be O 25 achieved."
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'v DAVbur 1 I think that is an overstatement.
2 MR. LANNING: I am not sure we can come to that 3 conclusion yet until the next team is dispatched.
4 DR. LEWIS: He says it here. j 5 MR. MICHELSON,: We are dealing with the SECY 6 paper, not with one example or perhaps even with two 7 examples.
8 I am dealing in a matter of policy, how this 9 should be set up , and I don' t think we have set up an 10 organization that achieves the level of independence that 11 you are claiming in that sentence.
12 MR. HE LTEMES: That is where it comes back to.
[
13 Independence is in the eye of the beholder. You can' t have l 14 someone from the agency -- I mean, independence, you have 15 got to have someone from the agency, maybe from the 16 government. If somebody else says he can' t be from the 17 of fice , he can' t be from the branch, he can' t be from the 18 section, he can' t be from the assigned reviewer, the 19 question is in the eyes of the beholder.
20 And I understand your viewpoint, that you take 21 issue with this, but please understand there are other 22 viewpoints on independence.
23 MR. MICHELSON: Some people think that the 24 resident inspector is independent, for instance.
25 MR. HELTEMES: Some people may.
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}DAVbur 1 MR. MICHELSON: And therefore should be a 2 legitimate team member?
3 MR. HE LTEMES: That has been advanced by some 4 people. -
5 DR. LEWIS: Sometimes he acts too independently, 6 as a matter of fact.
7 MR. HELTEMES: Some are independent of the 8 plant.
9 MR. MICHELSON: And I think we are kind of 10 overstating the situation that this paper --
11 MR. HE LTEMES: From your model, I can understand 12 your conflict, but please understand from our model, t
's' 13 MR. MICHE LSON: You see, the thing that bothers 14 me a little bit, NRR, for instance -- let's take 15 Davis-Besse. NRR presumably thoroughly reviewed Davis-Besse 16 and has been reviewing it for years any time any changes 17 were made, or whatever. The resident inspectors in the 18 regional offices are continuing to inspect the plant.
19 Everybody all along the way said things were fine, or maybe 20 at places where things weren't so good, like maintenance, it 21 was pointed out.
22 Now, all of a sudden they have a problem. The 23 problem is due in part to perhaps the lack of adequate 24 rigorous enforcement of certain aspects of how that plant
[ 25 was operated. That is possible.
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w-) DAVbur 1 Now, I am going to go in, though, with a team 2 consisting in part of the very fellow who said everything 3 was all right, who is from the regional of fice. He said 4 everything was all right, perhaps.
5 MR. HELTEMES: The team doesn' t go into the 6 regional office.
7 MR. MICHE LSON: Nothing in this document prevents 8 the regional office from being one of the team members. I !
9 am dealing now with this document. I am only pointing out 10 Davis-Besse as an example of the process.
11 We are saying now that a member from the regional 12 office could be a part of the team. He presumably is not
'O 13 the inspector, but everybody in the regional office 14 virtually, at one time or another, has probably taken a look 15 at aspects of Davis-Besse.
16 MR. HELTEMES: We already covered that. I guess 17 what I have told you is that the objective of this program 18 is to provide the maximum amount of independence that we 19 can. But that can be read by different people that no one 20 in the agency is independent and you need to get outside the 21 agency.
22 It is an interpretation, and it is the coloration 23 of the word " independence."
24 MR. MICHE LSON: That is one of the things that we O 25 are leading up to, whether or not in the letter we should ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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\- DAVbur 1 point out the need for outside participation, not outside in 2 the sense of being from INPO necessarily, but outside being 3 in the sense there ought to be at least one member 4 comparable to the sor.t of thing that the ASLB has, that 5 would be able to sit in judgment in this process to kind of 6 counterweight the judgments of the people who have been too 7 close to the operation.
8 MR. HE LTEMES : Please, in your letter perhaps you 9 can expand upon the word " independence." We go back and 10 forth between organizational independence and personal 11 independence, and maybe there is no distinction. Perhaps 12 you don' t make a distinction, but when you talk about U 13 someone outside, please talk about the criteria for 14 selecting that ind iv idual .
15 ,
Outside of what? Outside the nuclear industry?
16 Outside the agency? Outside of holding bonds and stocks in 17 utilities? Outside of technical service?
18 DR. LEWIS: I would be reluctant to spell it out 19 too carefully because that is a disease in this agency. You 20 try to think of everything and spell it out, ar.$ then you 21 are sorry you have such a rigid rule in the end.
22 But emphasizing the principle that people have to 23 be as independent as is feasible -- you know, you use the s 24 word "can."
25 MR. MICHELSON: Perhaps the word "outside ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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( / DAVbur 1 viewpoint" would be better.
2 DR. LEWIS: I had written " independence," and I 3 just put "/ participation." -
4 One has to play these things against each other 5 and see how it goes, but my inclination is to set up a 6 guiding principle and not spell out where these people come 7 from.
8 MR. MICHELSON: The same principle that people 9 have safety boards. Each utility has a safety board, and 10 generally, although not in all cases, the utility as a 11 matter af policy has one outside member on that board. They 12 don' t have to. There is no regulatory requirement. Some (dD
\ 13 do, some don't.
14 I am saying there should be one outside member on 15 these teams.
16 MR. HELTEMES: I understand. I would point out 17 that that principle is here already about independence. I 18 mean, just almost verbatim.
19 "To the degree possible, the team will be largely 20 staffed with individuals with no significant involvement 21 with the licensing inspection activities associated with the 22 event or the plant."
23 That is the paragraph we are talking about here.
24 That is the principle upon which we are saying that we are 25 going to constitute our teams. So there is togetherness, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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N DAVbur 1 I would hope.
2 MR. MICHE LSON: Those words are great until you 3 go back and find out, as an example, the resident inspector, 4 and that blew my mind.
~
5 MR. HE LTEMES: I have already explained that, and 6 we have discussed that, and I have given you the status of 7 that.
8 DR. LEWIS: I think everyone will be pacified if 9 the following sentence were simply deleted.
'10 MR. HELTEMES: In retrospect, I would agree with 11 you.
12 DR. LEWIS: You are overplaying your hand, and O 13 that is a bad mistake in bridge, I think. I don't play 14 bridge.
15 MR. MICHELSON: I think that is all the questions 16 I had on the SECY paper. Let me check the attachments ,
17 however, the other attachments to this package that I have 18 received.
19 MR. HE LTEMES : The package-I sent down?
20 MR. MICHELSON: Yes.
21 (Pause.)
22 MR. MICHE LSON: One of these attachments was the 23 OPE paper on Brookhaven.
24 Did we want to discuss the OPE paper?
O 25 DR. LEWIS: We can.
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9230 07 16 104 DAVbur 1 MR. MICHELSON: I think my main thing was I would 2 like to reemphasize that one of the things that Brookhaven 3 pointed out on page 10 of their paper -- I will point out.
i 4 They went through each of the alternatives. This 1 5 alternative dealt with using the preser.t organizational 6 structure, and on page 10, at the top of the page, they 7 pointed out:
8 Because of their ties to home-based NRC offices, 3 the investigative staf f could be potentially more inhibited 10 in its criticisms of previous NRC actions.
11 Again, this is dealing with the question of the 4
12 degree of independence and the concern that since you were a l 13 member of a particular organization like NRR, to what extent 4 :
i 14 as a team member are you really being influenced by your 15 association with NRR and the pressures that may come.
, 16 Now, correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the 17 SECY paper seems to indicate that the team members operate
- 18 as individuals, not as members of an organization like NRR,
, 19 and their conclusions and recommendations, whatever goes 20 into this first document that the team produces, are the 21 views only of the team members.
{
22 Is that correct?
23 MR. HELTEMES: They operate as individuals and as 24 members of the team.
(:) 25 MR. MICHELSON: And up to the point of producing i
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%) DAVbur 1 this first report, they are still functioning as
'2 ind ividuals , not as members of NRR or I&E or AEOD or 3 whoever.
4 To me, that means they do not go back and ask 5 their bosses is it all right to say this and that when their 6 bosses can' t come and say change this or change this.
7 Is that a correct concept?
8 MR. HE LTEMES : Yes, that is correct.
9 10 11 12 i 13 14 i
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'm/ DAV/bc 1 MR. MICHE LSON: At the point this report is 2 issued, that is the case. After the report is issued, the 3 team disbands and then you get into individual division 4 policies, or whatever, on what's done thereaf ter or what's 5 said thereaf ter, and what's decided.
6 No longer are the individuals speaking now, but 7 rather organizations are speaking. Is that correct?
8 MR. HELTEMES: They revert back to their 9 organization. They're a member of that organization.
10 MR. MICHELSON: Even though they no longer 11 function as individuals.
12 MR. HE LTEMES: They're not functioning as team r~s
(' 4 13 members.
14 DR. LEWIS : I don' t know whether this is what 15 you're addressing, Carl, but the concern there, as I 16 understood it, was that if, as a member of the team, you
- 17 participated in a report that is critical of your branch and 18 then go back and work for your branch, your promotion 19 possibilities may be af fected.
20 MR. MICHE LS ON: There's that problem also. I was 21 mostly trying to get a clarification of the fact that you 22 function as individuals on the team.
23 DR. LEWIS: You do.
24 MR. MICHE LSON: And up to the time the team O 25 report comes out, those are individual views. Now I think ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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l 8590 08 02 107 DAV/bc 1 this is another argument on why you need a final report, a 2 supplement to this report later. Because now I would like 3 to hear what the final division policy is on this matter, 4 and it could be contrary to the view of the particular team 5 member at the tLme the first report was issued.
6 DR. LEWIS: It can be, that's right.
7 MR. MIC HE LSON: I don' t believe you want to 8 reconstitute a team for the purpose of producing a 9 supplement. I now want to know what's the party line.
10 DR. LEWIS: We've agreed on that but I'm 11 concerned at a deeper level that, even when you're 12 functioning on the team, the awareness that you go back to,
_ 13 the usual kinds of evaluation and the usual kinds of 14 pressures cannot fail to be on your mind.
15 MR. MICHELSON: This is why, in the case of AEOD, 16 if they jumped into a problem, they don' t mind being 17 critical of what other parts of the agencies might have 18 done, because their present future, at least, is dependent 19 upon the AEOD, not upon what NRR thinks of them.
20 Perhaps the long-term future might be affected by 21 other parts of the agency but, clearly, not the short-term 22 future. But, in this case, the short-term future would be 23 affected by whatever critical views they might have held as 24 to what the root causes of this were.
25 MR. HELTEMES: Let me ask Wayne to address this ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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'Sc) DAV/bc 1 because he's been in that situation operating on the team.
2 He knows the team well. Let me ask him what the real 3 situation is.
4 MR. LANNING: When the team was assembled, we 5 were charged with the responsibility of going out and ,
6 investigating the event at Davis-Besse. As part of that, 7 the EDO directed us to not limit our investigation to only 8 the event, but if there were any other deficiencies on the 9 part of the licensing or inspection, or whatever process, to 10 identify it, to write it into the service, to not be 11 hesitant to identify.
12 I think all four members understood that charge b
'~# 13 and were cognizant of that. And I think we went out as a 14 team with individual dynamics and did the best job we 15 could. Never during that six weeks did I hear any dilemma 16 or discussion that would imply that there was a tie back to 17 the organization from which the individual came or any 18 reluctance on the part of the individual to identify any 19 problem associated with his organization.
20 That was certainly the case at Davis-Besse.
21 There were certainly problems with the design of a few of 22 the systems at Davis-Besse, that certainly raised the 23 licensing aspect, but never was there any inclination or 24 hesitation on the part of an NRR individual to raise that, 25 to identify that.
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(_)) DAV/bc 1 MR. MICHELSON: I guess what you're saying is 2 that this concern as expressed by Brookhaven is probably not 3 real.
4 MR. LANNING: I just didn' t see .it as a real one 5 in Davis-Besse .
6 MR. MICHE LSON: I don't think we want to use 7 Davis-Besse as the sole potential or future example.
8 MR. LANNING: I've been on a lot of task forces.
9 MR. MICHELSON: I was thinking more in terms of 10 like the Brown's Ferry failure to scram within the agency, 11 that took a considerably different path.
12 MR. HELTEMES: That was a long, different... Salem
(\/^T 13 and GINNA were a lot more similar. Have you ever seen it, 14 Wayne?
15 MR. LANNING: I've never seen any hesitation to 16 call a spade a spade. I still think it will exist.
17 DR. LEWIS: That's a credit to the people.
18 MR. MICHELSON: I think that's right.
19 MR. LANNING: I think that's what it boils down 20 to.
21 DR. LEWIS: Sure. Of course. I know that.
22 That's why I like to not spell out rules.
23 MR. MICHE LSON: I just wanted to get a view.
24 Brookhaven didn' t bring this up as a theoretical b,s 25 possibility. You' re saying you don' t think that's likely?
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N/ DAV/bc 1 MR. HE LTEMES: We ' re going to protect people, so 2 we don' t get them in trouble with that branch.
3 MR. MICHE LSON: But, in finding your best 4 expertise, you probably would want to get the guy from that 5 branch.
6 MR. HELTEMES: We will find the best expertise.
7 The thing is to maximize the degree of independence.
8 MR. MICHELSON: How is the team composition, as 9 you see it, going to be put together each tbne? Given that 10 an event occurs today, what is the process by which you 11 select a team?
12 MR. HE LTEMES : We'll have to act quickly but the b 13 thought is to make sure that we have --
14 MR. MICHE LSON: Does AEOD select the team l
15 members? Does EDO select them? If EDO selects them, how 16 does he get his recommendations? Does he get it from AEOD 17 or does he get it from NRR or where?
18 MR. HE LTEMES: He gets them from AEOD.
19 MR. MICHELSON: If you decide that a member of 20 NRR is the one who should be on the team?
21 MR. HELTEMES: I can tell you, in the case of 22 Davis-Besse, that what we did was we got as much information 23 about the event as we could. We tried to find out what we 24 were dealing with. And then we stepped back and said what O 25 kind of people do we need and how many people do we need, ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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,m k-)DAV/bc 1 and who was available? Then we started to collect names and 2 expertise. Some of the people that we had in mind, quite 3 frankly, were not available. One was fishing in the Gulf of 4 Mexico. We just couldn' t get him no matter what we tried to 5 do.
6 Another one was out of the office on 7 inspections. And so forth and so on.
8 DR. LEWIS: It's easy to find somebody fishing in 9 the Gulf. Just call the Navy.
, 10 MR. HE LTEMES: So we juggled three things 11 basically -- his expertise, his availability and his 12 independence.
p
\- 13 MR. MICHE LSON: But you did this juggling.
14 MR. HELTEMES: I did this juggling. I took my 15 recommendations to EDO.
16 MR. MICHE LSON: So is this what you think will go 17 into the manual chapter, that process?
18 MR. HELTEMES: My answer is yes.
19 MR. MICHELSON: At least on your first draft.
20 MR. MICHE LSON: It will be interesting to see how 21 it comes out. I think that would alleviate some of my 22 concerns. If a reasonably independent organization did the 23 selection as opposed to each NRR figuring out, you know, 24 which one they want to send, because that's already putting O 25 a box on the results.
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DAV/bc 1 MR. HE LTEMES : Wethave volunteers, I can tell 2 you.
3 D,R . LEWIS: rIt depends on where the accident is.
4 Volunteers to go some places and not others. But I'm just 5 being whimsical. There's still an unresolved issue. And 6 that is that it's easy to say the words about maximizing 7 independence, maxidizing expertise and maximizing experience i
j 8 and familisrity'with the plant.
Maximize everything in the 9 world. As you know, you can't maximize everything. Some
,e ,
10 things are trades. And, in particular, familiarity with the 11 plant is inevitably traded off against a commitment to che 12 plant, either inssection or design or 5peration, in one way .
/ - 13 or another.
14 Independence from an office is traded for 15 unfamiliarity with the affairs of the office, and so forth.
16 So that, in the actual, agonizing selection of team 1 members, 17 there has got to be some waiting to these things which are .,
18 really in opposition to each other, you know. We can write
,19 papers saying you maximize them all, but that's not what you 20 do.
21 As I understand this procedure, it maximizes the 22 expertise at the expense of the institutional independence 23 which isn' t there and depends upon the integrity of the 24 individuals to provide the independence which is not O :
25 institutionally present s
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(-) DAV/bc 1 Is that an unfair statement?
2 MR. HE LTEMES: I believe so. It's unfair.
3 DR. LEWIS: How is it unfair? It was meant to be 4 a little bit unfair but not very unfair.
5 MR. HELTEMES: I didn' t say it was very unfair, 6 just unfair.
7 DR. LEWIS: Very good. Let's go into that. How 8 is it unfair? You do have to balance them against each 9 other.
10 MR. HELTEMES: Could you define " independence",
11 first of all?
12 DR. LEWIS: Are you willing to give up expertise f~)
l/ 13 in favor of independence?
14 MR. HE LTEMES : Are you saying someone cannot be 15 associated with the Licensing Of fice?
16 DR. LEWIS: I'm not saying anything absolute.
17 I'm specifically trying to get away from saying absolute 18 things because it's fatuous to say absolute things.
19 MR. HELTEMES: The absolute that came through to 20 me was that the priority was given on expertise. Some 21 consideration but essentially no priority was given on 22 independence.
23 DR. LEWIS: I didn' t say that, Jack. I'm trying 24 to force you to recognize that you must trade independence O 25 against expertise. That is not suf ficient to say that ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(O/ DAV/bc 1 you're going to maximize both. Therefore, when you go 2 through the job of selecting people, you must have in your 3 head -- however much you deny it - you must have a relative 4 weighting between expertise and independence. I'd be happy 5 to know what it is.
6 Just to start the ball rolling, I gave you my 7 perception of what it is, which is not that you ignore 8 independence in favor of expertise, but that you were giving 9 greater weight to independence -- I'm sorry, to expertise 10 than to independence. That's how I perceive it. If I'm 11 wrong, I'm happy to learn otherwise.
12 MR. HE LTEMES: I certainly agree with you that t")
\/ 13 that's a tradeof f between knowledge and independence. And 14 it's a very di'!4: ult one. That's the one we got into with 15 the resid9nr u know, maximum knowledge, perhaps very 16 little independence.
17 So in this competing or weighting type activity, 18 what I said was we try to balance three things:
19 availability of people -- who can we get? Their technical 20 expertise and what they can bring to bear, because we were 21 looking for certain types of expertise and knowledge and 22 independence from deep personal involvement in that event.
23 That is to say, they didn't license the AFW system. Or deep 24 involvemen t in the plant. And so there is no easily -- I O 25 can't tell you the precise way the judgment was formed. But ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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'v/ DAV/bc 1 those three things were weighed and balanced, and we tried 2 . to get a team out there that had the maximum independence 3 given the situation, given the people available and given 4 the need for independence.
5 It was not certainly optimized on independence.
6 but it was not optimized only on expertise either.
7 DR. LEWIS: I never used the word "only". I'm 8 trying to force you on to the bed of nails and you're 9 getting there. You know, again, balanced is a buzzword. We 10 always balance all the alternatives whenever we do anything, 11 but we measure some in tons and others in milligrams when we 12 do this balancing act. -
A 13 So I would settle not for, you know, you 14 obviously don' t have in your head a statement that says out 15 of 100 percent, my students who got a mid-term yesterday, 16 because I'm in Washington, asked, well, are you going to 17 count the problem sets for 13 percent of the final grade and 18 the mid-term for 3 8 percen t? They want to know that kind of 19 thing.
20 I'm not asking you that kind of question. If I 21 were mean, I'd ask you that question. But I would settle 22 for what I told the kids: We'll count the final more than 23 the mid-term and the mid-term more than the problem sets ,
24 and let it go at that.
25 Would you say, in the question of whether those ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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.k,)DAV/bc 1 two things which we've agreed you've stipulated are contrary 2 requirements -- independence and expertise -- would you be 3 willing to say you'd give more weight to expertise than to 4 independence, or more weight to in, dependence than expertise?
5 And if you tell me you've given them the same 6 weight, you'll be evading the question.
7 (Laughter.)
8 MR. HELTEMES: I can only tell you the truth.
9 DR. LEWIS: You balance them.
10 MR. HE LTEME.S : Both were necessary and we wanted 11 to have -- we wanted to make sure that in our minds that we 12 had sufficient independence for each member of that team on (D
N/ 13 it, that went to Davis-Besse, and that they had sufficient 14 expertise on that team that they could do the job, that we 15 had to meet both criteria.
16 Now I won' t use the word " balancing", but we had 17 to mee t both.
18 DR. LEWIS: You gave yourself a harder job than 19 the one I asked you because now you've said that you have in 20 your mind some absolute level of expertise which is 21 sufficient to do the job, and some absolute level of 22 independence which is sufficient to do the job. And that if 23 they're above these two thresholds, it doesn' t matter which 24 one is bigger than the other.
O 25 You didn' t say it doesn' t matter, you don' t worry i
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-O ke DAV/bc 1 about it as long as they're over the threshold. I bet that 2 isn't the way you really did it.
3 MR. HELTEMES: That I did not assure myself in my 4 mind that the team had the prerequisite independence and the 5 prerequisite expertise, and that they were available?
6 DR. LEWIS: I appreciate the fact I'm putting you 7 in a hard place, but I started out asking whether you gave
~
8 more weight -- not percentage -- more weight to expertise or 9 independence. And you answered, if I understand correctly, 10 you said, "Well, tha t isn ' t the question." What you assured 11 yourself was that there was suf ficient expertise to do the 12 job and suf ficient independence to function independently.
F)'- 13 And the word " sufficient" sounds to me like a 14 passing grade. Like the analogy would be that I told my 15 students: I'm not going to tell you the weighting on the 16 mid-term and the final but you've got to pass both of them.
17 That means you have to have 60 percent or higher on each of 18 them.
19 That's, I think, the answer you gave, that you 20 had in your mind the level of independence which is 21 adequate, and a level of expertise which is adequate, and 22 that's why you won't answer the question about which is more 23 important to you.
24 And I think it's harder for you to do that than 25 it is to do the other.
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N DAV/bc 1 MR. HELTEMES: I can't address that. I can tell 2 you the test, and I have already told you the test. I did 3 not go to EDO with a list until I in my mind had the 4 expertise and that it was sufficiently independent.
5 DR. LEWIS: I don't want to press this point any 6 further.
7 MR. MICHE LSON: I don' t want to press quite the 8 same point any further, but I was wondering how was it 9 determined who the team leader would be, and does he have 10 any special powers that the other members don't-have, 11 MR. HE LTEMES: He's SES. He's got a certain 12 level.
13 MR. MICHE LSON: Beyond that, how is it 14 de te rmined? How was the team leader determined?
15 MR. HELTEMES: First of all, he's SES. Second of liS all, he has knowledge of event analysis. He has particular 17 technical expertise and has no direct personal, deep 18 involvement in the plant or the event. And he's available.
19 MR. MICHE LSON: And he can be from any of the 20 offices?
21 MR. HE LTEMES : Correct, including the regional 22 offices. Another region, not the same region. If the event 23 cccurred in Region III, we would never get someone from 24 Region III. That's precluded.
O 25 MR. MICHE LSON: You'd have potentially a ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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( ) DAV/bc 1 Region III member on the team but not as the leader?
2 MR. HELTEMES: That gets back into earlier 3 conversations. We haven' t done that. We can cite the rules 4 in 208. I've explained to you that that's the subject of 5 quite a bit of controversy.
6 MR. MICHELSON: The manual chapter will be the 7 final determinant.
8 MR. HELTEMES: It will have to come down. I also 9 don't know if there's going to be a black and white on that 10 at all.
11 MR. MICHE LSON: The other part of my question is, 12 does the team leader have any unusual powers, or is he just 13 to keep orderliness in the --
14 MR. HELTEMES: howers?
15 MR. MICHE LSON: What's the dif ference between a 16 team leader and the other members of the team in terms of 17 what they can do, what vote they have, or what they can 18 initiate? For instance, hypothetically, one of the members 19 says you ought to be looking at this. The team leader says ,
20 No, we don' t have time , we're not going to.
21 Is that the final? Does he have that kind of 22 power?
23 MR. HE LTEMES: He has the responsibility to
_ 24 direct the team.
25 MR. MICHELSON: It's not clear in this whole ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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8590 08 15 120 N) DAV/bc -1 SECY paper as to how much leadership power the team leader 2 has.
3 DR. LEWIS : Is he a committee chairman or is he a 4 boss?
5 MR. HELTEMES: It's intended that he directs the 6 activities of the team.
7 MR. MICHE LSON: That means that he decides we ' re 8 going to look into .this, we're not going to look into this?
9 MR. HE LTEMES : Yes.
10 MR. MIC HELSON: Tha t's a f airly large power.
11 That wasn' t clear in the SECY paper that he had that kind of '
12 power. I thought, in terms of a team, as a collegial team.
n'
'- 13 MR. HE LTEMES: Indeed, I think the team acts a 14 lot like the collegial team, but if the decision has to be 15 made for the team to move on, the team leader would make the 16 decision to move on.
17 MR. MICHE LSON: He can decide without a vote 18 whether or not he looks into this matter or that matter.
19 MR. HELTEMES: You can take a vote but it's going 20 to be his decision. How he gets there, I don't know. )
21 22 23 24 O 25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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-9230 09.01 121 l DAVbw 1 MR. MICHELSON: Just a clarification. If he 2 gives them a lot more power than I imagine , but if it is, 3 I'll be very interested in the criteria to be a team 4 leader. Clearly, I would not want Region 1, if the event 5 isn' t Region 1, to be a team leader.
6 MR. HELTEMES: I said that would be precluded.
7 MR. ' MICHELSON: But I. haven't seen any of that 8 here. I'd have to see the manual. I 9 DR. . LEWIS: Could I ask a slightly dif ferent 10 question which is, I notice that Davis-Besse was June 9th.
- 11 If we ' re supposed to do these things two or three times a 12 year, it's j ust abou- five months since June 9, which one
() .
13 are we going to do for this?
14 MR. HE LTEMES: I wish I knew. I had the team j 15 ready to go.
16 DR. LEWIS: There hasn' t been one. There hasn't 17 been a team set up since Davis-Besse.
18 MR. HE LTEMES: That's correct.
l 19 DR. LEWIS: There are two to three per year. You 20 ought to have it before Christmas or thereabouts.
21 MR. MICHELSON: I've seen a minor event reported 22 in one report that I think might have justified one, but 23 we'll discuss that on Monday.
24 MR. CARPUCCI: That was just an NRR team that O 25 went out to Rancho Seco.
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'w) DAVbw 1 MR. HELTEMES: It was an interof fice team, a team 2 that went to Palo Verde. We had somebody on that team.
3 MR. LANNING: It was a team at D. C. Cook. ,
'4 MR. HE LTEMES: A team would have gone to 5 Lacrosse , unless it had been an ATWS.
6 DR. LEWIS: I actually have no further 7 questions.
8 How are you doing, Carl?
9 MR. MICHE LSON: I think that was it. Give me 10 just a moment. We will not discuss then, Judge Cotter's 11 recommendation.
12 DR. LEWIS: I don' t see how we can. We don't f~
' 13 have a presentation. It's been OBE, and I think we should 14 treat it as OBE, unless there is a groundswell of 15 enthusiasm for recognizing it as an alternative.
16 MR. MICHE LSON: The remaining questions I have 17 have to do with Dircks' letter on these 41 items.
18 DR. LEWIS: I see.
19 MR. MICHELSON: And they were again comments and 20 clarifications, and looking through his memo, I didn't have 21 any real problems with the transmittal of it, but I was 22 confused by a number of the action items, sor.o of which --
23 well, let me say it dif ferently.
24 AEOD was assigned two action items at the 41.
25 One had to do with the overspeed trip on the auxiliary ,
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- . 1 feedwater turbine. The other had to do with two particular 2 isolation valves. I think there were only two that were 3 specified for your action. I think they were the isolation 4 valves.
) 5 MR. HE LTEMES : The motor-operated valves come 6 under a safety. function. It was a generic report.
7 MR. MICHE LSON: That wasn' t assigned to you, 8 though.
9 MR- HE LTEMES : Yes, it is.
10 MR. MICHELSON: Then I misintepreted what it 11 said. Let me read it again.
12 MR. HELTEMES: " Productive review of failures in
'- ) 13 safety-rated motor-operated valves requiring an assessment 14 in the failure modes af fecting valve performance under 15 design-basis condition."
4 16 It's on page 3.
17 MR. MICHELSON: That is the one I was looking at 18 -- that you considered to be comple tely broad-gauge , even 19 though there are a number of other specific items relating 20 to it, in that particular heading.
21 MR. HE LTEMES : The other part deals with the
- 22 valves at Davis-Besse.
23 MR. MICHE LSON: Well, I was thinking Item F, for 24 instance, determining the engineering basis for the i 25 specification of adjustments in safety-related valves and ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 09 04 124 rx kw ) DAVbw 1 torqueing limits. Torque switch and torque switch bypass 2 settings are adequate for all design basis events. That is 3 a generic question, really.
4 Now this is asking, specifically, at Davis-Besse, 5 what was this? Can I correctly interpret that you will go 6 and also look at how this relates to plants other than 7 Davis-Besse, with regard to your Item I?
8 MR. HE LTEMES : Item I will take a cross-section 9 of all motor-operated valves.
10 MR. MICHE LSON: Are you going to look at other 11 plants and their adequacy?
12 MR. HELTEMES: Item J, I think is what you need O
'l There is an NRC bulletin, as I mentioned 13 to look at.
14 earl ie r .
P 15 MR. MICHE LSON: I am acquainted with the 16 bulletin. I've read it already, but that doesn't deal with 17 the adequacy of a value to close under design basis 18 conditions.
19 MR. HE LTEMES : Yes, it does. It's designed to 20 make sure that the valve performance is commensurate with 21 the design basis conditions.
22 MR. MICHELSON: Maybe I read a different 23 bulletin than you did. I read the one dealing with the 24 torque limits with adjustments, but I'm dealing now with the
()
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25 adequacy of the valve to begin with, to be able to isolate a ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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9230 09 05 125 DAVbw 1 breakdown stream of the valve, which is essentially what I 2 think they're talking about in Item G. So my question was, 3 are you going to look at plants other than Davis-Besse from 4 the viewpoint of the adequacy of isolation valves to isolate 5 breaks downstream of the valve?
6 MR. HELTEMES: Our study takes into account 7 f.ailures of motor-operated valves, all reported events of 8 that. We are looking at NPRS data and LER data.
9 MR. MICHELSON: Hopefully, this event hasn't 10 happened yet. Item G, I assume, we're dealing with the 11 possibility, if that were to happen, plus the likelihood 12 that the valve under performance isolation -- they're -
13 looking at it, though, only for Davis-Besse.
14 MR. HELTEMES: Our study looks at operational 15 experience.
16 MR. MICHE LSON: I know you do. Therefore, I 17 don't think you're going to look at it either under Item I, 18 because there isn' t any operational data yet on a LOCA 19 downstream of an isolation valve, and G is pitched only to 20 Davis-Bease. And I'm asking who is going to look at it 21 generically. I think it is a generic item that is simply 22 missing, or they should have said generic beside it. Then I 23 would have thought they're going to look at all plants, not
, 24 just Davis-Besse.
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2 MR. LANNING: But that goes beyond the scope of 3 the Davis-Besse event. You had no break that you had to 4 isolate at Davis-Besse.
5 MR. MICHELSON: That's right. But I think G goes l
6 beyond, the wording goes beyond Davis-Besse, as I see it. I 7 mean, beyond the event that occurred at Davis-Besse, because 8 the design basis events include pipe breaks downstream from 9 isolation valves.
10 MR. HELTEMES: It doesn' t go beyond design 11 basis. It is for all design basis events.
,, 12 MR. MICHELSON: That is a design basis event.
13 That's what the put the isolation valves in there for. But 14 it didn' t happen. But now on Davis-Besse, they are going to 15 go back and look to see what happened, what would be the l
16 likelihood of' isolation valves working, if, for instance, 17 their blowdown line were to break by blowing down, and 18 they'd failed to isolate on Davis-Besse. Now I'm asking, t 19 though, to what extent are you going to look at other i
20 plants for this viewpoint, if at all?
21 Clearly, G doesn' t cover it. So my question is, 22 does I cover that? I don' t think I covers it either.
23 There fore , I don't think it's part of this study at all.
24 MR. HELTEMES:
-) This may be. It's tied directly G
25 into the team's report. The team didn' t mention that ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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\/ DAVbw 1 somebody followed up on that.
2 MR. MICHELSON: Even when it says generic, 3 though, it doesn' t mean go beyond Davis-Besse.
4 MR. HELTEMES: It does mean go beyond 5 Davi s-Be sse .
6 MR. MICHE LSON: But you're not going to go beyond 7 Davis-Besse from this particular viewpoint.
8 MR. HE LTEMES : We're going to operate off all 9 data, like I mentioned before, the LERs and NPRDS for all 10 plants.
11 MR. MICHE LSON: There's two problems. One is 12 looking at events that have already happened. Another one t
'~) 13 is postulating events that are supposed to be design basis 14 in determining whether not equipment will function properly 15 under those conditions and you're not looking at the 16 latter.
17 MR. HE LTEMES : I guess what you're getting into 18 is proof-testing and prototypes .
19 MR. MICHELSON: That is part of it. That is one 20 way of doing it.
21 MR. HELTEMES: I know your valve subcommittee is 22 looking into this, and I am sure you can get better 23 information than we can give you today as to what the 24 activities are.
O 25 MR. MICHE LSON: My question is, how far are you ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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, DAVbw 1 going to go under Item I?
2 MR. HE LTEMES: Item I is just our normal --
3 MR. MICHELSON: What you've already been doing.
4 MR. HELTEMES: Go through all operating 5 information to see if we can assess the failure mode and see t ~
6 if we can detect concerns that warrant the action.
- 7 MR. MICHELSON
- I think that concludes what my ,
l 8 question was. Under Item 8, there is an Item 8B, which-9 deals.-- this is dealing now with the auxiliary feedwater 10 pump turbines. And it says, " Evaluate Licensee 's 11 engineering report on root cause analysis and propose l '12 corrective actions. NRR is going to do that.
) 13 To what extent does AEOD -- will they also review 14 this report on root cause analysis?
l 15 MR. HELTEMES: I can' t answer that question. We 16 will get the reports, but I can' t answer specifically to l 17 tell you today just how much ef fort we will put into it.
18 MR. MICHELSON: There is two or three other 19 qual analyses.
20 MR. HE LTEMES : There is a lot of engineering qual
! 21 reports. It may be worthwhile. I just can' t tell you.
22 MR. MICHELSON: But you have no commitment, only 23 NRR.
24 MR. HELTEMES: They are assigned specific
()
l j 25 responsibility to review it.
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( )S -DAVbw 1 MR. MICHELSON: Yet this report will probably go 2 back to the people who have been dealing all1along with 3 auxiliary feedwater' turbines and who made the earlier design 4 ' decisions or design acceptance decisions, and now they' re 5 asked to review, I guess, those decisions.
6 Is that what this is for?
7 MR. HELTEMES: It is best to pursue that with 8 NRR.
9 MR. MICHELSON: It's certainly not what I would 10 call an independenr. examination. That comment pertains to 11 several. Item 12 has to do with resolution of equipment 12 deficiencies , and apparently under 12(b), the Licensee will 13 issue a report, which, again, includes a root cause analysis 14 and' corrective action. NRR will review that.
15 Does AEOD also intend to review these final 16 resolutions?
17 MR. HE LTEMES: As I said, we get copies of this.
18 For example, the Licensee is responding the 5054 F letter.
19 As you know, it's about two inches thick. We certainly get 20 copies of that, and so we will be reviewing it. Whether we 21 do further in-depth analysis on it, I can' t tell you.
22 MR. MICHELSON: What this all leads to is, what 23 is :the mechanism by which AEOD may decide that there are 24 areas, safety-related areas that need to be looked into O 25 further, that they were unhappy or uneasy with the decisions ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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'v' DAVbw 1 made by the agency? What will be the input that you will 2 review that will lead you to the conclusion that some more 3 work needs to be done?
4 MR. HELTEMES: We monitor all this documentation 5 going back and forth. We get copies of it.
6 -MR. MICHELSON: There is a lot of difference, of 7 course, between monitoring something.
8 MR. HE LTEMES: That's what I said, your question 9 was -- I understood your question to be, are you going to 10 conduct an in-depth review of this? And I said, I don' t 11 know. I can' t tell you that today, because we -- if we ge t
- 12 -
a feeling that in-depth review is necessary, we can 13 certainly and probably will do that, consonant with other 14 priorities within the office, but right now I'm not aware 15 that we see the need to do any independent in-depth review 16 of this information.
17 MR. MICHE LSON: So I really have to conclude, I 18 guess, that if -- whatever the judgment of NRR in this case 19 is, will probable be the final judgment. There won' t be any 20 way of checking their judgment.
21 MR. HE LTEMES: NRR carries the responsibility for 22 restart of the plant, making the restart recommendations. So 23 they, in the first instance, have to look through and make 24 the judgment that the reconstitutions are sufficiently 25 well-documented and well-understand, that the corrective ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(~m 5u DAVbw 1 actions are appropriate. They'll have to justify that l 1
2 internally to NRC management and, indeed, to the Commission.
3 As I understand, prior to that plant restarting, there'll be 4 a very detailed SER, no question in my mind about that. And 5 it is going to be well-reviewed and well-publicized and 6 documen ted .
7 MR. MICHELSON: I guess the fundamental thing 8 that is bothering me just a little bit is, what's dif ferent 9 about this that didn' t exist five years ago? Are we falling 10 back into the original mode of operation prior to AEOD?
11 And the answer is, hopefully, no, we aren't 12 falling into the mode of agency operation of 1980. So
-] 13 what's dif ferent? Wha t , in your opinion, is the dif ference l 14 between this new mode of operation? I think this is new.
15 This is different than what we've been doing for the last 16 two or three years.
17 MR. HE LTEMES: That's the answer to the 18 question. It is new, and it is different.
19 MR. MICHE LSON: But what is new that didn' t exist 20 prior to 1980? And prior to 1980, NRR did it. They did it
! 21 just like it described it here. NRR carried the ball. They 22 decided most of the action items. There wasn't an AEOD 23 involved. In this case, there isn't too much of AEOD
[
L l 24 involved. Just two items out of 41. There's some I&E
! d,s 25 involvement. I think they got nine items. Region 3, in ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(_)T DAVbw 1 fact, has nine items.
2 Aren' t we falling back to the pre-1980 method of 3 operation, except we formalized it a little more and have a 4 team to put the report together. Af ter the team has issued 5 its report , then I'd hate to fall back under that method of 6 operation that existed prior to 1980.
7 MR. HELTEMES: I'm surprised you would even say 8 that or even think that that may be the case. Wha t's new 9 is, you have a very comprehensive report, which lays out 10 exactly what happened, 11 MR. MICHE LSON: I'm talking about after the team.
12 MR. HELTEMES: We're talking about a process, and O
\/ 13 the question, as I understood _your question was, whac is so 14 newabbutthisprocess? And what is significant about the 15 process?
16 MR. MICHELSON: Yes.
17 MR. HELTEMES: Therefore, you can't focus on any 18 one piece. You really should take it as a package. The 19 question is, is the package new and different and better 20 than what existed five years ago.
21 MR. MICHELSON: The new part is the team and the 22 team's report.
23 MR. HE LTEMES : Well, let me finish, if you would, 24 please. I'm sorry. The point being that we start of f with 25 the team report, a very detailed comprehensive, and it has a ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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A/ DAVbw 1 number of findings and conclusions in it, and any of those 2 that are worthy of f urther attention, the EDO documents, 3 specifically what those are, what the action is, 4 specifically, it assigns a responsible of fice for that, 5 makes the determination, whether he wants a generic look or 6 only a plant-specific look. And he tells the responsible 7 office directors that I want a schedule, and I want a status 8 report on this orally, and then I want a written report six 9 months from now.
10 So there's tracking, there's follow-up. The 11 items are specifically identified and made a subject, if you 12 will, of a contract between the EDO and the office
(
l-) 13 directors, whereas, before the office directors would pick 14 and choose what they choose to follow up on, and there 15 wouldn't be any outside involvement by the EDO and now 16 written report on those particular items at the EDO level.
17 MR. MICHELSON: Prior to 1980, each office made 18 its own decision as to what to look at.
19 MR. HELTEMES: The degree to which they went into 20 something, the degree to which they formalized it and 21 documented it , the degree to which they closed it of f.
22 MR. MICHE LSON: Now we' re saying that we 23 formalized tha process. It is no longer a matter of 24 individual offices making that decision. Later on, you'll O 25 clarify, of course, who decides what action items there ACE. FEDERAL REPOR'lERS, INC.
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9230 09 14 134 A(_/ DAVbw 1 are. They will have to be in the manual chapter, but I'm 2 just trying to search in my own mind now what's new, besides 3 the team and the team report, which I think is real good.
4 Don' t misunderstand me at all. I think that's a step in the l
5 right direction. I think ACRS took a significant step in 6 the right direction, but beyond that, what's new? You're 7 saying that it's now the item are going to be an organized 8 process by some office which is yet to be id en ti fied .
9 But having ,been thought out and identified and 10 documented, they are now tracked and closed out, and that's l
11 what's new, although I think there will be people who argue 12 prior to 1980 that tracking and closing out, but within the
'- 13 o f fice. They say now it's within the agency.
14 MR. HE LTZMES : NUREG 1154 should be read in the 15 context of the August 5th memo. Those two things are 16 married, if you will. They are inherent steps in the 17 process.
18 MR. MICHE LSON: I would like to see this memo as 19 one of the parts that is issued in the final report.
20 So I think I understand that. This is also a 21 significant step forward, if it appears in the manual 22 chapter as a part of a process. I didn' t know that that 23 would be a continuing part of the process. I'll know that l
24 only when I see it in writing. It was handled, I think, k 25 properly here.
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' ) DAVbw 1 I think that's all the comments and questions I 2 have.
3 DR. LEWIS: I have no more questions, so I think 4 -- we appreciate your coming down to talk to us. It's been 5 very informative, and not a particularly heated discussion 6 like we could have done. And we will see how the system 7 works in the future.
8 I think it is fair to say that this Subcommittee 9 is of one mind in feeling that we will recommend some letter 10 to the full Committee, and heaven cannot predict what will 11 then happen.
12 But with that, I am happy to close out this 13 meeting. We're done.
14 (Whereupon at 11:45 a.m., the meeting of the 15 Subcommittee was adjourned.)
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 O 25 ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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CERTIFICATE OF OFFICIAL REPORTER O
This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION in the matter of: ,
NAME OF PROCEEDING: ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS SUBCOMMITTEE ON REGULATORY POLICIES AND' PRACTICES DOCKET NO.:
PLACE: WASIIINGTON, D. C.
DATE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1985 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
(sigt) A (TYPEDI DAVID L. IlOFFMAN Official Reporter R r r liathon'
- O
O O O STAFF PROPOSAL ON THE NRC INCIDENT INVESTIGATION PROGRAM C. J. HELTEMES, JR., DIRECTOR OFFICE FOR ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION OF OPERATIONAL DATA NOVEMBER 1, 1985 REGULATORY POLICIES AND PRACTICES SUBCOMMITTEE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS
o ,
(' ;
L) O CONCEPT OF MRC INCIDENT INVESTIGATION PROGRAM e STAFF PROPOSAL DEFINED IN SECY-85-208 e RESPONSE TO SIGNIFICANT EVENTS WILL FOLLOW THESE CONCEPTS e PROGRAM HAS TWO NEW INITIATIVES e EVENTS WITH CLEAR AND SERIOUS IMPLICATIONS REGARDING SAFETY
-- INTEROFFICE, INTERDISCIPLINARY TEAM TO BE ESTABLISHED BY THE ED0 AND SENT PROMPTLY TO THE SITE. RECOMMENDATIONS NORMALLY ORIGINATE WITH PROGRAM OFFICE DIRECTOR OR REGIONAL ADMINISTRATOR.
OBJECTIVE IS TO DETERMINE WHAT HAPPENED AND THE PRINCIPAL CAUSES AS TO WHY IT HAPPENED, AND TO DEVELOP FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS FOR POSSIBLE FOLLOW-ON ACTIONS.
TEAM WILL FOCUS ON THE EVENT AND WILL NOT NORMALLY: (1) IDENTIFY AND ANALYZE ALL OF THE "WHAT IF" QUESTIONS; (2) REVIEW THE DESIGN OR REGULATORY BASE FOR THE PLANT; OR (3) DETERMINE POSSIBLE VIOLATION OF NRC REQUIREMENTS.
e EVENTS WITH LESSER SIGNIFICANCE BUT WITH POTENTIAL IMPORTANT SAFETY LESSONS TECHNICAL PERSONNEL FROM HEADQUARTERS OFFICES WILL AUGMENT REGIONAL INVESTIGATION.
l
O O O GENERIC IMPLICATIONS WILL BE EMPHASIZED.
EVENTS WARRANTING THIS APPROACH WILL BE IDENTIFIED BY REGIONAL ADMINISTRATOR OR THE DIRECTORS OF IE, NRR, OR NMSS.
I
O . O O
+f
~
v' -
,3 CONCFfT)0F NRC INVESTIGATING TEAMS -
'~ '
i . '(REF. SECY-85-208) ,
l e TEAM LEADER SELECTED BY EDO - SES LEVEL AND NORMALLY NO DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN ,
LICENSING OR INSPECTION OF PLANT <s 4
/
4 e NUMBER AND COMPOSITION OF TEAM TO BE ESTABLISHED BASED UPON EVENT ,
e SELECTED FROM PRE-APPROVED ROSTER j
.e AUTOMATICALLY RELIEVED FROM EXISTING DUTY e SELECTED ON BASIS OF: 4 TECHNICAL OR OPERATIONS EXPERTISE P0TENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE INVESTIGATION '
i '-
I --
FREEDOM FROM SIGNIFICANT DIRECT INVOLVEMENT WITH PLANT u
e RESIDENT INSPECTORS MAY BE ON TEAM '
~
l e FORMAL TRAINING PROGRAM WILL BE ESTABLISHED
- c '
e FOCUS ON COLLECTION AND DOCUMENTATION OF FACTUAL INFORMATION AND EVIDENCE ASSO f ~
- WITH PLANT i
L _
0 0 Q e- PROCEDURES WILL ASSURE SUFFICIENT INFORMATION IS PROVIDED TO ENABLE IMMEDIATE ACTION TO
! BE TAKEN l
i e TEAMS WILL ISSUE A SINGLE COMPREHENSIVE REPORT
! e ISSUED SIMULTANEOUS TO COMMISSION AND ED0
~
e PLACED IN PDR WITH BACKUP INFORMATION i e FOLLOW-ON ACTIONS TO BE SPECIFIED BY ED0 e RESULTING CORRECTIVE ACTIONS WILL FOLLOW EXISTING PROCEDURES, INCLUDING CRGR -
j REVIEW l
I i
l e INVESTIGATION IS NOT TO_BEGIN UNTIL PLANT IS PLACED IN A SAFE AND STABLE CONDITION -
l INTERFACE WITH REGIONAL RESPONSE TEAM TO BE ESTABLISHED e ENFORCEMENT ACTION REMAINS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF IE AND REGIONS - INFORMATION IS REFERRED TO 01 AND OIA AS APPROPRIATE
- l J
J
O o o e PERTINENT EQUIPMENT IS TO BE LEFT IN THE "AS FOUND" CONDITION AND INFORMATION AND DATA CONCERNING THE EVENT ARE'T0 BE RETAINED - REQUIREMENTS TO " FREEZE" EQUIPMENT ARE NOT TO INTERFERE WITH MAINTAINING PLANT IN A SAFE AND STABLE CONDITION e CONSIDERATION WILL BE GIVEN T0 o INVITING OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVES TO PARTICIPATE e PROVIDING SUBPOENA POWER TO TEAM e AUTHORITY TO PRE-EMPT PARALLEL INVESTIGATIONS IF THEY INTERFERE
o 9 U STATUS OF INCIDENT INVESTIGATION PROGRAM e DAVIS-BESSE' EVENT WILL SERVE AS!A " PILOT"-
e ED0 PROPOSAL WAS APPROVED BY THE COMMISSION ON OCTOBER 16, 1985 i e AE0D HAS BEEN ALLOCATED 3 FTE IN FY 1986 TO DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT PROGRAM-e DEVELOP MANUAL CHAPTER e PREPARE PERSONNEL ROSTERS e DEVELOP TRAINING PLANS-e PREPARE SUPPORTING PROCEDURES e ' DRAFT. LANGUAGE FOR ASSURING SAFE " FREEZING" 0F EQUIPMENT AND DATA e STUDY SELECTED CONSIDERATIONS e A PROGRAM PLAN IS UNDER PREPARATION AND ACTIVITIES ARE IN PROGRESS e TIME SCHEDULE FOR COMPLETION OF'AB0VE IS "EARLY 1986"
_ _ _ _ .