ML20198G896
| ML20198G896 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 05/22/1986 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-1515, NUDOCS 8605300033 | |
| Download: ML20198G896 (300) | |
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R&Rst es ORIGIng U UN11EU STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS SUBCOMMITTEE ON RELIABILITY AOCn03ME;;T ASSURANCE '
o LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D. C. PAGES: 1 - 210 DATE: T!!URSDAY, MAY 22, 1906 o; OMCOPYQ demwe fromhCRSOfice ace-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 UNITED, STATES OF AMERICA ,
2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ,
3 ADVISORY COMM TTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4 SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING 5
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6 RELIABILITY ASSURANCE 7 Room 1046
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8 1717 H Street, N.W.
9 ' Washing ton , D.C.
10 Thursday, May 22, 1986 11 The ACRS Subcommittee on Reliability Assurance
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v 12 met, pursuant to notice, at 8:00 a.m.. Charles Wylie, 13 chairman of the subcommittee, presiding.
14 PRESENT: -
15 CHARLES'WYLIE', Chairman of the Subcommittee 16 JESSE C.;EBERSOLE, Member 17 GLENN A. REED, Member 18 RICHARD MAJOR, Designated Federal Employee 19 p 20 ,
21 22 1
23 .
24 ,
25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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) PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONERS' ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS TilURSDAY, MAY 22, 1986 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
() this meeting accepts any. responsibility for errors or, inaccuracies of statement or data contained in this transcript.
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01 02 l' Mimie 1 PROCEEDINGS 2 MR. WYLIE: The meeting will now come to order.
3 This is a meeting of the ACRS Subcommittee on 4 Reliability Assurance. I am Charlie Wylie, chairman of the 5 Subcommittee on Reliability Assurance. The other members in 6 attendance are Jesse Ebersole and G16nn Reed.
7 Rich Major is the ACRS Staff member for the 0 8 meeting.
9 The rules for participation in today's meeting 10 have been announced as part of the notice of this meeting 11 that was ublished in the Federal Register on May 14, 1986,
<^4 12 and updated on May 20, 1986.
U 13 It is requested that each speaker first identify 14 himself or herself~and speak with sufficient clarity and 15 volume so that h6 or she can be heard readily 8
16 We have received no written comments or requests 17 for time to make oral statements from members of the 18 public. The main purpose of the meeting coday is to discuss
- 19 the proposed NRC Safety Research Program and Budget for
, 20 ,
fiscal year 1988 and fiscal y6ar 1989 in the areas for which 21 this subcormittee is assigned responsibility by the ACRS.
22 The areas of responsibility include the NRC 23 I Reliability Assurance Program, operating assurance and I
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reliability maintenance compononts and systems important to l 25 safety; mechanical and electrical equipment qualification, l
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{~}000103 1 Mimie 1 including seismic and environmental nuclear plant aging 2 research; also areas of research related to seismic 3 fragility of plant components; performance of components 4 under accident conditions -- that is isolation valves under 5 dynamic forces of blowdown, flows, et cetera, are also 6 included.
7 The agenda may not cover all areas of interest, 8 and it would be helpful if the Staff and others would help 9 identify any areas which may be overlooked.
10 The subcommittee is charged with submitting a 11 report to the ACRS Subcommittee on the Safety Research 12 Program by May 28th, regarding the adequacy of proposed 0("N 13 research for the fiscal year 1988 and 1989. And on the i 14 appropriateness'of the associated funding level.
15 I would ask the subcommittee members present to l
16 consider the adequacy of the proposed research, proposed 17 funding of each area as it is presented, and to make notes 18 and identify any areas where they feel additional research 19 j is needed.
20 Several areas that have already been identified 21 where clarification would be helpful to the subcommittee, 22 are research associated with seismic fragility of 23 components; ability of isolation valves to close under 24 accident flow conditions; check valves; equipment associated
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(JM00 01 04 4 1 Mimie 1 relief valves and safety valves. Perhaps at the right time 2 the Staff can address these areas.
3 I will ask the subcommittee members present if 4 they have any comments to add to what I just said?
5 MR. EBERSOLE: No.
6 MR. REED: No.
7 MR. WYLIE: Okay. So, why don' t we proceed with 8 the meeting, and I will call on Gary Burdick to begin with 9 the overview of the Operational Safety Reliability Program.
10 MR. BURDICK: Good morning,11r. Chairman, members 11 of the subcommittee.
12 (Slide) 13 I had planned to address a few topics in addition 14 to what we call our Operation of Safety Reliability Research 15 Program, very closely related in conversation with Rich 16 Majors over the telephone. I understood these were of 17 interest to the committee. So, I will just go ahead and 18 proceed as I had planned.
19 (Slide) 20 The basic premises, some of them from which we are 21 working appear in the PPG and EDO guidance. First of all, 22 of course, we want to make sure that nuclear facilities 23 operate safely, and there has been some interest expressed 24 in looking at the feasibility of some shift away from (J}
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2 I believe Commissioner Roberts, in particular, is 3 interested in this.
4 I won' t go through all of these. But, we are 5 attempting to fulfill this guidance from the EDO and from te 6 Commission.
7 MR. EBERSOLE: May I comment on that?
8 That is the business of however ambiguous promises 9 and claims of obtaining performance criteria without 10 appropriate validation, like the FAA requires, you know, 11 they use certificated components. I guess we are talking 12 about loss of instruments, Charlie.
13 What bothers me about that is so ofter the 14 applicant escapes through some lqophole claiming performance 15 criteria, which in fact is not valid. Like valves which 16 won't close when they are supposed to, of which we have had 17 a long history of troubles. They were supposed to close.
18 And even today, we are trying to figure out what to do with 19 valves.
20 So, I think to toss out being prescriptive 21 entirely is wrong. If you find a way to do something like 22 using a hammer to drive a nail, you ought not to do it with 23 a screwdriver. Are you with me?
24 MR. BURDICK: I'm with you.
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s-1 Mimie 1 shift would be made. This is something we are 2 investigating.
3 I'm not suggcsting --
4 MR. EBERSOLE: If I have to tell a workman to use 5 a hammer to drive a nail, then I will do it. I might not 6 have the kind of worker that I have to tell to use a 7 hammer. I don't think I can use that analogy in the nuclear 8 business. We have not found, as indicated by the present 9 status of our business, that kind of expertise and 10 commitment to safety and reliability.
11 MR. BURDICK: What you say is true. But still 12 there are some owners out there, some licensees who are 13 extremely good performers.
14 MR. EBERSOLE: It is the bad ones that cause us 15 the problems.
16 MR. BURDICK: That's right.
17 MR. EBERSOLE: One must then look at that sector 18 of the entire group, not the good ones, but the small 5 19 percent of the worst, the ones that make the news like 20 Chernobyl, Browns Ferry, whatever, Davis Besse.
21 MR. BURDICK: Those are performance indicators 22 that are pretty easy to spot. But I think we can have a 23 little more subtle indicators that might indicate trends in
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1 Mimie 1 MR. REED: I think I read that line a little 2 differently from the way Jesse did, and maybe it is going to 3 be a question of interpretation.
4 shift away from detailed prescriptive requirements 5 toward performance criteria. Now, by detailed prescriptive 6 requirements, to use Jesse's hammer story, I would say that 7 detailed prescriptive requirements would say that the nail 8 to be driven would be a cadmium-plated nail with certain 9 roughness, of certain length, certain size and class. Say 10 tenpenny, or whatever.
11 I agree with Jesse, certainly you should say for 12 systems and larger issues, you should say it must be done 13 this way. I think that is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 14 law that there must be, let's say, an engineered safeguard 15 system. But, when you get down to detailed prescriptive, 16 that is where I think we get ourselves all messed up, 17 because we lay down such detailed prescription that it can't 18 be carried out, or it is ridiculous.
19 MR. BURDICK: Or it might be even 20 counterproductive in some cases. For example, licensees who 21 have very good performance records on their safety systems i 22 may, in some cases, be allowed to relax some surveillance lI 23 test requirements. That is a possibility.
l 24 Diesel generators -- I think we had the licensees
{~T xI 25 testing those things so frequently that we are actually l
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1 Mimie 1 beating them to death.
2 I think if we took a more reasoned look at some of 3 these items we might get a better-running industry, a safer 4 industry. A little relaxation for the good performers, and 5 try to have some performance criteria and trending 6 techniques that would allow us to spot the poor performers.
7 That is what I am suggesting here.
8 MR. REED: One bullet that did bother me was the 9 fourth bullet. It says allow individual licensees the 10 flexibility to select the most cost-effective ways to 11 satisfy NRC safety objectives.
12 Now to me, you know, we have one thrust. It is 13 almost a national thrust, and political congressional thrust 14 towards standardization. And this almost says, let's not 15 standardize. I could read it that way.
16 So, have you-got a comment on that?
17 MR. BURDICK: I don't think the bullet was 18 intended to have anything to do with standardization. It 19 was more along the lines of what I was talking about before, 20 surveillance testing.
21 It may be that the NRC safety requirements can be 22 met in a more relaxed and cost-effective manner by the 4
23 owner. As long as our safety requirements are met, and the i
.24 owner is being cost effective about it, I don't see any 25 harm.
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J 1 Mimie 1 MR. REED: I think there has to be NRC or close 2 oversight of, let's call it innovations. Now, I could use 3 an example that came up yesterday.
4 Toledo Edison apparently is going to put in a 5 primary blowdown system on their B&W reactor by connecting 6 off the top of the plenum chamber of the steam generator, 7 and putting in a four-inch line, four-inch blowdown valves 8 and so on and so forth.
9 Well, nobody else is doing that. But, I heartily 10 -- I think that is just tremendous. But, it seems to me 11 that it is just a system of safety importance that I'm not 12 so sure the NRC should allow one company innovation, 13 .necessarily. I think that the NRC should decide that it is 14 good or bad.
15 I, personally, feel it is the right way to go in 16 some reactors. But, then it ought to be a little bit-17 prescribed.
18 Is that an example? It is my idea of an example.
19 MR. BURDICK: Let me offer a few observations on 20 that.
21 In some cases it might be a good thing to do, in 22 other cases it may not. These plants are very different.
l 23 We have learned that we have 100 plants out there that are i
! 24 virtually unique. And whether or not adding this system to
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25 other B&W plants is going to give you a significant increase
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00.,01 10 10 1 Mimie 1 in safety, that would have to be looked at carefully before 2 .there was any mandating across the board, I would think.
3- The safety tradeoffs have to be weighed 4 carefully. If you have a PRA you can do it there.
5 MR. REED: You are going to get hit with -- the 6 NRC Staff is going to get hit with very shortly, approval of 7 this system, right?
8 MR. BURDICK: For that plant, it could be a very 9 good idea.
10 MR. REED: You are going to have to be prepared
'11 for that. And you are saying here, allow individual 12 licensees -- I'm all for the system. I believe it should 13 have been done 25 years ago, quite frankly, for certain 14 PWRs.. But, this statement here, allow individual licensees 15 flexibility to select most cost-effective ways, I don't-16 know. It seems like NRC objectives is pretty broad. That 17 can say, cool-the core. But, it seems to me the NRC has the 18 responsibility to say, cool the core by utilization of 19 certain methods, not to allow complete individual 20 initiativos and so on.
I 21 MR. BURDICK: Suppose, for example, we told that 22 licensee not to put in that particular system, but to put on 23 a PORV. It could be that there would be more radiation
- 24 exposure, perhaps, to workers putting on a PORV than 25 ' installing this particular system.
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1 Mimie 1 As long as the NRC safety objective is achieved, 2 that is what I'm saying, we should allow flexibility in some 3 cases. The plants are different. Each owner might come in 4 with something that is reasonable, and --
5 MR. REED: We are not communicating very well.
6 This flies in the face of what I think 7 standardization should be about. In other words, the 8 government should be in a position now to standardize some 9 of the necessary safety systems for nuclear reactors.
10 I worry how this might be interpreted. Like, 11 people might go off -- you know, we have been in 35 years 12 now, of individualism in safety systems, even though, let's 13 say, it's a PWR. There oughtn't to be that many differences 14 in a PWR.
15 We ought to come out with pretty much the same 16 safety systems for a PWR that is a recirculating boiler PWR, 17 and you,ought to come out with a B&W non-recirculating 18 once-through with a pretty much standardized safety system.
19 sure. I don' t mind the licensees buying dif ferent 20 pumps and this, that and the other, but they ought to have 21 the system concept pretty well standardized by now.
22 MR. BURDICK: I agree with you that 23 standardization is a good thing. I don' t think that these 24 -- any of these comments are intended to fly in the face of 25 that concept.
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1 Mimie 1 The Commission and -- you know, they are on record 2 elsewhere as being very much in favor of standardization.
3 This particular bullet here, I am sure was intended to refer 4 to operating plants and backfits, procedural changes, that 5 kind of thing.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Why shouldn't they be up there, 7 real fundamental statement; examine the roots, reliability 8 of individual reactor systems which we now have and selected 9 in an ordered way, the most safe to the least safe, and 10 begin to home in on what we ought to build as a workhorse 11 for the nuclear option?
(~ 12 I don't see anything that is really focused on the
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13 fundamental problem of what we ought to standardize to.
14 Maybe it is a boiler, maybe it is a PWR. It is certainly 15 not going to be a combustion. It is doubtful that it is 16 going to be -- I'm sorry, B&W Palo Verde is still a 17 question.
18 I think something should be up there that goes to 19 the roots of where we are going to build, if we ever do, a 20 nuclear option and get some energy coming out again from 21 this business. We have failed miserably after 25 years 22 because of a lot of the looseness of letting the industry 23 have enough room to hang itself, and it has certainly hung
('s 24 itself.
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1 Mimie 1 continue to hang itself.
2 MR. BURDICK: You are suggesing that the NRC 3 should get into the fundamental --
4 MR. EBERSOLE: We have got to have some leadership 5 someplace. We are not getting it out of DOE. There is no 6 energy policy. There is no policy to restore the option.
7 We are leaderless. We are wallowing, compared to France and 8 any other -- Japan, whatever.
9 I see nothing in there that says anything about 10 that.
11 MR. BURDICK: I don't have any basis, any NRC r'N 12 charter that would --
U 13 MR. EBERSOLE: I know that. And somewhere I think 14 maybe you should say that we need a charter. We don't have 15 the authority to initiate and conceive it. Where the hell 16 is it?
17 MR. BURDICK: I do agree with you. There are 18 fundamental improvements that could be made.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: I don't see anything in there that 20 says an applicant can't come in, he says I'm going to do 21 this function with this daisy chain of 14 dozen systems 22 interdependent in this order, when he can do it with one.
23 MR. BURDICK: Jesse, this list was not intended to
/~S 24 be complete.
V 25 MR. EBERSOLE: By the way, there is one bullet up
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1 Mimie 1 there which I think -- I guess it is the one where it says, 2 develop capability to foresee safety problems through 3 analysis of operational data.
4 That misses the other statement you made. We had a 5 hundred unique plants.
6 I wrote another bullet down here, develop 7 capability to foresee unique safety problems before 8 occurrence of severe accidents in unique plants. I 9 MR. BURDICK: Sure.
10 MR. EBERSOLE: That says you cannot wait for the 11 operational incidents. You have got to visualize, you shall 12 not put a packaged boiler in the spreading room, or 13 something like that.
14 MR. BURDICK: We have different plants. But there 15 are techniques we are working on, that the licensee himself 16 can use, the resident inspector can use. In fact, we have 17 -- I just was at a two-day meeting yesterday and the day 18 before, representatives from all over the NRC, multi-office 19 conclave, discussing this very same issue. What kind of 20 data could we get, what kind of performance indicators could 21 we have that we could perform trending on, so we could spot 22 early on some of these trends that would --
23 MR. EBERSOLE: For that matter, what can you do in 24- the context of eyeballing the configuration and say that is 25 wrong.
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2 MMbw 1 MR. BURDICK: There may be some things like that, 2 sure. Do you have an example in mind?
3 MR. EBERSOLE: My classic one is that arrangement 4 of those ten-inch steam lines in the boiler equipment room 5 withstanding full pressure with little, if any, known about 6 whether the valves can close, if you bust a line.
7 MR. BURDICK: The kind of data I am talking about 8 here is the unavailability increasing on trains of safety 9 , systems. Is the scram rate increasing? Is there an 10 over-increasing --
11 MR. EBERSOLE: I know. That's an important part, 12 but that's not the whole part. We wrote an Indian Point 13 letter on system interacts that tried to cover the other 14 aspects of that capability development. So you just can't 15 rely on 10,000 LERs, because maybe you're waiting for one 16 Chernobyl.
17 MR. BURDICK: Of course, if you trend on the 18 the significant events, you are going to be too late.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: Right.
20 MR. BURDICK: Sure.
21 MR. WYLIE: Let me ask a question just for my 22 own edification.
23 What -- which MAC numbers fall into this area?
24 Have you got those? We identified three here of 111, 135, 25 133. Are there others?
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\ J' 2 MMbw 1 MR. BURDICK: 111, 135 and 133. I think that 2 covers all of them.
3 MR. WYLIE: Where does 136, for example, 4 " Improved Reactor Safety Regulations" fall?
5 MR. BURDICK: I've got that breakdown in my 6 briefcase, unfortunately. If you don't need it now, I'll 7 give it you --
8 MR. WYLIE: That's all right. I was just curious 9 whether there was something else in here.
10 In the case of identifying for reexamination in 11 your bullet there, regulatory requirements that have
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12 marginal importance to safety, next to the bottom there, 13 that is saying, okay, here are the regulations that are in 14 place. We're just going to examine and see whether there is 15 really much gained out of this particular regulation. If 16 not, we will perhaps recommend we will eliminate it.
17 Is there any thought to trade-offs? In other 18 words, you add something and then you can relax a whole 19 bunch of other things?
20 MR. BURDICK: The intent of this program was --
21 we might get into that.
22 What would happen if you got rid of the certain 23 system that we now require, for example, what would be the
~N 24 risk increase? Is it significant? In some cases, there is (O
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i 3 MR. WYLIE: I am not arguing that you shouldn't 4 do it.
5 MR. EBERSOLE: Overhead injection was one of 6 those. Overhead injection, we're just getting rid of that 7 at Maguire.
8 MR. BURDICK: I don't think that was studied 9 under this particular program I'm talking about.
10 MR. WYLIE: Go ahead and proceed.
11 MR. REED: Trying to get myself back on the 1
, 12 target. We're talking about budgeting for reliability. In 13 yesterday's meeting, we tried to talk about, for instance, 14 valves that might be used in a primary blowdown system, and 15 they said, okay, it's not for the budget research. That is 16 materials that we're talking thermal hydraulic research 4
17 yesterday. It's materials and equipment which says it 18 perhaps falls over into the area of research that you're 19 addressing.
20 Now to focus on that bullet again about 21 flexibility, allowing licenses the flexibility to select the 22 most cost-effective valve we'll put in there, let's assume .
1 23 that somebody is putting in a primary blowdown system, and I 24 have great interest in it succeeding, I personally. So I
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25 would want to see them -- I wouldn't want to see them ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 MMbw 1 misapply valves or select a valve concept that would fail.
2 Ifcan almost tell you a valve concept that's been used for 3 PRCs for a long time that is bound to fail. Okay?
4 MR. BURDICK: If that failure means they are not 5 satisfying NRC safety objectives, then they won' t be able to 6 install that valve.
7 MR. REED: You don't really -- at this time you 8 haven' t made up your mind that kind of valve will fail, and 9 I am referring to an internal pilot operated relief valve, 10 which has no loop sealing. It is just open to, let's say, 11- the pressurizer vapor.
12 You haven' t made up your mind from your 13 research. You haven't done tne research that that kind of 14 valve will fail. History shows that it has right along.
15 MR. EBERSOLE: And yet it's called reliable.
16 MR. REED: So I really don't know that you should 17 allow them the flexibility, and someone ought to get on with 18 the research to point out that certain valves should not be 19 applied to certain duties.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: That's being perscriptive.
21 MR. WYLIE: Let me ask a question. This may not 22 be pertinent to this particular area, or is it? The 23 questions that he's asking, or should that be held for 24 another presenter?
25 MR. EBERSOLE: It's got the number two bullet ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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i 2 MR. WYLIE: It may be, but again, if_this valve 3 has a history of failures, that should be factored into the 4 thinkin in the design process to see whether or not this f 5 valve will meet its objectives. I don't see what the i-6 problem is. If we know this valve is bad, for example --
7 MR. REED: Have you published any paper that says 1 8 that the valve was bad, so Toledo Edison, let's say, won't 9 . apply it?. You haven't.
10 MR. EBERSOLE: There are no statistics of.
11 reliability requirements on things like this, are there, as 1'
/'] 12 there are in the airplane business?
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- . We have a lot of statistics-on 14 types of valves --
15 MR. EBERSOLE: I said requirements. And you know i
16 a valve shall operate 14 dozen successful times without 17 failure, or something.
i 18 MR. BURDICK: That is one of the things I've 19 suggesting we move toward in this presentation. I am not 20 going to show this one again.
21 (Laughter.)
22 MR. WYLIE: Why don' t we go ahead and proceed.
Okay.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
24 (Slide.)
i 25 MR. BURDICK: Again, these are the topics that ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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30 02 06 20 2 MMbw 1 it was agreed I would talk about. Our inspection guidance 2- program which started out at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 3 yet has shown a lot of success. It appears that it is going 4 to be extremely beneficial. It is going to grow rapidly, l- 5 and it has a close relationship with a number of other 6 activities that we have ongoing now at Idaho National 7 ' Engineering Laboratory.
8 So in FY '87, we are moving the program up to 9 Idaho. As you can see, we anticipate that expansion.
- 10 MR. EBERSOLE
- Are you still talking about-
- 11 inspection guidance?
12 MR. BURDICK: This is not now only aimed at 13 inspection guidance, but as I said, it has now broadened.
14 It is related to a number of programs. NRR is going to use
{' 15 it. CRGR, et cetera.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: For the last four or five years, l 17 we've been muttering about the inspection program as being 18 the only program within which we now have this population ,
( 19 thing called walk downs, where you try to get a perspective 20 view of the integral plan, but inspection was the only 21 activity where you saw the plant in physical reality for a 22 long time. And the folks who did that walked around with a 23 piece of paper in their hand and did a comparative of it, 1
24 says, this ought to be here, and is it there? They never l 25 did evaluate the implications of contiguous arrangements
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2 MMbw 1 or anything. They never saw the integral plant as an 2 integral problem. They only saw what in adjustments would 3 be called a comparative example, 4 We were promised by whoever used to run the 5 inspection business that that activity would be extended to 6 visualizing intrinsic arrangement problems, for instance.
7 That inspection would be extended to go beyond simply the 8 comparative examination of the configuration versus the 9 paper to analyze and study, was that a sensible arrangements 10 they were looking at.
11 Has that been factored appropriately now into the 12 inspection process? Do you follow me?
13 MR. BURDICK: I follow you very well.
14 MR. EBERSOLE: I am talking about what in what is 15 now popularly called the "walkdown concept." I can't quite 16 figure that out either.
17 I wish I had a guideline for what you do in a 18 walkdown, because you can't see what's behind an opaque 19 surface.
20 MR. BURDICK: That's right, but part of this 21 program is aimed at using computer techniques to try to give 22 the inspector a more global view of the plant.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: Right.
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2 MMbw 1 be operating up in another system. See what I am saying?
2 MR. EBERSOLE: Sure. It could even be a spatial 3 computerization to show special interrelationships.
4 MR. BURDICK: Certainly.
5 So we think this has a lot of benefit for a 6 number of activities here, offices also at the NRC.
7 Operational safety reliability. This started out 8 as our reliability assurance program, which changed the name 9 partly because it kept being confused with quality 10 assurance. Operational safety seems to be more actually 11 what we are after anyway.
12 MR. EBERSOLE: I am impressed by the wide range
(")T
\_
13 of those numbers up there form 1 to 2500. It looks like 14 some arithmetic conflict.
15 MR. BURDICK: I don't understand.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: Risk base decisionmaking goes as 17 high as 2500 units, whereas operational safety is one. You 18 have to have some mental flexibility here.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: I don' t have that this morning.
20 MR. BURDICK: I am sorry. We are not consistent 21 here. You are write. This is 1.3 million -- 1.33 million.
22 .6 million.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: You left the decimal out.
24 MR. BURDICK: I apologize for that. Like I said
(~)h N.
25 I've been at these other meetings the last few days. I ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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3 MR. WYLIE: That first one is 600,000; is that ,
4 right?
5 MR. BURDICK: 600,000, 200,000, 1.33 million, 2.5 l 6 million, 2 million. The rest of these are in millions.
7 This should be .25 -- .205 million.
i 8
9 10 11 i 12 -
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14 15 -
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21 I 22 23 24 l- 25 i i t
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r 00 03 01 24 2 MMbw 1 Our risk-effectiveness regulations. This is 2 ongoing now at PNL. We expect this to continue as 3 l indicated.
4 Root cause failure analysis. This is related to 5 I the aging program; however, we've made an agreement with 6 AEOD that we would transfer our portion of that program over 7 to them in FY '87, and we will supply them with user 8 requests.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: Let me ask you a question about 10 that. Yesterday we spent nine or ten hours on a thermal
. 11 hydraulics meeting. The meeting had eliminated the fission 12 power component of thermal hydraulics. We have always shut 13 down. Okay? We're dealing with what do we do with decay 14 energy in the long run. And it, of course, turns out that 15 in the final analysis, the root cause failure is thermal ~
16 hydraulics in character. You lose the heat removal process 17 that causes cladding failure, et cetera, and you begin to 18 decrease the mobility. So everything converges to thermal 19 hydraulics in the final analysis, including TAB 45. Root 20 cause must certainly get down to the heat balance on the 21 fuel rods, whether you maintain it or you don' t. And that 22 is a long way from aging, because aging is a predecessor to 23 having a problem at the bottom, which is the root.
24 Are you with me?
25 MR. BURDICK: I'm with you. Things like fuel ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 MR. EBERSOLE: Whatever. We've eventually got to 3 get down to doing something to the cladding, and I don't 4 think that is really properly named. That is a predecessor 5 to the root problem, which is heat balance at the pin, and 6 everything turns out to ve a heat balance at the pin, even 7 for that matter, in the fast reactivity train.
8 So when you say " root causes" -- and maybe this 9 is a good forum to get to the real roots of that. You've 10 heard about Glenn's zeal and pleasure about making the PWR 11 boil. He is trying to modify it.
r~' 12 MR. REED: Boil only for decay heat' removal.
(_)
13 MR. EBERSOLE: I think this is a good forum to 14 call out something, which I don't know whether you've heard 15 of'that or not.
16 We've had some grinding discussions with GESSAR 17 II. GESSAR II is the first plant which, to my great 18 -pleasure, at least began to show some sense in initiating 19 root solutions to problems by acknowledging that that was 20 the root problem, getting the heat out of the core, no 21 matter what the condition of anything else was, and they 22 invoked for the first practical time, the way to do it, and 23 Glenn is trying to do it in an awkward way with the PWR, but 24 it is already in your pocket with the boiler.
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1 MMbw 1 being depressurized,'if it is in trouble, I don't care what .
2 kind of trouble, of evaporating to the drywell space of 3 heating up the water beyond the saturation temperature, 4 because you don' t have any heat, hypothetically, heat 5 removal functions. You've lost electricity or whatever.
6 Letting the exist steam traverse that space in water and 7 be scrubbed with a DF of about 10, of releasing it to the 8 atmosphere for an aperture in the containment.
9 It leaves you with a single action function of a ,
10 200 to 300 gpm makeup, with a jockey pump and a ydllow
~
11 Caterpillar gasoline engine. That cools the core, if the 12 the process has been initated by a transient, which is mot
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13 likely not involving a large LOCA. \
14 Now with that kind of system in your pocket, you 15 could diminish all these damn things in reliability 16 requirements, because you've got a back do^* wh" *ha hall 17 we don't do sensible thinna lika tha* io haunna mn 18 imagination.
19 MR. BURDICK: You mean, as long as we have the 20 super reliable --
21 MR. EBERSOLE: I've got a wheelbarrow device that 22 will work, and yet we hang to this myriad of programs and 23 other things. I am sure we will have to continue. Fine. I 24 like this, but I'd like to have in my pocket a back door, 25 when I don' t believe you.
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2[ MR. BURDICK: Let me enlarge upon it just a 3 little bit, if I can.
4 There are other types of reactors that we're l' 5 concerned about, pressurized water reactors.
- 6. MR. EBERSOLE: I understand. I'm not sure why we 7 should be, except we just blundered into them from the 8 submarines, i
i 9 MR. BURDICK: But the intent here is to'look at 10 the root causes of failure for a wide spectrum of components 11 appearing in safety systems.
2 12 Unless you know what the root cause of failure
{
13 is, how are you going to fix it? How are you going to solve 14 the problem?
15 MR. EBERSOLE: You're talking about subroots to 16 me.
17 MR. BURDICK: -I have a transparency later on that 18 gives an idea of what I am talking about.
i- 19 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm talking about the root of all 4
20 roots.
21 MR. REED: I would like to know, on your second i 22 line up there, this Idaho National Laboratory decision, it 23 says " Risk-based decisionmaking." It is quite a lot of 24 money, and it is increasing. Now we listened yesterday to
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25 a thing called the technical integration center, which is ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 MMbw 1 going to be INEL, and it is going'to be the order of 6 2 million or more yearly funding, increasing, and as a part of 3 the Technical Integration, Center, one of the missions is 4 to the PRA.
5 Now is this risk-based .decisionmaking h'ere, ,
6 A-6851, the same as the Technical 3 Integration Center and 7 it's PRA activities? 7 ,
8 MR. BURDI'dK : It's not the same as that center.
9 It may be. Whoever made that presentation may have figured l
l 10 this mori,ey in there. I don't know. I can' t swear to that.
11 I am using Idaho, however, as an integration center for O 12 combining, as I said, the inspection guidance program with a d
13 number of already ongoing activities up there. ,
4 14 These programs started out initially with 15 individual objectives,-but as the research progressed, th'e 16 workers in each pro rum got a little smarter, and they 17 started solviiy 3 le more problems', until there started to 18 be a little overlap.
19 Now we are combining the programs, so tha', there 20 is more effective, cost-effective work up there.
21 MR. REED: It almost looks like, to me that since 22 the Technical Integration Center begins in fiscal '67, that 23 that is the same or could be the same thing as your A-6851, 24 Their PRA activity would be the same thing.
25 MR. .BURDICK: Part of the PRA activity here is a
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3 My division is the only one in the Office of 4 Research that does a lot of PRA activity. If they are 5 talking about PRA activity, it's probably mine.
6 MR. REED: I just wanted to identify it.
7 MR. BURDICK: Fire risk analysis at a very low 8 level here in support of our risk methods integration and 9 evaluation program, which is winding down. We are doing a 10 PRA of LaSalle Unit 2 and experimenting with some methods.
11 There are, however, some problems that have been 12 identified by one of our contractors, Sandia National
{^/}
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13 Laboratories, and we think that we should reassess the fire 14 risk picture in FY '87, determine if there are any problems, 15 how serious they are, and what we should do programmatically t 16 to address those problems.
p 17 The numbers out here are a guess. I don' t know I c 18 exactly what is going to turn out of this reassessment in FY j 19 '87.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: Where do we stand now on devising i
21 the probability number for a fire which of transportable 22 character, which, therefore, makes it interrelated with the 23 operational discipline, whether the janitor carries 24 acetine with him, who handles the oxyaceletin systems, and
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, 25 all of that? Where have we come up with any sort of a ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 MMbw 1 reasonable enumeration of the five probabilities in areas 2 which are sterite of . fire combustibles in their own right?
3 MR. BURDICK: I will tell you where I am coming 4 at. Perhaps all we have to have is a good method of 5 identifying vulnerabilities and trying to sharpen your 6 pencil with respect to the probability of some janitor 79 carrying some flommable material o'rer the 40-year lifetime 8 of the plant. It could be an exercise in stupidity. If you 1
9 know what the vulnerabilities are in control rooms, you know 10 you don't want fires in control rooms. Take some additional 11 steps to make sure that the hazard is over the 40-year 12 lifetime of the plant, extremely low, why try to calculate
(~)%
\_
13 it.
14 MR. EBERSOLE: Well, there was Browns Ferry.
15 MR. BURDICK: Sure, but I don't think trying --
16 doing a lot of research on --
17 MR. EBERSOLE: What about distributing confidence 18 across such a broad field, physical dispersion that you 19 cannot possibly coincidentally damage all the critical 20 functions.
1 21 MR. BURDICK: Sure. You have to look at whether 22 or not you are vulnerable in certain locations and whether -
! 23 or not you know fires can spread from one area to another, 24 whether or not particulates, are going to cause harm. But I 25 am saying, you may be able to use some screening approach on
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2 Suppose you assume, for exceple, that fire does 3 occur in a location. Look at what is in that location and 4 see if you are vulnerable to some damage, core damage
' S incident.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Identify the perimeter of 7 influence.
8 MR. BURDICK: Exactly. Now I don't think it 9 makes a lot of sense to spend millions of research dollars
- 10 in trying ,to develop models that are going to supposedly 11 ' tell you whether or not somebody over the 40-year lifetime i
12 of the plant is going to do comething stupid. .
I 13 MR, EBERSOLE: You must assume it is going to be 14 one.
15 MR. BURDICK; In a lot of cases that is a very 16 good assumption. If you are going to be hurt by that --
17 MR, EBERSOLE: That leads you automatically into 18 a firm, mature designation, which is impermeably to
, 19 influence, and I think it is perfectly right. a 20 MR. BURDICK: That is where I am coming from.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: That means dampers, ductwork, 22 cables, whatever it is that penetrates that.
23 MR. BURDICK: That's right, i
24 p).
r (Slide.)
25 Let me talk first about our inspection program ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 You have the transition here, as I indicated, from Oak Ridge 3 to 1daho. And the purpose here is to develop these 4 computerized tools by which 1*E and the regions and now also 5 I NRR and these other entities that I identified can utilize 6 elsk information in a very rapid beneficial manner.
7 If you look at these PRAs, one of the problems 8 that is in hand in these productions is that there something 9 incomprehensive, inscrutable -- there are numbers of volumes 10 on nhelves, an inspector trying to leaf through one of these 11 by hand to find some worthwhile information that is going to 12 help him in a particular problem, will probably throw up his
(]
L, 13 hands and quit and leave it there on the shelf.
14 What we have developed a way of loading the 15 information out of the PRA into a computer PC, which the 16 . inspector can access very easy. It is a menu-driven l
17 l artificial intelligence approach, if you will allow that, 18 and he can be a total neophyte as far as knowledge of the 19 l PRA is concerned. The PRA machinations, the fault trees, 20 i event trees, all that kind of stuff, is totally transparent 21 [1 to the user. What he sees are results, what happens when he 22 comes to work end looks at a status board and finds out that 23 certain pieces of equipment, for example, are out of
( r^ 24 commission.
(_))
25 lie can quiz the system and see whether or not ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. ,
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{}000310 1 MMbw 1 there are now single failures existing in the system, 2 whether or not these are tech spec-related. He can look at 3 what inspection modules apply. There is a whole word of 4 information that this inspector can now have at his 5' fingertips. He can do his job a lot more efficiently, and I 6 think a lot more effectively, and thereby making a heck of a 7 lot better use of the limited inspection resources.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: That system was proposed by 9 General Electric, I can't remember now, in about 1970. It 10 was called the matrix spec techs -- tech specs, and so 11 forth, which gave you a composite visualization of the 12 degree of visibility of the plant, according to functional 13 capabilities. It was shown out by NRC as not being 14 traditional, I think.
15 I hear what you are saying, and it sounds great 16 that we are going to get this on the computer, which will i 17 tell you the degree of vulnerability at one point in time, 18 considering the state of maintenance, or whatever.
19 MR. BURDICK: Exactly; right. Working with the 20 exact status of the plant to benefit --
21 MR. EBERSOLE: By the way, I take it again you 22 don't have the decimal points on the 600, and so forth?
23 MR. BURDICK: Right; however, I am consistent on
?
{} 24 this one.
25 (Laughter.)
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2 So some of the objectives here were to develop 3 this use of friendly interactive computer-aided program for 4 the inspectors, so they can assess the risk status of the 5 plant very rapidly an'd use that to guide them in their daily 6 activities.
. 7 Some of the things we are providing this risk 8 information for. Tech spec evaluations. If a system is 9- down for surveillance testing, the inspector can now see 10 what the implications of this are. He may now decide to 11 spend more time looking at backup systems, perhaps. We can
(~) 12 look at the importance of accident initiators, operator
(/
13 reactions, et cetera, and even get some assessment of the 14 importance of certain nonsafety grade systems and 15 components.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: When are we ever going to get a
-17 system that tells the maintenance instrument mechanic or.
18 whoever, that when he goes to fiddle with some single 19 channel, there are ways for him to foul it up and cause a 20 trip that will cost 1 million bucks, with little bitty 21 screwdriver in his hand.
22 How are we going to impress on him that he is 23 dealing with a million dollar program instead of a 3/8
(~% 24 Phillips head screw?
g) 25 MR. BURDICK: Well, I hope that very shortly we ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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.V 1 MMbw 1 -will have defined operation safety reliability programs that 2 will have mechanisms that will assure that those kinds of 3 things are accounted for.
4 MR. EBERSOLE: Maybe he should require that he
- 5 stop for 10 minutes and sit in his chair and don't touch a 6 thing as we, you know, infer in an emergency mode, the 7 operator has to have a period of reflection where he says, 8 I've got $1 million and this miniature screwdriver, which is 9 a shutdown.
10 Something needs to be done to make more 11 deliberate and careful the fiddling around with what you see 12 when you open the box cover.
13 MR. BURDICK: I agree. I think that attention to 14 detail would be --
15 MR. EBERSOLE: Right now, it seems to me the 16 janitor can fling his broom against something and trip out a 17 plant.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: I don't see why that should be 19 so.
20 MR. REED: Jesse, you've got to be practical 21 about the workplace.
( 22 MR. EBERSOLE: Just put a cage around the box; l -
! 23 that's practical.
24 MR. REED: Pretty soon, you can't get to the box, i
25 and that's what security --
l l
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2 MR. REED: I think what we have to do with you, 3 Jesse, is make you work for 25 years as a janitor, and then 4 you would understand better the workplace. You've been in 5 this engineering office so long, you have not been out where 6 the tools are.
7 MR. EBERSOLE: I know, but there would be cages.
8 on my level switches.
9 MR. BURDICK: Again, this program has shown a lot 10 of promise. We have a lot of interest, not only from the 11 -regions, the inspectors, but from the licensees themselves.
12 We're having this prototype demonstration out at ANO-1, and
'13 the owner got very interested, has asked us already if they 14 can get companies of the software, and we have communicated 15 with them exactly what kind of hardware, they will need to 16 implement this, and we plan on sharing this with them.
17 MR. EBERSOLE: That's at ANO-l?
i 18 MR. BURDICK: Yes.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: When is it going to be?
s 20 MR. BURDICK: The demo, I think, is planned for 21 mid-July of this year.
MR. EBERSOLE: If you're out there, maybe it 22 l 23 would be useful for you to execute a sample trip of the 24 turbine, just to hear the gear-shattering roar that comes 25 out of the safety switch, excites the town two miles away.
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3 MR. BURDICK: I don't think they would comply 4 with my request.
5 Then we plan to very shortly assess the 6 integration with the other programs that I mentioned out at 7 Idaho. This is -- what is this -- systems analysis and risk 8 assessment program, a proedure for evaluating tech specs 9 programs. These are again -- these other programs are now 10 getting very closely related to our inspection or risk-based 11 decisionmaking activity. We're going to have to implement a 12 system to update the data base that we are using in this --
13 for these computerized systems. And some of the avenues we 14 think we might take are to look at the 5059 reports, 15 licensee, licensing amendments, FSAR amendments. Maybe 16 there is a lot of information right here within the NRC that 17 we might be able to use to update a lot of the models, so 18 that we don't allow them to get out of date.
19 We may have to, of course, get some verification 20 from the owner from time to time.
21 MR. REED: I have to pick up and support part of 22 what Jesse has said earlier, at this point in, time.
23 What I see here in these program objectives is 24 building of the regulatory business. In other words, we 25 will do massaging of data -- we will risk analyze things.
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% 03 15 1 MMbw 1 We will give the inspectors more bases for doing inspections 2 and building -- I call it the adversarial climate, and we 3 will keep looking at all the activities, small prescriptive 4 detail, whatever.
5 We keep looking at all the activities and try to 6 massage that mass to make reactors more safe and better 7 assure.the health and safety of the public.
8 But again, I think that we are missing the root 9 issue. We will call it the root issue. The root issue 10 being, why massage all this mass. Let's go back and look at 11- the design and improve the design.
12 Why is design so sacred that it resists 13 improvement? Let's improve the design, and then we don't, 14 perhaps, have to focus so hard on the mass.
15 MR. BURDICK: When an inspector asks me what-16 you're doing for me, I can't tell him I am sitting back here 17 improving designs in plants. I have to provide that guy 18 something he can use on a day-to-day basis to deal with the 19 problems he's got in that existing plant at the time that 20 problem arises.
21 MR. REED: Put in a backup, put in the -- I was a 22 parachutists in World War II. I never jumped once with only 23 one parachute. Okay?
24 MR. BURDICK: I wouldn' t jumo with five of them.
)
25 MR. REED: I am just telling you, in a risky ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 MMbw 1 business, sometimes you have to do a job, and I always 2 carried two parachutes and one was called a reserve.
3 The interesting thing about the reserve was it is 4 a tiny parachute by comparison to the main chute, and if you 5 had to use it, you might very well break your legs, but your 6 core, your heart would be alive. All right?
7 MR. BURDICK: I grant the wisdom of it.
I 8 MR. REED: So what I am saying is, why don't we 9 look at the backup issue in the design area, and so we don't
- 10 have to fiddle around with all the riser strengths of the 11 main parachute, trying to make each one infallible?
(" 12 MR. EBERSOLE: Yet, as a depressant to all this
()%
13 furious activity to make everything perfect.
14 MR. REED: I thought that was a beautiful 15 comparison.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: I thought it was too. Just break
, 17 a leg, that's all.
18 (Laughter.)
19 MR. BURDICK: I think we are trying to prevent 20 any broken legs here also.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: I believe you are. As a matter of 22 fact, that's killing us. It ain't worth it, a lot of it.
23 MR. BURDICK: I have to differ with you, Jesse.
24 I think it is very important that this inspector --
25 MR. EBERSOLE: No, I wouldn't diminish that.
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/~ 40 N.')100 03 17 1 MMbw 1 MR. BURDICK: This does not mean that we are not 2 looking at plants in a more global and making sure that we 3 do have adequate backup.
4 MR. EBERSOLE: But we have this practice, you 5 know, of ferociously attacking this myriad of 6 interdependencies and trying to make them all work. It is 7 like trying to play a piece of music with a piano out of 8' tune. They never do all work at once. Somewhere there 9 ought to be some concept that works simply like a 10 wheelbarrow.
11 MR. BURDICK: Give this one a chance. I don't 12 think we're trying to massage a mass here. I think what 13 we're trying to do in this program is allow individuals to 14 get through this gigantic mass down to what it is important.
15 MR. EBERSOLE: There is a lot of Parkinson's law 16 in here and a lot of things that drives the media. If the 17 media printed the truth all the time, they couldn' t sell any 18 papers.
19 If you had a simple system that always you could 20 come into, we wouldn't really have a lot of this. We would 21 worry less about it, and it would be more practical in its 22 reliability problems. But we are hung with it now.
23 MR. BURDICK: That's very true.
r' 24 MR. EBERSOLE: I guess what we are doing is, we C]
25 are working with what we are hung with.
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v 2 MMbw 1 MR. BURDICK: Exactly. I am trying to help that 2 inspector live with what he's got.
3 MR. EBERSOLE: That is your job. You've got to 4 work with what you've been hung with. What I am bitching 5 about is why should we always be hung with it?
6 MR. BURDICK: Hopefully, there will be 7 standardization, simpler, safer plants some day.
8 (Slide.)
9 Some of the past and expected activities in this 10 particular program.
11 As I mentioned, we have developed, or are 12 actually developing a prototype for demonstration at ANO-1.
[
13 We hope to -- this is out-of-date now. This has been to, I 14 guess, mid-July. Same here. The field testing mow is 15 scheduled for later on.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: What does the PRISIM mean?
17 MR. BURDICK: A PRISIM means plant risk 18 information management. Plant risk system information 19 management.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: You've got to have a new 21 vocabulary in this business.
22 MR. BURDICK: Also, we plan to move on to do a 23 prototype of a boiler, Peach Bottom. This is in conjunction 24 with Region 1. Then we plan to develop procedures for
)
25 expanding the modeling and data base for the 1150 plants, i
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, 2 MMbw 1 these half dozen plants that we are now studying in great 2 detail under the severe accident research program.
3 MR. EBERSOLE: While you are in ANO-1, you might 4 step next door to ANO-2, which is a CE plant, and ask them 1
4 5 how they stand now about that horrible, but pretty defined
- 6 problem, where they couldn' t even get the plant on line for J
7 months and months and months, because the heating and I
8 ventilating system didn't work in the control and equipment 9 rooms. That was well-known a couple of years in advance, j 10 they were putting solid state equipment in. It rode on H&V, 11 but H&V was not upgraded to a level compatible with carrying f
12 the station output.
13 So I don't know how many millions they lost, 1
14 patching the H&V system to make it run with solid state l
15 equipment.
l 16 MR. BURDICK: It sounds like a very costly design
! 17 deficiency.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: Yes.
19 MR. BURDICK: Then we intend to, of course, go
- 20 ahead and implement these programs on NUREG 1150 plans.
21 This will be.in FY '87. Concurrently, we will be developing 22 techniques to use the accident sequence evaluation program 23 data base to include the other plants.
B 24 At this point, whether or not the Office of 25 Research is going to continue this program is a little up ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 MMbw 1 in the air. We think that once we get into this production 2 mode, perhaps it ought to be turned over to I&E, and I&E 3 should then take it over; however, the implementation of 4 that accident sequence evaluation program data base will be 5 taking place in the years FY '88 and FY '89.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Could you give me a brief 7 description of ASEP?
8 MR. BURDICK: Accident Sequence Evaluation 9 Program. Looked at all the PRAs that had been published up 10 to a certain date when the program started. We are no 11 revisiting those that have been published since. But they 12 looked at the dominant accident sequences from those PRAs 13 and then looked at specifics of other plants that did not 14 have PRAs and modified the dominant accident sequences 15 accordingly.
16 So what we have now is a family of dominant 17 accident sequences for the 100 now licensod plants. We do 18 not have a lot of system details, we think, and we may have l
19 to go back to owners to verify some system information to 20 make sure that we have the latest changes, that kind of 21 thing.
22 Again, we are going to try to use the 5059
, 23 reports, licensing amendments and FSAR amendments, to try to 24 keep these dominant accident sequences current. Actually, 25 we have more than that. We go down to the train level and l
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2 MR. EBERSOLE: We were looking yesterday at all 3 the B&W plants, all except Bellefonte, which is not running 4 yet. And out of those, we picked the one that was rather 5 quite obvious, the ones that didn't have PRAs, the ones that 6 didn't have other programs that indicated owner-operated, 7 interested in the safety and efficiency of the plant.
8 Clearly, there was all evidence standing in front of us 9 there, that those surely would have been the plants where we 10 had the most trouble, and they were -- Rancho Seco, 11 Davin-Besse.
~
12 Are you telling me that you are doing this sort 13 of thing for those plants to synthesize what should have 14 been a PRA?
15 MR. BURDICK: Not to synthesize what should have 16 been a PRA, but do do a rather high-level PRA, call it a 17 first cut.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: What are the cascades that can 19 develop in these plants?
20 MR. BURDICK: That is what we are trying to 21 develop. Models that will tell us that at a fairly high 22 level.
23 There can be, will be problems that can occur
~'s 24 that we cannot identify because of the level we are (Q
25 operating at. For years, you know, Davis-Besse stood out ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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I 3 And I think the political atmosphre is that we would still 4 let them wait.
i i 5 MR. BURDICK: Once we get this program, that is,
. 6 the ASEP data base, to a point where we think it is 7 truthworthy, I think that we can perhaps discover some 8 potential problems at these plants and use it in high level j 9 fashion, what we would be using with the PRISIM program, 10 with a full PRA like ANO-1 has.
11 MR. EBERSOLE: You put in cascades, stoppers.
12 MR. BURDICK: Whatever. Might be able to make a 13 number of recommendations.
14 MR. EBERSOLE: Yes.
15 MR. BURDICK: So that is some of the things we l-16 have been doing and have planned.
17 I would like to make a very detailed presentation 18 of this program, but unfortunately, tempus fugits.
19 I am going to skip some of these. In fact, I 20 will skip the whole rest on the risk-based decisionmaking, 21 and I will go on into the operational safety reliability
- 22 program.
23 (Slide.)
{} 24 25 For a while now, it struck me that there are actually about four basic questions that we have to deal i /
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3 These questions are, number one, what constitutes 4 acceptable risk from nuclear power plants. That is a safety 5 goal which the Commission is now considering. We have to 6 have an idea of what the risk is from these nuclear 7 power plants, how the risk could be reduced, if necessary, 8 and then how can an acceptable level of safety be maintained 9 over the lifetime of the plant.
10 If you can answer these four questions 11 successfully, you've done it. You've done your job.
12 It is this last question where operational safety 13 or reliability assurance programs enter in. These are the 14 mechanisms the owner has to have in place over the 40-year 15 lifetime of the plant to assure that he is maintaining this 16 acceptable level of safety.
17 (Slide.)
18 Here is our budget breakdown and some of the 19 objectives. We are evaluating the effectiveness of 20 reliability techniques through case studies on trial 21 applications. We have been cooperating with five utilities, 22 looking at what you might consider to be reliability 23 assurance programs at those utilities, and we try to
(~ 24 identify the liability tasks that were important to V}
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2 These two things are crucial to maintaining an 3 acceptable level of safety.
4 Now again, we want to then develop some 5 risk-based method to evaluate performance indicators and 6 develop some alert levels, so that you can spot an 7 unsatisfactory trend or a trend that if it continues will 8 lead to some potentially serious problem.
9 You want to head these things off at the pass.
10 MR. EBERSOLE: Let me ask you about this question 11 here. One of the things about the safety systems is the
(~S 12 challenge frequency of them. The lower that is, the less V
13 reliable you have to have them, et cetera.
14 There is a school of thought that says what we 15 really need to do when we go downgrade one step into 16 controlled systems which don't have to have the 1E 17 categorization over liability and all the pedigrees, and so 18 forth, that we should upgrade the non-lE integrating systems 19 to catch a plant in a transient with somewhere the 20 reliability of a safety system and stop it before it trips 21 the safety system in a lower and.less efficient mode, but 22 still satisfactory.
23 In short, reduced challenges.
24 Now EPRI works on this business. It call this
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1 MMbw 1 front of the safety system that stops the drift to a 2 transient, which will cause a trip, which then brings a 3 cascade of problems.
4 Is this in your thought process to look at the 5 reliability and perhaps. require coincidence redundancy in 6 some of the control systems, which are not now in place?
7 MR. BURDICK: No. We are not looking at that 8 kind of thing in this program.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: You know, you find a turbine trip 10 will occur, because of one cotton-picking little vibration 11 switch. The vendor has said that is so good, I am willing 12 to risk a million bucks on the fact that if the janitor hits 13 it, it won't go off, or whatever. Yet a lot of our trips 14 come from these things. When you look at a turbine, by the 15 way, and go upstream from what trips set, what you see as a 16 contract multiplication system. By the time you gt up to 17 the point where you need a scram, an anticipatory scram on 18 the stop valve, now you are right out into the coincident 19 redundancy. You apply a lot of reliability, but all of that 20 depends on some little device down the line, a relay, 21 reduction relay, or whatever, back in the electrical or 22 machinery, which are single function standard commercial 23 grade systems.
24 MR. BURDICK: What we are doing here is trying to l
25 identify what are the mechanisms that an ownership have in i
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3 MR. EBERSOLE: Duke Power recently let a rubber 4 hose blow that knocked all the air out and pushed two units 5 out for I don't know how long. One rubber hose. Our 6 esteemed Duke Power Company. You're going to stop that, 7 aren' t you?
8 MR. BURDICK: Well, we're not going to start 9 investigating that kind of detail.
10 MR. EBERSOLE: I hear you. Everybody wants to be 11 cosmic, but unless you put the cotter keys in, nothing 12 works.
13 MR. BURDICK: I agree with you, but there are --
14 MR. EBERSOLE: -- limits.
15 MR. BURDICK: Yes.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: So you sample them at the worst 17 point in the system. You know, like Davis-Besse, Rancho 18 Seco.
19 MR. WYLIE: As I understand it, what you are 20 looking at is the programs that the utility has.
21 MR. BURDICK: Right.
22 MR. WYLIE: Looking at the precursors.
23 MR. BURDICK: Let me give you some examples to 24 try to clear this up. There are many ways a unit or a 25 station can be organized, managerially, structurally --
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2 MR. BURDICK: -- politically. But there are 3 certain fundamental things we are discovering that a 4 licensee and owner has to do, no matter what part of the 5 organization does it, but it has got to be done. There are 6 a number of these items. They are not motherhood items 7 either. They are very important items in any organization 8 that is going to run a nuclear power plant.
- 9 For example, do you set goals, reliability goals?
10 Do you trend reliability? Do you have alert levels to, you 11 know, issue a SITEM, when you start spotting bad trends?
12 Do you have good quality assurance activities? Do you have 13 follow-up? Do you have closeout on problems and prioritize 14 --
that kind of thing is what I am talking about.
15 MR. EBERSOLE: Does anyone have a feeling of 16 urgency?
17 MR. BURDICK: I do. I think the big pay-off in 18 nuclear safety is exactly reliability assurance. You do a 19 PRA, a snapshot in time, of that plant's safety profile.
20 That profile can change over the 40-year lifetime of 21 that plant radically, drastically.
22 You have to have, in place, reliability assurance 23 mechanisms and programs to make sure that you maintain that 24 acceptable level over the lifetime of that plant. That is
{'}
25 all there is to it.
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(^/j00 x_ 20 01 1 Mimie 1 MR. BURDICK: Against reliability criteria?
2 MR. EBERSOLE: Yes. Assurance that you obtained 3 the designated reliability.
4 MR. BURDICK: We are advocating specifying 5 reliability right in the design of the procurement process, 6 tracking reliability against those? Is that what you are 7 talking about?
8 MR. EBERSOLE: Yes.
9 MR. BURDICK: That is all part of this. You have 10 ' got to do that, you have got to do it well.
11 So ultimately, we want to then provide a technical 12 basis for the Staff to evaluate these reliability programs (w)
\-
13 that might be proposed also in a tradeoff fashion by 14 licensees. And that would move us into an evaluation of 15 pros and cons of performance-based regulation compared to 16 the detailed prescriptive regulation that we discussed.
17 MR. EBERSOLE: What do you do about reliability 18 when you are talking about a hostile environment situation, 19 in which the hostile environment doesn' t materialize except 20 once in a lifetime?
21 MR. BURDICK: There is no guarantee that that is 22 going to exist once in a lifetime, or not in a lifetime of 23 ~ the plant. So, you have to make sure that the equipment is 24 going to operate in that hostile environment. That should
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1 Mimio 1 MR. EBERSOLE: I've seen equipment loaded into 2 potentially hostile environment just because it was handy 3 and cheap to do so. And with it was bought the 4 unreliability potential of having it not work that once in a 5 lifetime case, where it was critical to the sfety of the 6 plant.
7 MR. BURDICK: I went to a doctor once and I said, 8 " Doc, it hurts when I do that."
9 Ile said, " Don' t do that."
10 MR. EBERSOLE: I know. But they still do it.
11 MR. BURDICK: No, you should not put equipment in 12 environments where it is not designed for it.
13 (Slide) 14 !!ere's a little cartoon. Again, I think there are 15 two aspects to this: Assuring the safety of plants over 16 their lifetime; assure the low frequency of challenges and 17 assure the high safety system availability.
18 And the mechanisms that you have in place 19 certainly have to address these two items.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: The one on the right is the one 21 where you could improve the low frequency by more attention 22 to the so-called controlled complex, couldn' t you?
23 For instance, it doesn't scram the reactor, but 24 sets it back X percent while you catch up and figure out why 25 the hell it got out of order.
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1 Mimie 1 MR. BURDICK: My own feeling is there are a lot of 2 improvements that can be made in the control system designs 3 that we have'in nuclear power plants.
4 MR. EBERSOLE: Maybe the classical problem one is 1
5 the one we know on the B&W integrated -- the ICS on B&W 6 where it seems as though the plant is in some kind oE 7 tailspin for which there is no defined state of affairs 8 until you actually experience it.
9 l
MR. BURDICK: And control systems, I think, will 10 get more complex as we move to digital control systems using 11 dynamic models of systems. We are going to have to look at e- 12 these a lot more carefully yet, because there could be k_)N 13 combinations of inputs and faults that could get the plant 14 in a very serious situation.
15 MR. EBERSOLE: Yes.
16 (Slide) 17 MR. BURDICK: Some past accomplishmer.cs.
18 We have coalesced now a number of reliability 19 practices from several industries. We looked at what the 20 j FAA was doing, what NASA was doing, the Department of 21 Defense was doing. -
22 l Some of their approaches were applicable, some i
23 not. They were faced with very different problems. In some 24 cases, for example, you get in a defense missile program,
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3 They are faced with much different problems than 4 we are. They fire off sometimes 25 rockets a year, get all 5 the data they want. That is the luxury that they have --
6 one luxury they have that we don't.
7 We have had discussions with INPO and EPRI and 8 actually, as I said, five cooperating utilities. We have 9 completed a survey of the potential applicability of 10 reliability technology to help resolve generic issues and 11 prevent abnormal occurrences, rg 12 Again, I think this is very promising. These are V
13 things that you really have to do if you are going to 14 operate your plant in a very safe, acceptable manner.
15 In an initial trial use -- this was at Trojan --
16 we demonstrated this technique to help assure emergency 17 diesel generator availability. And we.are now involved in 18 developing risk-based performance indicators. IE has the 19 lead on this. This was a two-day meeting we just had with 20 IE and representatiaves from other offices.
21 But we did take a look at LERs and NPRDS data to 22 look at the Davis Besse aux feedwater system to see if there 23 could have been some prediction of problems there. And 24 again, we think we had a success.
25 MR. EBERSOLE: Wasn't that rather obvious from the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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56 (Q'100 20 05 1 Mimie 1 time zero that with the two turbine-driven pumps and nothing 2 else, that they were in trouble? It didn' t take much 3 inspection to see that.
4 MR. BURDICK: Well, perhaps not. But in general 5 there may not be problems that are all that obvious and 6 could still --
7 , MR. EBERSOLE: You know, the reason I nention that 8 is, that was said to be a plant in full compliance with all 9 NRC regulations. It had redundancy, it had -- you could ,
10 tick off the rules and they followed them all. And you 11 co'uld saV, oh, it is in compliance. ,
12 And that looks like this other nonprescriptive 13 business. It was nonprescriptive that they should have --
14 they got away without. diversity. There was no requirement 15 for diversity in any physical context or anything.
16 MR. BURDICK: A lot of things come into' play.
17 here. You could call up the question about --
18 MR. EBERSOLE: It was a dog from day one.
19 MR. BURDICK: Pre-op testing may not have been 20 adequate also.
21 MR. REED: I'm ,having a problem here, and Jesse 22 brings me into it because he says, okay, the design was 23 vulnerable from day one, whi~ch is obvious to almost any 24 designer, I would think, who had any credentials.
25 You are trying to avoid saying it is the design.
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. (]^*002006 1 Mimie 1- MR. BURDICK: No, I'm not.
2 MR. REED: Let me continue.
3 MR. BURDICK: I'll say right on it has a design 4 problem, period.
5 MR. REED: I look at this whole reliability, 6 design reliability research proposal. I look at key words 5 7 in it. That it is mostly an operational reliability 8 insurance. It is to operate safely; the licensee is 9 primarily responsible for safety; allow licensees m,
10 flexibility; implement the safety goal; inspector guidance; 11 risk-based decisionmaking; assess risks by computers; update 12 the data base and then have more data base; assume safety
(-)
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13 system -- high safety system availability.
14 And I get the feeling that if I was to weigh this 15 thing, it is highly operational and very little relationship 16 to design improvement or design root cause detection and fix P
17 it and the reliability of valves and the reliability of
/
18 systems and equipment to give the operator a reasonable 19- burden in the workplace.
, 20 Let's go back to the history of other equipment 21 and its evolution. Let's talk about the automobile, having 22 some experience with the Model T Pord.
23 It had two brakes; two heel brakes, steel shoes.
("%, 24 And only one way to put the brakes on. That was the Model Q /:
25 T.
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- (G'700 20 07 1 Mimie 1 Now, look what happened to the automobile over the 2 years. There were (esign changes. We went to four-wheel 3 brakes; we went from mechanical to hydraulic; and then we 4 finally -- I think the government got into the act and said, 5 hey, you have got to have not only the emergency brake and 6 hydraulic brakes on all four wheels, you have got to have 7 diagonal braking as another element of safety.
8 Now, when are we going to -- you know, we are a 9 young industry from a design point of view. Nuclear is 10 young from a design point of view. It is only 30 years old, 11 35, 40 years old at the most. The automobile is 100 years
(~T 12 old in its evolution, and they have built many of them and
, . %s) 13 it has got to these design improvements.
14 But, I think that your reliability assurance 15 research is heavily tilted towards massaging the operational 16 and not looking for design vulnerabilities or researching 17 those vulnerabilities and doing something about them, like 18 Davis Besse.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: Cheers.
20 MR. BURDICK: That's not true.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: Anyway whether it is true or not, 22 it is a problem. I saw a highly-colored investigation --
23 MR. BURDICK: I agree there was a problem.
! 3 24 MR. EBERSOLE: In Davis Besse there was an intense
_ J 25 search to see if there was compliance to regulations, not ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 And the coloration extended to the fact that they 3 really could claim a nice, convenient exit; poor j 4 maintenance, lousy upkeep, operational ignorance, when I 5 thought the roots of it was design deficiency, But, there 6 is a built-in tendency in the regulatory process not to ,
7 condemn a design. Bring anything you can conceive in front 8 of me and I will patch it until it works. Nobody ever says, 9 go home and give me something good. And this is laced with 10 that philosophy.
I 11 It is not go home and give me something good. It 12 is somehow I will make do with what the industry at large '
("}-
V 13 has handed me, which is a snake nest. ,
14 MR. BURDICK: This program recognizes that there 15 are certain fundamental sources of problems. Design is one 16 of them. If you are going to have a safe plant, it has to 17 be designed well. You have to hayo well-manufactured 18 components. you have to install them properly, you have to 19 operate them properly, you have to maintain them properly.
20 We cover all bases.
21 I don't care what the root cause of the problem 22 is. A well-designed operational safety reliability program 23 is designed to identify the problem, If it is a serious 24 problem, to.close out on it, a design problem included.
25 Not omitting design problems.
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1 Mimie 3 RR. EBERSOLE: In a way what i see here is T2 L historically what an ' opera. tor doeg, He will take prido, 3 great pride in showing that he is he nmart that he can work i 4; a booby trap. Ne won't complain back .to the management, I
$ because that would depreciate hi's raputatign. So, he won't 6l even tell them that he is working a . booby trap.
7 I The SL-1 was a caco in point, 1 don't know :
8 inether anyone told ther. they were working with a booby trap 9
i 9 when thuy blev it op or not. But, nobody ever goes back to .
i 10 < say thi<a is a mcBs. You have given :te a snakepit. I don't 11 : wanh ,it.
12 MR. uGRDICX: That n why you shculd havs i
13 performance indi!:aterk, And perhaps a number of them. Some 14 of them being redundant that are going t6 spot problems for 15 l yott so you don't rely on just one source of information like 16 , an ope.rator. And perform.snee indicators are part and I
17 percel of this program.
18 ,i P'R . EBERSOLE: You can do a wonderful job on .a
, I 19 1 lousy project.
20 MR. BURDICX: I suppose ycu can.
21 l <
(Slide)
. I 22 .MR REED: I think we lost something here in 23 trying to communicate.
24 i As the operator representative art ACRS, I think 25 there ere many operators down there that un:ierst.and j ;
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61 N')1002010 1 Mimie 1 difficult burdens and recognize difficult burdens.
2 One of the reasons I'm here is to try to say that 3 there is a burden, that there are some problems in looking 4 for the design vulnerabilities in our research, in this 5 proposal research, and getting to those design 6 vulnerabilities and doing some improvements.
7 Now,-I was fretting yesterday when I was in the 8 workplace I kept fighting to get the industry to say, hey, 9 we must do something for a reserve parachute on PWRs, 10 certain PWRs, particularly the B&W system, to get a backup 11 decay heat removal system like primary blowdown.
r'g 12 Okay. While I was in the industry I could never
- tv 13 move the issue. So, I come into the ACRS and I have been 14 shouting ever since I got here to do something about it.
15 And lo and behold, I always wind up on the wrong team. Now, 16 all of a sudden Toledo Edison looks like they are going to 17 do it. You know, one little company out there by itself is 18 going to do it.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: That's right.
20 MR. REED: Why can't I get on the right team that 21 says, do it.
22 MR. EBERSOLE: ANO-2 did it also. Very silently, 23 quietly, they got a valve there. You don't hear about it 24 much, but it is there. Palo Verde. And it was the company 25 that did it. There was no heat, no asking by NRC.
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'V 1 Mimie 1 MR. BURDICK: I can't answer for all of NRC, but 2 I think NRR has a number of tech assistance programs --
3 MR. EBERSOLE: What NRC does comes down from the 4 Commissioners.
5 MR. BURDICK: Some things we are up to in this 6 program, are participating and developing this IEEE Guide on 7 Reliability Assurance. We have a technical report assessing 8 technology. I have seen it in draft form. I think it is 9 superb. I hope that you people will read it carefully, and 10 I hope you come to the same conclusion that I did.
11 This is an extremely worthwhile effort.
r'y 12 What is the bottom line? I guess the complete NJ 13 demonstration of plantwide implementation will be in '88 and 14 '89 following demonstrations on trial systems. There is one 15 in '87 on a standby system, then here in '87 and '88 on an 16 operating system.
17 MR. EBERSOLE: On that fourth ballet, I came back 18 from Japan last year in an unbelieving state when they said 19 they never had a failure to start and run it. That must 20 bear some intense investigation.
21 I understand they build those machines for the 22 nuclear industry with features that arc oriented toward 23 disuse, standby duty, and so forth. I don't know whether
(~} 24 they have got multiple starting systems, or whatever.
\s' 25 But, they claim there are no statistics on ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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I 2 MR. BURDICK: Are these hot or cold starts?
3 MR. EBERSOLE: Their machines are preheated all 4 the time. They are not running, but they are virtually up 5 to operating. temperature.
6 And what they hTve in the way of guaranteed 7 starting, multiple starting systesa or guaranteed 8 compression starts or whatever, I don't know. But they say j 9 there are no statistics on failures.
10 That's hard to believe.
11 MR. BURDICK: For diesels that is startling.
12 MR. EBERSOLE.: They are just no t run-of-the-mill 13 diesels that you put -in boats and things. They are nuclear j 14 plant dieseis. Maybe we better buy them.
i 15 (Slide) l' 16 MR. BURDICK: I'll move on to the evaluation of 17 risk importance of exist.ing regulatory requirements. j 18 Here again we are tryihg td identify regulatory
, 19 requirements that may have : marginal importance to reactor !
l l j 20 safety. We want to analyse requirements, look at their }
l- 21 estimated impacts on safety and the costs of the e
22 requirements, compare the two, and f: hen propose l6 1
23 modifications of these regulatory requirements as necessary, f 24 with estimate of change in risk and ccst.
25 MR. EBERSOLE: When you look at that, are you l ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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i 3 l MR. BURDICK: I think that is one of the 4 fundamental purposes of the program, to weed out the --
5 MR. EBERSOLE: Things that just take time but 6 don' t do any good.
7 MR. BURDlCK: Yes. Time and money.
8 ,
MR. WYLIE: Is this all regulations or l
B 9 requirements, or just in operational?
10 MR. BURDICK: We are looking at a selected feu 11 right now. We have also limited resources.
12 MR. WYLIE: But I mean the scope.
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13 MR. BU'RDICK : I hope it will be an ongoing 14 activity as long as the agency exists.
15 ,
HR. E8ERSOLE: A lot of this is in tech specs, y
16 isn't it?
17 MR. BURDICK: Wa are looking at tech specs. A 18 ; look at tech . Specs is planned under this program. We have 19 j another research program dealing with technical 20 specifications and t'cying to put LCOs and surveillance test t
21 integrals on an analytical basis using PRAs.
22
- MR. EBERSOLE: If this marginal performance to 23 r.eactor safety comes in the shape of, you don' t need as much (N 24 h anyway because I hcVe a comfortable back door, there is an
(-) l 25 awful lot of work and detail to be saved. But you need a ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 MR. BURDICK: For somet of these things, perhaps.
3 For some of these things maybe you don' t even need a back 4 door.
5 MR. EBERSOLE: Maybe you don't.
6 MR. BURDICK: Maybe in the early days of this 7 agency something was thought to have been necessary.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: For instance on H&V systems in the 9 control room, maybe you can bring.up some portable systems 10 and cool the room.
11 MR. BURDICK: I see what you are talking about.
12 It is a possibility.
- b< x 13 (Slide) 14 In 1985 we looked at a number of existing 15 regulations. I think it was about 40 or so. And then we
, 16 prepared a detailed analysis of some items that were 17 selected out of that previous analysis.
18 We looked at reactor containment, leakage 19 requirements, whether or not we needed MSIV leakage control 20 system. And we looked at the regulatory review process for
- . 21 reactor fuel designs.
22 In some cases there was marginal benefits, some 23 cases very costly activities were required. For example, 24- leakage -- containment leakage requires a lot out of the
(^)
'%d 25 licensee. e ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 We have selected some regulatory topics to look at 2 this year. These are listed for you.
3 MR. EBERSOLE: What is the source term that is 4 used for MSIV leakage control on a PWR, do you know?
5 Do you suppose it is the TID?
6 MR. BURDICK: I think they have to see whether or 7 not Part 100 requirements --
8 MR. EBERSOLE: With the TID releases? I think it 9 is illusionary, the whole thing.
10 MR. BURDICK: Illusionary? I think that is what 11 our look-see verified.
~s 12 MR. EBERSOLE: You are just killing yourself doing (b
13 something you don' t have to do. You can have a leakoff some 14 place, or for that matter, a vacuum system. It is a lot 15 cheaper.
16 MR. BURDICK: Here are some topics we have decided 17 to look at in the '87-89 timeframe. Equipment
, 18 qualification; fire protection; Appendix R; OA requirements; 19 and standard review plan issues.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: What are you going to do on turbine 21 missiles?
22 MR. WYLIE: He's already done that.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: Analyze -- oh, I see, in fiscal 24 '86.
I p>
25 MR. BURDICK: Do we have a draft report?
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'l Mimie 1 MR. BELOTE: That will be in this month.
2 MR. WYLIE: What did you conclude?
3 MR. BURDICK: Do you know what is going to be in 4 that draft report, conclusionwise?
5 MR. BELOTE: I can guess, but I haven' t seen it.
6 This is one of our programs. The reports, 7 preliminary reports that we have gone into on '86 topics, we 8 are due to get first drafts on those at the end of this 9 month or the first of June on all four topics.
10 Our turbine missiles -- although this is one of -
11 the topics selected by our Advisory Committee to examine 12 this, we felt that because of the changes that had been made dgs 13 in the requirements in the blade structures and in the 14 safety testing and inspection of those systems, that it 15 might not seem of much benefit to change the regulations.
16 In other words, there is a process being followed 17 now by IE and by NRR that does not necessarily reflect the 18 whole procedure, but has reduced the problem considerably.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm waiting for the day that l
20 somebody finds a waste rag in the electrohydraulic drainpipo 21 and it won' t dump.
22 Are you with me?
23 MR. BURDICK: Yes.
I
(- 24 MR. EBERSOLE: You only open the can and look at
~ ( )/
25 the electrohydraulics. And yet it depends on the dump ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 system, just like a PWR system does. It has got a dump 2- volume and it has got an open can, I believe. But, I am 3 waiting for the day somebody leaves waste in it, it doesn't 4 dump, and the turbine comes apart.
5 I'm waiting for that day to coincide with one of 6 the more modern changes in which you have held in 7 synchronous lock-in all of the driven equipment being 8 carried by the turbine up to 186 speed, when it comes apart, 9 which disintegrates the entire station, not just the 10 turbine.
11 (Slide) 12 MR. BURDICK: I want to talk just a little bit 13 about our root causes of component failures.
14 This transparency was lifted from some material 15 for another presentation. These are directions for the user 16 of the menu-driven software. These are the kind of things 17 i we are calling rcot causes.
18 You will notice design inadequacy shows up right 19 here next to the bottom. But faulty manufacture, improper 20 testing, improper configuration control, this is one serious-21 problem that I think has to be addressed in an operational 22 safety reliability program.
23- Drawings get way out of date; control room "3 24 operators, maintenance people, don't know --
-(Q 25 MR. EBERSOLE: Where would Palo Verde have fallen ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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21 01 1 Mimie 1 in that chart?
2 MR. BURDICK: I don' t know. This is just an 3 example of --
4 MR. EBERSOLE: Do you have improper testing?
5 MR. BURDICK: There is improper calibration --
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Oh, it is number two.
7 MR. BURDICK: Improper calibration, there is 8 maintenance, there is improper testing.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: That took Palo Verde out.
10 MR. BURDICK: Anyway, this just illustrates if you 11 had good information like this you might be able to put your rN 12 fingers on some significant problems that you can then, with LN 13 the reliability program move on to solve.
14 If you had good fractions for these root causes, 15 if out of all the failures that occurred for this type of j 16 component, or this system, X percent of them were due to 17 this kind of problem, you could even derive importance 18 measures from PRAs to see how important that problem dan to 19 core melt frequency, or system unavailability.
20 This kind of information also just has qualitative 21 value I think in the reliability program.
22 MR. EBERSOLE: How do you separate the last two 23 bars at the bottom? System interaction inadequacy?
f~N 24 MR. BURDICK: Yes. That is a problem that we, I
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25 think, solved by considering the harsh environment being one ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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- /~100 21 02 70 L) 1 Mimie 1 one beyond the design.
t 2 MR. EBERSOLE: See, the two bottom ones fit 3 together in the absence of good system interactive studies.
4 MR. BURDICK: Sure. You could put inadequately i 5 designed component in an environment that is just to harsh 6 for whatever it was designed.
7 MR. EBERSOLE: Because the designer didn't know 8 what the environment was, on account of the bosses never 9 tell the individual compartments how to work.
10 MR. BURDICK: Again, in a well-designed 11 reliability assurance or operational safety reliability 12 program, I think a lot of those would simply be run better.
13 So, we think the root causes of f ailure, .not only 14 for this example, but for a lot of major components and 15 systems, would be of very great value to spot problems and 16 -therefore have some idea of what to work on to keep the 17 plant running in a safe mode.
18 So this is what we are talking about when we say 19 root causes.
20 (Slide) 4 21 Some budgetary information here. As you can see, 22 the Office of Research will have zero for that in '87 and 23 onwards. But AEOD will be picking this up.
24 MR. EBERSOLE: Is that thousands?
25 MR. BURDICK: This is now in thousands.
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~ }00 21 03 1 Mimie 1 (Slide) 2 Let me talk a little about fire research. That 3 was one of the requested topics. Again, we are going to 4 revisit the fire area in FY '87, try to identify what 5 problems remain; what kind of problems these are; is it a 6 problem with Appendix R; is it a problem with implementation 7 of Appendix R; how serious the problems are; what we have to 8 do to solve them.
9 And again, I have just put some figures, very 10 rough estimates out here as to what might be needed for 11 follow-on programmatic support in '88 and '89.
12 MR. EBERSOLE: I guess I should call attention to 13 a letter that came out last week about system interactions, 14 A17, in which we upraided the staff a little bit because 15 they took the case of fire damage resulting in system 16 inaction, or the killing -- inactivation of system 17 functions, without considering the erratic, sporadic, the 18 hot short problem, the generation of wrong signals and so 19 forth. They took the philosophy which has been 20 disproved.
21 You know, like when we look at the air system 22 on PWR in a slowly degrading mode with sporadic performance 23 you can get all sorts of funny things happen that you never r~N 24 get with a clean break to zero output.
.Q 25 They were going down the ACP road, just steady on ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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00 21 04 72 1 Mimie 1 with that in frank contradiction to you, because you have 2- got fault propagation with spurious signals. How do you 3 drift apart like that?
4 They are not doing what you are doing, but they 5 should, and the letter so states.
, 6 MR. BURDICK: I wasn' t there. I wasn't 7 responsible for the technical resolution of A17.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: I know. But it is buried in there.
9 MR. BURDICK: We have been in communication with
-10 those people. This list actually was supplied by a.
11 concerned contractor who said these still might problems 12 that we should think about, look into. And we are going to 13 do that, get some handle on how serious, perhaps, these 14 items might be.
15 MR. EBERSOLE: In fire control, I believe mostly i
16 in reinforced concrete walls without any holes in them --
l 17 but we always put holes in them and bring cabling and pipe
- j. 18 in and ductwork in. And when we put in ductwork we put in I
19 dampers. And the dampers have been chintzy things on which j 20 there is virtually no reliability and no programs to keep up
- 21 with their operational assurance or anything.
22 And probably the upgraded source has been 23 validation of the fire protective logic. I hear there are a 24 few movements in the direction of doing something about 25 those damper reliabilities, but not much. What do you
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1 Mimie. I contemplate?
2, Remember, they are to replace the hole in the 3 concrete wall.
4 MR. BURDICK: Yes. That may be a problem.
5 ..R. EBERSOLE: You know the classic --
6 MR. BURDICK: I think it may contribute to a 4 7 couple of problems.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: A lot of them are driven by fusable i
9 links and that don't work until you are too hot to kill 10 electrical equipment anyway. They are not dual, they are 11 not really-safety grade in an operational reliability 12 context. They are just a little tin thing that waves in the L 13 wind. The never operate until something happens. I don't 14 think there is any operational sequence -- periodic testing, 4
15 or hasn't been.
4
-16 MR. BURDICK: Hopefully, this effort in '87 will 17 spot potential problems like that.
18 MR. WYLIE: Basically ~this is an analysis program 4
~
19 to identify problem areas. It is not any hardware testing 20 or anything associated with this. This is basically-to 21 ' identify whether you should do something.
22 Is that correct?
. 23 MR. BURDICK: We are going to have to look into 24 some hardware aspects as we examine some of these.
25 MR. WYLIE: Okay.
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00 21 06 74 1 Mimie 1 1 MR. BURDICK: Smoke control. Is the ventilation 2 ducting that is perhaps capable --
3 MR. WYLIE: So these do represent actual testing?
4 MR. BURDICK: Actual hardware testing?
5 MR. WYLIE: Yes.
6 MR. BURDICK: No. I don't think -- If we do 7 identify potentially serious problems in FY '87, the 8 solution to the problems and the funding for that would be 9 supplied in the out years. I don't see a lot of testing as 10 being needed any more.
11 I know we have set control room cabinets on fire 12 to see what would happen to them.
13 MR. EBERSOLE: The last time I was out at Sandia 14 they showed new cabling which is supposedly fire proof or 15 fire resistant. It is always a loose word that doesn't ever 16 mean anything. Can be ignited if it is properly grouped in 17 about seven or eight cables in a corner control cabinet and 18 is ignited by the typical plastic bottle of acetone carried s 19 , by an electrician to clean contacts, as a source term of 20 fire.
21 They find that produces a progressive 22 autocatalytic fire right on up into the board, where I think 23 the current design logic is that it won' t progress f rom that
's 24 point. But it will.
(O 25 Hasn'lt that come out of Sandia yet in a formal ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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00 21 07 75 1 Mimie 1 paper report form that they find this combustibility to b 2 still with us?
3 MR. BURDICK: I don't recall any formal report.
4 There was a number of presentations made --
5 MR. EBERSOLE: We went out and watched an exhibit.
I 6 MR. WYLIE: I was going to ask a question. I 7 believe in review of the '87 budget last year, fire 8 protection research was zeroed out, wasn't it? I thought it 9 was. That program we were thinking of was cancelled.
10 MR. BURDICK: Correct me if I'm wrong, the DET 11 program -- I j
w 12 MR. RICHARDSON: That ha been zerced.
I v.
13 MR. BURDICK: As I said, we will revisit from a i
14 risk standpot to see how important --
15 MR. WYLIE: Did they actually finish the program I 16 Jesse was referring to?
l- 17 MR. DATTA: My name is Amar Datta. I am program L
l 18 manager for DET fire protection program.
l r 19 This program that has been referred to is an i
20 ongoing program that has been zeroed out from fiscal '86. !
I 21 MR. WYLIE: The end of '86?
22 MR. DATTA: The program had a list of tests to
! 23 ' perform, specifically on cabinets and control room setups. !
24 Actual nuclear cabinets in a full-scale partial control room i 25 setup. We have performed only about half of the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. !
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76 pb 00 21 08 1 Mimie 1 approximately 48 tests that were planned, and because of the 2 budget cut we can go no further.
3 However, some important insights have been 4 obtained in whatever tests have been performed.
5 And in answer to your question on the report, the 6 report -- I have been getting monthly reports on individual 7 tests. However, they have still not been all compiled for 8 the reason that we have not finished the test series.
9 Because of the planned closure now by end of 10 fiscal '86, the report has been taken under preparation now i 11 and will be completed.
12 MR. EBERSOLE: Do you have any prelim inary 13 remarks to make about the findings?
14 MR. DATTA: Preliminary findings can be made about 15 the potential hazards as follows:
- - 16 That electrical cabinets can be ignited under very 17 credible scenarios such as a hot joint at a terminal block.
18 i That is an electrical initiation rather than the more 19 obvious source of a cottle of acetone somebody has spilled.
20 That is more obvious. .
21 , But, we have found that an ignition can start 22 because of an electrical short circuit or even an electrical
! 23 hot joint. Actual ignitions have been made.
24 The second obsvation is that so far from what we 25 have seen, it appears that the greatest threat is from ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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{)002109 1 Mimie 1 losing visibility in the control room.
2 As an example, from the first instant when a 3 flicker of flame was observed in a cabinet to the point when 4 a mockup control room sized 60 feet by 40 feet by 20 feet 5 high was entirely engulfed in smoke so thick you couldn't l
. 6 see your panel in front of you, it took only seven and a 7 half minutes.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: Isn' t the remote shutdown center 9 supposed to have compensated for that?
10 MR. DATTA: The remote shutdown center is supposed 11 to compensate for that. The operator is supposed to throw l 12 his switches and remove himself to the remote shutdown 13 center.
i 14 We have not yet looked into the possibility of 15 effecting such a transfer in seven minutes or even less.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: It used to be about ten.
17 MR. DATTA: So these-are some preliminary 1
- 18 findings
- That smoke is a problem; that there is a credible i
19 scenario for starting such a fire.
20 MR. WYLIE: It might be a subject to bring up in 21 another meeting. We can't go into a lot of detail here 22 because it raises a lot of questions about the types of 23 cables involved and this kind of thing.
24 MR. DATTA: Also we have found, since you 25 mentioned the types of cables, that both IEEE 383 qualified ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 cables and those unqualified, both of them can be ignited 4 2 with the same source.
3 MR. EBERSOLE: That is what I remember seeing, in 4 fact.
5 MR. WYLIE: Okay.
. 6 MR. EBERSOLE: May I mention some tragicomic 7 aspects of the fire protection system which, believe it or 8 not, came from my own old outfit I used to work for for some 9 40 years, which I had told them about.
~
10 I didn't here by the greatest stretch of 11 imagination believe it would materialize. You put in CO2 12 systems to protect against fire. And that department out in 13 the corner does its design and has the choice of picking i
14 individual volumetric amounts of CO2 from compartmentalized 15 bases or drawing it from a humongous tank farm.
16 They elect because of cheapness, to take it out of i
17 tank farms. That immediately puts a burden on dispensing 18 apparatus. Don' t be too exuberant and put in too much.
l 19 They didn' t bother to make the dispensing system safety 20 grade testable 1E, et~ cetera.
21 So, what do they proceed to do? Blow up the 22 spaces that they are protecting CO2 with excessive amounts t-23 of it. If they were brick walls that didn' t have any pulse 24 explosion or internal pressure capabilities, it doesn't take 25 many psi to knock down a structure.
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79 b7002111 1 Mimie 1 So, the picture you hang on the wall is, in the 2 exuberance of protecting against fire, before you finish the 3 job, you blow the walls down before you put out the fire, 4 and you spread it all over the place. It is another system 5 interactive effect that is not looked at.
6 MR. BURDICK: We do intend to look at spurious 7 actuations of --
8 MR. EBERSOLE: These are uncontrolled actuations.
9 They may not be spurious.
10 But, because of the inadequacies of the dispensing 11 system,-they go beyond the volumetric amounts that are 12 supposed to be dispensed to space. And they can go through l 13 all operators having CO2 to the control room.
14 MR. BURDICK: Sure.
15 MR. WYLIE: We are behind schedule.
16 MR. REED: You are behind schedule by one hour out 17 of two.
18 MR. BURDICK: (Slide) 19 I'm done. I guess to make this balanced
\
20 assessments of threats and research and regulatory needs for 21 '87, '88, '89, select top priority issues for further 22 research.
23 That completes my presentation.
I 24 MR. WYLIE: Thank you.
l 25 Suppose we take a ten-minute break.
l~
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"j00 21 12 80 1 Mimie 1 (Recess.)
2 MR. WYLIE: Let's get started.
3 MR. REED: Mr. Chairman, this item is scheduled 4 for 30 minutes.
5 MR. WYLIE: I don' t think it will take that much 6 time.
7 MR. RICHARDSON: I will do my best to help you 8 make up some time.
9 MR. WYLIE: Thank you.
10 MR. RICHARDSON: My name is Jim Richardson with 11 the Office of Research.
,S 12 You requested that we talk a little bit about this LJ 13 component fragilities program.
14 (Slide) 15 I just want to point out that this is part of the 16 Mission Area Code 135 Seismic Research program, which for 17 budgetary purposes is under the purview of the Extreme 10 External Phenomenon Subcommittee.
19 It certainly has a relationship to what you have 20 been talking about here today. And I can certainly see your 21 interest and need to understand the program better.
22 Basic objective of the program is to establish and 23 improve the seismic fragility data base for those components N 24 whose failure would be a substantial contributor to the
(\s!
25 seismic risk. We would use the fragility data base we are ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1- Mimie 1 developing to estimate seismic margins.
2 And I would, just as an aside, tell you our ;
3- seismic margins program is coming along very well. We have 4 developed procedures and screening guidelines, and have just 5 reached agreement with the Maine Yankee Atomic Power plant 6 to conduct a trial plant review to try out these procedures 7 and screening guidelines to estimate the seismic margin of 8 the Maine Yankee plant.
9 There we will be reviewing the plant at a ground 10 motion -- ground acceleration of .3g. We think we can show l 11 that the plant has a high probability -- a low probability 12 with high confidence of failure at .3g.
4 13 In order to do a good job of estimating margins, 14 we need a good fragility data base. We need to know at what 15 levels and in what modes components fail. That data is 16 needed to provide an accurate estimate of the seismic e
17 margins.
18 This data base would also be used then to evaluate 19 seismic PRAs that the Staff is reviewing, that have been ;
20 submitted by utilities. Certainly the data base would l 21 become available to the industry and they would have access l 22 to that data base. So we should see an improvement in the
! 23 uncertainties or a reduction in the uncertainties in some of i
24 the seismic PRAs that are being performed.
! 25 There is also another benefit of using the 4
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00 21 14 82 1 Mimie 1 fragility data base. And that is, it gives the people in 2 the equipment qualification area a data base that'they can 3 go in and make some decisions as to whether a particular 4 component needs to be carefully looked at in, terms of 5 equipment qualification. Or whether there is generous 6 margin there from a seismic point of view that the seismic 7 qualification level may not be critical.
8 As an example, you may.have a valve'that has been 9 demonstrated by test that it is rugged up to, say, 20g's --
10 20, 30g's, perhaps. And that it is in a location'that will 11 see no more than 4 or 5g's. Then one might conclude that it 12 is not critical that that component be tested or qualified.
13 Its seismic qualification is not a terribly important thing.
14 On the other hand, if I had a component that 15 demonstrated that its' ruggedness or fragility was in the
( 16 order of lg or a half g, and that was near the design level, t
t 17 its seismic qualification may become very important. And we 18 might want to pay a great deal of attention to that.
19' So, I think the seismic fragility data base will l
20 give the equipment qualification people some insights as to 21 whether things are near a cliff, or whether we have a lot of r 22 margin to play with from the standpoint of seismic t
- 23 qualification. -
f 24 MR. EBERSOLE: Let me ask you in manufacturing l components from computers to valves, don't the manufacturers 25 l
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~1 Mimie 1 generally put a requirement on them-that in handling and 2 shipping you don't drop them more than three feet or 3 'something?
f 4. MR. RICHARDSON: Sure.
i 5 MR. EBERSOLE: Isn't thoce some sort of a blanket I *
- 1. 6 requirement on ruggedness, I guess I would call it, that you i-7 can ride on it at least soet way.
8 MR. RICHARDSON: Yes, I think you could ride on p 9 that, except many of those transportation loads,~ drop loads, 10 are impact-type loads. One shot, and they tend to be high 11 frequency.
12 MR.- EBERSOLE: One impact, true.
13 MR. . RICHARDSON: Tend to ba high-frequency type 14 loads that really don't resemble a seismic load. But I
! 15 think those type of requirements are certainly -- we need to 16 knov about them. And it adds to our knowledge.
17 MR. EBERSOLE: You would never know, for instance, 18 a relay contact closed, if you dropped it. But it would 19 recover to its earlier status, which says then maybe this !
20 relay contact bounce business ought to be solved in the 21 design context by putting circuitry in that doesn' t i
22 acknowledge spurious response. You delay it until you get 23 the right reaction.
24 MR. RICHARDSON: In my opinion, a good equipment 25 ' qualification program -- a good equipment qualification ACE-FEDERAL 202-347-3700 REPORTERSfINC.
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('_)00 21 16 1 Mimie 1 criteria should discover design defects.
2 MR. EBERSOLE: Well, dependency on microsecond 3 response.
4 MR. RICHARDSON: If that is important, that should 5 be in the qualification requirements.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: But in a thousand cases -- 99 out 7 of a thousand,fyou don 5t need it.
8 MRf RIgHARDSON: Yes, I.3 gree. But the design 9 envelope should'$e well defined enough, and you should know 10 whether that aspect is important enough in that ap'plicdtion, 11 and the qualification requiremer.cs should acknowledge that.
(~g 12 MR. EBERSOLE: Right.
L/ .
13 I don't know anything about computers and plots 14 that need to be typed or should be typed.
15 MR. WYLIE: Jesse, just a comment. It is a matter 16 of experience. You are right, equipment is-designed to meet 17 - certain shocks and stuff like that.
18 The thing it is not designed to meet is a flat 19 wheel on a railway car. And I have seen large transformers 20 torn all to pieces because they were shipped 1000 miles on a 21 railway car that had a : flat wheel.
22 MR. CI3ERSOLE: That is a design fault, isn't it?
23 System interaction.
(
t 24 (Slide)'
25 MR. RICHARDSON: This program has been going on. a ACE-FEDERAI REPORTERS, INC.
-, 3-g- y-
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00 21 17 85 1 Mimie 1 little over a year now, and we have had two basic contracts:
2 One contract with Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, 3 who has been charged with developing importance lists. That 4 is, what components do we really need to know fragility.
5 And to conduct a demonstration test and to develop fragility 6 test procedures in anticipation of going out and doing some s
7 fragility testing.
8 We want to be able to do it right in a technically 9 correct manner for our limited dollars, t
10 That effort is essentially done. Importance lists 11 have been developed, demonstration tests on a motor control rs 12 center has been completed -- which incidentally included V 13 some relays -- and the report is being written and should be 14 out in a couple of months.
15 The second contract --
8 16 MR. EBERSOLE: Let me ask before you go further.
^^
17 That is an importance list. But what I see below there is a f list of components.
18 19 I think I could argue that only -- oh, I don't 20 know -- 5 percent of them should be in important e
ic 21 applications. Is that right?
'i. 22 MR. RICHARDSON: The importance list is pretty 23 small.
700 22 02
- Nm -
'l Mimie 1 Laboratory and we charged them with the task of going out 2 and gathering as much existing fragility data as they can -
3 get their hands on through various testing laboratories such 4 as Wylie and Franklin Laboratories and others, and some of 5 the NSSS vendors.
6 We have been working in cooperation with EPRI, 7 which is developing with a subcontractor, Anko, a generic 8 ruggedness spectra concept, which is very similar to 9 fragility concept for the seismic qualification utility 10 group, SOUG. And we find our objectives have a lot of 11 things in common.
12 So, we decided to enter into a cooperative -
13 agreement. And that has been very successful in gathering 14 together all of.the failure data from all over the country 15 and international, if possible. All the-failure data we can 16 get our hands on.
i 17 That has turned out to be a pleasant surprise.
18 There is more data there than we had anticipated. And, it 19 fact, it has been so -- our objective was to gather all of 20 this data, compare it to our importance list, then def.ine I 21 the gaps. And that tell us where we had to go out and do r
22 some fragility tests to complete the data base. ,
23 our data gathering of existing data has been so i
24 successful, and we have discovered that there 1.9 more out i 25 there, that we have decided to continue that effort before i ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie I we embark on a test program, bccause gathering existing data 2 is much, much cheaper than teeting.
3 And so we have Cel.ayed our test program until we 4 feel we have exhausted all of the data we can.get our hands 5 on. And that will probably continue into FY '87, becaase we 6 ,
ar.e havi.ng quite a bit of success.
7 Thia leads me then into this -- so far we have l 8 developed 142 summary data sheets in cooperation with EPHI 9 and their GERS work. These have include 6 components such as 3 LO I have listed up there, such as switchgear, motor control 11 centers, transformers,. roiays and so forth.
p 12 I know this committee is parti::ularly interested h L.j' 13 p in relays, relay chatter, and I might say in our cooperation 14 with EPRI, and pretty close cocperation with the SOUG 15 people -- they have a contract with MPA who is looki'r.g into i 16 j relay chatter - we have gethered quite a bit of relay e .
17 '
chatter data so far, and that we have in fact conducted some l 18 h of our own tests at Wylie. In this demonstration test wo 19 ; had a motor control center which had relays in it. And we 20 observed quite a bit cf relay chatter. .
21 Of course, as you know, relay chatter is not a 22 well-defined generic thing that we can say relays chatter at ,
23 .Ig, .5g. It is highly dependent upon what type cf relay it p 24 is. It is very relay speci.fie, And we are trying to get a G
25 handle on that.
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-V 1 Mimie 1 Some relays, of course, chatter at very low-2 levels. Others exhibit a great deal of ruggedness.
3 MR. EBERSOLE: Are you coming into view with 4 anything that gives you a new light on this, what I think is 5 the stupid use of circuitbreakers for PWR scram systems?.
6 MR. RICHARDSON: I must say this program is not 7 addressing that problem. I am hoping the data from this
- 8 will be able to feed Gary Burdick's, that can address that.
i 9 MR. EBERSOLE: I saw something the other day that L 10 just the misapplication of lubrication on circuitbreakers i
l 11 which have pivots, sliding contacts and pins and all sorts of junk, that the capability of the lubricant to move by l 12 l 13 surface transport to the point of where, unless it has that l 14 capacity to creep in, it won't work and you will get 15 abnormally -- extremely abnormally high rates of wear, and 16 you have-actual failures long before the predicted failures 17 with the proper lubricants.
I-18 MR. RICHARDSON: Right. I would hope that we can 19 get into some of that type of testing.
I 20 MR. EBERSOLE: This says, you know to me anyway,
- 21 contactors are always competitors with circuitbreakers 22 because they have few if any sliding pivot type contacts.
23 They are mostly spring tension devices.
i
{} 24 MR. REED: Jesse, I am trying to figure out 25 whether you are saying this is a design problem or a o
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2 MR. EBERSOLE: It is a design problem.
3 MR. REED: Good. Thank you.
4 MR. EBERSOLE: Misapplication.
5 MR. RICHARDSON: Our budget from '85 through '89 6 is shown here.
7 (Slide) 8 We see a rather substantial step increase in87.
9 We are anticipating that our test program will begin about 10 mid-1987 and then tail off in '88 and end in '89.
11 We would like to have this program pretty well
- f-s 12 wrapped up and a pretty complete data base developed by b 13 then.
14 The reason for the large budget in '87 is to 15 accommodate testing, continuing it into '88 and then tailing 3
16 off in '89. We are trying to keep the testing to a minimun 17 because, of course, it can be very, very expensive.
18 (Slide) 19 Our future efforts, starting in 1987 through '89 20 will be to continue gathering all the existing fragility 21 data that we can get our hands on.
22 I think the industry has come around now to 23 believing that it is to their benefit to contribute to this fs 24 data base. A few years ago when we tried this, we ran into 25 a great deal of resistence in getting our hands on failure ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie .1 data because people considered that highly proprietary.
2 l
They didn' t want to admit that their components failed at 3 all.
4 I think there has been a change of attitude in 5 l industry. We are also getting a change in attitude in t '
l 6 foreign conmunity. I think we are starting to get more ,
7 cooperation in the foreign community to contribute to a 8 world data bank, if you will, in the fragility area, 9 particularly the Japanese. And we are looking forward to 10 getting sotae good fragility data out of Japan. They have 11 done quite a bit of this work.
12 MR. EBERSOLE: I notice at the very front of your.
)
13 presentation you start with ccmponent fragilities. That is 14 'your topic.
15 MR. RICHARDSON: Yes.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: Then you itemize a lot of stuff a
- i 17 here, but every damn one of them is electrical apparatus. t 18 MR. RICHARDSON: That was because we have found in 4 8
- 19 the PRAs, the e.lectrical tend to be the biggest 20 contributors. That doesn' t mean that we are ignoring the 21 mechanical at all. It is just that is where we started. A '
, t 22 lot of our effort has been there because we feel we need 23 that data soon to help in some of our margins reviews. ,
i Who does the marriage work in, for i 24 MR. EBERSOLE:
25 instance, something like a valve which is a composite device f
b
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1 Mimie ) and becomes mechanical at some discrete point and is 2 electrical the rest of it?
3 MR. RICHARDSON: As part of our program, we will 4 look at electromechanical devices such as motor operated 5 valves.
6 MR. BBERSOLE: Then you will look at purely 7 mechanicals too, I guess?
8 MR. RICHARDSGN: Yes.
9 (Slide) 10 ) We will be continuing to gather existing fragility 5
11 > data. We want to put this data into a usable form.
12 3 We have been working closely with NRR, with SOUG, 13 with others that hopefully will be using this data and 14 consulting with them on what form would be most usable for 15 '
them. What kind of catalog would they like to see?
16 !
So, we are working hard to make this something 17 l other than a highly technical report that gets put on the
?
18 shelf.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: Are you going to come out with 20 < graded lists of preferred equipment for vendors and 21 manufacturers?
22 MR. RICHARDSON: No.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: A good designer will.
24 MR. RICHARDSON: I think you could probably draw 25 1 that from the report. But I don' t think -- I'm sure the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(~)1002208 1 Mimie 1 report will not come out with a preferred vendor. list.
2 MR. EBERSOLE: That is too critical of certain 3 ends of the spectrum, I guess.
4 MR. RICHARDSON: Politically, I would not want to 5 touch that. I'm not sure our program would be detailed 6 enough to really give that --
7 MR. EBERSOLE: Will you have criteria which will 8 in a subtle or effective way cut off the bottom?
9 MR. RICHARDSON: I think so. Yes.
10 MR. WYLIE: In your relay testing or gather of 5
, 11 information on fragility, are you going to put these in 12 categories by type?
13 MR. RICHARDSON: Yes. It would be foolish to lump 4
14 all relays into one bin and. pick the lower bound and say 4
15 that is the fragility of relays.
16 MR. WYLIE: I think that has been done in some
- 17 PRAs.
18 MR. RICHARDSON: Yes. And you pay a dear penalty i
- 19 for that.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: If you don't come out with model i
21 and catalog numbers, you are lost.
22 MR. RICHARDSON: Probably. We would like to find 23 some categories -- whether we have to go through a catalog
- 24 to model -- I hope we don' t have to go that detailed -- but 25 if we can find a logical set of bins.
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1 Mimie 1 MR. EBERSOLE: Why don't you adopt a system which
~2 Consumers Union has with little red dots.
3 MR. RICHARDSON: Perhaps something like that.
4 MR. EBERSOLE: That's good.
5 MR. RICHARDSON: Yes, that's very effective.. I 6 bought my last car based on all those red dots.
7 And finally we will be conducting tests to fill in 8 the data base. But before we get into that we want to make 9 sure that we have exhausted gathering existing data and that 10 we are comfortable that we are not testing components that 11 we really don't need to test. That we really use the limited
-s 12 budget we have as efficiently as possible.
- -U 13 MR. EBERSOLE
- I seem to really in ancient 14 history that some form of electrical control -- I think it
- 15 was Cutler-Hammer, I believe employed gravity-fall devices 16 to clear contacts and so forth. I've always been suspicious.
- 17 of them in a seismic application.
18 Have you run into those yet?
19 MR. RICHARDSON: We may have. I'm not familiar 20 with it. I will make a note to ask some people.
I 21 MR. EBERSOLE: Anything that is gravity fall or 22 inertia driven --
23 MR. RICHARDSON: I'd be very skeptical of their 24 behavior in seismic.
25 That is all I have.
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'S00 22 10 95 S'J l Mimie 1 MR. WYLIE: Okay.
2 Any further questions?
3 (No response.)
4 Okay. Thank you.
5 Let's move on then to our next subject, Mechanical 6 and Electrical Equipment Qualification.
.7 (Slide) 8 MR. WEIDENHAMER: I am addressing the program 9 entitled Environmental Qualification of Mechanical Equipment 10 and Dynamic Qualification of Mechanical and Electrical-11- Equipment Programs, abbreviated EDOP.
.12 Let me back up one second to say that there.is a 13 total equipment qualification program at NRC that' consists 14 of two parts. One is the environmental qualification of 15 electrical equipment. The second part is this part. It 16 covers the environmental qualification of mechanical ---
l 17 MR. EBERSOLE: Why is the heading in that peculiar 18 form where it says Environmental Qualification of Mechanical 19 Equipment, and then Dynamic Qualification of Mechanical and 20 Electrical Equipment?
21 MR. WEIDENHAMER: The electrical equipment --
22 MR. EBERSOLE: It says to me you are not going to 23 look at environmental qualification of electrical equipment.
24 MR. WEIDENHAMER: That is covered on the other 25 part of the program, Bill Farmer's program. This is my ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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}002211 1 Mimie 1 program. Marrying them together makes up the whole program.
2 MR. EBERSOLE: I've got the picture.
3 MR. WEIDENHAMER: That is what it is called. That 4 is the main title up through FY '87. After FY '87, we get
.5 into this Mission Area Code designation 113. And it is this 6- title here. Only will have equipment qualification after 7 it, I believe.
8 This is the first time I have seen it, so I think 9 it is confusing me now, but hopefully in another year we 10 will know what it means. So, I will just be talking about 11 the second part.
12 (Slide) 13 Here is the overall safety issue that we are 14 addressing with this equipment qualification program. Let 15 me sort of briefly read it to you.
16 Standards that are used in the equipment 17 qualification of these kinds of equipment contain criteria 18 requirements and methodologies for ensuring the health and 19 safety of the public.
20 These criteria requirements and methodologies in 21 many cases are either too general and open to wide 22 interpretations, or where specific guidance is given, may 23 lead to uncertainties. In some cases appropriate 24 qualification conditions may be inadequate and are 25 overlooked or omitted.
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.V 1 Mimie 1 We want to then perform our research to accomplish 2 this objective, which is to provide the technical bases for 3 clarifying these uncertainties and eliminating them, and 4 where necessary developing criteria requirements and 5 methodologies to improve these standards and other 6 regulatory documents.
7 MR. EBERSOLE: Let me ask you something. I always 8 figured and experienced the fact that national standards 9 were just exactly what they said they were. They were 10 standards of the existing state. They were not mechanisms 11 for improvement. They expressed the standards of whatever 12 everybody was doing and there was no motivation or intent to 13 make things better by issuing a standard.
14 The industry fights that.
15 MR. WEIDENHAMER: We have NRC reps on those 16 committees, most of those committees. And we have to 17 approve -- NRC approves those standards. And in many cases 18 --
~
19 MR. EBERSOLE: That's going to be a vehicle for 20 improvement, then?
. 21 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Yes. We agreed with these 22 Standards Committees.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: I know the industry fights it tooth 24 and nail.
7 O 25 MR. WEIDENHAMER: I know they are, but we have f
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1 Mimie 1 made one recommendation to them that they have been very 2 eager to look at, and I will talk to you about it.
3 MR. EBERSOLE: Okay. Great.
4 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Yes, that is a mechanism we hope 5 to interact in these standards. And that is a big part of 6 this effort to tell them, hey, here are the results of our 7 research, here is what we found out, and we believe that 8 this is a weakness in your standard and it needs to be 9 changed.
10 MR. RICHARDSON: I might point out that we have a 11 mechanism, if we disagree with the National Standards
(~3 12 Committee and essentially don' t get our way, we always have
%-)
13 the ability to write a Reg Guide that will take exception to 14 that standard.
15 MR. EBERSOLE: Great. Thank you.
16 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Then we have one more objective 17 here, although this is what we call equipment qualification 18 program. We find it very cost effective to, during some of 19 our testing of valves that would carry on into the severe 20 accident environment, to see how these valves behave.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: The connotation of severe accident 22 carries with it the notion of core failure. I wish it 23 wouldn't. You don' t really mean that, do you?
24 MR. WEIDENHAMER: We anticipate what these 25 enviroments within containment are.
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\-)100 22 14 1 .Mimie 1 MR. EBERSOLE: In the severe accident case?
2 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Yes. We are up to pressures on 3 the order of --
4 MR. EBERSOLE: You still want equipment to work in 5 there?
6 MR. WEIDENHAMER: No, no. That's why I am saying 7 this. We are not trying to develop new qualification 8 criteria-for severe accidents. However, we find that in 9 some of the tests that we are performing for equipment 10 qualification up to the design basis levels, that it is a 11 cost ef fective way to go up into the severe accident --
r^ 12 MR. EBERSOLE: Earlier on we were talking about b) 13 the fallacy of putting equipment on the wrong side of a wall 14 and thereby inheriting these vast, limitless testing 15 programs to see if you could survive the environment when 16 you could just put it on the other side of the wall and 17 escape all that.
18 'Now what are you going to do in the severe 19 accident case which we are studying as a separate segment of 20 our research work? You know, where you have got a degraded 21 core, high temperatures and high pressures.
22 Surely, there must be a general rule that in order 23 to escape that sort of situation you are going to rely on 24 equipment not inside the containment, dynamic equipment, 25 active equipment.
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r 700 22 15 100 1 Mimie 1 MR. RICHARDSON: I think the statement up there is 2 too general, when he says behavior specific components. We 3 are talking about containment isolation valves. That is the 4 equipment we are talking about. We are not talking about 5 general equipment. We are talking about containment 6 isolation valves.
7 How do you isolate containment in severe accident?
8 We are testing valves in the equipment qualification program 9 up to design levels. It is cost effective since you have 10 already got the valves in the test facility there to go 11 ahead and go up to the severe accident.
12 MR. EBERSOLE: You are testing valves against 13 dynamic flow loadings?
14 MR. RICHARDSON: Yes.
15 MR. EBERSOLE: Under model conditions. I guess 16 you can't do the big one, can you?
i 17 MR. WEIDENHAMER: We are investigating it right 18 now.
f 19 MR. EBERSOLE: So that is really a far broader 20 scope statement than you intended?
l I 21 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Yes. That is true. It is.
i 22 But my point is we are doing some work in that 23 regaion.
24 MR. EBERSOLE: In any case, I hope when we look at 25 severe accidents in the context that we are looking at in ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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00 22 16 101 1 Mimie 1 the broader sense, you know core damage and so forth, we 2 automatically invoke the fact we are not going to depend on 3 dynamic equipment inside the containment to survive that 4 state of affairs. We have got to do something on the 5 outside.
6 (Slide) 7 MR. WEIDENHAMER: You asked for some 8 accomplishments that we have gotten thus far in the 9 program. I'm also putting in here some of the plant 10 accomplis hments .
11 Now this program that I'm talking about consists 12 of about twelve different tasks. Each one can take an hour 13 to talk about. So, I am limiting my little discussion here 14 to some of the more high priority areas, some of the results 15 we got in these areas.
L6 MR. EBERSOLE: On the first bullet there I 17 understand some of these things are inflatable rings that 18 depend on air sources. I think that is a loose pin in the l
19 business.
,. 20 Am I right?
! 21 MR. WEIDENHAMER: You mean the air inflatable type 22 of seal?
23 MR. EBERSOLE: Right.
! 24 MR. WEIDENHAMER: It is a type and I don't recall 25 the reason for not including them in here. But we were ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 getting some immediate answers --
2 MR. RICHARDSON: I can answer that.
3 The air inflatable seals are generally used in the 4 equipment hatches. The large hatches. Those are being 5 addressed in our containment integrity program. This 6 supports the containment integrity program and these are 7 only looking at small penetration seals -- the 8 tongue-in-groove and the 0-ring type.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: Which is just the flexibility of 10 l the ring?
11 MR. RICHARDSON: The large seals are being 12 addressed in the containment integrity program itself.
13 MR. WEIDENHAMER: These were addressing the 14 immediate needs that NRR had. Identified purge and vent 15 valve closure requirements.
16 I mentioned to you that we are interacting with 17 one of the code people or one of the standards people, and 18 it contradicts one of the criteria that they have in there.
19 The particular criteria I am referring to is the operator 20 capabilities must be demonstrated over the last ten percent 21 of closure area. That is what it says.
22 Now in these big butterfly valves which these are, 23 maximum torque requirements are at about 70 degrees open.
24 So that obviously does not meet 1--
25 MR. EBERSOLE: Right. Sometimes you find those ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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- 2 MR. WEIDENHAMER
- Perhaps. We brought this up and ;
3 presented our argument to them. They are looking into how i 4 that can be changed. ;
5 So, yes, indeed, we are having impact, and this is 6 one of the areas where we have the impact.
7 MR. EBERSOLE: May I ask you in this sense, too. [
8 You design, you get a valve that will do what you want it to 9 do at 70 percent or whatever, and you.put it in place, and 10 thereafter it becomes like a solid state bistable in the 11 testing context. And you run it back and forth over its
- 12 40-year life unloaded, and you say, gee, look at the 13 statistics, it works every time. ,
14 You don't know that the gears are wearing out, l 15 lubricant is hardening, the motor is getting degraded. But, 16 because it goes and you see wonderful statistics. But what 17 you don' t know is it is degrading in the context of doing 18 what it ultimately has to do. And you don't know what it is 19 going to do when it has to face the enemy. e 20 What are you going to do about that in the valve i
21 area? I think you have got to do something to load the 22 valves at periodic intervals.
23 MR. WEIDENHAMER: That's the aging program. We are !
L 24 getting information f rom the aging program.
25 MR. EBERSOLE: Aging to me means time passes, but I
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l Mimie 1 not necessarily loads come up.
2 You have got to resolve the fact that the 3 equipment is depreciating in the absence of any real loads 4 that it sees, and every so often you have got to put 5 something on it, like a pony break or do a torque 6 measurement or something, or stall it or whatever you do.
7 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Well, if we find that that part 8 of the aging program does have a severe, serious effect on 9 the valve, we will get this information from the aging and 10 indeed require that to be done.
11 MR. EBERSOLE: It is more than pure aging. It is 12 aging plus events in the age process. It is not pure tme.
13 MR. WEIDENHAMER: You are saying these are the 14 kinds of loads it may see over the lifetime and --
15 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm saying pure time is not a 16 picture. It is a succession of events that pass in time.
17 MR. WEIDENHAMER: That has tc be qualified to the 18 environments that it will see.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: Will it hold that qualification l
20 l through more than tine? But time as measured by series of i
21 events in time that load it? -
l 22 MR. WEIDEUHAMER: Those are the kinds of loads 23 that must be simulatad.
24 MR. EBERSOLE: Right. Exactly.
25 I often thought you should put a wrench on it ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 somewhere down the road and see if they still turn.
2 MR. WEIDENHAMER: After we did this work, we 3 wanted to see, well, what about all the valves out there, 4 will they work, will they actually close or isolate 5 containment, the purge and vent valves, if indeed they have 6 to.
7 We found out a lot of them had been blocked 8 because the operators did not have adequate torque. So that 9 yes, indeed, we found out all of them will work because 10 there are restraints and so on to overcome this maximum 11 torque problem.
12 Here is what we are planning to do that answers 13 one of your questions on your agenda. Planned CIS -- these !
14 are containment isolation system v'lve a tests -- will provide 15 information on ef fects of containment wall displacement on 16 valve operability.
17 One of the concerns is containment failure will 18 most likely occur through penetration, leakages through 19 penetrations. And we wanted to find out when this t 20 containment vessel sees a severe accident environment
! 21 pressure and temperature, it is going into play. There is <
l ,
22 piping through the penetration, attached to the penetration
! 23 that go back to these valves, these containment isolation 24 system valves. Does this motion have an effect on closing 25 these valves?
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00 23 04 l 106 1 Mimie 1 MR. EBERSOLE: In order to get pressure you will 2 have closed the valves.
3 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Closed the valves?
4 MR. EBERSOLE: In order to get pressure on the 5 system in the first place.
6 MR. WYLIE: He's talking about containment 7 internal pressure.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm saying in containment internal 9 pressure -- are we talking about a purge valve, for 10 instance?
11 In order to develop pressure, the valve will have 12 had to have closed. Right?
13 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Yes.
14 MR. EBERSOLE: Except maybe a little valve which 1
15 is leaking.
i 16 MR. WEIDENHAMER: There are other kinds of valves I
17 too that we are also considering.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: Are you interested in opening a 19 valve for subsequent venting purposes, and you need to 20 really open it when it is deformed by pressure?
l 21 MR. WEIDENHAMER: That could be one of the 22 situations. The three that we are looking at are the purge
! 23 and vent valves, we are looking at some containment spray 24 valves to see if they are required to operate. We have to 25 open a valve. Okay.
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1 Mimie 1 MR. EBERSOLE: I see. Sure.
2 MR. WEIDENHAMER: And the displacement of the 3 containment --
4 MR. EBERSOLE: Very high pressure will certainly 5 defeat certain pneumatic operated valves.
6 MR. WEIDENHAMER: We are looking at it. This is 7 all under severe accident program.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: It may be very important to have a 9 valve open before you blow up.
10 MR. WYLIE: What was the last one you said?
11 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Containment spray valve system.
/~ 12 MR. WYLIE: Purge and vent sprays.
\,._T J
13 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Containment spray. And then 14 there were a number of two-inch lines that run through there 15 that are made up of some sort of lines. I'm not even sure 16 what they are.
17 MR. WYLIE: Cooling lines.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: I'd like to make a kind of special 19 request that you look at the valves on boilers, which are 20 called the semi-automatic reliefs, SARs in the severe 21 accident context. It is critical under certain 4
22 circumstances that you prop those things open. And t 23 excessive back pressure on them will prevent that, among 24 other things, because they are air operated from reservoirs.
25 And I've always wanted spherical valves driven by ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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s 00 23 06 108 1 Mimie 1 some perfectly, you know, reliable hydraulic remote pressure 2 system or whatever, invulnerable to the physical conditions 3 in the containment to get that system open.
4 Now what they got right now is pneumatically 5 driven valves from a bottle of gas, which is subject to back 6 pressure defeat. They are piloted by little electric 7 solenoids which must be maintained hot electrically to hold 8 them in the open mode. They are anxious to shut.
9 You know you always have a fight between what you 10 are anxious to do; anxious to open and shut. These damn 11 things are anxious to shut.
O 12 And there are modes of operation where you want b
13 them real anxious to open and stay open over a long term 14 when you lose high pressure of feedwater.
15 So, I think those things are a point vulnerability 16 in the BWR design that ought to be fixed.
17 MR. WEIDENHAMER: I'll get the particulars from 18 you later.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: We have circuit vulnerabilities, 20 all sorts of things.
21 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Here is another aree that you 22 may not be interested in, but it is nevertheless a high 23 priority area that we have been looking into. These are 24 roactor coolant pump seals.
25 We identified in Westinghouse coolant pump, an ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 unacceptable material. That is station blackout l t
2 information.
3 MR. EBERSOLE: Is this in contradiction to the 4 current claim that Westinghouse seals are okay? ,
- 5 MR. WEIDENHAMER
- No. It is not a contradiction, 6 because they have agreed to incorporate new seals in these 7 areas. New materials.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: All over the place? j 9 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Yes.
10 MR. EBERSOLE: Could you give us the particulars l
11 of what that was? !
- (g 12 MR. WEIDENHAMER
- The temperatures and pressures
\-)
13 that they see at these conditions were just blowing them 14 out. ,
15 MR. EBERSOLE: It sounds like the shuttle, doesn't r
- 16 it?
17 MR. WEIDENHAMER: It could be.
- 18 MR. EBERSOLE
- They made a lot of preliminary l
19 claims which I think we should now view in perspective and i
i 20 say, what really is the reliability insurance on the paper
, 21 that you issued to us?
i 22 I think that is a very valid question on
! 23 reliability assurance, the general topic of this meeting.
24 What is the reliability of the pape we get? And some 25 l criticisms should be appropriately brought up where we ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 found it is not what it should be.
i f 2 MR. REED: Let me ask a question. On those French 3 tests, did they blow out the 0-rings, or did the 0-rings j 4 stay in place?
j- 5 MR. WEIDENHAMER: The 0-rings stayed in place.
I
, 6 MR. REED: And the seals, of course, were okay and i
7 they limited the flow to less than 20 gallons a minute or l 8 something?
i I 9 MR. WEIDENHAMER: They were completely --
10 MR. REED: Those were the new rings or the old?
4 11 MR. WEIDENHAMER: They were the old, the old 12 material. Now we have a concern about that, and that was, l 13 you know, you haYe a sample, and it can vary from good --
i j 14 bad to good. 'We feel that they got up here at the upper end ,
i l 15 of it, the sample.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: Do they have a recipe now that they l 17 can guarantee will be stable?
18 MR. WEIDENHAMER: The materials they recommended i 19 to use have been tested and shown to be accepted. ,
20 MR. EBERSOLE: It is a type-test thing?
l 21 MR. WEIDENHAMER: It was a type-test.
i 22 They, Incidentally, have been very helpful. After
- 23 we once showed them that they had a problem, they have been f' I- , ,
24 f very good.
[
I 25 MR. EBERSOLE: I think they should be reminded of i ;
! i
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1 Mimie 1 their earlier claims for adequacy which didn' t materialize.
2 We should all take a lesson from that type of reliability in 3 assurance.
4 MR. REED: I think, Jesse, that in the rariod 5 which they were using these 0-rings, station blackout or 6 total loss of all AC internal and external was not a design 7 criteria. ,
8 MR. EBERSOLE: But they rose up in defense of 9 these seals after it had been invoked.
10 MR. REED: I didn't know that they had. Did they 11 do that?
12 MR. EBERSOLE: Yes, they did.
13 MR. WEIDENHAMER: I don' t know the whole story 14 behind it, but I do know we had trouble getting them to do 15 certain things. And after our lawyers talking to their 16 lawyers, that type of thing, eventually it got worked out 1
17 and they became very agreeable.
18 MR. EDERSOLE: By the way, the other plants, the 19 other seal designs have an intrinsic resistance to thii 20 leakage rate, do they not?
Did they question B&W seals?
21 j 22 MR. WEIDENilAMER: We are looking into that now.,
23 MR. EBERSOLE: Doln't they have steel-to-steel
/~T 24 flow in the designs?
b 25 MR. WEIDEN!! AMER: Certain features of the seal do.
I ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 But they are all O-rings. 1 ,
3 MR. EBERSOLE: Then it gets down to challenging 4 the results by bei'7 prescripteve or not. We could have 5 been prescriptive by saying we require steel-to-steel full 6 limiting concepts.
7 MR. WEIDENHAMER: As I look at those seals', some 8 of those seals look like Rube Goldberg contraptions.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: When you are subject out to recipe 10 stability by having the proper elastomer you introduce a 11 degree of doubt as to whether you always get the recipe 12 cooked up right, and you like to go back to this 13 prescriptive notation of having something like piston rings 14 which have X mils.of clearance and guarantee that they e .
15 work.-
16 MR. WEIDENHAMER:' We~have investigated in some'of 17 our tests there, a whole range of clearances and so on to 18 make sure we have covered the whole gamut --
19 MR. E9ERSOLE: Like the shuttle, the elastomer has 20 variability in it.
21 MR. WEIDENHAMER: There were two things on this 22 pump work I wanted to mention that did not get on bere.
23 There is generic issue 23 dealing with seal 24 failures, pump seal failures. We are going to be using all O(~T 25 this information that we have gotten from our test program ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 to start working on resolution of that next month.
'l 2 MR. EBERSOLE: May I ask something about the TMI 2
~
3 case.
4 I understood when they finally burned out the 5 core, they were anxious not to use the equipment for core 6 cooling which was located out in the equipment areas, 7 because, among other things, of seal leakage.
8 And they bled out from that the realization that 9 those seals were not designed to hold leakages tight enough 10 to prevent undue radiation leakage at the seal points out in S
11 the aux building. So, they deliberately kept on cooling the
- - 12 plant with the condensers and didn't invoke RHR cooling.
13 Am I correct?
14 MR. WEIDENHAMER: I don't know.
15 MR. EBERSOLE: Earlier on, years before that, it 16 was well known that at least hypothetically you were going 17 to deal with highly radioactive cooling water. And that 18 reached out beyond the containment into the equipment rooms 19 and had a shielding problem, you had a leakage problem, you 20 had a seal dosage problem on elastomers. All sorts of 21 things that came out of that. And, you had to go to exotic 22 equipment to get seals that wouldn' t leak very much and
.23 would sustain highly radioactive dosage,
'N 24 I take it that all that has been fixed now and we jd '
25 can continue to cool the plant even with substantial i~
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(_)100 23 12 1 Mimie 1 radiation dosage on the cooling water?
2 Are you with me?
3 MR. WEIDENHAMER: No.
4 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm dealing now with highly 5 radioactive coolant.
6 MR. WEIDENHAMER: I know you are.
7 You wanted to know what the effects of these --
8 MR. EBERSOLE: It is an environmental problem on 9 the elastomer.
10 MR. WEIDENHAMER: This is the aging effect.
11 MR. EBERSOLE: Wait a minute. You don't get aging 12 except when you get a big dose. Then you can get 13 deterioration in quick order. And I remember it was a real 14 deal to get appropriate elastomers to survive the 15 hypothetical radiation dosage on the pump seals.
16 Is that all fixed now?
17 MR. WEIDENHAMER: You are asking me something that 18 I am not --
19 MR. EBERSOLE: Is it invalid not to think of this?
20 MR. WEIDENHAMER: No, it is not invalid not to 21 think of it. I just don't know the answer to your question.
22 MR. EBERSOLE: Maybe you should put it in the 23 notes as something to look at.
/~3 24 I think we want to have a hypothesis that we can
'V 25 cool the core even after we have got highly radioactive ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 ' water to cool it with.
2 MR. WEIDENHAMER: This ad6resses main coola~t n pump 3 s6als only.
4 MR. BBERSOLE: I'm talking about RHR pumps.
5 MR. W2IDENHAMER: I know what you are talking 6 about, but that does not mean that we should not also be 7 looking at --
8 MR. EBERSOLE Right. The main coolant pumps are 9 inside the containment ahyWay. Once you are that bad off 10 who cares. This is to prevent ~~ j 11 MR. WEIDENHAMER: They should be expanded to f^3 12 include those.
V 13 MR. EBERSOLE: I thought, really, that was one of 14 the big embarrassments of TMI 2, they were fearful of 15 operating the pumps that were supposed to be operated, 16 because they hadn' t designed them right.
l 17 MR. WEIDENHAMERt I don't know the whole scenario.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: A little leakage in the machinery 19 runs out, the highly radioactive water out there would 20 create chaos. There would be no people around to run the t i
21 plant then.
t i
22 Okay. Thank you. ;
l 23 MR-. WEIDENHAMER: Two other things, like I said, 24 is going to contribute-also to the resolution of generic j 25 issue 23, which we are going to start on next month using ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie I the current results from our research program that are 2 finishing up right now. ,
i 3 We also want to know whether cr not we should put 4 some qualification crite.ria on the nain coolant pu:np -
I i 5 shafts. Right now we don't have any qualification criteria 6 on the seals themnelves, [
7 should we, first of All? And if we should, what j i 8 l should they be?
9 MR. BBERSOLE: When you do something like this, [
10 you are identifying a seal material which may be an.e.xotic 11 criteria recipe, only one of a kind which works.
}
j 12 How dd you in the regulatory process be 13 non-prescriptive in requiring that -- I guess you can write 14 performance criteria that Will capture that proprietary 15 product and it only, can you not?
16 M.R. WEEDENHAMER I would hope we could,.yes. If 17 you can' t do that, then you can' t guarantee it, I don't '
!' 18 e think.
l 19 , MR. EBERSOLE: Right. It is just part of the 20 game. !
21 (slide)
L l l 22 " MR. WEIDENHAMER: Some other accomplishments.
23 L This addresses your concern you brought up earlier, 24 Mr. Wylie. This is on the flow interruption capability of 25 valves that Mr. Michelson has raised a couple of times.
4 r ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 We told him we would look into this program for 2 him. It started out by conducting the survey what is the 3 population of valves out there?
4 There are a number of piping systems that we are 5 concerned about, reactor water cleanup, hot pressure core 6 injection, and so on. What are the valves and actuators in 7 these lines?
8 We understand right now that there are as many 9 different combinations as there are plants. So, it looks 10 like it might end up being sort of a big mishmash if we have-11 to look at all that and decide well, what are we going to 12 do.
13 So that is our next step, to evaluate these 14 results. It is going to be finished in a month.
15 MR. EBERSOLE: Could you add down there on the 16 second bullet, "in the aged and degraded state," not brand 17 new.
18 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Good point.
19 MR. WYLIE: Basically you are going to run the 20 survey and then determine whether or not you should perform 21 your test?
22 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Yes.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: The classic example you can use,
./~ 24 which has been on the market here for 15 years, is to look
(.3I 25 at the HPCI steam supply valves that feed the tubine with ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 standard full pressure in many designs.
2 MR. WYLIE: I notice you have it budgeted for 3 fiscal year '87.
4 MR. WEIDENHAMER: That is '87, but we think it 5 might carry over into '88. I'm getting into my '88, '89 6 budget a little bit later. Right now I am talking about 7 accomplishments.
8 MR. WYLIE: You do have that budgeted, then?
9 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Yes.
10 30K here. We expect if we do have to do any 11 testing, something on the order of 300- to 400,000 next
'N 12 fiscal year. And we expect that that may carry over into (J g
'88 which would be additional 300- to 400,000.
13 14 MR. WYLIE: You have that in the budget in '877 15 MR. WEIDENHAMER: yes.
16 MR. REED: I recognize that this is a slide on 17 accomplishments, and that you are going to have future 18 action. But I notice -- I jumped forward and looked in the 19 future valve work, and I don't find my pet peeve.
20 I notice you are greasing Michelson's wheel 21 here, but my wheel neverr gets greased.
22 (Laughter) 23 My wheel, I think is much more important. It has r^g 24 come up with loose spokes many times. And that is the wheel V
25 of power operated relief valves off the top of pressurizers ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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00 23 17 119 1 Mimie -1 in PWRs. .
2 Now it was a key aspect in Three Mile Island, it 3 shows up time and time again on borated PWRs. Supposedly
- 4. relief valves have been tested by EPRI, But as far as I am '
i 5 concerned, the: test work was not good. ,
6 The French a few years ago, decided that 7 power-operated relief valves, Westinghouse patent design at ;
8 that time that they bought their 900 megawatt patent rights [
9- and built all those 900 megawatt units -- the French decided 4
10 to create their own power operated relief valve, and they '
11 backfitted on I think all of their 900 megawatt plants, r~T 12- there created power-operated relief.
g.
13 Then, after two years -- two years -- time 14 interval, found out they didn' t work very well. And now
16 All right. Now in my opinion, a very fertile area l 17 for research is. power operated relief valves of borated
- 18. water systems of'PWRs, because they may become-if, God bless 19 Toledo Edison, we go on to primary blowdown, we will want to .
e 20 know how to do it, with what kind of valves are the best to 21 acomplish the purpose.
22 ' I don' t want it screwed up. ,
23 All right. Now we never seem to want to research 24 this very complicated and subtle valve application of power 25 operated relief of pressurizers off the primary system of !
t ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. , i 202-347-3xn Nation.ide cmerage . s m 33 u 646 }
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00 30 01 120 1 lMMbw .1 a borated system, and I really think that is the most 4
2 .important research in the valve region.
3 ,
MR. EBERSOLE: Yes. I think, by the way, to just 4 mention PORVs in this context is a limited concept anyway.
5 I think we should look at ball valves and plug valves. They 6 ao good valves. They come out of the petrochemical 7 industries. Valves which will stop mud or even break a bar, 8 if you put you through it, they will do it. They don't L
9 depend on ramming metal to metal fusion contact at the 10 seats, in order to close either. They've got closure 11 mechanisms that don' t depend on distortion of the metal 12 seats to get shut or lapping.
13 So I am in agreement with Glenn that looking at 14 just PORVs in this context in the usual sense of looking at 15 a valve which senses pressure and then has a lot guts in it 16 that works a pilot function, that ought to be looked at in 17 an entirely different perspective. Maybe you ought to have 18 a big electric or hydraulic valve that is monitored by some 19 transducers.
20 MR. REED: I would like to limit the research, 21 because I find if you don't limit the research, you never _
22 get an accomplishment.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: There are valves a lot better than i
24 PORVs, Glenn.
25 MR. REED: I think the history of the French, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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00 30 02 121 1- MMbw 1 the pilot -- internal pilot, pilot-operated relief valve, 2 the air-operated relief valve. I think if you did a 3 literature research on the LERs and incidents, and somebody 4 had good credentials and ability to evaluate, you could 5 almost get yourself on the path of focused research to 6 answer this problem.
7 My personal opinion is, this very subtle boron 8 vapor, hydrogen vapor, other aspect application, there is a 9 valve that will do it, but we just don't seem to prescribe 10 that valve. First of all, we don't do the research testing 11- to find that.
12 Second of all, we don't prescribe it. I would 13 hope that we could do some research in that area. I have 14 asked for it for two years, but it doesn't seem to show up.
15 MR. WEIDENHAMER: This flow interruption 16 capability of valves is to resolve the Generic Issue 87, 17 which has sort of -- I don' t think the title of that is 18 complete enough, because there are other systems also 19 indicated.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: That could be extended to include 21 reactor water clean-up valves?
22 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Yes; definitely, it is.
23 MR. WYLIE: Let me ask a question. The addition fs 24 that Mr. Reed raised a moment ago was really on the agenda a
(-)
25 little bit later and a little different question. Is this l
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./ 00 30 03 122 1 MMbw I a good time to talk about that, as to whether there is any 2 work going on in the research area in qualifying equipment 3 or establishing the qualification of equipment for a feed 4 and bleed operation?
5 MR. WEIDENHAMER: If you are talking about the 6 qualification of relief valves, I suspect this is the time t 7 to do it. I should tell you that we are maybe belatedly 8 looking into the TMI PORV. They have not taken it out yet.
9 It is just too contaminated to even get to right now. They 10 are in the process of taking it out. We want to look at it.
11 MR. REED: Let me make a point. I said this is a
~
12 very subtle technical area. You can put valves onto 13 systems, and as the French found out in two years, their 14 valve didn't work, you cannot do this laboratory testing, 15 this tear-down testing and evaluate valves in some kinds of 16 service. Now whether a PORV will function reliabily or not
- 17 depends on the environment in which it exists at the time of -
l 18 operation.
t l
19 You take that Three Mile Island valve out. It
! 20 won't tell you a damn thing. That is my opinion. You're 21 just wasting your research dollars, because it is now cooled l 22 down. The hydrogen is no longer there. The boric acid
\
23 ' crystals and scum, if it was ever there, that affected the 24 friction, is no longer there, because it has all been
(~N j %)
25 redissolved and the whole environment is different. It is ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 MMbw 1 a very -- that's why we haven't come out, in my opinion, 2 with tagging the_ issue and discovering the issue. I think 3 there is a subtle research.
4 MR. WEIDENHAMER: You are right, but I think also 5 there is a political question here, and if we are ever 6 asked, did you look at that valve, did it tell you anything?
7 That is the kind of question we're trying to answer. We are 8 not looking at it to delve into it, unless it says through 9 some sort of preliminary analysis, by golly, it was due to 10 qualification problem. Then it might tell us something, but 11 we are not sure what all of this will say.
12 MR. REED: I think there are things that happen.
13 There are evolutions in the industry and industrial people 14 do things for proprietary reasons. They don't tell you why 15 they do things. But I think we are trending along a trail 16 that some people know what is wrong with the plain old Three 17 Mile Island type of internal pilot operated relief. For 18 instance, I notice on the new Westinghouse plants to be just 19 licensed or licensed recently, one of them, they have loop 20 seals on both the pilot lines to the pilot-operated reliefs 21 and loop seals on the discharge, the incoming line the 22 valve main body itself. That tells me something. Somebody f
l 23 is saying, that environment of hydrogen and boron vapor is f
l (~} 24 not. good in the valve operating conditions sitting there.
i \_)
l 25 So it is a very subtle problem, and I think this l
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2 See, the French jumped on the wrong horse and 3 found out two years later that they were on it. I really
, 4 think real smart engineers could say what the right horse 5 is, and we can get on with the show.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: By the way, there's a cloud that 7 hangs over our business. Wherever you see an applicant 8 operator or a utility say, oh, I can bleed and feed, he will
- 9. always do that and never come down to grips with the fact 10 he's. going to do what the PORV, which is incapable of.
11 surviving the environmental circumstances that bleed and 12 feed produces. He carefully avoids ever saying how long he 13 can do it.
14 MR. WYLIE: I take it, in the present proposed 15 program, the type of research that Mr. Reed and Mr. Ebersole 16 have just described is not planned.
17 MR. WEIDENHAMER: It is not planned, no.
18 Jim, would you like to say something?
19 MR. RICHARDSON: But I think you've brought up 20 some very good points, and I give you some assurance as best
. 21 I can that we will be looking into it. I think you've 22 brought up some very good points, and we will, as soon as 23 practical, start looking into this.
24 (Slide.)
25 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Here is the '88 '89 effort ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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00 30 06 125 2 MMbw 1 that we are planning to do, and it is just talking about the 2 higher priority areas. This, incidentally is mostly a 3 carryover effort, carry-on tasks, that we, perhaps, 4 originated ab$ the main program comes to an end, like I 5 say,, in '87. But the mission area code then comes into 6 effect in '88, and these will come in under the mission 7 areas.
8 We believe because of the possibility of large 9 populations of valves that require large samples for 10 testing, that this would go on into '88. I am sort of 11 identifying that now.
rS 12 Qualification requirements might help us to G
13 reduce the size of the sample by saying, well, we've got a 14 similar valve in the reactor water cleanup system and one in 15 the high pressure core injection system. They are the same 16 and requires larger forces or a larger condition from the 17 reactor water cleanup system. We qualify it to that.
18 Perhaps we can say that the high pressure core injection 19 valves are acceptable. That is what I am trying to say. It 20 might help us reduce the population and, therefore, the 21 sample size we need to look at.
22 Things like that are going to be considered, and 23 obviously, the costs. We can only spend so much on these r^3 24 things. Obviously, we can't test everything. So it would 25 require a very diligent evaluation of this data, and so ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 To complete that HDR test, we are using a 3 decommissioned reactor facility in West Germany. We've got 4 a deep valve installed. We supported the piping system to 5 replicate the thickness of the U.S. system. We have an 6 opportunity to get typical flows through these valves. We 7 can measure it now. This is our first opportunity'to do 8 this.
9 We want to find out whether or not traveling 10 flows have any -- what do these forces look like? I believe 11 that the traveling forces are very significant and have been 12 overlooked here. They are flow-induced. I believe they are g'}
U 13 very large and could be very detrimental to the operation.
4 14 This is an area -- this is one of the reasons why we are 15 using it. It provides us an opportunity to apply some i
16 seismic loads and also get these flow loads. We are not 17 sure what the Phase 2 efforts are going to be into. We 18 think we are going to be able to put some shakers on each of 19 these components that we are interested in to simulate 20 seismic events, and in addition, have the flow. We can 21 operate the valve. We have no real restrictions.
22 MR. EBERSOLE: What does "HDR" mean?
23 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Heiss damp reaktor. It's 24 H-e-i-s-s D-a-m-p R-e-a-k-t-o-r, Reaktor.
25 This Phase 2 testing is right now scheduled to ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 MMbw 1 begin in late '87. To be sure, if we get involved in it, we 2 will carry it over to '88.
3 (Slide.)
4 Additional planned effort. This is that 5 flow-induced work I just mentioned, using the results of 6 this HDR and the flow interruption tests. This will give us 7 some information on these throttling forces. What do they 8 look like? What are its characteristics? How can we 9 represent thme? If we have to qualify a component of these, 10 what should they look these? And that is just more detail.
11 MR. EBERSOLE: Yesterday we heard about an effort T 12 that was going to take place in the thermal hydraulics area 3 /
13 to look at water hammer. How it is induced and shock 14 effects of water flows running through piples. It impacted 15 on the thing most recently about all the check valves 16 failing.
17 Are you going to look at the more generic 18 aspects of check valve vulnerabilities. In particular, the 19 one that always bugged me a little bit was with the direct 20 cycle boiler pumps feedwater direct from the big pumps, from 21 the turbine haul onto the reactor with the progressive of
- 22 raising the pressure from the booster pumps on up to 1200, 23 1500 pounds pressure. And it faces, at least, 24 hypothetically, upstream failure somewhere to condensate
.25 pump or something in a sudden reversal of flow, which will ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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128 b1003009 1 MMbw 1 look at swinging valves on stellated seats. That has never 2 been studied for the dynamics of closure.
3 That then brings me picture of a through line 4 hookup to the feedwater system with inability to make up.
5 That is a horrible picture to picture.
6 MR. WEIDENHAMER: This is another area we want to 7 look at, we have not addressed yet. We have not forgotten 8 it or thrown it out. It is something that is on our agenda.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: I mentioned yesterday, one 10 particular owner utility had an investigator group of 11 consultants look into this until the answer began to look 12 bad, at which point the investigation ceased.
b(w 13 MR. WEIDENHAMER: In which way was it too much 14 money?
15 MR. EBERSOLE: Too much dynamic forces on the 16 closure. The answer was beginning to be forecast as being 17 the wrong color.
18 MR. WEIDENHAMER: We- are doing some work in check 19 valves right now.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: That tends to make me a cynic.
21 When the answer begins to look the wrong way, turn off the 22 analysis.
23 MR. WEIDENHAMER: I can only say it is something 24 we haven't forgotten about. Issues you raise today 25 certainly have to be put into it.
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1 MMbw 1 MR. EBERSOLE: That can be a very spectacular ,
2 event.
3 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Yes, that is true. Obviously, '
4 it has to be qualified to valves, to these kinds of loads, 5 but I am not sure what these magnitudes are.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: I understand some more brilliant 7 designers are requiring hydraulic extension shafts and 7
8 distance to dampen the closure.
9 MR. RICHARDSON: I am more cynical than you ae.
10 I wouldn't trust the check valves, as far as I could throw 11 them.
12 MR. EBERSOLE: That is great. I would always 13 back it up. But you have to put the valve that backs it up 14 in f ront of the check valve, so you don' t have to chew down 15 on the pieces of it. But we don't have them. We've got 16 swing checks on the BWRs.
17 MR. RICHARDSON: I think it is an area of 18 research we've got to get into. I am hoping we can get 19 into it --
20 MR. EBERSOLE: I am thinking, you know, maybe 21 that would be our Chernobyl.
22 MR. RICHARDSON: Yes.
23 MR. WEIDENHAMER: Finally, as I pointed out 24 earlier, at least alluded to we have to interact with these 25 standards committees. It is a big part of this effort.
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1 MMbw 1 MR. EBERSOLE: Is there a check valve ASME i
2 committee? !
3 MR. WEIDENHAMERs They cover check valves. Yes, 4 I believe there is.
5 MR. EBERSOLE: They're special cat' check ;
6 valves.
7 MR. WEIDENHAMER: They have an ASME committee, 8 and they-are the valve committee. -
9 MR. EBERSOLE: What do they say about the 10 dynamics of closure in respect to pipe failures? -
11 MR. RICHARDSON: They don' t. ;
12 MR. EBERSOLE: You know, it's fascinating to me.
13 We can have LOCAs all inside the plant, spend millions of 14 dollars investigating hydraulic transients. When we look ;
15 out there-at the cheap piping on the sunction side of the 16 pumps, and we don't know whether we can'stop the fluid 1
17 spewing out into open space. The spread of logic is vast.
I 18 MR. WEIDENHAMER: The whole question of valves is-1.
19 really coming to a head right now. We are experiencing 20 failures.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: We just don' t get enough pipe
! 22 failures to have an experience base. Maybe we should have 23 a stick of dynamite thrown against an old plant.on the
(^T 24 backside. We need.a little sabotage.
l- (_/
4 25- MR. WEIDENHAMER: Finally, the interaction i
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00 30 12 131 2 MMbw I with the various standard's committees to make sure they know 2 about our results, if they are, indeed, applicable and good 3 results, and if they do impact some of the deficiencies and 4 can improve their standard.
5 (Slide.)
6 Budgeting for '88, '89 -- for '36,'87, on the old 7 equipment qualification, EDOT, the name is 1.655 K. These 8 are in K. 1800 -- 1.8 million. s l 9 The Senior Contracts Review Board has approved 10 the two expenditures, '86, '87. Under the mission area 11 code, we are requesting 800 and 800 for '88, '89 for these 12 areas that I have mentioned earlier.
13 MR. WYLIE: If we added additional things like 14 PORVs and the check valves and this kind of thing, that is 15 not adequate, is it?
16 MR. WEIDENHAMER: No. It's got to be doubled, I
, 17 would say, 18 MR. RICHARDSON: I think as we develop these 19 programs, hopefully, within the next year, as we develop the ,
20 programs, then we go in for a legitimate budget request and 21 have justification for the Commission for the budget.
22 MR. EBERSOLE: The work you are doing here, I ;
I 23 would like to sort of stand up and look at it in
( 24 perspective. If we look at everything but pumps and valves, 25 we are looking at static components, pipes and vessels. ;
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, 2 MMbw 1 Well, pipes and vessels don' t give us much problems, because 2 they simply sit there, and we have stress corroding, ;
3 cracking, but by and large, they are pretty sleepy things.
4 So you can refocus to pumps and valves as 5 critical elements of a critical process called jet on heat 6 removal, right down on the pins. These are the gizmos that 7 have to work or they don't work at all, is the pumps on 8 valves, apart from the electrical driving.
9 And I don't think we have really fccused on the 10 real -- focused attention to punps and valves in this 11 context, as we should have, but maybe this is a beginning.
12 MR. WEIDENHAMER: I an hoping it is. We think it r^}
v 13 is a beginning.
14 MR. EBERSOLE: You pump or you don't pump. You 15 open and close and flow or you don' t flow. And if we do the 16 right things, it won't.
17 So these are the roots of the active equipment 18 problem.
19 MR. WEEDENHAMER: What should they be qualified 20 to?
21 That is all I have to say.
22 NR WYLIE: Okay. Any other cuestions?
l 23 (No response.)
24 ; MR. WYLIE: Okay. I thank you.
25 Mr. Sullivan, are you next?
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_ 2 MMbw 1 MR. SULLIVAN: My name is Don Sullivan. I am 2 Acting Chief of the Electrical Engineering Instrumentationm 4
3 Program of Instrumental Technology.
4 The next speaker is Mr. Vora, who will discuss 5 the nuclear plant aging research program, which is conducted 6 under the Division of Engineering Technology.
7 MR. EBERSOLE: Is this just electrical aging?
8 MR. WYLIE: This is in-plant aging.
9 MR. VORA: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, ladies and 10 gentlemen.
11 As Don mentioned, my name is Jit Vora, and I.am 12 the Program Manager on Nuclear Plant Aging Research in the
'Cr~)
13 Division of Engineering Technology of Office of Research.
14- This morning I would like to present to you and 15 discuss with you the major elements and activities of my 16 research program, related to the plant aging and the life 17 extension, license renewal related activities, which have 18 been, at this point in time at a technical level, have been 19 integrated as part of the aging research program. This 20 program element has been described in-the mission area code 21 number 0116 and 0112 of the Five-year plan.
22 (Slide.)
23 Here we see the NRC initiatives with regards to 24 the activities on the plant life extension, and since we 25 consider the technical level the aging and life extension ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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% 30 15 1 MMbw 1 issues are interwoved together, my discussion today covers 2 both elements simultaneously.
3 The Commission intends to continue the 4 development of the policy and critera to define the 5 requirements from operating license extension to help assure 6 the industry efforts in this area are focused on the primary 7 regulatory concerns. This is the guidance as came out in 8 the 1986 PPG.
9 (Slide.)
10 And the guidance to to the staff implement this 11 policy in the PPG includes that in view of the industry 12 initiative to addrcss operating license renewals, the Staff 13 should proposal policy guidance and develop licensing 14 criteria to define requirements for operating license 15 extensions.
16 (Slide.)
17 In terms of the aging problem, the strategy 18 goals, as defined in the 1986 PPG includes, identify those 19 problems which should be anticipated as a consequence of 20 plant aging.
> 21 (Slide.)
i 22 As far as the elements of research programs are 23 concerned, the planning goals for needed safety research
- 24 include coordinating a research effort to identify measures 25 which can be taken to correct deficiencies attributable to ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 MMbw I aging and irradiation and to reduce the safety risks 2 inherent to degraded equipment.
3 The current program of plant aging research of ,
4 the MAC 0116 include both the aging part as well as the 5 influence of irradiation, which is Chuck Serpan's program, 6 which has been addressed in the Materials Group.
7 (Slide.) i 8 To give an idea about some of the industry ,
9 effort, in terms of the license expiration for the operating 10 plants and the capacity, this gives you some idea about the 11 plans which will require -- which can be considered for the 12 license extension.
13 (Slide.)
14 The DOE EPNI and utilities have large-scale 15 pilot studies. The one which is actually the DOE EPNI,
- 16 Virginia Power, with Surry 1 plant, and the other is f
17 BWR, with the Monticello Northern States Power. This gives 18 some perspective about the timetable and the schedule, but l
19 when the license expires around 2004 for many of these ;
f 20 plants, they require about 10 years of new plant lead time, '
- 21 and these four that they are identifying, that you will i
22 require about eight years of industry effort, which is time
(
l l 23 available to establish the life extension program, perform r~s 24 the confirmatory research during this time and get the U
f 25 regulatory review and approval. ,
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1 MMbw 1 This came out from the industry effort and 2 program at this point in time.
3 So the confirmatory research element that needs 4 to be done, and we are the agency actually have to come up 5 ,
with an independent evaluation criteria to make the decision l
6 I on some of these applications.
7 So this gives you a perspective about the f
8 timetable for this issue, which will require a resolution 9 for plant life extension at a technical level.
10 of course, there are the institutional issues, i
p 11 the legal issues and the procedural issues which are not 12 being-addressed as a part of this aging program, j 13 (Slide.)
14 When I talk about aging and life extension 15 I program, this simply side gives you some concept and idea 16 about that NRC's aging research program, as~we mentioned, in 17 this, in the MAC 0116 and 0122. This is actually what we 18 call the aging program or the aging research program. And 19 for just-lack of any better words, the question comes about-L 20 that before we will consider the life extension, are we 21 going to make 40 years, and therefore, the aging program, as 22 we visualize it, covers the entire spectrum of the 40 years, 23 and whatever we do at a technical level in this program 24 would also help answer some of the technical issues that 25 will come up and which will require some independent ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 Some of the major technical issues which require 3 resolution not only during plant life extcasion 4 consideration, but also during the normal operations, which 5 components and structurs will require residual life 6 evaluations and what should be the basis for the selection 7 criteria.
8 A large-scale industry effort is going on. They 9 want to improve the availability, the capacity factor and 10 the transmission of megawatt of power, and they have 11 selection criteria. We want to look into it, but the safety 12 aspect has to be the number one aspect of the NRC selection 13 criteria.
14 What the degradation processes of materials, 15 components and structures which could affect the safety 16 during extended life? But before that we also want to look 17 about, what about up to the design life of 40 years? What 18 are the degradation processes of materials, components and 19 structures? And once we want to identify these degradation 20 process, which involve some materials, which involves the 21 stresses in time domain, which involves the environment, the 22 electrical stresses, the mechanical stresses, the thermal 23 stresses, the chemical environment, the contamination, the 24 radiation. Once we identify the degradation processes for a 25 given component, for a given structure, for a given ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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.l. MMbw 1 system, then we want to identify what methods of inspection, 2 surveillance and monitoring will be effective in detecting 3 i degradation processes before safety is affected.
4 And the challenge here is, the failures are too 5 late. I think the technological challenge which lies ahead I
6 during the normal eperating life of 40 years and extending 7 life and our ability to detect the effects in the incipient .
. d stage prior to failures for pumps, for valves, for breakers, u
9 for cables, for connectors, and then we want to find out 10 about how/ effective are the current maintenance' programs in
~
11 mitigating aging. Will special reliability assurance and 12 maintenance programs be needed during the extended life.
(^}
%s -
. 13 (Slide.)
i 14 Continuing these technical issues, what data 15 should be gathered over the later years of current operating f
16 licenses'to justify license extension?
17 I think the important thing could be, it would 18 help to do the trending of certain performance indicators or i
19 the functional indicators or the parameters on the cables, 20 the breakers, the relays on pumps, on valves or the i
21 structures or whatever components for which you require the 22 residual lifetime evaluation.
23 We would have to do some testing of parameters, l
24 and if we know it, that af ter 40 years as an example, 25 failure dissipation factor or power factor of a cable is l
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00 31 03 139 1 MMbw 1 still less than .05 percent, I think we all would have 2 better confidence. Sure, as long as the power factor is 3 below this level and it stayed the same way for the last ten 4 years, why not go ahead and extend it for the r. ext ten 5 years.
6 So those are the kind of extending parameters 7 for every component or every system which we want to 8 evaluate might have to be considered, especially during the 9 extended life situation.
10 How should industry codes and standards be 11 revised to support relicensing? What kind of schedule (T 12 should be followed? Can effective action be taken during (J
13 later years of current license to prevent degradation and 14 wear. Can adequate life prediction me nods be developed to 15 support a fixed license extension, and what format should 16 be followed to encourage information exchange coordination 17 and avoid duplication?
18 These are some of the major technical issues.
19 The plants are getting older. 25, 30, 40 years, when we are 20 talking about license extension. Are these technical issues 21 that we, together with the industry, should start to address 22 at this point in time, so that five years from now, when the 23 decision has to be made, that we can all work together and s 24 say, okay, these are the kinds of things that we would
('J s_
25 require.
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~1' MMbw- l' So this gives a general' overview about aging life 2 extension:ati.the technical level, are very much integrated e .
.3 and interwoven together.
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4 (Slide.) > ,
- n. ,
5 As far as the research program'its. elf,is 6 . concerned,.this is a very hardware-oriented engineering
!' 7 research;programinthe.51kisionofEngineeringTechnology i ,i
'8 of Office'.nf Research, headed-by Guy Arlotto as the Division-9 Director,.and we have various programs, which actually are
~
! 10 now being coordinated and integrated, working together at r.
-11 the division level. .
.p 12 , We. now have an effort goirig on, a coordinated 13 effort at the office level, but not only that, we now have a .
, / ,
> 14 directive from'the EDO-that'he would like to see a plan 15- developed'by the end of September on how to accomplish the-
'16 integration of age,ncy-level activities related to aging and
-17 life extension.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: In that diagram up there, where do 19 .I find elastomers and electrical installation and plastics?
, 20 MR. VORA: That all comes at this point in time, 21 before we get reorganized this afternoon, it looked like 22 most of.'this work was done in the Electrical Equipment' 23 Qualification Branch, and this part here on the safety h 24 systems an'd components.
\.)
25 There is also the element of equipment
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141 p 00 31 05 1 MMbw 1 survival in Jim Richardson's program.
2 The heart of the equipment and systems right now 3 is with Don Sbllivan and Jim Richardson's Branch, and this 4 is where you will find it.
5 MR. EBERSOLE: Will they extend the fatigue 6 studies on metal equipment?
7- MR. VORA: This is actually some of the things we 8 intend to find out. What are the issues we will have to 9 address at a technical level for components, for systems, 10 for piping, for vessels and all the other aspects of
-11 the materials research.
12 So if there are aging and degradation processes 13 associated with this, it will be my recommendation, there 14 should be a test.
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 i (")%
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! 25 l
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'-u{J}00 40 01 l Mimie 1 MR. WYLIE: In the area you mentioned a moment 2 ago, like cables, for example, not just electrical 3 characteristics in some of the cables, but --
4 MR. EBERSOLE: Elastomer seals?
5 MR. WYLIE: The elongations to rupture material --
6 MR. VORA: This is correct.
7 MR. WYLIE: All the other characteristics of the 8 material.
9 MR. VORA: ~This is correct. We want to look into 10 -- what we are doing here, we can take any component, pump, 11 valve, breaker, cable or elastomer. We want to understand g-] - 12 the material and the materials we have here in a time domain
's_/
13 due to stresses and due to the environment it will 14 experience during normal operating conditions, and "uring 15 the accident conditions.
16 So we are talking about that there are only seven 17 parameters of materials. The stresses are electrical 18 stresses, mechanical stresses, thermal stresses.
19 Environment is radiation, chemical and contaminant. And 20 then you have the synergistic influence.
21 So any component we do the aging and degradation 22 assessment for it, those are the seven parameters we want to 23 look into and see what are the influence of it, and actually 24 on a degraded or aged component or system.
25 The major issue, is it going to do its intended ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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{J100 40 02 i 1 Mimie 1 function when my component., my systems are 25 years old, 30 2 years old, 40 years old? Or, would it result into a common 3 mode failure, because now they have degraded to a point that ;
4 they are going into stresses under normal operating 5 conditions. ,
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Are they now using elastomer seals .
7 in environmental qualification work which have a finite life 8 that require replacement every 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 nine years? [
9 MR. VORA: I think Bill Farmer could probably 10 answer that better, but I am .sure there are.
11 MR. FARMER: A lot of the maintenance programs '
12 require elastomeric seals on valves, pumps and other items 13 be changed at regular intervals well before_they have 14 degraded.
15 MR.-EBERSOLE: So this is an extension of that ,
16 process?
I 17 MR. FARMER: This is one of the thinga that Vora f 18 would expect to look at, to find from his research, is there 19 an unanticipated aging occurring in these seals that might 20 lead to earlier than expected failure.
21 MR. VORA: Also, we are talking about in the life 22 extension issue -- I'll show you this later. ,
23 (Slide) ,
24 Industry put in a tremendous effort in evaluating 25 the integrity of the containment structures for life ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. .
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2 Mimie 1 extension considerations. So, Jim and his group, and the 2 equipment survivability, on Jim Weidenhamer's work, in our 3 area on the electrical and mechanical components, Chuck 4 Serpan's work on primary system integrity. Also, would 5 there be special decommissioning required on life extension considerations, 6lf 7 If that is going to be a technical issue, it might 8 have to be included. So, in Arlotto's division we have i
9 coordinated this effort.
10 We are also going to bring in the work which 11 Burdick described in the reliability programs and quality
< 12 assurance programs to bring their effort into it, and come (3 J f
13 up with a program at office level. And then eventually go 14 I into agency level programs.
15 j MR. EBERSOLE: There is so much use of plastics l
16 d now and apparatus. I don't know.
i 17 MR. VORA: When we had epoxies, plastics, gaskets, 18 I all those materials are the most susceptible. When you have 19 .a temperature, you have mechanical stresses in it, I l 20 y vibrations in it, and you have other chemical contaminants, 21 1 they are going to degrade with time.
22 f MR. EBERSOLE: In the seismic context, there will J
23 f work fine perhaps, and you will never know that they are
("N, 24 gone. What are you going to do, pull them out and shake V
25 them again?
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f 300~40 04 145 1 Mimie 1 MR. VORA: That's a very good point. I think this 2 is where we are going to see that we are going to have this 3 inquiry focused to a component level, to a systems level and 4 identify which materials are most susceptible to aging and 5 degradation. And then make recommendations for inspections, 6 surveillance, monitoring, and then maintenance of it.
7 MR. EBERSOLE: I was thinking about the Salem 8 scram switch handle coming off when he was trying to get it 9 shut down. Af ter 40 years, lots of handles will come off.
10 MR. VORA: The question is, identify that that is 11 a concern. And it requires good attention for maintenance 12 for those activities. Then I think we can prevent that from 13 happening.
14 So, I think we have to do it, but we would not be 15 able to do all the components and all the systems. But, we 16 can do a few of them and demonstrate and show it to the 17 investigator, this is how you can evaluate your own 18 components, your own system for your own application 19 operating in your environment with your own maintenance 20 operating practices.
- 21 And so this is very component specific and very 22 hardware-oriented program. ;
23 (Slide) 24 What we are trying to do with that is take a pump .
25 or a cable or a breaker or a relay. For every activity, we ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1l first want to identify what are the aging and service wear 2 effects, which if unchecked, if not properly identified and l 3 maintained, could cause degradation of that component system 4 and impair plant safety.
5 If it is a motor operated valve or a breaker or ,
6 containment structure or primary system or piping, let's 7 identify the aging and service wear effects.
8 Then when we do t. hat let's identify what are the ,
9 methods of inspection, surveillance and monitoring which 10 will be effective in detecting the defects prior to loss of 11 safety function. We identify the material, stresses and r~N 12 environment and we know if we have certain epoxy or certain V
13 elastomers, or certain insulating material, if you know that 14 they are operating in this temperature and this chemical l 15 environment, they are going to degrade.
16 That means that we want to identify what is the l
17 best way to inspect it, how to surveillance, how to monitor 18 it. And then make recommendations for storage and 19 , maintenance, repair and replacement practices.
I I
20 ! And Guy Arlotto made the presentation of it saying i
21 that understanding aging as we define this program, is a key l >
22 to ensuring safety. And I, actually supplemented this slide l' I
23 with the same goals.
l.
24 (Slide)
/]
~~/ .
25 For the major structures and components for which ;
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1 Mimie 'l we will have to make independent residual --
2 MR. EBERSOLE: I stalled on the word " major" and 3 made the notation that is a cosmic view that leaves out the 4 relays, little plastic buttons and other things that makes i
I '
5 things work.
6l MR. VORA: The two issues, when I talk about the i
'7 , scajor components, these are the~ industry programs for plant 8 life extension for which they are thinking that they might 9 require continuous operation beyond 40 years.
10 j As far as the aging program is concerned, we are l
11 addressing the breakers, the relays, pumps, valves and l
< l 12 l other components that you mentioned.
- l. 13 j MR. EBERSOLE: And seals like we talked about 14 earlier?
15 '
MR. VORA: Yes.
! l
! 16 l (Slidel 17 1 I'd like-to put this slide up again. I presented 18 , it before. What do we mean by aging of a component, of a l
(' 19 L system, of a structure?
20 L It is accumulated degradation occuring within a L
i 21 l component or structure which, if unchecked, will result in h l l' 22 l the loss of function.
i I l 23 ; And it can be caused by any of the natural l
i=
.24 internal chemical or physical processes: External stressors
- i. 25 [, ,
and environment, service wear, cycling, vibration and 1
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2 And what we are saying here, if we identify the 3 aging and degradation processes, if we identify the 4 inspection, surveillance and monitoring methods, then the 5 inspection, surveillance and monitoring methods will also 6 help us to identify improper installation, design, 7 applications and maintenance for that component as well.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: I recall a case where the pilot 9 operated safety valves on the boiler were found to be 4
10 uniformly proceeding toward inability to safety relieve. I 11 am not talking about PORV function -- I'm talking safety 12 relief -- because the bronze metal pilot springs were 13 operating too hot, and they_were relaxing, caused by the 14 insulation contractor on insulation extending his insulation 15 X 1.ches or feet up too far next to the valves. And it was 16 a silent and deadly process leading to inability to relieve 17 at 1400 psi when you needed it.
18 Very careful uniform process to lose safety 19 valves.
20 And they were not tested at sufficient intervals; 21 that you would never know it happened.
22 MR. VORA: A good design and good analyst, if he 23 had known that that is the component, he is going to 24 experience this kind of temperature and other environment --
O 25 MR. EBERSOLE: But the insulation contractor came A.CE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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- ^300'40 08 149 V-1 ~ Mimie 1 in, and it is an independent ef fort, _and wanted to do a very 2 good job'to keep the heat in. He did. He kept it into the 3 valve.
4 MR. VORA: I think the real challenge is for all 5 these. components -- talk about check valves, motor operated 6 valves or relays or breakers, is to identify what materials 7 are most susceptible to aging, and where. To identify what 8 are the stresses and environment it is going to experience 9 during its normal 40-year design life. And also, under 10 accident conditions.
11 And then we have to make an analysis, we have to 12 do the testing to see whether it is going to do its' intended r-)
'% d 13 function when needed.
14 It is one thing to' check an operability of a 15 component according to the codes and standards or tech spec 16 requirements. But, it is a different thing, how do we L
17 assure the operational readiness of an aging component or a l
18 system? Will it do its intended function?
S 19 MR. EBERSOLE: Do we measure the temperature in e
20 solid state equipment cabinets as a safety 'Inction?
21 MR. VORA: I think it is built into the design 22 feature, isn' t it? And also --
l 23 MR. EBERSOLE: I have never found that there was a 24 temperature measurement made internal to the cabinet, and l 25 then an execution function that says, "I've got fever, I l
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1 Mimie 1 must divert to a safe mode."
2 MR. VORA: At the time of the installation of the 3 cabinets and switch gear, there are certain --
4 MR. EBERSOLE: You measure the temperature on a 5 wall, but you don't check the painters' drop cloths.
6 MR. SULLIVAN: Let me try to answer that.
7 In my years of reviewing plants -- although I 8 haven' t reviewed plants in about ten years -- I don't recall 9 any safety system tied into a control room or control 10 cabinet temperature measurement.
11 You are referring to the ambient --
12 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm saying the solid state
(~)s
\.
13 equipments which are produced by Combustion Engineering 14 don' t have their own thermometer to tell whether they are 15 sick or not, which is an aging problem.
16 MR. SULLIVAN: Okay. I am saying, to my 17 knowledge, there is no automatic shutdown.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: No automatic shutdown when a system 19 should know that I am going crazy. I may not shut down at 20 all, certain critical functions.
21 MR. VORA: I think the last industry effort is 22 going on, what are the stresses on environment --
23 MR. EBERSOLE: Solid state equipment is
<' 24 notoriously susceptible to malfunction in the wrong Ns]
25 direction for shutdown heat removal function.
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_1 Mimie 1 I have a personal conviction, every such box ought 2 to have its own temperature fever-detecting system which 3 says, "I am sick, I'm going to quit safely." It is an aging 4 problem which can come on slowly.
5 (Slide) 6 MR. VORA: As far as our approach to the research 7 is concerned for every component and system we do the study, 8 we have a phase approach to research. And once we find _out 9 that these are the component systems, we want to do the 10 in-depth engineering studies, we want to look at operating 11 experience, reviews and analysis and go through the Phase I 12 study befor we actually go into the very intensive test
(~}
v 13 program to actually see the operational readiness of aging 14 components and systems.
15 And this slide has been actually expanded into a 16 much larger and more detailed effort.
17 (slide) 18 I would like to bring one point in. In our 19 discussion we are talking about the Phase I study which 20 includes all of these elements.
21 And then we go into the Phase II study for that 22 component which includes the generation of the application, 23 guides and development of that criteria.
24 And for that component, for motor operated valve
., 25 or jet valve or breaker or relay, if we do this job and go ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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/^1 152 Q 00 40 11 1 Mimie 1 through the Phase I and Phase II study, it vrill help us in f 2 consideration of life extension evaluation.
3 Also, as Mr. Reed pointed out, if we do this job 4 right, it could also identify improvements in the materials 5 and designs; it could also help us prepare the guidelines 6 for maintenance, service life prediction.
7 So, this is actually the phase approach for study 8 for those components and systems, Phase I and Phase II. And
'9 those are the outputs or result we expect for each component 10 or system we are studying.
11 (Slide)'
1 12 These are some of the slides that are included. I
(
13 think in consideration of time, I will expedite this.
4 -
14 Utilization of research and general benefits.
15 (Slide) 16 We also have specific benefits.
i 17 (Slide)
! 18 In our research activities, we include risk 19 oriented identification of aging effects, includes the 20 correlation of risk and aging trends, analysis of impact of 21 component aging on system performance. We are not just 22 looking into the components by themselves, but we are having 23 an approach from component level as well as the systems 24 level.
25 (Slide)
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1 Mimie 1 And some of the components. Before we actually 2 get the output of our system studies, we have already 3 identified various components for which we are doing the 4 detailed in-depth engineering study during the Phase 5 approach. Motor operated valves, pumps, motors, batteries, 6 check valves, diesel generators and all these components.
7 Up to this point in time all of these components 8 are already being investigated and they are in various 9 stages of Phase I study and the Phase II study.
10 (Slide) 11 We are also looking into the in-depth engineering
~T 12 studies of the systems; the reactor protection system Class (C 13 I, electrical distribution system.
14 So, these are the six major, seven major systems.
15 We are also doing the aging assessment; also 16 identified inspection, surveillance and monitoring measures 17 and general guidelines and criteria for maintenance of those 18 systems.
19 (Slide) 20 We also have activities for plant life extensions, 21 about which are the components for which we might have to 22 make the residual life assessment in consideration of the 23 industry's program for plant life extension. To identify
(~g 24 and rank major components according to their relevance to V
25 plant safety. ,
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.,g 1 Mimie 1 Identify degradation sites and life limiting 2 processes for each of the components.
3 Assess the adequacy of inspection and residual 4 life assessment and prepare a plan to determine the residual 5 life of those components.
6 (Slide) 7 This is being carried out at Idaho, and this is 8 very preliminary. We are just starting to look into some of 9 these activities for which we require to evaluate during the 10 relicensing consideration, j 11 These are some of the component major items for 12 which the utilities might come up and ask for consideration 13 for license renewal in these activities.
14 (Slide) 15 Our scope of work also includes the review of the 16 Standard Review Plan; what components and which chapters 17 will require the reviews in consideration for relicensing, 18 and recommend needed research to allow extension of an 19 operating license.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: By the way, that key PWR 21 components, you didn't say anything about switch gear, 22 elastomers or plastic.
23 MR. VORA: The questions on some of those
^ 24 components, we have reviewed the pilot studies done by the 25 utilities, the DOE, EPRI. They started. They have ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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( 00 40 14 155 1 Mimie 1 identified 1200 major components and they have identified 10 2 or 20 major items which does not include the elastomers and 3 the other items at this point in time.
4 MR. EBERSOLE: It is just, you know, when you put 5 an all-encompassing title to a table like that, it just 6 leads you astray.
7 MR. VORA: This is correct. When we go into the 8 detail for the control rod drive mechanisms, or emergency 9 diesel generators, at that point in time if there are any 10 elastomers, any epoxies or other materials which are 11 susceptible to degradation, it will come into the detailed 12 studies for these components.
13 MR. WYLIE: Would scram breakers be treated 14 differently than any other circuitbreakers?
15 MR. VORA: No, that is being addressed as a part 16 of our breaker program, itself. We are also looking into --
17 not from the life extension consideration but also 18 operability.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: You are going to look at the mashed 20 up float switches on the BWR level controls on the dump i
21 volume?
22 MR. VORA: Yes. Let me say we are not looking 23 into all the major components and systems. That is one of 24 the items we have identified. We look into conformance of 25 bistable switches.
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2 Mimie 1 MR. EBERSOLE: You have to look at the brains as 2 well as the muscles.
3 MR. VORA: I think you are absolutely right.
4 Our list is not very exhausting, but we are 5 starting with these components, which include representative 6 electrical components and mechanical components and a few 7 electrical systems and fluid mechanical systems.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: Well, I think the brains of the 9 plant is the first to go. And you are talking about the 10 muscles.
11 MR. VORA: I think you are absolutely right. Some 12 of these things we have not looked into, bistables and .
13 control switches is one of the items we have identified 14 needs to be looked into. When we looked into the operating 15 experience of the many systems' unavailability and failures, 16 we find those components are actually showing up.
17 MR. WYLIE: You may have mentioned it and I missed 18 it if you did, is part of your criteria to mate the seismic 19 reactor with the age components?
20 MR. VORA: Not directly, but indirectly, our 21 effort at Brookhaven with looking into the seismic 22 performance and activity, is nothing but mechanical stressor 23 and in-time domain, the way we look into the aging problem.
24 The question is, what happens when these
{s 25 components are 35 years, 40 years old, then you have a ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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-(O 2 Mimie 1 seismic event, should we be concerned? Should we look into 2 it?
3 And that is the part we have started looking 4 into; the breakers, the relays, and in conjunction with Jim 5 Richardson's program on the motor control centers at 6 Brookhaven, we will see the influence of the aging and wear.
7 And then you have stresses due to the seismic 8 event.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: What are you going to do about the 10 zillions of pin connectors that are not made out of gold?
11 MR. VORA: That is correct.
12 But when we look into a motor control center, what 13 we want to identify is the physical layout, the electrical 14 layout, and identify the major interfaces, connections, the 15 leads that connect all those parts into it. And then see 16 which are the most susceptible to aging and wear with time.
17 And then question what happens if you now have a 18 seismic event? Where it could actually have its influence 19 the most?
20 MR. EBERSOLE: What is thought to be the life of a 21 pin connector, typical non-gold pin connector? Is it 30 22 years?
23 MR. VORA: It depends, actually what environment 24 it is used in, and what kind of stresses it has experienced.
25 MR. WYLIE: If it is purchased for Class lE ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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300 40 17 158 2 Mimie. 1 service, it would be for 30 years. That was a minimum 2 criteria.
'3 MR. EBERSOLE: It would hold its spring tension 4 and surface contacts?
5 MR. WYLIE: I suppose it is tested in a simulated 6 age condition.
4 7 MR. VORA: Another question also is, you might 8 have, say a relay out of switches or connectors. They, 9 themselves might be all right. What happens when you put l
10 everything together? Then you have a system. You have i
11 leads floating.around all over, in the switchgear. What is i .v g 12 going to happen? Are they going to be susceptible to get
- kJ 13 moved during the seismic event?
~
4
'14 MR. EBERSOLE: What about service water pipes that i
- 15 are put in and buried in earth and are, unknowingly to you e
4 16 on the outside, corroding, and they are thin and worn and a 17 seismic event tears them up?
18 MR. VORA: I think that probably would be 19 addressed as part of the materials engineering program. Or,
- 20 depending upon what has been done --
21 MR. EBERSOLE: I once found a retaining wall that i
22 was held up by exposed tension reinforcing rods, which l 23 certainly rust with time and would eventually be gone. And,
! 24 waiting for the first little disturbance to lose the whole j 25 retaining wall which contained the whole field of pipes by i
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2 MR. VORA: I think we have to start going from 3 generality to very specific component's and systems and do a 4 thorough analysis, identifying the materials.
5 If you have the moisture and vibration in it, and 6 if you have steel or concrete interfacing, they are going to 7 rust with time.
8 The question is, how we can actually inspect for 9- it, surveillance and monitor for it.
10 But, we won' t be able to do all the components and 11 systems -- this is our first list -- with the limited 12 funding we have in the program.
13 MR. WYLIE: One that is more prevalent is stray 14 ground currents taking metal off quicker than rust.
l 15 MR. VORA: It is the same thing. You are talking 16 about the ground, of lightning surge. arrester is going to 17 -degrade with time. Are you going to have the same i
i 18 protective monitoring after 40 years, as when you first 19 started 40 years ago?
i 20 Those are the kinds of things that should come up 21 in the system interaction studies.
22 MR. EBERSOLE: The surge arrester you are talking i 23 about can also be blown away in a tornado, and a subsequent 24 strike be picked up which will instantly take the same 25 effect.
l ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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00 31 02 160 l' Mimie 1- It is iust a chronology of events.
2 (Slide) l 3 MR. VORA: Some of the interfaces. As part of the 4 aging life extensions program, we already are doing it with 1
5 the DOE Office of Naval Reactors at Shippingport.
6 We also have quite a bit of interest for DOE to 7 actually join the forces at a working level with our plant 8 aging program, and with their effort for the life extension, 9 especially their multi-million dollar program for life
- 10 extension in reactors. Henceforth they have a lot of 11 experience.
1 12 And so we have set up working group meeting to 13 have an information exchange and dialogue in this ef fort.
14 We are working very closely with EPRI Equipment 15 Qualification Advisory Group with Jim Thomas of Duke Power l 16 as a chairman. Also, Guy Arlotto and Bryan Sherman from NRR 17 have been assigned to work with the Utility Steering Group 18 in Plant Life Extension headed by Jerry Neise of Northern 19 State Power.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: Is the utility group admitting that 21 in order to hold the load curve they are going to have to 22 use these old plants? There is no escape?
23 MR. VORA: I think they have actually -- it is my 24 understanding they made the economic analysis it is better 25 to go or not to go ahead. And it looks like economically it ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 is probably a viable option. That is all I know about that 2 effort.
3 And they are going to publish their report this 4 fall on what criteria they used in considering the life 5 extension effort.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Of nuclear plants?
7 MR. VORA: This is correct.
8 We also have a special working group helping set 9 up for plant life extension under the ASME section 11. I am 10 a member of their working group and we are interacting on 11 what are the technical issues, which codes and which r; 12 standards would require attention, revision o" changes for
(.)
13 plant life extension.
14 MR. EBERSOLE: What plans have they got for the 15 vessels which are going to be hardened?
16 MR. VORA: They have a report coming out. They 17 are not telling us at this point in time. They are doing 18 some more studies on it for all the major components which 19 are listed. They have a topical report where they have done 20 a study on the value-impact study and analysis.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: Are they talking about annealing?
22 MR. VORA: I don't think I can anser that quetion.
23 Jim, do you have any idea about it?
/' 24 MR. RICilARDSON: I don' t.
%S) 25 MR. VORA: That's one of the options they have ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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'l Mimie 1 looked into.
2l We also have the interactions on this aging life 3 extension with Italy, West Germany, France, Japan, Canada 4 and a special working group has been formed by IAEA to look 5 into the safety aspects of nuclear plant aging. They had 6 their first workshop, and they are now going to have a 7 second meeting in September.
8 So, there is a tremendous amount of activity 9 nationally and internationally on this aging life extension
- 10 issue, and we are trying to coordinate as much as we can.
11 (Slide) 12 As far as the budget is concerned, those are four a
-}
13 major areas. I tried to actually put everything together.
I 14 Risk evaluation of aging effects. The question 15 comes about, where in the plan aging of components and 16 systems is risk significant?
17 It is a two-pronged approach we are adopting. We 18 want to find out, learn from the operating experiences on 19 the components and the system, on the data base, talking 1 20 with the manufacturers and the experts. And then to do the 21 risk evaluation using the modified PRA techniques.
22 All of the current PRAs do not take into account 23 the time related degradation processes. And so Bill Vassely 24 is working on it to see the influence of aging, residual i 25 lifetime evaluations, aging characterization and degradation ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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3 These are the four major categories of the 4 program. <
t 5 (Slide) 6 Milestones and schedules are described in this 4
7 slide. We have actually completed, and will be completing 8 the operating experience review.
l 9 This is the Phase I assessment of our entire 10 strategy, of the aging assessment strategy on motor operated 11 valve, auxiliary feedwater pumps, motors, breakers, relays, 12 snubbers, chargers, inverters and diesel generators.
13 We have done the in situ testing of electrical 14 circuits at Shippingport using the new time 15 demand techniques.
16 And I think we are able to utilize this i
17 effectively to see the degradation of certain systems and i
18 components. This was developed by DOE at TMI 2, and we are l
19 able to actually utilize this technique and do the l
20 evaluation for the aging and degradation of cable systems, i
l 21 connectors, et cetera.
22 And that effort will continue.
l 23 I think we have some feeling with the input from l
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{J003106 l' Mimie 1 expertise, I think we can probably have a better system for 2 the diagnostics of the electrical system inside containment.
3 In '87, our effort is also going to be on the 4 safety systems unavailability due to aging. We have l
5 identified about 12 different systems.
i 6 We looked into the NPRDS., the LER data bases at i
7 systems level, the reactor protection system, high pressure 8 injection system, distribution systems, which components,
- 9 which interfaces contributed most to failures or 10 unavailability of the system.
i
- 11 And, identify which are due to the design, 3
, 12 installation related events, due to testing, due to l 13 maintenance, due to aging and wear and others.
! 14 And once we find out the root causes attributable l- 15 to the aging and wear and using the PRAs and actually 16 determine the risk significance of those failure events with 17 time.
18 Also going to continue operating experience, 19 reviews and analysis of the additional componants which 20 have not been finished in ' 86.
21 Evaluate the SRPs and also do the additional I 22 components from Shippingport.
23 How do we assure the operational readiness of aged 24 safety systems and components? Will it do its intended 25 functions? And the question is, if we have naturally aged l
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1 Mimie 1 components, cables, relays, breakers or connectors which 2 have gone through the operating stresses for ten years, 3 fifteen years, twenty years, and if we then subject them to 4 the accident stresses and environment, and if it makes it, 5 we have much better confidence, that, yes.
6 So, that's one of the things, we are trying to get 7 the naturally aged equipment and components from the 8 operating and decommissioning facilities, and subject them 9 to some of the stresses and environment which we think they 10 can anticipate during the accident condition.
11 MR. EBERSOLE: We have got a lot of buried cables 12 that live in dry, warm environments, that will live there 13 for 40 years. And then all at once a big flood will come 14 along and we say they will be waterproof. Will they?
15 MR. VORA: It depends on the designs and how it is 16 used and applied.
17 The question is, supposing that cable system, we 18 monitor the power factor before flood occurred. And after 19 the flood, if the power factor has not changed 20 substantially, we will have much better confidence.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: But you don' t get that flood but 22 once.
23 MR. VORA: That's correct.
(~ 24 But this is one of the things that could be, if we V) 25 take those naturally aged cables and subject them to very ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 MR. EBERSOLE: I once proposed that we selectively 3 flood those cables and be prepared to take the failure of 4 the selected ones. But I got thrown out. ..
t 5 MR. VORA: But in the laboratory conditions, 6 control conditions we can get the samples. For instance, 7 right now --
4 8 MR. EBERSOLE: But the samples don't take' intoL 9 account pulling, stresses and local environments or anything 10 else.
11 MR. VORA: It depends on how effective we do our 12 job. But we might find out the influence of flood might be 13 more detrimental than some of the original mechanical 14 stresses. 3 e 15 But, we need to identify what are the influencing 16 parameters which will cause the failur of that cable which 17 will reduce capability in time of an accident.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: I know there is lots of cables that 19 are subject to floods that w'ill live for a long time in a 20 hot, dry environment and then have to do their thing one 21 time. And whether they do it or not is questionable.
22 MR. VORA: I think this is a challenge. And this 23 is what we are saying.
24 Now, if these cables are 40 years old, what will 25 happen to it? But, if we monitor and do the planning of ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 Mimie 1 parameters, then subject those cables or a few samples of it 2 to the flood environment, we will have much better 3 confidence whether it is going to do its job or not.
4 MR. EBERSOLE: There happen to be water faucets on 5 the conduits that carry those cables at Sequoyah, but the 6 operators won't turn them on.
7 MR. VORA: There are many scenarios. Under this 8 environment, what we are saying, we won' t be able to 9 simulate and test all cables. We won' t be able to simulate 10 --
11 MR. EBERSOLE: You have to sample it.
12 MR. VORA: -- and then show how one could go about p%J 13 doing their own assessment of their own cable for their own 14 environment under their own operating and maintenance 15 conditions. And I think we can take the lead and 16 demonstrate it.
E 17 MR. WYLIE: The thing that you will accomplish by 18 your program is, you will determine whether or not the 19 insulation cracks, or the jackets crack, or whatever. And 20 the flooding will be taken care of, because if you have got 21 a cracked jacket, cracked insulation, it is going to fail 22 when you flood it.
23 MR. VORA: What is going to happen is, the power 24 factor of the cable is just going to spike.
25 MR. EBERSOLE: Under locks, I think, typically all ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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3 Mimie 1 the cables stay wet their whole lives and they last. Probay 2
- better than if they were dry.
3 MR. VORA: . I have one or two slides on this.
4 (Slide) 5 We did some small activities for NRR in resoluticn 6 of Generic Issue 70, PORV block valve reliability. And 7 looking into it, this is just a very quick review from the 8 LER data bases, called Operating Experience Reviews of 9 PORV block valve reliability.
10 And it gives the events of the failure.
11 (Slide)
^g 12 And this gives you the new SER rules that have (G
13 been imposed so that way all these block valves are not a '
14 reportable event as they were previously.
15 (Slide) 16 Jerry I think also has this slide for you. This 17 is TMI 2. And I think he has been working totally with Jim 18 Richardson on it and he identified the activities related to 19 PORV block valves.
20 Our feeling is you can apply the same assessment 21 strategy for PORV block valve as well like we did for the 22 other component in the aging program.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: Let me make an observation. I 24- think the PORVs were taken off of fossil plants where they 25 were put there to avoid safety valve unseating. It is kind ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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.%.M)00 31 1 Mimie 1 of just an operational device to keep safety valves from 2 popping, lifting and leaking.
3 And they were lifted off the hood on these PWRs 4 and BWRs more or less automatically with no real view into ,
5 the fact they had to shut as well as they had to open. They 6 did put a backup valve behind them. Whereas, I think the 7 special need should have been recognized at the outset and 8 we put in a good rotary plug or spherical ball valve, or put 9 in a valve compatible with the challenge it faces.
10 And we persist in hammering this damn thing into 11 some sort of shape it will never achieve.
12 Some day -- it is a classical example of why don' t 13 we take this back and do it right.
14 MR. VORA: I think it is a design and application 15 that needs to be reviewed.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm talking about in a real 17 perspective sense.
18 MR. VORA: And what kind of stressors and 19 enviro nment it is going to experience during its 20 application.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: Maybe the whole physical 22 application shouldn't be. Maybe it shouldn' t be a pop-it in 23 the first place.
24 MR. REED: I appreciate this list. But let me 25 point out something that bothers me right away when I look ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 at the number of failures, and they are classified as events 2 or failures.
3 You have got to look and sort out significant 4 failures with respect to safety versus annoying leakage.
5 Right away I pick up, just from looking at your list on 6 these pilot operated relief valves, you have a number of 7 significant failures to function. I expected that.
8 Now you go over on the air operated valve, which I 9 think are under the Westinghouse events -- you don' t say 10 they are air operated valves, you don't classify your 11 valves, which you should do -- and I see leakage, seat 12 leakage, seat leakage.
13 That doesn't bother me. That is not a significant 14 safety issue. It is vexing, annoying, and that is what the-15 French tried to get rid of with their new concocted design.
16 Seat leakage, seat leakage, that is all you have. Don't 17 worry about that.
18 That is not the problem. The problem,is back here 19 under these pilot operated valves. Failure to operate.
20 Failure to operate. Worked three times and quit.
21 That is the problem.
22 MR. VORA: I think you are absolutely right. And 23 NRR is working on resolution of Generic Issue 70. And they 24 are going to take just one of these input. They have other 25 activities going on where they are going to address that ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 I think they intend to finish their effort by the 3 end of this calendar year, or early part of next year.
4 MR. REED: Quite frankly, I have personal opinions 5 that if you have got air operated PORVs and you take care of 6 the hydrogen problem by exercising them once a week, you 7 won' t have seat leakage.
8 But you know the operator input into, let's say, 9 design -- vulnerabilities where perhaps design cannot be 10 achieved to perfection, doesn' t exist very much.
11 MR, WYLIE: Any other questions for Jit?
. 12 (No response.)
13 MR. WYLIE: Let me ask a question. i 14 We have heard earlier the electrical and 15 mechanical equipment qualification presentation by -
16 Mr. Weidenhamer, I believe it was. Yes. But, he mentioned 17 y the other side of the coin, the electrical equipment f
18 u qualification which, I guess, Mr. Farmer is responsible for.-
19 I understand that is zerced out? t 20 R WEIDENHAMER:
M'. Yes.
21 MR. WYLIE: how my question is, how muct! of that -
22 work that was zorced out is going to be done under this 23 program that Jit i s -- .
24 MR. FARMER: Well, we had some material which I 25 gave Ri-ch, which I had intended to go into, which outlined 1
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2 MR. WYLIE: Are you prepared to cover that?
3 MR. FARMER: It is five Vugraphs, if you would 4 like.
5 MR. WYLIE: Why don' t we do that? -I think the 6 rest of the members would like to see that.
7 MR. EBERSOLE: What I want to hear -- this has 8 been an interesting program to me. I would like to hear 9 what their big bitches are about money.
10 MR. WYLIE: Okay.
11 Jit, let me ask thi s question -- or whoever -- on d
C' 13j you have got a problem.
1.4 MR. VORA: It depends on to what extent, how many 15 systems and how many components we want to look into. But at 16 this point in time, I presume there is no budget --
17 MR. EBERSOLE: You always want to know whether the i- 18 money defines the program or the program defines the 19 program. Sometimes you see the money as defining the 20 pe6 gram, but it is a subtle definition.
21 And I just wondered if there ar things here which 22 you intrinsically took as being budget limitations that cut 23 you off prematurely.
24 MR. VORA: It depends. As we said, we are 25 limiting our program to 20 major components.
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15 173 k70031 1 Mimie 1 MR. EBERSOLE: When I hear the word " major," I 2 always get to the fact that the cotter keys are left out.
3 MR. VORA: Other kinds of things are not being 4 addressed in the program We are talking about breakers, 5 relays --
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Even ACRS wants to look at cosmic 7 matters. And the jigsaw puzzles will fall apart if you just 8 look at that.
9 MR. VORA: One of the things I am really trying 10 hard to work on a testing program, is to create enough 11 incentive on the part of the industry. If everybody will 12 start to assess their own components and their systems using 13 our approach and strategy to identify which part, which 14 component, which interfaces are most susceptible to aging 15 and wear --
16 MR. EBERSOLE: I think it is a reasonable 17 assumption that the brains and nerves of the plants are 18 going to die first. Yet you are looking at the steel, 19 stainless steels and the big stuff that is obvious. And I 20 think the other stuff will die long before that.
21 MR. VORA: I think you are probably right. We 22 have not identified all those brains of the systems and 23 components, but we do have studies on the PRAs and also from 24 the operating experience to identify which components, which
-Lr~)s 25 systems, which interfaces. We are trying to get itiputs from ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimle 1 the regio 6s, from the IE DGople to tell us which component i
2 systems are the most sus 6e'ptible, with the problems. And 3 then we can put our resources to it.
4 MR. WYLIE: Let's sre, the component group that i
5 you had listed -- :
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Instrumentation switch gears. That 7 would cover what I em talking about, I think.
8 MR. VONA: We do h8vc the breakers, we have the 9 relays, we have motor control centers, and we also have the ,
10 pressure, temperature and level sensing systems. {
11 When we look into the systems aspect for an entire 12 system from sensor all the way to the breakers, we want to ,
13 identify every major part or component or interfaces and 14 their environment and do the analysis of it.
15 MR. WYLIE: What you are asking is whether the 16 control systems and instrument systems --
17 MR. EBERSOLE: Ever since I found that alloy 18 softening on that safety switch -- I mean safety valve --
19 this stuf f is stuck up in a pretty hot environment 20 sometimes.
21 MR. SULLIVAN: I would like to point out we are 22 covering reactor protection system, which I think in a very 23 real way is the brains of this system.
24 MR. EBERSOLE: That still connotes to me that you 25 will get the reactor shutdown.
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. 1 Mimie 1 MR. SULLIVAN: I'm saying there is a certain 2 f) amount of brains in the sense that it does make logical 3I decisions.
4 l MR. EBERSOLE: When you say reactor protection 5; system, do you mean the trip systems?
l 6 i MR. SULLIVAN: We really mean it broader than what i
- 7 , 18 here. We mean the entire safety system, not just the 8 trip system or scram system, but also the engineered 9 safeguards initiation.
10h MR. EBERSOLE: When you say protection system, the T
11 connotation in the books is more often not just the trip 12 '
system.
k
'~
13 MR. SOLLIVAN: Spscifically the initiating Systems. You are correct, we do intend --
~14 {
h 15 g MR. EBERSOLE: It stops very quickly at the t
16 I breake r contacts.
I
- . 17 ' M3. SULLIVAN
- But we are not stopping.
L 18 MR. WYLIE: It looks like you have got it fairly well covered.
19 f 1
20 l I think we need to understand what Mr. Farmer is I
- . 21 j going to present here is, what if any of this work that is 22 I zerced out will be covered under -- at least get the answers 23 ur. der Jit's program as he just described and what is not 24 , Encluded there.
~J 25 i Then, what is significant that should be included
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1 Mimie 1 someplace.
2 MR. EBERSOLE: What is it that isn't here.
3 (Slide) 4 MR. FARMER: I will go through and explain what is 5 in these programs.
6 For the record, my name is Bill Farmer, and I am 7 with the Office of Research. I have program management 8 responsibility for the electrical survival program.
9 Here is an outline -- let me just run through. I 10 have got these things in the wrong order -- what the program 11 we had contemplated carrying on in fiscal '87 and '88 i
rs. 12 consists of, and that program that I am going to present has b
13' all been zerced. Technically it is gone.
14 (Slide) i 15 We are terminating the facilities and shutting the 16 . program down gradually over the year. Basically all these 17 programs are aimed at this particular safety issue.
18 As you can see, they will all tie into, will the i 19 equipment perform in the event of an accident. We look at a 20 range of accidents in that regard.
21 The second question we have identified in this l
22 program is, what is the qualified life of the equipment.
23 By that we are talking about the life in terms of s
(g 24 survival, how long can you use a piece of equipment and
! \_/.
25 consider the aging will not degrade it below acceptable l
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1 Mimie i performance in an accident.
2 MR. EBERSOLE: When you shut down these questions, 3 what answer did you shut it down with?
4 MR. FARMER: On these?
5 MR. EBERSOLE: I don' t know.
6 , MR. FARMER: Some of it is incomplete. That is 7 all I can say.
8 I gave Mr. Wylie a copy of our summary status 9 report. It is that two-inch thick volume sitting there, 10 which represents the work we have done. And we feel it 11 resolves many issues. But we can't say that all the issues 12 are closed?
13 In fact, our program you will find is fairly 14 specific and boiled down to really what we consider to be 15 only the open issues. It is not an all-encompassing program 16 like you have heard today from the others, where they are i
17 looking at very broad questions in a very broad programmatic 18 sense.
19 We are looking at very specific questions which we 20 feel are the remaining open questions that we have currently 21 identified as needing to be addressed. They are listed down ,
22 here in a sense in the regulatory issues.
23 This is a broad statement but will show you what 24 we are doing in that regard is nearing the end. And that is 25 assurance of validated methods for equipment qualification.
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178 (G700 42 03 1 Mimie 1 The second is assessment of the new source term 2 work with respect to whether the radiation dose to equipment 3 has been properly specified in the rule.
4 The third is the question of what equipment 5 availability can one expect in the event of a severe 6 accident? This is more in particular to the BWR MK I where 7 you get these very significantly high temperatures.
8 The next one is the electrical penetration work 9 under severe accidents, which is a question of leakage and 10 potential risks to the public.
11 And finally is the aging and requalification of g 12 electrical cables for plant life extension.
13 (Slide) 14 in answer to your question about what is Jit going 15 to cover, as you can tell in looking at this, the only one 16 of those, really which relates closely to what Jit has 17 described is the last one.
18 And I might add that we have, I'd say, at least $2 19 million in the facilities at Sandia. Those facilities will 20 be shut down at the end of this calendar year. The staff is 21 already starting to disseminate. We have lost three 22 people. We expect to lose the rest by the end of the year.
23 So that any contemplation of conducting this type s 24 of work will require reconstituting the staff, reinitiating b
25 the facilities. To my knowledge, there are no duplicate ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 facilities of this type anywhere else in the NRC.
. 2 Now, that is not to say that the work could not be 3 done elsewhere by utilizing alternates. But these 4 particular facilities were generated specifically to address 5 the questions of severe accidents, design-basis accidents, 6 and test equipment under environmental conditions and 7 simulate those. And as such they have fairly unique 8 capabilities.
9 This was the research program. And the dates on 10 the end over here are the ones which we expected to finish 11 this program, c' 12 The first was to develop a correlation between b;
13 cable aging and accident survival. And, as Vora has 14 mentioned, he intends to look at naturally aged cables, and 15 look at other natural aged components in an effort to 16 establish what parameters does one watch and measure to tell 17 how the aging is progressing.
18 Obviously, you haven' t got a complete answer 19 unless you know what that aging indicator means in terms of 20 survival in an accident. The cable may be totally 21 functionally capable, but would fail immediately when 22 exposed to steam and radiation from an accident.
23 That was the test we were going to do at Sandia in 24 those unique facilities that I discussed before. That is
(^)
</
25 the test that will not be done, as far as I know, unless he ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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00 42 05 180 1 Mimie 1 uses a pool or some other clobbered up facility at some 2 other lab.
3 MR. WYLIE: That schedule to your right was when 4 you were going to do this?
5 MR. FARMER: This was the completion.
6 MR. WYLIE: Completion date.
7 MR. FARMER: It would probably be towards the end 8 of that date. In other words, we are saying these programs 9 were complete in fiscal '88. These were the endings.
10 MR. EBERSOLE: What was the rationale and the 11 basis for terminating that in the face of the open question?
w 12 MR. FARMER: You will have to ask my management.
(d 13 MR. EBERSOLE: Sure, that is what I want to do.
14 MR. FARMER: I'm afraid I can only say when the 15 budgets were presented in January and February --
16 MR. EBERSOLE: I can think of a lot more ethereal 17 and less significant things to do in the thermal hydraulics 18 category.
19 MR. FARMER: I was not a participant in the 20 discussion of the budget for fiscal '87, '88 --
21 MR. EBERSOLE: There is favorite kinds of work, 22 most of which has been analysis of fast thermal hydraulics 23 transients, which is really far out on the perimeter of s 24 importance, because these are initiators here.
Os -
25 MR. FARMER: Yes. These are initiators. They are ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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00 42 06 181 1 Mimie 1 all accident related.
2 The second was the life extension, effective life
~3 of the cables. That was simply, we were going to take some 4 of the cables, using existing methods of aging, carry out 5 . life extensions to 45, 50, 55, 60 years, test them in our 6 loca facility to see if it still survived. In other words, 7 extending the life into the period when relicensing would be 8 contemplating extension.
9 The motivation here-was to establish what-10 requalification requirements are you going to require of the 11 utilities when you offer them life extensions.
12 Obviously, as you well know, there are millions of 13 dollars worth of cables in these plants. The time, effort' 14 and money is going to be fantastic to replace them. And it 15 is fine to say, as EPRI is doing, as Jit mentioned to you, 16 we are going to take out a cable this year, another in five 17 years from now. Those are all near-term aging.
18 Are we going to wait to 40 years to find out 19 whether we can extend cable life to 50 years?
i 20 That is what that program would end up doing.
[ 21 MR. EBERSOLE: As long as they were in a stable 22 environment, the failures in.them would be just E23 statistically progressive. There wouldn't be any
-p 24 coincidence of environmental change. They would precipitate V
25 a coincidence of sudden failures.
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1 Mimie 1 MR. FARMER: Just age. Just progressively age.
2 MR. EBERSOLE: That's fine. But if you have a 3 surge of environmental change; seismic, fire, water spray, 4 whatever, it may reveal that you already failed and you 5 don't know it.
6 MR. FARMER: I think a good example is Dresden 2.
7 You know, they went back and looked at some of these 8 splices, the qualified splices. I don't know whether it was 9 a dry well --
10 MR. EBERSOLE: Ozone eats them up.
11 MR. FARMER: If you remember in '72 or 12 thereabouts, they had a blowdown and the safety release q) 13 didn't reset. So they filled the whole dry well, the light 14 bulb, with steam. Nobody presumed this had any effect on i 15 the cable life.
16 Recently, I was told by an 's fellow, they go in 17 and look at the cables, they are seeing some splices 18 splitting. This, apparently, had a premature aging effect 19 which was not recognized. But it fits your example.
20 MR. REED: As I think about your problem of aging 21 here in all the cables and all the systems, I think bout my 22 parachute comparison here of having a backpack and a reserve 23 chute.
24 Now, I wouldn't be so afraid of, let's say of 25 continuing jumping if I had two parachutes, if my backpack I
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{
2 Mimie 1 shrouds were getting old. I wouldn't worry about that so 2 much.
3 But, I would say, hey, let's redo the reserve 4 parachute once in a while and keep an eye on the reserve 5 parachute, which is a simple system, has lots less cables 6 than an entire plan.
7 So, again I think there is an alternative to 8 aging. The alternative to aging is to have a child -- call 9 it a reserve parachute. The reserve parachute, you take 10 care of the child, because it is not going to be an easy 11 thing to do all this stripping and revamping and redoing of
(" 12 all the cables and pipes throughout a facility. There is
\)' 13 just too many of them to keep track of.
14 MR. EBERSOLE: This program could force what I 15 wish would happen. For instance, like we could put a UPPS 16 system on every boiler which will catch it, like Glenn's 17 parachute. It will put his primary blowdown on PWRs. It 18 will catch it. Then you could look at this in a better 19 perspective, because you have got a back door.
20 But, as long as we maintain the protection of the 21 industry concept not to do this, we are going to have to 22 deal with a monolithic tangle.
23 MR. WYLIE: Unfortunately, we don' t have those 24 alternatives yet.
25 MR. EBERSOLE: It is a cheaper alternate ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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-3 Mimie 1 alternative, by orders of magnitude.
2 If we had somebody to overview it and look at it 3 from a high perspective, the alternative would be just i l 4 cheaper by unbelievable amounts. .
5 MR. REED: What you are going to do is spend scads 6 of money on research to chase aging into the ground. -
7 MR. EBERSOLE: This never shows up on a i- 8 cost-benefit study relevant to, do we need a dedicated
$ 9 shutdown heat removal.
10 MR. FARMER: I don' t think there has been any such 11 assessment made.
- 12' MR. EBERSOLE
- It is miles away from looking at 13 this. You know, a simple system with two dozen wires that 14 you can repair once every ten years if you want to. ;
- 15 MR. REED
- I think that kind of reserve parachute .
16 backup would take the hard emphasis off very, very {
f 17 . sophisticated and detailed and expensive work to evaluate 18 aging cables all throughout the facility. ,
f 19 The normal rule of heat sink these dayn is through
, 20 about eight or ten systems are involved to accomplis the i
21 heat sink. That kind of heat sink is the gentle way. I l
i 22 like it as long as it works.
l l 23 I'm not going to be so sure with your aging l
24 discussion that it is going to be working 40 years out,
~ 2 5_ though.- That kind of reliability.
l L !
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185 f}00 v 42 10 2 Mimie 1 MR. FARMER: Maybe I didn' t make it clear. What 2 we intended to do in this particular item, was to use 3 artificial aging methods to extend the life of cables into 4 the beyond-40-year period.
5 We use samples of the three or four principal 6 Class 1E qualified cables for this experiment, and then 7 subject the cables after being aged, to this, say, 40, 50, 8 60-year period. Subject it to a qualification test to 9 de te rmine if it will survive under accident conditions.
10 Now, that was the total aspect. I don' t know how 11 you would get that answer without doing it.
12 MR. REED: You find the answer is, they will J
-)
13 fail. Now what do you do?
14 MR. FARMER: I'm a little more optimistic. I 15 don't know that they will fail. That is really what I am 16 trying to find out.
17 MR. REED: Even if you found one that failed, it 18 would be enough to cause people to chase the moonbeam, you 19 know, to chase the replacement.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: You really ought not to have to ask 21 the question.
22 MR. WYLIE: I think, of course, the problem is we 23 don't have the parachute. And so what he has presented is rS 24 in that context, that you don't have the parachute.
- t. .
25 MR. EBERSOLE: There is no lifeboat, there is no ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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{;.004211 1 Mimie 1 parachute.
2 MR. REED: I can understand that. All I am trying 3 to do is get the reserve parachute in focus in a regulatory 4 agency. And we can do that, maybe a lot of other things --
5 MR. EBERSOLE: I bet TAP 45, Glenn, never has 6 considered this aspect in the cost-benefit.
7 MR. FARMER: This is a relatively cheap -- As I 8 mentioned, this is $2 million a facility.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm talking cheap in the longe term 10 when you have got to pull out the cables.
11 MR. FARMER: I think I made an estimate of S5 12 million a plant, which may be way off if you have to recable 13 the containment cabling in a plant at the end of a lifetime.
14 MR. REED: $5 million for a plant? That won't 15 hardly pay for the purchasing department's input. >
16 MR. WYLIE: Bill, is the radiation aging facility
[
17 there?
18 MR. FARMER: Just for your information, we have 19 four facilities we built in Sandia. One is called the 20 HIACA, which is a gigantic chamber in which we put 21 equipment, spools of cable which is capable of 22 simultaneously irradiating the material. And we have major 23 steam supply subjected to the proper temperature steam 24 atmosphere.
25 In addition, we have another pool facility where ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 we do sample radiation aging.
2 We also have a severe accident facility we just 3 recently built, which is capable of giving us extreme 4 temperatures for sustained periods of time to duplicate the 5 in-containment severe accident environments.
6 Then finally we have a new facility which is just 7 going into operation, which we are using for hydrogen burn 8 simulations, where you want to subject equipment to 9 pulse-type of heat radiation.
10 So those four are our principal facilities. All 11 four are scheduled to go down as far as NRC is concerned.
r~ -12 They may be perpetuated by DOE for some other purpose or 13 program, but within NRC all four facilities which NRC paid 14 for, will be effectively th' rough.
15 Why don' t I go through these quickly. The 16 remainder of these, as I say, are accidents. Not 17 necessarily the ones that are design basis.
18 Here we are talking about hydrogen burns. We have 19 some residual work to do on equipment survival where we are 20 testing equipment for both PWR type of deflagration where 21 you get a rapid burning and a very rapid rise in the heat 22 load on the equipment. And we are-also -- we will follow 23 that up next year with a PWR MK III type test, where we will
^
24 subject equipment to a lower heat flux, longer term pulse 25 representative of that in a MK III containment.
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- 1 Mimie 1 We are nearing the end but we will go into '87 on 7 2 some work on the electrical penetration assemblies. We 3 bought assemblies from E.G. O'Brien, from Westinghouse, from 4 Conax, and we are testing them under three types of. severe 5 accident environments.
6 The E.G. O'Brien was tested under a PWR 7 environment, where we subjected it to about 155 psia at 360 8- Fahrenheit. This was a steam environment for ten days.
9 We measured the leakage across the areas and we 10 also measured electrical continuity.
11 And we followed that up with a test which was f- 12 finished recently on a Westinghouse electrical penetration, 13 which was subjected to about 75 pounds, and 400 degrees 14 Fahrenheit for ten days.
15 Both of those penetrations, incidentally, did not 16 leak, although there was some reduction in resistence with I
17 time.
18 The last penetration is through the aging, and 19 that is a Conax. It is a gigantic. thing. It is, I think, 20 4, 5000 pounds. It is like 14, 16 feet long. It is used 21 in BWR MK I's. And the BWR MK I severe accident is probably 22 the worst we are faced with, 700 degrees Fahrenheut, and 4
23 about 135 pounds steam exposure.
24 That one will be tested somewhere in the July to 25 August framework.
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1 Mimie 1 These penetrations, incidentally, are full scale, 2 purchased as qualified components from the manufacturer 3 identical to those going into contaimment.
4 Moving on down, this was a followup to the source 5 term work which you have undoubtedly heard about in other 6 sessions, where the people in the other half of research ,
7 have been doing sensitive studies of new and mechanistic i
8 models and source terms.
9 Our current equipment qualification rule is based 10 on the old TID 14-844 Rule, which was nonmechanistic. We are 11 doing some work with Battelle and Sandia to compare what 12 sort of doses one gets, and determine if the current 13 requirements in the Rule are adequate.
14 MR. EBERSOLE: What does BCL mean?
15 MR. FARMER: Battelle Columbus.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: Would that include looking at the 17 elastomer seals on the RH pump, for instance?
18 MR. FARMER: We are not looking at equipment under 19 this. We just are strictly defining the dose in rads per 20 hour2.314815e-4 days <br />0.00556 hours <br />3.306878e-5 weeks <br />7.61e-6 months <br /> to the equipment.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: Would it include a dose on such 22 seals?
23 MR. FARMER: We would know what the dose would be 24 to such seals, yes. We are not specifically doing it for a
! 25 pump.
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.T.g'700 4 2 15 1 Mimie 1 MR. EBERSOLE: This is when you are trying to 2 prevent a meltdown, but you have also had a massive core 3 failure?
4 MR. FARMER: Actually, all we are doing here is 5 supporting the agency assessment of the source term work.
6 You know, they have other people looking at the question of 7 --
8 MR. EBERSOLE: You would still be trying to pump 9 water under this condition.
10 MR. FARMER: Here?
11 MR. EBERSOLE: Yes.
12 MR. FARMER: We are assuming it is a design basis 13 accident.
16 MR. FARMER: Yes.
17 MR. EBERSOLE: Which means you pump highly l 18 irradiated coolant.
19 MR. FARMER: Through the system.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: Yes.
21 MR. FARMER: Yes. Actually most of our look here 22 is during the loca phase, and we were looking more at the L 23 release to containment than we were at the retention.
,r's 24' MR. EBERSOLE: These tentacles run out into i
Q) 25 equipment rooms,-and it is very nervous out there while you ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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U 1 Mimie 1 are pumping that stuff around.
2 MR. FARMER: We will be looking at all the sources 3 in the BCL model, which includes that within the primary 4 system, the played out and the gaseous content.
5 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm thinking about the active 6 pumping network that is keeping it from getting any worse. -
7 MR. FARMER: We are not going into details of the 8 equipment itself.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: Why not? That's where the problem 10 is. That is what keeps it from degrading into a 11 meltthrough.
12 MR. FARMER: Our mission was, as I say, strictly l 13 in support of licensing assessment of the source term.
14 MR. ESERSOLE: I think it is foreshortened 15 inappropriately. You are going to always try to pump water ,
16 if you can. But you might be very nervous about pumping it [
17 with a pump that has got open seals. i The point at which we are looking at i 18 MR. FARMER:
19 this, you have already gone past that. We failed the core.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: But now there is always a desperate 21 attempt to recover. [
22 MR. FARMER: This is not part of this particular 23 study.
24 It certainly is a worthwhile question and one that f-)
kJ l
- 25 could be addressed.
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{~ ;00 42 17 1 Mimie 1 MR. EBERSOLE: I thought you had to take the view, 2 I'm going to keep these pumps rolling right on if it is 3 melted or not melted.
4 The severe accident program, by the way, is a 5 funny thing. They don't have staged levels ce degrees of 6 meltdown at any point in time at which you may recover 7 pumping. But they are permitted to say, I'm going to try to l 8 pump whenever I can. And that means pumping mighty dirty 3 9 water.
10 MR. FARMER: If you went through the whole 11 accident scenario --
r~g 12 MR. EBERSOLE: If you don't you-are not going V
13 anywhere. You know, degradation by stages consistent with i 14 the continued effort to get some water in there, whether it 15 is quite hot or not. And I- think that is an agreed position 16 taken by the severe accident people. We are always going to 17 try to put water in no matter what, j 18 Well, this says this equipment has got to work.
l 19 MR. FARMER: This is more devoted to looking at 20 the post-accident situation.
I
,- 21 MR. EBERSOLE: This is post accident.
I 22 MR. FARMER: The survival of equipment.
l l 23 MR. EBERSOLE: I guess you could say this is post l
l g 24 accident, where the accident is a classical accident, but l
(~A l 25 you don't want to go to a meltdown.
I i
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- 1. Mimie 1 MR. FARMER: Right. We will be doing it for a 2 severe accident --
- 3 MR. EBERSOLE
- This is pre-severe accident
, 4 activity. It is precisely the reason, I think, they 5 couldn't turn on the pumps at TMI 2. They were nervous 6 about seal leakage and degradation.
7 Am I correct?
8 MR. FARMER: They had tremendous vibrations, as 9 you recall. They shut the pumps down because they were 10 afraid they were going to have the seals and everything go 11 out.
12 MR. EBERSOLE: If they didn' t have the condenser 13 handy, it would have been a different story.
14 MR. FARMER: This is again, we were planning to 15 complete all of the equipment qualification research at-the 16 end of '88; shut the program down anyway at that point.
17 And this was some work we are doing on the seismic.
18 fragility of station batteries, which is largely done except-19 for one open question. The people conducting, the USI, have 20 raised the question of, well, you found that the batteries 21 will fail at a certain level, and you have taken it to 12 22 years, which is the period of time that the batteries that i
23 we could get hold of from plants were aged to. l 24- They want to know, while_ utilities are going to l O. 25 continue to use these batteries on out to the 15, 20 years, l ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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194 1 Minie 1 sir.co this aging that is identified in the saisaic fragility 2; accects to be a corrosion nischhef snt, will it not be 3, progressive and therefcre, will not f.he seismic fragility
- 4) ,
leVG1s coratihue to decrensts? .
~
5 Well, the only thing wo een tell them is that we l l
l 6 have told Ontario Hydro, o60 research . contractor, that we
, 7 are s!.i't't ing down --
I '
, G, MR. EDERSOLS: May I ask this. In a battery s
- 9) deieadation J case, one thing *s if you open the battery, can l 1 i 10 the chargen iceep on carryingt' he electricai apparatus {
11 uithout overvol?aLJe damagb., a stability cotstrol requirement?. l, l 1Z And second, will the open circuited battery be I 13 progressively open circuited and during the ipading proces.S .
14 renult .in e local fira at that batte'ry?
l I
15 Do you know that7 i
16 MR. FAAMRRt I think you have get areas that I 17 can't prcvide an answer on.
I MR. EBERSOLE: I don't think you would.
18 4' -
P i 19 i MR. WYLYhr The first question yott asked regarding 9- i
- 20 . the power suri)ly tattery charger, that is a function of the l
21 specs of the battery chargar. r 22 t4R , EBERSQLIM I'm rcally asking, are the specs
- 23 carefully drawn up?
24 MR, WYLIE: Surt.o do, some don't. ;
MR. EB{',RSOLC : I thought t her.e was an answer, So, 25 ) '
i i ACE, FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(~')9004303 g-1 Mimie 1 therd is no answer, 2 MR. WYLI2: The ones that are weltten do, for a 3 t ime , 'J' hey do. 'They regiaire full output , zero up to ful.1
! i 4 optput, you khow without brittories and with this harmonic I 5 content of ec much and so furth.
I 6 MR. EllERSOLE: Bdt som2 may not? ,
7 MR WYLIE; Some may not. I don'E think there is 8 any stafgiritd.
9 Kk. 51TLLTVANs We have c regulatory g';ide -- I ':n f' ,
10 l trying to think of the number on battery mointenance
~
l
( 11 l endorsed, I believe, by,IEEE 4S0. Reg Guide 1.129. It does l
12 not require the chargers to carry inl.1 design casig load.
J 13 '
i MR. EBERSOLE: This is not the questiori.
i 1-14 If I sever the battery fro _m the cha'rger, Will it 15 l
i not burn out the connected 16ad? Does the battery depend {
l 16 upon it as a stable voltage-limiting function? It shouldn't l
17 be.
18 MR. WYLIE: Some battery chargers it is.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: Some batteries for automobiles it 20 is . And I think some station batteries. i 21 But, there should be something in the specs that 22 says if I go hack the cables on the batteries apart, my 23 battery voltage might rise a few volts, but it won't be too 4
> 24 much.
(
, 25 MR. SULLIVAN: I don' t know the answer to that.
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(_)
2 Mimie 1 MR. EBERSOLE: The other question is, wouldn't the 2 I-squared-R losses Charlie, just ignite the battery?
3 MR. WYLIE: I don' t think so. The battery 4 internal resistance itself is something like .0000 -- it is 5 very low.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: What if the electrolyte is boiled 7 out or drained.
8 MR. WYLIE: You havo got to get hot to do that.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm g9tting hot. I think it is 10 autocatalytic.
11 MR. WYLIE: I'm not sure you are going to get so g3 12 hot, because your internal resistance is so low.
\m) 13 MR. EBERSOLE: I'd like to put a ballpeen hammer 14 on a dry cell and watch it drain during discharge.
15 MR. WYLIE: You are talking about draining 16 electrolyte. I thought you were talking about opening up 17 the plates.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: I'm talking to draining out due to 19 the cracking of the plastic of the glass. Just one out of 20 60.
21 MR. FARMER: That will open up your circuit.
22 MR. EBERSOLE: Gradually in the course of draining 23 out, going a open circuit. I don't know, but I think I am r~ 24 going to have a big, fat fire.
(_)g 25 MR. WYLIE: I'm not sure. Basically, if the
. ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 200-3aM486
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197 (u )100.43 05 1 Mimie 1 plates are not shorted out, then as you drain out you are 2 just going to drain your electrolyte.
3 MR. EBERSOLE: Eventually I will boil it out. I 4 don't know whether I aggressively go to open circuit or not.
5 MR. FARMER: We didn' t load it -- in test we 6 loaded it to a cell, loaded two-plus.
7 MR. EBERSOLE: Why don' t you crack one of the 8 cells with a hammer, keep a discharge load on it and see --
9 MR. FARMER: We did. In fact, we tested. See, we 10 took batteries out of Fitzpatrick, North Anna and Baltimore 11 Gas and Electric. They represented C&D, Gould and Exide, 12 the three manufacturers.
13 The ones from Fitzpatrick included cells that had 14 cracks in the lucite casing. And one of the questions we 15 were addressing in our program on Ontario Hydro, was can 16 these batteries, in the event of a seismic event, crack open 17 and drop the acid out?
18 And what we found was the cracks would propagate 19 to the edge, but the batteries never fractured open. They 20 just dripped and made a mess of the triaxial shaker table.
21 But we never had fires or anything like that.
22 MR. EBERSOLE: Did you keep them on full current 23 discharge while you were doing this?
24 MR. FARMER: Yes.
25 MR. EBERSOLE: Did you get any increase in ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 Mimie 1 temperature, or any funny thing at that battery?
2 Did you watch the electrolyte lower?
3 MR. FARMER: We watched the eletrolyte lower, but 4 it went very, very slowly because we didn' t get a 5 catastrophic type failure.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: I wonder how close you were to 7 trouble?
8 MR. FARMER: We didn' t have any temperature 9 measurements. I don't think we could really tell you --
10 MR. EBERSOLE: I think it goes without saying that 11 I squared R losses are going up, and eventually we will get f' 12 to the point where it becomes all catalytic, and then all
& 13 hell breaks loose.
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
- 24 s
25.
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~3 MMbw 1 MR. WYLIE; Your plate separations are rubber, 1
2 aren' t they? ,
. a 4 .
3 MR. Fl\RMER: I thought they were some other 4 material, but I really can't recall. -
Okay, 5 MR. EBERSOLE:
6 MR. FARMER: Let we just jump quickly over to )
7 regulatory application and show you the budget mtmbers.
8 (Slide.)
9 I think we covere6 most of these points. They -
10 tied in with the previous discussion, : relative to thu la i 11 purpose for doing the cables, the puroese for doing the 50 ,
\
h y3 12 rule and the hydrogen burn. We've covered t'hess points in '
\,) '
13 cur discussion.
14 (Slide.) (' s 15 I just wanted to show you, as far as the budger 16 is concerned, what we had projec.ted as minimum raeds to
- 17- car'ry on the program. These ninimum needs, of course, are 18 zero -- well, not minimum needs. These prob 1cos are all i
19 zero at this time. This is what we projectea as the cost of I t
20 ; completing the program.
21 These two programs were to be finishec raexc yea,r 22 anyway. They are in the tail end. So these were Cone ah e
23 this point. That is why we projected no funding in '88.
- 1 24 l The two programs that did go on into '80 vore the 25 ! OT program, largely related to some of the agi.n9 questions f ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. '
202-347-3700 Natict.& Cut erare ofXL3? M M 6
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'U 2_ MMbw I cables, as well as finishing up the QTE research and the 2 electrical equipment survival, which was to test some of the 3 .
monitoring equipment and some of the valve actuating 4i equipment for a BWR Mark 2, to determine if it functioned.
So if you had a severe accident, and you have any 5 fl information 6 flow from the containment, if you have any l
f 7i capability of actuating equipment to ~ preclude release or i
8I mitigate the accident.
9 f MR. EBERSOLE: This 's i on the influence of a i
10- l hypcthetical core melt of very severe character?
t- 11 MR. FARMER: Yes, very severe. This work, i; 12 incidentally, is terminated now already, That work is ,
13 dend.
14 ' Thi.s program will go through, based on using 15 every nipk'el we can and allocating it carefully to go
- - i >
36 l through next. yetars l
l 17 l M F. . EDFP, SOLE : Suppose we don't invoke core melt 1 4
l 18 l
conditions but jsist pCeEof e-mol t conditions? Ilow do stand ?
19 there?
20 MR. PARMERI You mean on the severe accident?
0:n a more modest basis for 21 MR. EDERSOLE:
- 22 Onvironm6fithi qualificat. ion, H 23 MP. FARNER: Wou).d 6xpact He st.ood all right, as l 24 long as you don't get the relsase into the containment, i L :
25 MR. EDEREDL3: So you aria telling rae we have :
i I I 1 ACE-3EDERAL REPO.RTERS, INC. .
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2 MMbw I cut out environment qualifications for tnis horrendous state 2 of affairs, when you've got a core melt.
3 MR. FARMER: Basically, yes. That work is 4 terminated.
5 MR.'EBERSOLE: That puts a different color on 6 it, especially on a boiler.
7 MR. FARMER: Electrical penetrations. We have
'8 finished that work pretty work. It's the tail-end work 9 we're talking of over here. We'll run all three tests. We 10 will not be able to ride up --
11 MR. EBERSOLE: Were you looking at integrity i
12 penetration just in the membrane containments?
(S
.%)
13 MR. FARMER: Yes. Just as a part of containment-14 integrity.
15 MR. WYLIE: You say you won' t do what, Bill?
16 MR. FARMER: In '87, we would have finished the 17 write-up, this test onm the Conax will be done this summer.
18 There is a post-test examination ar.d reporting, which takes l
19- you to the three months. That work is -- we just don' t have the money.
20 l 21 MR. EBERSOLE: What sense did it make to blow up 22 a model containment, and then say, well, there's pieces in 23 the containment that were not in the model, which are the d
24 penetrations, and they are going to go long before.you blow r) 25 up the steel members.
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2 MMbw 1 MR. FARMER: They didn' t duplicate those.
2 MR. EBERSOLE: Doesn't it invalidate all that 3 work that was done on this pure steel spherical containment 4 to say, well, yes, I've got patches in the containment 5 someplace which will never obtain the integrity that you 6 think you've got in the pure steel containment?
7 MR. FARMER: It is a weak point that they will 8 not have an answer for. That is true.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: So then they spent a lot of money 10 that just went down a black hole.
11 MR. FARMER: I think the purpose of the 12 containment research in stressing that steel vessel out in 13 Sandia was mainly to validate their codes and understand the 14 fracture mechanics.
15 MR. EBERSOLE: A technical exercise without 16 reality.
17 MR. WYLIE: They don't plan to use a real --
18 MR. FARMER: They don't have electrical 19 penetrations in any of their containment models that 20 Mr. Ebersole is referring to.
21 MR. WYLIE: Just reinforced concrete?
22 MR. FARMER: Yes. Basically, structural models.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: They satisfied the professors at 24 the Research Institutions that the steel structure is good.
(~
%)} .
25 That is all they've done. And they are so far from ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(~)100 44 05 ,
2 MMbw 1/ reality, we can't believe it.
2 MR. FARMER: That basically is --
3 MR. WYLIE: How much money is invested in this 4 program at its termination?
5 MR. FARMER: The OTE program, if you go back to 6 1975 to date or '76, I once had an exact number. So this is 7 approximate from memory, is something of the order of $10 8 million. The equipment survival and hydrogen burn, we're 9 spending about S380,000 this year.
10 We've spent maybe 400 the year before. So we are 11 talking about roughly $1 million for this program.
12 { The electrical penetration -- when I say a
~}
ss 13 million, I am counting the 200,000 here.
14 Electrical penetration, counting the 100,000, 15 would run something of the order of about, I guess 700,000 16 or 800,000. A good part of that, incidentally, is purchase 17 of those penetrations each. We've got six of them. Each 8 about $50,000 to S60,000 a piece.
MR. EBERSOLE: Let me ask you, that 1382 20 equipment survival, not the penetration, that implies you 21 , want c,ome apparatus in there to keep on working after you've 22 had a nevere accident?
23 MR. PARMER: That is correct. The test that was 24 to have taken place next year was going to be of a solenoid
-}
25 l valve manifold, which is involved in manipulating the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
262-347-3700 Nationwide roverage MJ0-336-6M6
00 44 06 204 2 MMbw 1 containment ver.t valves, which were part of the question of 2 what do you do, if you have a severe accident inside the 3 light bulb --
4- MR. EBERSOLE: Isn't that solvable by not having 5 those valves in that environment, as it is interchanged, or 6 at least the solenoids?
7 MR. FARMER: That would be one way to move 8 equipment out. It isn't out, it is in, but that would be 9 certainly an answer.
10 MR. EBERSOLE: It is a back door.
11 MR. FARMER: Then you would have to pipe the air 12 in.
13 MR. EBERSOLE: Sure. Well, that is a hell of a 14 lot less vulnerable than wires.
15 MR. FARMER: Yes.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: They always should have been done
+
17 way, anyway. And also in the hydrogen burn, that is a 18 little bit different. That is where you had an accident 19 that produces hydrogen, like TMI 2, but you don' t want to 20 let thu ontainment go, and you need some active functions 21 in there, yet, right?
22 MR. FARMER: Yes. We're addressing two questions 23 in this work currently. One is, as you know, the hydrogen 24 rule requires the BWRs to either inert or use an igniter.
25 The same thing is true of ice condensor, the small ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 MMbw I containment. The large dry PWR containments, the rule only 2 says, you must assure equipment survival does not 3 explicitly give any guidance.
4 The tests we are doing now are to simulate a 5 large, dry PWR. We are doing analyses and coupling them 6 with experiments in our facility at Sandia, where we subject 7 cables transmitted, typical safety equipment.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: That is pre-catastrophic in the 9 context of being preventive.
10 MR. FARMER: Yes.
11 MR. EBERSOLE: You do want some stuff to work to 12 prevent the catastrophy of a meltdown. You've already had 13 some fuel failures which produced hydrogen, but now you are 14 in an intermediate stage of prevention, preventing the worst 15 thing from happening.
l i 16 MR. FARMER: We are trying to prevent the total 17 loss of equipment.
18 MR. EBERSOLE: Yes. That sounds valid against i 19 the background of TMI 2, where they had a burn, and it I
20 didn't tear down the equipment.
4 21 MR. WYLIE: On that last, how much you invested?
22 MR. FARMER: This one?
23 MR. WYLIE: Yes.
24 MR. FARMER: The best I can recall, it is 25 soraething on the order of 250,000, something like that.
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2 MMbw- 1 MR. WYLIE: You have about a half a million by 2 the end of thi's year.
3 MP. FARMER: The program is shut down. It was 4 terminated in '86.
5 'MR. EBERSOLE: It sounds like a very localized 6 research program, just to see if you could still vent it.
7 MR. FARMER: You've heard the PRA discuss all of 8 their conjectures about this accident, this sequence, all of 9 those sequences are based on judgment. For the most part, 10 there is no data. If you don't run an experiment like this,
~
11 you have nothing but conjecture on which to base your
(~S 12 assumptions about sequences in an accident.
U 13 MR. EBERSOLE: The point I am trying to make is, 14 at was pointed at being a guarantee that you could vent, if 15 you wanted to vent.
16 MR. FARMER: This is what we hope to show here. .
I 17 MR. EBERSOLE:
You can do that with a few sticks l 18 of dynamite.
l l 19 MR. WYLIE: Let me ask you. The objecive of 1
20 coming up with verifiction of the simulated aging process 21 that now is specified for equipment in the industry, how did 22 you stand there when you shut it down?
23 MR. FARMER: You mean with respect to the current
('S 24 methods of accelerating aging?
\~J 25 MR. WYLIE: That was one of your objectives; ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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l
(~'300 44 09 207
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2 MMbw I wasn't it?
2 MR. FARMER: Yes. I think we feel, based on the 3 work we have done to date, the industry uses Arrhenius 4 method, largely. We found Arrhenius method to be fairly 5 correct, suitable, as long as it is used properly.
6 We have found people in a few cases take it to 7 too high a temperature to accelerate it and get into 8 reactions they didn' t anticipate.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: It has a hump in it, doesn't it?
10 MR. FARMER: Yes. But the one thing we still are 11 not overly overly happy about, in terms of insuring ourself
(')
U 12 on accelerated aging, is the radiation dosage question. We 13 know very specifically that you get radiation dose effects, f
14 that you should do your radiation at low doses. Practically 15 no equipment has been qualified at low doses. It's all been 16 qualified at accident level doses.
17 It may very well be that this poses no risk or 18 problem, because we have seen some tests where we have used 19 -- but they have been very limited. I think there is one 20 test we used low doses, the equipment didn' t survive. We l
21 also know, we looked at, for example, cables that came out 22 of Savannah River and did an analysis of them. They say, if 23 I remember correctly, two or three megarads inte9 rated 24 radiation during their lifetime use. The cables were shot.
25 The cables happened to be a material that you probably i ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(-)100 44 10 2 MMbw 1 wouldn't use in a Class I-E application, but nevertheless, f
2 they exhibit extreme dose rate effects.
3 Now those were cables that saw something on the 4 order of maybe 50 rads per hours, mething like that, in the 5 way of dose in the locations they are in.
6 We are qualifying cables to 50 megarads for our 7 equipment qualification effort through an industry, at 8 generally a half a megarad, is 500,000 rads per hour 9 levels. And we know at 500,000 rads per hour. If there is 10 a dose rate effect, you are not picking it up.
11 Now whether the fact that the 50 megarads of 12 integrated dose is so far in excess of what the cables 13 normally see, which is like- two megarads, at most, gives you 14 a margin of safety, we don' t know. You know, what you have 15 done is, you have used a rate which is nonconservative and 16 coupled it with an integrated exposure, which is 17 ultraconservative, and then you hope that the 18 counterbalancing effects have left you in a safe, 19 satisfactory condition. That part of our aging research, I 20 would say, is somewhat incomplete.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: May I ask, is there a publication 22 out on where you found this break away fromn the Arrhenius, 23 fast-aging effect, to tell you, don't get near that level of 24 temperature?
25 MR. FARMER: No, we do have in that two-inch ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 80433M646
00 44 11 209 2 MMbw 1 volume of the status report, we do have what work we have 2 'done. Generally, in there you will find statements that it 3 is believed that the Arrhenius theory is generally a good 4 way to age equipment.
5 MR. EBERSOLE:- Up to what?
6 MR. PARMER: It does not specify a temperature 7 limit that's so much a function of the component. Almost a 8 bigger problem in Arrhenius has been what the French ran 9 into. The French throw up there hands on aging sensitive 10 electronics. What they ran in it is, when you have any 11 complex piece of electrical equipment, which has with in it 12 degradable polymers, a different variety, you try and guess 13 what is the most critical one for the operation for that 14 piece of equipment, and then you set the aging for'that.
15 You may overage in half a dozen other pieces in 16 the system. They ran into this problem, and they could 17 never seemingly get their transmitters to pass the aging 18 qualification.
19 So the finally altered their whole procedure and 20 went to sort of military type of specs, where you subject it 21 to severe environment testing. You know, you overload 22 severe environments and all that survives a extreme severe 23 environment. Therefore, it must be a good quality
(' 24 component, and you don't have to worry about the aging. ;
v 25 MR. WYLIE: Okay. Well, thank you.
ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 MMbw 1 Any other questions?
2 MR. EBERSOLE: No.
3 MR. WYLIE: I'd like to thank the Staff for their 4 presentation. It's been a very productive day, very 5 helpful.
6 We'll call adjournment then.
7 (Whereupon, at 1:15 p.m., the hearing was 8 adjourned.)
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
312-347-170) Nationwide Coverage kn33MM6
e CERTIFICATE OF OFFICIAL REPORTER O
This in to certify that the attached proceedings before l the UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION in the matter of:
NAME OF PROCEEDING: ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS SUBCOMfiITTEE ON RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT DOCKET NO.:
PLACE: UASHINGTON, D. C.
I 1 DATE: THURSDAY; MAY 22, 1986 t/ .
were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
(sigt) /
(TYPED) [
MIMIE !!ELTZER Official Reporter ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
Reporter's Affiliation TN U
L-
T ,
O ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT SURVIVAL SAFETY ISSUE s
0 WILL ELECTRICAL EQUIPENT PERFORM ITS SAFETY FUNCTION IN AN ACCIDENT ENVIR0 K NT?
0 MiAT IS THE QUALIFIED LIFE OF ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT?
REGULATORY ISSUE O ASSURANCE OF VALIDATED METHODS FOR EQUIPMENT QUALIFICATION.
O ASSESSENT OF THE SOURCE TERM RESEARCH RESULTS ON THE ACCIDENT RADIATION :
DOSE TO EQUlFE NT.
O AVAILABILITY OF ELECTRICAL EQUIPENT FOR OPERATOR ACTIONS TO MITIGATE AND
- h. MONITOR SEVERE ACCIDENTS.
0 RISK TO PUBLIC FROM RADI0 ACTIVE RELEASES THROUGH CONTAI E NT ELECTRICAL PENETRATIONS DURING SEVERE ACCIDENTS. l O AGING AND REQUALIFICATION OF ELECTRICAL CABLES FOR PLANT LIFE EXTENSION.
O
2 .
):
Q . .' - -
1 :. ' . .-
RESEARCH PROGRAM
'o DEVELOP CORRELATION BETNEEN CABLE AGING AND ACCIDENT SURVIVAL. (FY88) 0 DETEININE TE EFFECTIVE LIFE OF CABLES AND REQUALIFICATION REQUfREENTS FOR PLANT LIFE EXTENSION. (FY88) 1 0 TEST EQUIPENT FOR SURVIVAL IN A SINLATED HYDROGEN BURN INSIDE A PWR AND ,
BWR Will CONTAI N NT. (FY87)
O % ASURE CONTAI N NT ELECTR(, CAL PENETRATION ASSEN LY ELECTRICAL BEHAVIOR ,,
AND GAS LEAKAGE FOR SINLATED SEVERE ACCIDENT ENVIRO M NTS. (FY87)
O COPFARE Tm TID AND BCL SOURCE TERM ON THE RADIATION DOSE TO EQUIPENT. l (FY87)
O o COPFLETE EVALUATION OF ETHODS FOR QUALIFYING ELECTRICAL EQUIPENT INCLUDING VALIDITY OF ACCELERATED AGING TECHN! QUES, SYNERGISM, DOSE RATE EFFECTS AND SI N LATION OF ACCIDENT AND POST ACCIDENT DEGRADATION. (FY88) ;
O EVALUATE BY TEST THE DECREASE IN SEISMIC FRAGILITY OF STATION BATTERY WITH (FY87) !
AGE.
l 0 TEST THE SURVIVAL OF TYPICAL ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT REQUIRED FOR OPERATOR g, _
, ACTIONS DURING A SEVERE ACCIDENT IN A BWR WI. (FY88) i l
l i
l 1 O r
O) f REGULATORY APPLICATION ,
i O CABLES REPPISEtK A MAJOR POTENTIAL REFURBISHING COST Ill LIFE EXTENSION -
THIS RESEARCH WOULD PROVIDE A BASIS FOR DEVELOPING LICENSING AND REQUALIFICATION REQUIREE NTS IN THE PLANT LIFE EXTENSION RULE. ;
O DEiEHINE THE NEED FOR REVISIONS TO THE EQUIPMENT QUALIFICATION RULE NID R.G. 1.89 TO INCORPORATE THE IMPROVED SOURCE TERM AND THE FINAL ASSESSMENT OF VALIDITY OF ACCELERATED AGING AND QUALIFICATION E D10D.i. (FYS8) 0 MEASURE EQUIPENT THERMAL RESPONSE AND FUNCTIONS If1 A SIMJLATED HYDROGEN BURf1 TEST TO PROVIDE DATA FOR ASSESSING HCOG M(III OWNERS GROUP LICENSEE RESPONSE AND EVALUATE THE NEED FOR REVISIONS TO THE HYDR 0 GEN RULE FOR
() LARGE DRY PWRS. (FY87) i 0 EXPERIMENT WITH ELECTRICAL PENETRATION ASSEMBLIES N4D E0JIPENT UNDER SEVERE ACCIDENTS WOULD PROVIDE DATA TO DETERMINE PADI0 ACTIVE GAS LEAKAGE IN RISK ASSESSMENT STUDIES AND DETEPMINE THE AVAILABIL!TY OF ELECTRICAL EQUIPE NT FOR OPERATOR ACTIONS IN SEVERE ACCIDEllTS. (FY87) 0 BATTERY FRAGILITY TESTS WOULD DETERMINE AGE LIMITATIONS FOR POTENTIAL LOSS OF STATICH BATTERIES IN A SEISMIC EVENT AND SUPPORT RESOLUTIOf4 0F USI A46. :
. (FY87)
COSTS AND SCHEDULES t 0 AB0VE ACTIVITIES ARE ALL UNFUNDED IN FY87/88.
uj 9
($)
l ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT SURVIVAL RESEARCH ,
f f
o RESEARCH PROGRAMS BELOW UNFUNDED IN FY87/88.
o RESEARCH FUNDS NEEDED IF PROGRAM TO CONTINUE:
FY87 FY88 A1051 - QUALIFICATION TESTING EVALUATION 840K 600K
.O A1270 - EQUIPMENT SURVIVAL IN HYDROGEN BURN 200K -
A1364 - ELECTRICAL PENETRATION ASSEMBLIES ,
IN SEVERE ACCIDENTS 100K -
A1382 - ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT SURVIVAL IN SEVERE ACCIDENTS 300K 300K m
0
O v
QUALIFICATION TESTING EVALUATION FY88 RESEARCH PROGRAM o COMPLETE ASSESSMENT OF ACCELERATED AGING METHODS, SYNERGISMS AND ACCIDENT SIMULATIONS METHODS USED BY INDUSTRY IN ;
QUALIFYING EQUIPMENT.
O COMPLETE TESTING EVALUATION OF LONG TERM LOW' DOSE RATE AGING DEGRADATION OF CABLES AND CORRELATE AGING TRENDS WITH ACCIDENT SURVIVAL.
O o TEST FOR QUALIFIED LIFE EXTENSION OF CABLES AND DEVELOP REQUALIFICATION CRITERIA FOR PLANT LIFE EXTENSION LICENSING.
o COMPLETE POST ACCIDENT ACCELERATED SIMULATION METHODS ASSESSMENT FOR QUALIFYING EQUIPMENT.
o SUMMARIZE RESEARCH AND PROVIDE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LICENSING ASSESSMENT AND INSPECTION.
- PROGRAM FINISHED BY END OF FY88 -
O
4 Plant Aging / Life Extension (REF,11AC-Oll6, 0122)
PRESENTATION TO ACRS SUBCOMtilTTEE ON t
RELIABILITY ASSURANCE
_MAY 22, 198.6 J. VORA, EEICB, DET,
!~ O O O l
5 l
NRC Initiatives .
i l
i, The commission in its 1986 Policy and Planning f
i l,. guidance (PPG NUREG-0885) has stated, -
r
" Requests for an operating license renewal are to be anticipated and will require advanced .
l planning and analysis. The Commission intends -
to continue development of the policies and .
criteria to define requirements for operating license extensions to help assure that industry's efforts in this area are focused on the primary l' regulatory concerns" i
i !
l
i! : I i ; - ;i j ' r '
b o
kr e ds t
a roy d l n ewr u sou s ep c t o
l ehioda o c rs d f porulu l l t n df of og aal he i
osvtnft e ssr y f
f y .
t e e eae f a c sh dmtk etd e s t i
tl v ,nrea So i t s aihh al u t O eP ia iwc t e nenr s n r" qT e .e he u na e o sd i
th yednine r ri ot tt t
sege us uiseif n ot f
i det n e ne dny t neco xye c icit l erd ti fi oaes nm pi s u r e l
o g r ae dl wnee etisicis ia t en nda e
ip vr or pci l hu n pr e o nn g git ss -
um Gi I
" o pii w i o
O O O i
)
l Strategic Goals'
', Include i " Identify those problems :
which should be antici- ,
l pated as a consequence of plant aging "
O O O i
Planning Guidance for Needed Safety Research l -
include l
l "The staff will coordinate a research effort to identify measures which can be taken to correct deficiencies attributable j to aging and irradiation and to reduce i
safety risks inherent to degraded equipment."
._---i._a -
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O OPERATING Lb.lP9 LICENSE EXPIRATION FOR 2688-2813 20, 1 o
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UTILITIES NEED TO INITIATE LIFE EXTENSION PLANNING NOW:
NEW PLANT OR 1985 1994
[ 2004 EXTEND LIFE 1964 1968 '
l LICENSE EXPIRES CP C0 (EARLY LARGE LWR) H-NEW PLANT 10 YR SAN ONOFRE -1 LEAD TlHE CONNECTICUT YANKEE OYSTER CREEK e- 8 YR--*
TIME AVAILABLE T0:
- 1. ESTABLISH LIFE EXTENSION PROGRAM
- 2. CONFIRMATORY RESEARCH
- 3. REGULATORY REVIEW AND APPROVAL e
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' Technical Issues Which May Require Resolution l
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Which components and structores will requir f life evaluations? What should be the ba l
selection criteria?
fety What are the degradation proces i
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during extended life?
i e What methods of inspection, sur processes before safety is affected?
e How effective are current maintenancendprogr mitigating aging? Will special reliabilityd eassuranc d life?
maintenance programs be needed during exten
i Technical Issues icont'd?
l e
What data should be gathered iovere the later years of current operating licenses to justify l cens l '
d extension?
l i
' e How should industry codes and h ou ld standards be to support relicensing? What schedule s l
l be followed? f l
e Can effective action be taken during d wear?later years o current license to prevent degradation an d e
Can adequate life prediction methods be de to support a fixed license extension? f a -
e What format should be followed to encourag id duplication?
tion exchange, coordination, and avo
1 O O Hardware Oriented Engineering Pr$ gram for Nuclear Plant Aging ReSearch ,
RES Division of Engg. Tech. -
l i 3 E _ _ _
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F --- - -- - - - , MEB '
- '- - - - - - 1 EEICB CH. E.B. --'t 8, q. Equipment l'
! ' Containmen Survival NUREG-1155 Integrity '
NUREG-1144 t. - ------J l
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l Aging / Life Ext, and ************"**
................, Shippingport "
Evaluation l ,
Safety-Systems / Components I
l I I
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! Primary System Integrity _
Decontamination and Decommissioning _ l I
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,. - .1 -. q p _. l_ _ , S.G. Piping I Vessels Vol.4 Vol. 2 Vol. 3 i
UNC PNL illI .INEL l Vol.1 1 l
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O" os:v=tv" O -
Understanding Aging - A Key to Encuri Program Goals '
i d service wear i
e To identify and characterize agingsend degradation of an thereby l
l- effects which,if unchecked could c .
l impair plant safety veillance and t f tructures, l
f o To identify methods of inspectio t o loss of
/
components, and systems, whic safety function ge, maintenance, itigating the' e repair, To evaluate the effectiveness and replacement practices in mte and of stora effects of aging and diminshing the ra degradation caused by aging and serv q '
o o
g-Understanding Aging - A Key to Plant Life Extension ,
Program Goals e To identify and characterize aging and service wear i l effects and determine residual life of components and ,
l structures for plant life extension l ,
e To identify methods of inspection, surveillance and monitoring, or of evaluating residuallife of structures, components and systems which will assure timely i
assessment of significant aging effects for plant life extension t e To evalute the effectiveness of maintenance, l refurbishment and replacement practices in mitigating l' the effects of aging and diminshing the rate and extent
)
of degradation caused by aging and service wear and l
i achieve extended life time for components and I structures
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o o o Working Definition of " Aging" e
l The term, . aging" is used to re f '
l.
l system which, if unchecked, may r
' aging / degradation may include:
e Natural internal chemical or physical processes l
f e External stressors and environment e Service wear (cycling; vibrations) h e Testing e Improper installation,' application, maintenance f .
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Utilization of Research Results (Ge Benefits):
r -
e Better understanding of aging processes itigating l
1 e improved confidence in methods for detectin l i aging and service wear effects
- l. ii s Provide a basis for timely and sound f all regulator ages l!
e regarding continued operation of nuclear plants 1
l e
Avoid unplanned and costly plant shut downs
( '
. e Reduce excessive testing e improve reliability and availability m
l O
9 -
O Utilization of Research Results(Specific B ,
c e
Support the NRR " Maintenance and Surveillance t
/
' e Supportimplementation of 10 CFR 50.49 44,382, -
i e
Support and/or endorse IEEE Standards 317,323 501,535,572,649,650 1 04, e
Supoprt and/or endorse ASME-O&M Standard 06,08,10,13,15,16
~
I Situ e
Support NRR in resolution of generic issue ll.E.
l Testing of Valves" bility e
Support NRR in evaluating aging and service of dieselgenerators f nce e
Development of criteria for evaluating in-service p l of '.' Snubbers" as piping restraints l s e
Support NRR in development of criteria for ev for "Mothballing" plants and reactivation idering e Supportimplementation of 10 CFR 50.51 while c plantlicense extensions i
O .
9 -
O.
I -
Research Activities .
I.
Risk-Oriented Identification of Systems Agi 1
A.
Correlation of Risk and Aging Trends I
I B.
Analysis of Impact of Component Aging Performance '
i C.
LWR Opersting Experience Reviews and -
l to identify Aging Trends ,
ts l
D.
Evaluation of Plant Cycling and Trips on and Structures - Aging Perspective E.
Selection of Components for Aging Ass .
l
O O O 1 Component Groups l
e CheckVelves(ORNL) f e Motor Operated Valves (ORNL) e Diesel Generetc,rs (PNL) i '
' e Aux. Feedwater Pumps (ORNQ e ' Snubbers (PNL)
Bettery Chargers / Inverters (BNQ e Electric Motors (BNL) e e Batteries (ORNL) l e Relays (BNL)
Circuit Breakers (BNL) e Actuation Channel / Trip Module (BNL) e e Room Coolers (PNL) l e
Solenoid Operated Velves(ORNL)
I e
Gang Operated Control Switches (ORNL) !
l o Electrical Penetrations ;
l Pressure Sensing System e Cables ,
e (INEL) ;
e Temp. Sensing System e Level Sensing System j' ,
e Safety and Relief Valves (INEL) !
e Purge and Vent Velve(INEL) e Additional Components I Motor Control Centers (BNL)
\
O O O ,
Systems / Support Systems l -
e Reactor Protection System o Class IE Electrical Distribution Systems .
e High Pressure ECCS e RHR/ Low Pressure ECCS l
e S~ervice Water System o Component Cooling Water System l .. - - - -----
! o o o t
Plan for Residual i
NRC Research Components l of l
l Life Assessment 4
components according
- Identify and rank major to plant safety to the their relevance and life limiting
- Identify degradation sites component f each major processes for inspection and
! adequacy of
- Assess the residual life assessemnt methods
! a. plan to determine residual
- Prepare l
l life of major components
o O O Key PWR Components .
Residual Life Assessment
! for COMPONENT l
l 2 Containment and basemat l Reactor coolant piping and safe ends
' 3 .
4 Steam Generator ,
Reactor coolant pump casing ,
5 f 6 Pressurizer 7 Control Rod Drive mechanism Safety related cables and connectors 8
f Emergency diesel generator i
9 f 10 Reactor internals l Reactor Pressure Ves.sel supports 11
. _. _ g O O Topics with Regard to Review of SRP l of License Extension
' Feasibility l
1 OBJECTIVE
/
aging and service the plant, wear ofcomponentsextension. that, given Ldentify issues related to theoperating history of the l
would have to be reviewed for license Subject SRP Chapter f Design of structures, components, equip. & sys 3 (3.6, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11) f l Reactor (4.5, 4.6) l 4 Reactor coolant system and connected systems 5
l Engineered safety features 6
l 7
Instrumentation and controls l Electric power
! 8 Auxiliary systems 9 Steam and power conversion systems . .....-
10 4
g O Scope of Work i
i re a":ive to ag i ng l
of relicensing issues o identi"ication u]on SRP of comoonen":s aasecL j and service wear l chapter reviews.
of ar to allow extension
- 3ccommenc needec research "or the knowledge gaine<
accounting
- operating License c'uring plan'
- operation.
i R$4M 8 '
i
O EXTERNAL C0 ORDINATION (NUCLEAR PLANT AGING RESEARCH) 0 DOE OFFICE OF NAVAL REACTORS 0 DOE-NRC WORKING GROUP Of1 PLANT AGil4G/ LIFE E 0 EPRI-EQUIPMENT QUALIFICAT1014 ADVISORY GROUP O UTILITY STEERING GROUP ON PLA!4T LIFE EXTEf4510N O ASME SPECIAL WORKING GROUP ON PLANT LIFE EXTE
" " "*'" GR UP N PLANT LIFE EXTENSION O
0 ITALY-ENEA/ENEL-GARIGLIANO O W. GERMANY-GRS/BMI/TUV-GUNDREMMINGEN 0 FRANCE-CEA 0 JAPAN-MITI, NUPEC 0 CANADA-AECB 0 1AEA-SAFETY ASFECT OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANT A O
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O ($ X THOUSAOS)
RNDING DISTRIBlRION FY86 DE FY88 2,400 4,500 1,200 o RISK EVALUATION OF AGING EFFECTS; IN-DEPTH ENGINEERING STUDIES OF SYSTDG; RESIDUAL LIFETIFE EVALUATIONS; AGING CHARACTER 12AT10N AND DEGRADATION PONI-TORING 0F CABLES, CONNECTORS, PENETRA-TIONS, PRESSURE-TBPERATURE-LEVEL SENSING SYSTEMS 1,000 1,250 1,100 o OPERATING EXPERIENCE REVIEW 3 A0 DATA ANALYSES: AGING CHARACTERIZATION A0 DEGRADATION PONITORING OF PltPS AO VALVES; EGRADATION PONITORlhG OF REACTOR O INTERNALS 800 1,000 700 o AGING CHARACTERIZATION AND DEGRADATION fGITORING 0F CIRCUIT BREAKERS A0 RELAYS, PDTORS, BATTERY CHARGERS AO INVERTERS, f0 TOR CONTROL CENTERS 1,050 1,500 650 o AGING CHARACTERIZATION A0 DEGRADAT10N MONITORING OF DIESEL GENERATORS, SNUBBERS; SHIPPINGPORT AGING EVALUATION 5,250 8,250 3,650 l
g
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O THR0lGi FY86 MILESTONES A@ SCEDULE o OPERATING EXPERIENCE EVIEWS AO ANA M) DES AND EVALUATION OF CURRENT INDUSTRY ETHOD MONITORING AC MAINTENANCE E EQUlffENT INCLUD CIRCulT BEAKERS, ELAYS, SN'JBBERS, BATTERY-C GENERATORS.
o IN SITU TESTING 0F ELECTRICAL CIRCUlT EXAMINATION OF SELECTED C0FFONENTS, OL82 o
EVALUATE SAFETY SYSTEMS UNAVAILABILITY DUE TO AGING, o OPERATING EXPERIENCE AO MONITORING ETHODS FOR CABLES, CONNECTORS, PEN EVIEWS A0 AN TEPPERATURE-PRESSUE-LEVEL SENSING SYSTEMS, AO A HIGH PRESSURE COOLANT INJECTION SYSTEM.
O o EVALUATE TliE STANDARD EVIEW PLAN (S LIFETIME EVALUATION OF COPPONENTS IN CONSIDE o OBTAIN A0 EXAMINE ADDITIONAL COPPONEN A
U
-- -- -- - - ~ . - - ,, ,w
O as o TEST NATURALLY AGED EQUIPENT TO DETERM o PERFORK IN SITU ASSESSENTS OF C0WONENTS o DEVELOP CRITERIA FOR C00lT10N P0NITORING WATER PWPS, P0 TOR OPERATED VALVES, CHECK VALVES INVERTERS, DIESEL GENERATORS.
o DEVELOP DATA ON ESIDUAL LIFE OF CABLE TO SUPPORT REllCENSING.
FY89 o
INDEPTH ENGINEERING STUDIES OF CIRCUIT-BREAKERS, RELAYS TEMPERATURE-PESSURE-LEVEL SENSING SYSTEFS.
IOEPTH ENGINEERING STUDIES OF A LOW PRESSURE g' o o C0KTINUE TllE TESTING OF NATURALLY AGED EQUIREN o CONTINUE THE DEVELOPENT OF DATA ON RESID o STUDY ADDITIONAL SYSTFS/00MPONB4TS.
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ACRS SUBCOMMITTEE ON RELIABILITY ASSURANCE REVIEW 0F FY 88-89 RELIABILITY-RELATED RESEARCH MAY 22, 1986 DIVISION OF RISK ANALYSIS AND OPERATIONS
- O DRA0-86056 5/20/86 #1 e
. . 1 APPLICABLE PPG AND ED0 GUIDANCE--FY 85-86 o MAKE SURE THAT NUCLEAR FACILITIES OPERATE SAFELY o SHIFT AWAY FROM DETAILED PRESCRIPTIVE REQUIREMENTS TOWARD PERFORMANCE CRITERIA o CARRY OUT REGULATORY ACTIVITIES IN A WAY THAT RECOGNIZES THAT LICENSEES HAVE THE PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY FOR SAFETY o ALLOW INDIVIDUAL LICENSEES THE FLEXIBILITY TO SELECT THE MOST COST-EFFECTIVE WAYS TO SATISFY NRC SAFETY OBJECTIVES o DEVELOP CAPABILITY TO FORESEE SAFETY PROBLEMS THROUGH ANALYSIS OF OPERATIONAL DATA o IDENTIFY FOR REEXAMINATION REGtILATORY REQUIREMENTS TilAT HAVE MARGINAL IMPORTANCE TO SAFETY o IMPLEMENT SAFETY G0AL DRA0-86057 5/20/86 #2
DIVISION OF RISK ANALYSIS AND OPERATIONS RELIABILITY-RELATED RESEARCH, FY 86-89
$M FY 86 FY 87 FY 88 FY 89 B-0825 (ORNL) INSPECTION GUIDANCE $600 0 0 0 A-6851 (INEL) RISK-BASED DECISIONMAKING $200 1330 2500 2000 A-3230 (BNL) OPERATIONAL SAFETY RELIABILITY 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 B-2894* (PNL) RISK EFFECTIVENESS OF REGULATIONS 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.8 A-6831 (SNL) ROOT CAUSE FAILURE ANALYSIS $205 0** 0 0 A-1391 (SNL) FIRE RISK ANALYSIS .05 0.2 .25 .15
- 0NE TASK IN REFERENCED FIN
- PROGRAM TRANSFERRED TO AE0D IN FY 87 DRA0-86058 5/20/86 #3
FIN NOS, B0825 AND A6851 RISK-BASED DECISIONMAKING FY BUDGET ($K) FY 86 FY 87 .FY 88 FY 89 ORNL ( 0825) 600 0 0 0 1NEL (A6851) 200 1,330 2,500 2,000 PUF,F_0SE-TO DEVELOP TOOLS BY MHICH IE AND THE REGIONS CAN UTILIZE RISK INFORMATION TO ASSIST IN THF PLANNING OF INSPECTION ACTIVITIES. THIS PROGRAM IS PRESENTLY BEING AUGMENTED TO DEVELOP SIMIL.TR TOOLS TO ASSIST NRR IN LICENSING MATTERS, E.G., ESTABLISHING LIMITING CONDITIONS OF OPERATION, TECH SPEC MODIFICATIONS.
DRAO-86059 5/20/86 #4
FIN NOS, B0825 AND A6851 RISK-BASED DECISIONMAKING (CONTINUED)
PROGRAM OBJECTIVES o DEVELOP USER-FRIENDLY, INTERACTIVE, COMPUTER-AIDED PROGRAM THAT WOULD HELP PLAN RISK-EFFECTIVE INSPECTIONS AND ASSESS PLANT-SPECIFIC RISK OF ACTUAL SYSTEMS CONFIGURATIONS TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS EVALUATIONS; o PROVIDE RISK INFORMATION APPROPRIATE FOR:
ASSESSMENT OF IMPORTANCE OF ACCIDENT INITIATORS, OPERATOR ACTIONS, AND SPECIFIC SYSTEMS AND COMPONENTS; AND ASSESSMENT OF IMPORTANCE OF CERTAIN NON-SAFETY-GRADE SYSTEMS AND COMPONENTS o EXPAND PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING o ASSESS INTF.GRATION NEEDS WITH OTHER PROGRAMS (E.G., SARA AND PETS) o IMPLEMENT A SYSTEM TO UPDATE DATA BASE o PREPARE RECOMMENDATIONS AND PROS AND CONS FOR EXPANDING SYSTEM T0 INCL REMAINING OPERATING AND NEAR-TERM OPERATING PLANTS IN THE DATA BASE P
DRAO-86060 5/20/86 #5
EIN N0'S, 50825 AND 6851 RISK-BASED DECISIONMAKING (CONTINt!ED),
PAST AND EXPECTED ACCOMPLISHMENTS o DEVELOPED PROTOTYPE BASED ON ANO-1 PRA o COMPLETE ANO-1 PRISIM (IE) SYSTEM INCLUDING PROGRAM I)lSC, USER'S MAN 1!AL AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT REPORT (SPRING 1986) o INSTALLATION OF AND-1 PRISIM (IE) SYSTEM AT REGION IV AND ANO-1 BASED ON CURRENT DESIGN; COMPLETE FIELD TESTING AND FINAL REPORT (SPRING 1986) f o COMPLETE FIRST VERSION OF AN0-1 PRISIM (NRR) SYSTEM FOR TRIAL USE BY NRR'S AND-1 PROJECT MANAGER (FY 1986) o DEVEl.0P ADDITICNAL PROTOTYPE AT PEACH BOTTOM (MID FY 1987) o DEVELOP PROCEDURES FOR EXPANDING THE MODELING AND DATA BASE T'O THE REMAINING NUREG-1150 PLANTS (END OF FY 1986) o DEVELOP SYSTEM TO MONITOR AND UPDATE PRAs USING 50.59 REPORTS, FSAR CHANGES, AND LICENSE AMENDMENTS (END OF FY 1986) o EXPAND MODELING AND DATA BASE TO REMAlitiHG NUREG-1150 PLANTS (FY 1987) o DEVELOP TECHNIQUES TO USE ASEP DATA BASE 10 INCLUDE OTilER PLANTS (FY 1987) o IMPLEMENT UTillZATION OF ASEP DATA BASE (FY 1988 - FY 1989)
DRAO-86061 5/20/86 #6
PROBLEM:
PSA provides a capability to assess a plant risk, i.e., core rnelt freq uency a nd off site consequences.
CAN F54 D4TA BE MELDED /NTO 77/E REGULATORY PROCESS?
AP P ROAC H :
+ Identify inspection prog ram responsibilities
& Id e n tify the actions and decisions required of inspectors
- Establish the relationship between the plant risk and the inspection decisions
+ Develop a tool for the inspector which is:
RE4D/L Y ACCESS /BLE F7iE OF' e/4RGON US4BLE BY /NSPECTORS MTH HAR/ED TECHN/ CAL BAC/n;WOui%?S RESPONS/iE TO DPE5' OF DE ^/5/ONS /NHERL~NT /N PROMDL4i2 h.
Plant Risk Status Information Management System ( PMS/A4. . . . . .
+ Decision o rie n te d , rn e n u-d rive n , and user-friendly
+ Da ta base management and in te ractive sof twa re
+ Accessed via IBM-PC/XT desk to p c orn pu ter
+ Supports inspector's daily inspection planning or longer range planning for scheduled inspections
+ Based on risk relevance of the p la n t's status
- G __
e
DESCRIPTION PRISIM FUNCTIONAL DATA BASE MANAGEMENT ROU flNE INTERFACES WITH:
A. Data Base, Co n taining:
Accident Sequences I rn portanc e rneasu res for - Systems and Components.
Support System s I n te rf a c e s, Cornponent Failure Data B. Interactive Routine Which Provides:
Plant status in sta n taneous core rnelt freq u en cy Ranking of f ail ure sce na rios by expected f req uency Irnporta nce ranking of systems and components G
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l REGULATION OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS o WHAT CONSTITUTES ACCEPTABLE RISK FROM NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS?
o WHAT IS THE RISK FROM OPERATING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS?
o HOW COULD THAT RISK BE REDUCED, IF NECESSARY?
o HOW CAN AN ACCEPTABLE LEVEL OF SAFETY BE MAINTAINED OVER THE LIFETIME OF THE PLANT?
I.E., OPERATIONAL SAFETY DRA0-86062 5/20/86 #7
FIN NO A3282 OPERATIONAL SAFETY RELIABILITY RESEARCH FY BUDGET ($K): FY 86 FY 87 FY 88 FY 89 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 PURPOSE o EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF RELIABILITY TECHNOLOGY THAT CAN HELP ACHIEVE AND MAINTAIN AN ACCEPTABLE LEVEL OF SAFETY THROUGHOUT PLANT LIFE.
OBJECTIVES o EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF RELIABILITY TECHNIQUES THROUGH CASE STUDIES AND TRIAL APPLICATIONS o IDENTIFY RELIABILITY TASKS IMPORTANT TO MAINTAINING ACCEPTABLY LOW FREQUENCY OF TRANSIENTS / FAULTS AND HIGH AVAILABILITY OF SAFETY SYSTEMS.
o DEVELOP RISK-BASED METHOD TO EVALUATE PERFORMANCE INDICATORS AND ALERT LEVELS o PROVIDE TECHNICAL BASIS FOR STAFF TO EVALUATE RELIABILITY PROGRAMS THAT MIGHT BE PROPOSED AS TRADEOFFS BY LICENSEES o EVALUATE PROS AND CONS OF PERFORMANCE-BASED REGULATION COMPARED TO DETAILED, PRESCRIPTIVE REGULATION DRA0-86063 5/20/86 #8
APPROACH ASSURE ACCEPTABl.E SAFETY THROUGHOUT PLANT LIFE I
E 5
ASSURE HIGH ASSURE LOW SAFETY-SYSTEM FREQUENCY OF AVAILABILITY CHALLENGES I~
U ASSURE ADEQUATE m ASSURE RELIABILITY SAFETY-EQUIPMENT UP 0F UP SAFETY-EQUIPMENT I I CONFIGURATION ^ RELIABILITY PROGRAM RELIABILITY PROGRAM MANAGEMENT APPLIED APPLIED TO SAFETY-SYSTEMS APPLIED TO B0P &
TO SAFETY-SYSTEMS (TYPICALLY STANDBY SYSTEM 3) OTHER SYSTEMS THAT CAN CAUSE TRANSIENT /
~
ACCIDENTS (TYPICALLY OPERATING SYSTEMS)
O O O
FIN NO. A3282 OPERATIONAL SAFETY RELIABILITY RESEARCH (CONTINUED)
PAST ACCOMPLISHMENTS o C0ALESCED RELIABILITY PRACTICES FROM SEVERAL INDUSTRIES, INPO, AND EPRI TO OUTLINE RELIABILITY TECHNIQUES o COMPLETED CASE STUDY OF RELIABILITY TASKS AT FIVE PLANTS o COMPLETED SURVEY OF POTENTIAL APPLICABILITY OF RELIABILITY TECHNOLOGY TO HELP RESOLVE GENERIC ISSUES OR PREVENT ABNORMAL OCCURRENCES o IN INITIAL TRIAL USE, DEMONSTRATED TECHNIQUE FOR COMBINING RELIABILITY TECHNOLOGY WITH ROUTINE OPERATIONS / SURVEILLANCE TO HELP ASSURE EDG AVAILABILITY o PILOT-SCALE TEST OF RISK-BASED PERFORMANCE INDICATORS AND ALERT LEVELS (BASED ON LERS FROM DAVIS BESSE AFW) LOOKS PROMISING DRA0-86064 5/20/86 #9
O FEASIBILITY TEST OF RISK-BASED PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
! TRAIN 2. UNAVAILABILITY .
4 6 MONDI INTERVAL i
0.34 ,,,. ,
0.32 -
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FIN NO, A3282 OPERATIONAL SAFETY RELIABILITY RESEARCH (CONTINUED)
PLANNED ACCOMPLISHMENTS o PARTICIPATING IN DEVELOPMENT OF IEEE GUIDE o TECHNICAL REPORT ASSESSING TECHNOLOGY (1986) o LETTER REPORT ASSESSING NEEDS (1986) o COMPLETE INITIAL TRIAL APPLICATION OF RELIABILITY PROGRAM TO STANDBY SYSTEM (EDGs) (1987) o TRIAL APPLICATION OF RELIABILITY PROGRAM TO OPERATING SYSTEM (FW AND AFW) (1987-88) o COMPLETE PLANTWIDE IMPLEMENTATION (1988-1989) o ASSESS FEASIBILITY OF RISK-BASED PERFORMANCE INDICATORS AND ALERT LEVELS (1986) o COMPLETE DEVELOPMENT OF RISK-BASED PERFORMANCE INDICATOPS AND ALERT LEVELS, AND IMPLEMENT IN CONJUNCTION WITH IE PROGRAM (1988)
- O O
FIN NO, B2894 REGULATORY SUPPORT EVALUATE THE RISK IMPORTANCE OF EXISTING REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS PROGRAM OBJECTIVES o IDENTIFY REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS THAT MAY HAVE MARGINAL IMPORTANCE TO REACTOR SAFETY o ANALYZE THE (IDENTIFIED) REQUIREMENTS ESTIMATE IMPACTS ON SAFETY ESTIMATE COSTS OF REQUIREMENT o PROPOSE MODIFICATION OF REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS, AS NECESSARY, WITH ESTIMATE OF CHANGE IN RISK AND COST DRA0-86066 5/20/86 #11
i EVALUATE THE RISK IMPORTANCE OF EXISTING REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS (CONTINUED)
PAST AND PLANNED ACCOMPLISHMENTS o PREPARED SCREENING ANALYSIS OF EXISTING REACTOR REGULATIONS AND IDENTIFIED POTENTIAL CANDIDATES FOR REVIEW (1985) o PREPARED DETAILED ANALYSIS OF REACTOR CONTAINMENT LEAKAGE, MSIV LEAKAGE CONTROL SYSTEM, AND REGULATORY REVIEW PROCESS OF REACTOR FUEL DESIGN (1985) o ANALYZE SELECTED REGULATORY TOPICS IN FY 1986:
COM60STIBLE GAS CONTROL SYSTEM (GCS)
POST-ACCIDENT SAMPLING SYSTEM (PASS)
IMPREGNATED CHARC0AL FILTERS IN EFFLUENT TREATMENT SYSTEM TURBINE MISSILES o POTENTIAL REGULATORY TOPICS FOR FY 1987-89 EQUIPMENT QUALIFICATION FIRE PROTECTION (APP. R) 0A REQUIREMENTS STANDARD REVIEW PLAN ISSUES DRA0-86067 5/20/86 #12
O l
ROOT CAUSES OF COMPONENT FAILURES FIN NO, A6831 (INEL) s DRA0-86068 5/20/86 #13
FIN NO, A6831 ROOT CAUSES OF COMPONENT FAILURES FY BUDGET ($K): FY 85 FY 86 FY 87 150 205 0 PURPOSE o SAFETY--IDENTIFY ROOT CAUSES OF PLANT COMPONENT FAILURES AND ASSESS THEIR IMP TO PLANT SAFETY o REGULATORY REFORM--DEVELOP APPROACHES FOR USING ROOT CAUSES OF FAILURE INFORM IMPROVE REACTOR REGULATION DRA0-86069 5/20/86 #14 l - _ _ ____________
i.
MASTER ROOT CAUSES OF FM FOR WOTOR-DRIVEN PUMPS ESCAPE LAST BP N
i FAULTY WANUFAChME
! wPROPER 1E51W80 wPROPER egert3URA1 MIN CONTROL luPROPER WeSTALLAlt0N OTHER CAU NS IMPROPER OPWIAll0N I IMPROPER CAMERAfl0N I IMPftoptR WApl1ENANCE l ACING (WEAft-0UT) 1 DESCN INADEOUACY 4 HAR34 DNRONMENTS i i i i i S 10 15 20 j
i PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL EVENTS i
4 e
e i
l O
- G e
FIN NO, A1391 DRA0 FIRE RESEARCH BUDGET ($K): FY 86 FY 87 FY 88 FY 89 233 250 250 150 PURPOSE REASSESS FIRE RISK POTENTIAL: IDENTIFY PROBLEMS, MEASURE PROBLEM IMPORTANCE, DEFINE o
SOLUTIONS, SCOPE OUT PROGRAMS (IF WARRANTED)
KEY ISSUES BASED ON PRA RESULTS, FIRE RESEARCH TO DATE, AND OPERATIONAL EXPERIENCE, THE FOLLOWING ISSUES ARE IDENTIFIED.
o CONTROL SYSTEM INTERACTION (FAULT PROPAGATION, SPURIOUS SIGNALS) o SM0KE CONTROL (HVAC CAPACITY) o SEISMIC / FIRE INTERACTION o MANUAL FIRE FIGHTING EFFECTIVENESS (HUMAN RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT) o SPURIOUS SUPPRESSION SYSTEM ACTIVATION o CABLE / COMPONENT TOTAL ENVIRONMENT SURVIVABILITY (S00T, SM0KE, CORROSION, SUB-IGNITION HEAT)
O O O
FIN NO, A1391 DRA0 FIRE RESEARCH (CONTINUED)
APPROACH FY 87: BALANCED ASSESSMENT OF THREATS AND RESEARCH AND REGULATORY NEEDS FY 88, 89: SELECTION OF TOP PRIORITY ISSUES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH TO REDUCE UNCERTAINTY, BASED ON FY 87 ASSESSMENT PAST ACCOMPLISHMENTS DEVELOPMENT OF IMPROVED FIRE VULNERABILITY IDENTIFICATION TECHNIQUES, RMIEP (FY 84-FY 86)
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[_MPONENT FRAGILITIES PROGRAM OB.lECTIVE TO ESTABLISH AND IMPROVE THE SEISMIC FRAGILITY DATA BASE FOR COMPONEN IMPORTANT TO RISK.
BEGULATORY USE O ESTIMATE SEISMIC MARGINS 0 EVALUATE SEISMIC PRAs 0 ASSESS EQUIPMENT QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS
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ACCOMPLISHMENTS 0 DEVELOPED IMPORTANCE LIST 0 CONDUCTED DEMONSTRATION TEST 0 DEVELOPED lil2
SUMMARY
DATA SHEETS (COOPERATION WITH EPRI)
SWITCHGEAR MOTOR CONTROL CENTERS TRANSFORMERS RELAYS SWITCHES CONTACTORS ELECTRICAL PENETRATIONS OTHER ELECTRICAL 1
1
O 9
8 K 0
Y 0 F 4 8
8 K 0
Y 0 F 8 T
E G
D l
i B
S E
I T
7 8
K 0
O I 0 L Y 2 I F 1 G
A R
F T
N E
N O
P 6 M 8 K O 0 C Y 5 F 5 5
8 K 0
Y 0 E 5 O
Fl!TURE EFFORTS 0 CONTINUE TO GATHER EXISTIt!G FRAGILITY DATA 0 DEVELOP DATA INTO A USABLE FORM 0 CONDUCT FRAGILITY TESTS ON IMPORTANT COMPONENTS NOT C0VERED BY EXISTING DATA, 9 O O
v ENVIRONMENTAL QUALIFICATION OF MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT AND DYNAMIC QUALIFICATION OF MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT PROGRAM (EDGP)
(Flh AG322)
OR ASSURE GUALITY OF SAFETY-RELATED EQUIPMENT (MAC-0113)
PP.ESENTED TO p.
U ACks SLBCOMMITTEE ON RELIABILITY ASSURANCE MAY 22, 1986 bY G. H. KEIDENHAMER
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OIRONMENTAL QUALIFICATION OF MECHANICAL ({'} DYNAMIC v' AND MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT EROGRAM (EDQP)
OVERAIl SAFETY ISSUE STANDARDS THAT ADDRESS THE QUALIFICATION O ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT CONTAIN CRITERIA, REQUIREMENTS AN METHODOLOGIES FOR ENSURING THE HEALTH AND S PUBLIC.
THESE CRITERIA, REQUIREMENTS AND METHODOLOGIES IN MANY CASES ARE EITHER T00 GENERAL AND OPEN PRETATIONS OR, WHERE SPECIFIC GUIDANCE IS GIVEN, MAY IN SOME CASES, APPROPRIATE QUALIFICATION UNCERTAINTIES.
CONDITIONS MAY BE INADEQUATE AND ARE OVER OBIECTIVE OF PROGRAM THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS PROGRAM IS TO PROVIDE BASES FOR CLARIFYING, RESOLVING UNCERTAINTIES AND, WHE NECESSARY, DEVELOPING THE CRITERIA, REQUIREMENTS AND METHODOLOGIES TO IMPROVE NATIONAL STANDARDS REGULATORY DOCUMENTS USED FOR QUALIFYING EL MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT.
0THER OBJECTIVE OBTAIN INFORMATION ON THE BEHAVIOR OF SPEC UNDER SEVERE ACCIDENT CONDITIONS.
o COST EFFECTIVE THE PROGRAM IS ALSO RESPONSIVE TO NRR AND E
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'{ lhP0kTANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND PLAhNED ACCOMPLISilMENTS
' RELATED TO LICENSING NEEDS (PARTIAL LIST) i C0hTAINMEhT INTEGRITY (SEVERE ACCIDENT CHALLAhGE) 0 DEMONSTRATED LEAK INTEGRITY OF TYPICAL TONGUE-GROOVE AND 0-RING USED IN LARGE PENETRATIONS OF CONTAINMENT (FY84) 0 IDENTIFIED PURGE AND VENT (P&V) VALVE CLOSURE REQUIREMENTS (FY85)
RESULTS ARE CURRENTLY BEING USED TO PROVIDE A BASIS FOR RESOLVING A DEFICIENCY IN THE ASME VALVE QUALIFICATION STANDARD.
) O CONFIRMED THAT P&V VALVES USED IN OPERATING PLANTS HAVE :
INCORPORATED RESTRAINTS TO ASSURE ISOLATION IN THE EVENT OF A SEVERE ACCIDENT. (FY85) i O PLANNED CIS VALVE TESTS WILL PROVIDE INFORMATION ON EFFECTS i 0F CONTAINMENT WALL DISPLACEMENT ON VALVE OPERABILITY. (FYS7)
REACTOR COOLANT PUMP SEALS O IDENTIFIED UNACCEPTABLE 0-RING MATERIAL IN h COOLANT PUMP SEAL UNDER STATION BLACKOUT CONDIT1014S - NEW ACCEPTABLE MATERIAL TO BE INSTALLED BY h. (FY84) 0 TEST RESULTS HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE PROPOSED RESOLTION OF USI-A44, " STATION ELACK0UT." (FYLS)
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.-,------.-.,e, -- --- - - - - - - - - - - - - - _ . - - - - - -
9 ACCOMPLISHMENTS (CONT.)
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-FLOW INTERRUPTION CAPAEILITY OF VALVES o SURVEY CURRENTLY BElhG CONDUCTED TO IDENTIFY VALVE AND ACTUATOR POPULATION, QUALIFICATION CONDITIONS AND QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS. (6/86)
- 0 EVALUATE RESULTS OF SURVEY TO DETERMINE WHETHER hhC SHOULD PERFORM TESTS TO DETERMINE CAPABILITY OF VALVES TO CLOSE AGAINST HIGH FLOWS RESULTING FROM DOWNSTREAM (OUTSIDE j CONTAINMENT) PIPE BREAK. (9/86) 0 RESULTS WILL BE USED TO RESOLVE GI-87, " FAILURE OF HPCI STEAM LINE WITHOUT ISOLATION." (FY87, FY88?)
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\
. FYS9 .
vO PLAhhED EFF0h1 FOR FY,88 AND TO END lt.WILL FY87 SKS AND PROGRA.M IS SCHEDULED i EQUIPMENT QUALIFICATION 9 WitL c0NS ORT F0n FYS8 AND FYB 0113.
IDENTIFIED UNDER ftAC-APAblLITY, OF ..yALVES (GI-87)
F SURVEY TO M[I LOW INTERRUPTION CL DEPENDON:
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ON RESULTS O ri
.)ECISI ON FOR EFFORT (T$$TlhG) WIL6 . , EXTENT OF SYSTEMS ' '~ .E s
e BE COMPLETED IN FYS .
s (MANY DIFFERENT PIPING 0 QUALIFICATION . REQUIREMENTS HPCI , RWCU , ET C . ) c:
C) POPULATION SIZE c O COSTS ,,
2
- 5 HDR TESTS (PHASE 11) W. GERMANY TO OBTAIN CILITY IN COMBINED SEISMIC AND z USE DECOMMISSIONED REACTOR FAVAL 4 INFORMATION ON NORMAL LOADS, .
EXPECT MULT1-SHAKER
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O DETAILS OF TESTS NOT TO (ETOVER CARRY KNOWil INTO EXCIT AT ION .
S7 AND ARE EXPECTED
' 0 ' TESTS ST1 ARi IN LATE FY FY 88 l
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'em (COMT 'I U fgg pygu Mab pygg ,
Eppuk1 AFFECT IN VALVES THAT MAY
- DUCED FORCES PRODUCE SIGNIFICANT LOADS -
CAN TO TESTS '
THROTTLlhG TY.
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. OPERABILI AND FLOW-INTERRUPT FORCES, ION %ma -t K;y%%c OF HDR TESTS OF THROTTLING V ALVES. %::6 %:
USE RESULTSCHARACTERIST ICS CS FOR GATE
- .['YNN DETERMINE ;a.: 3R5 FORCE CHARACTERISTI FORCES? ?Cf%&
THE TO THESE 'EfEfll QUANT IFY QUALIFIED ADEQUATELY ~
V ALVES ARE GATE Aq ACT hlTH ST ANDARDS COMMITTEES PROGRAM:
lh RESOLVIhG .
MAIN OBJECTIVE OF FOR VIDE BASIS ,
TO ACCOMPLISH T ASKS TO PRO p
ST ANDARDS . =
FROM ALL USE RESULTS QUALIF ICAT ION AhD PROPOSE *,
0 COMMITTEES UNCERT AINTIES ST IN AND ARDS
'4 O hEET WITH APPROPRI ATE + ,
MODIFIC ATIONS .
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(DOLLARDS IN THOUSANDS) i l
FY89 FYB8 FYE7 Elg ,,.;
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$1800
$E55 .
EGulPIEiT 90AtlFICATi0h' (EDOP)
$800
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REPORTED PORV/BV FAILURE EVENTS OPERATING EXPERIENCE REVIEW TO SUPPORT THE RESOLUTION OF GENERIC ISSUE 70 "PORV AND BLOCK VALVE RELIABILITY" B&W PORV EVENTS - MECHANICAL FAILURE (17 EVENTS)
B&W PORV EVENTS - CONTROL FAILURE (7 EVENTS)
H PORV EVENTS - MECHANICAL FAILURE (45 EVENTS)
(33 EVENTS)
H PORV EVENTS - CONTROL FAILURE CE PORV EVENTS - MECHANICAL FAILURE (11 EVENTS)
CE PORV EVENTS - CONTROL FAILURE (4 EVENTS)
PORV BLOCK EVENTS (29 EVENTS)
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Toble 1. B&W PORV EVENTS Mechanical Failures (LERs)
O Plant Dste Description Valve Mir.
Pilot vent line design Dresser ANO-1 9/74 faulty Crosby Davis-Besse 10/77 Pilot stem clearance problems Crosby
- 5/15/78 Broken valve stem RC-2A pilot valve and Crosby
- 10/26/79 main disc leaking Leaked through-replaced Crosby
()
Vent failed to open; 6/13/75 boric acid buildup; bent lever on pilot valve PORV and BV leaking Dresser Rancho Seco 6/11/78 Position indicator Dresser 9/19/83 weight caused pilot valve to open, opening PORV Dresser TMI-l 8/31/82 PORV internals corroded Dresser 2/11/83 Internals rusted and
, pitted; traces of sulphur on internals, alternate of 8/31/82 valve event Failed to open Dresser TM1-2 9/78 PORV stuck open Dresser TMI-2 3/28/79 Seat leak at mating Dresser 7 6/23/79 surfaces ._
reported as,LERs; event inferred to occur at Davis-
(,
7 Source of report was NPRDS; plant identification un-available.
i i
[ Control Failures (LERs)
Date Description Plant Crystal River 3 11/75 Stuck solenoid 9/24/77 Missing seal-in relay caused PORV to cycle 9 Davis-Besse times, then stick open 8/73 Wiring error Oconee 2 5/12/82 Hook up wire blocked control relay contact 2/21/84 Coil contacts dirty Rancho Seco 3/20/78 NN1 power failure; short from dropped light bulb 3/29/78 Loss of power to PORV channels TMI-2 O
4 i C:)
Table 3 3 PORV EVENTS Mechanical Failures (LERs)
Description Plant Date 8/20/74 Fractured valve yoke Beznau 12/17/84 PORV suf f ered excessive leakage; BVs had to Callaway 1 be closed 4/26/81 PORV seat leakage Farley 2 6/19/83 PORV lif ted but leaked on reseat; seated Ginna after pressure reduced 1/3/82 PORV seat leakage McGuire 1 4/2/82 PORV seat leakage 6/24/80 Cocked bearing in valve operator North Anna 2 4/18/79 PORVs had long stroke times; scored valve Robinson 2 stems 4/29/83 PORV failed during testing; galling of plug to cage 6/81 PORV leakage due to stean cutting of valve Salem 1 cage Foreign material or dry stroking
() Salem 2 6/22/80 5/15/81 PORV leakage; changed material to eliminate galling 7/9/81 PORV seat leakage; Copes-Vulcan DIOO-160 generic problem 1/22/83 PORV seat leakage; generic problem 7/25/84 PORV f ailed to resent during test; BV slow to close 10/26/81 PORV leaked due to improper adj. of stem Sequoyah 1 coupling 4/21/83 PORV leakage 11/9/83 PORV leakage; crack in valve seat; valve Sequoyah 2 vendor replaced seat 10/20/82 PORV seat leakage; steam impingement on Summer 1 seat / disk interface 2/17/83 PORV seat leakage Surry 1 1/26/82 Leaking PORV and BV 10/2/82 Leaking diaphragm 2/4/83 PORV would not cycle
Table 3 (continued)
Mechanical Failures (NPRDS)
Date* Description
- Plant 1/24/84 Seat leakage; cause unknown Cook 1 Haddam Neck 3/12/83 Seat leakage; disc cracked 8/6/83 Seat leakage; wear Kewaunee 1 12/5/84 Seat leakage; incorrect installation 9/21/84 Seat leakage; improper adjustment of valve North Anna 1 stem 7/2/83 Seat leakage; gouge in disc on 1-PCV-430 Point Beach 1 7/6/83 Seat leakage; degraded cage and plug 4/10/84 Seat leakage; cage deformed (PCV-444B)
Summer 1 7/3/84 Seat leakage; cage deformed (PCV-445B)
Zion 1 7/22/84 Seat leakage; wear + rad (?)
12/18/83 Seat leakage; wear Zion 2
? 3/23/75 Plug scored, cage frozen
? 3/23/75 Bonnet leak; plug deformed, cage frozen O'- ? 7/7/75 Seat leakage 9/19/75 Gasket on valve PR-2a f ailed; replaced
?
1/14/76 Seat leakage
?
? 1/20/76 Seat leakage (PCV-455C) 3/15/76 Valve leaked through; plug and seat cut
?
6/10/76 Bent stem on valve PR-2A; new internals
?
? 1/22/77 PT-2B diaphragm failed; replaced
? 4/18/77 Stem out of adjustment; valve replaced
? 6/25/77 Leakage; cage and plunger worn
- Date failure occurred (from NPRDS failure report).
r
? Plant identification not available.
Table 4. W PORV EVENTS Q Control Failures (LERs)
Date Description Plant 2/80 PORV actuated due to dirty contacts Connecticut Yankee 4/3/81 Pzt. pressure controller malfunction 1/8/83 PORV emergency air actuation system Cook 2 failure; allowed PORV to drift closed during test 7/3/83 Lack of air supply for PORVs due to admin. error Farley 2 2/17/83 PORV controller f ailure; defective driver card 1/25/82 PORV stuck open; due to f aulty pilot Ginna solenoid valve i'
4/3/81 PORV actuation setpoint set too low McGuire 1 3/26/82 PORV position indication light f ailure 6/5/82 PORV position indication lost due to pinched cable at limit switch 17 1ew a < <r e t O erea ^# - > 12/>>/so ro=v itre8 = s cycling during preparation for refueling 3/18/81 PORV nitrogen tanks leaked 10/7/81 PORV nitrogen supply low 5/10/82 PORV nitrogen supply low 5/19/82 PORV nitrogen supply low 5/25/82 PORV nitrogen supply low 12/7/82 PORV nitrogen supply low 9/2/80 Low N due to high plant usage North Anna 2 g 6/20/81 PORV nitrogen supply low 8/6/81 PORV nitrogen supply low 5/16/82 PORV nitrogen supply low 6/5/82 PORV nitrogen supply low 7/10/82 PORV nitrogen supply low 8/20/82 PORV nitrogen supply low 4/6/83 PORV nitrogen supply low 5/15/83 PORV nitrogen supply low O
Table 4 (continued)
Date Description Plant 11/4/83 PORV f ailed to meet required cycle time; Robinson 2 limit switches misadjusted 1/26/83 PORV control air system f ailed; surge Salem 2 caused excess flow check valve to close 6/18/81 PORV controller settings caused cycl-San Onofre 1 ing during transients Sequoyah 1 4/2/84 PORV bistable alarm lights miswired 6/6/83 PORV nitrogen supply pressure regulator Summer 1 drif ted (PCV-445A-RC) 7/7/83 PORV nitrogen supply pressure regulator drifted (PCV-444B-RC)
Control Failures (NPRDS) 12/11/83* PORV nitrogen supply accumulator relief North Anna 1 valve failed 7 2/26/75* Air line to PORV leaking i
- Date f ailure occurred (from NPRDS failure report).
? Plant identification not available.
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Table 5. CE PORV EVENTS Mechanical Failure LERs Date Description, Plant Calvert Cliffs 1 7/79 PORY f ailed to seat after test Calvert Cliffs 2 3/1/81 PORV leaked until RCS pressure raised to 150 psig; leakage stopped Millstone 2 12/29/83 PORV seat leakage; foreign material on seat; successfully flushed 8/30/80 Pilot solenoid held open by solenoid Palisades plunger St. lucie 2 5/14/83 PORV position indication magnet lost magnetism due to high temperatures 4/28/83 Possible f ailure of PORV pilot solenoid valve 5/23/83 PORV position indication magnet lost magnetism due to high temperature (Garrett valves)
Mechanical Failures (NPRDS)
Date* Description Plant
? 7/22/76 Seat leakage; replaced disc, guide, rings 11/28/79 Pilot valve and main valve seating surfaces cut, 1-ERV-404 1/25/80 Pilot valve and main valve seating sur-faces cut, 1-ERV-402 12/9/80 Valve lif ted - f ailed to reseat tightly -
seat leakage
- Date failure occurred (from NPRDS failure report).
? Plant identification not available O
[) Control Pailures Date Description.
Plant 7/16/81 PORV actuated on erroneous signal; bumping Calvert Cliffs 1 of pressure transmitter cabinet Calvert Cliffs 2 1/18/81 PORV opened due to pressure transmitter failure 2/3/83 PORVs opened when two RPS channels were inadvertently deenergized Palisades 9/8/71 Loss of power O
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Table 7. PORY BV EVENTS (LERs)
O Plant Date Description 6/79 Failed torque switch (SMB-00)
ANO-1 (B&W) 6/79 BV operator torque switch failed ANO-2 (CE)
(SMB-000)
Beaver Valley 1 (W) 4/28/81 BV, operator limit switch damaged 11/3/81 BV packing leak; backseated to stop Calvert Cliffs 1 (CE) leakage Crystal River 3 (B&W) 9/27/8 Torque switch failed; replaced 4/27/83 BV packing leak leakage (2NC-315) -
McGuire 2 (W) eye bolts failed 6/10/79 Body-to-bonnet seal failed; 2 1/2" Millstone 2 (CE) pressure seal gate valve 9/28/81 BV body-to-bonnet seal ring leakage (2-RC-403) 12/6/81 BV sotor operator electrical failure due to torque switch failure (2-RC-403) 3/4/82 BV body-to-bonnet joint leaked until RCS temperature and pressure raised s (2-RC-403) 7/82 BVs suffered packing leakage 3/1/83 BV leakage into containment; (2-RC-405)
North Anna 1 (W) 11/19/82 BV control cable connections loose 10/2/80 Not given (330/80-65)
North Anna 2 (W) 12/19/73 M.0. failure, valve stuck open; Oconee 1 (B&W) override thermal O/L to close valve 6/9/79 Torque switch failure on motor Prairie Island 1 (W) operator (SMB-000)
Robinson 2 (W) 12/81 BV operator did not receive proper PM 6/25/83 Pzr BV RC-356 packing leak Salem 2 (W) 7/25/84 BV slow to close Sequoyah 2 (W) 11/10/81 BV position limit switch gear broken (2-FCV-68-333)
O
Table 7 (continued) i Description Plant Date 3/27/82 BV operator torque switch setting too low f or operational conditions 4/16/81 BV packing adjusted too tight (MV St. Lucie 1 (CE) 1403) 8/2/81 BV would not close due to f ailed limit switch; excessive leakage through packing (MV-1403) 2/26/82 BV would not shut (MV-1403) 10/1/82 BV would not reopen after test; Summer 1 (W) packing too tight; overtorque on opening (MVG-8000A) 10/10/82 BV packing leak (MVG-8000 C) 1/26/82 BV would not close completely; Surry 1 (W) required manual assistance (MOV-1536) 6/18/82 BV would not close completely; required manual assistance (MOV-1536) 12/30/84 BV would not close completely; faulty Turkey Point 3 (W) torque switch
_/
1 0