ML20198H185

Responds to to President Clinton Re Rept by Gao, Issued 970530 on NRC Oversight of Nuclear Power Industry

ML20198H185
Person / Time
Site:	Millstone, Salem, Cooper
Issue date:	12/15/1998
From:	Roe J NRC (Affiliation Not Assigned)
To:	Richmond D AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED
References
NUDOCS 9812290259
Download: ML20198H185 (8)

Text

. =.

at g J'

UNITED STATES

, j

, *j NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION o,

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20666-0001 k*****,o December 15, 1998 Mr. Dean Richmond P.O. Box 370 Yachats, Oregon 97498

{

Dear Mr. Richmond:

Your letter to President William J. Clinton, dated October 20,1998, regarding a report by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), issued May 30,1997, on the Nuclear Regulatory i

Commission's (NRC's) oversight of the nuclear power industry has been referred to me for response. Your comments and the recommendations in the GAO report highlight areas for renewed vigilance by the NRC. The NRC is aware that the methods by which it ensures that operation of nuclear power plants does not endanger public health and safety must evolve and incorporate lessons teamed as regulatory experience is gained.

'j As indicated by a broad spectrum of industry and NRC performance indicators, the overall safety performance of the commercial nuclear power industry has been improving. However, some plants, such as the Millstone Nuclear Power Station, the Salem Nuclear Generating Station, and the Cooper Nuclear Station, had been found to be operating outside some of their 4

applicable design bases. The NRC has reviewed actions taken by the licensees of these plants to ensure operation within their design bases. The GAO report indicated that NRC needed to be more effective to preclude such occurrences and made recommendations for improvement.

Shirley Ann Jackson, Chairman of the NRC, responded to the recommendations in the GAO report in a letter to Charles A. Bowsher, Comptroller General of the United States, GAO dated August 18,1997. In the August 18 letter, the Chairman discussed planned or existing NRC activities that were responsive to the recommendations in the report and stated that the NRC is committed to continued process improvements that help the NRC better fulfill its mission.

In your letter, you listed five areas of concern from the GAO report. These concerns center around the need to ensure that plants are operated within their design bases and that deviations from them are discovered prompt'y and are corrected in a timely tv aner. You also expressed concern that NRC was not assessing the performance of plant management and that NRC regulations did not provide specific criteria for plant safety. I will describe briefly the actions being taken to improve licensee and NRC performance in these areas.

f As part of NRC's regulatory oversight, the NRC has evaluated licensee activities that relate to the maintenance of the design bases at licensed nuclear power plants. However, when NRC

,g staff at Millstone in the fall of 1995 and at other nuclear power plants found that some licensees Tk were not operating within thsir cesign bases, the NRC issued a letter to the Chief Executive Officer of each utility operating an NRC-licensed plant. In these letters, the NRC required each licensee to submit a description of any design review or reconstitution programs that had j

already been completed, were planned, or were being conducted to ensure the correctness and accessibility of the design-bases information for their plant and to ensure that design-bases

( D M w.

w g229025998121 H

ADocK 05000245 PDR

- - _ ~. - - -

- _ ~. - - -. -. - - - -. - -.. - - _. -

D. Richmond

-2 December 15, 1998 l

information is kept current. If a program was planned or was being conducted but had not been completed, the licensee was required to provide the implementation schedule for completion of F

the program. If a program had not already been implemented and was not planned to be l

implemented, the licensee was required to submit the rationale for not implementing such a program.

The NRC systematically reviewed the responses to its letter and inspected several plants within each region. Those inspections indicated that, at some plants more action was needed to ensure that current design bases information was readily available and that all plants were operated in compliance with the current design bases. On the basis of the results of those inspections, the NRC instructed its regional inspectors to increase inspection of the maintenance of design-bases information and the compliance of licensees with that information.

2 The NRC has revised the guidance for plant inspections to emphasize review of the maintenance of design-bases information and the conformance of plant operations with the 1

design bas es, especially any changes to the design bases.

l During this time, the NRC discussed with licensees better maintenance of design-bases i

informatien, proper evaluation of proposed changes to operations for conformance to design-bases requirements, and the need to obtain NRC review and approval when necessary.

i These discussions revealed that NRC needed to better define both the information that must be considered design-bases information and the kinds of changes to a facility that require NRC review and approval. The NRC is working with industry to develop this information and is completing an evaluation of industry-developed guidance, which d may endorse, i

j The NRC has historically inspected licensees for compliance with the criteria specified in NRC l

regulations and plant technical specifications. Compliance with NRC regulations has been i

generally recognized as guaranteeing reasonable assurance of pA!ic safety. However, p

violations of these requirements may not necessarily result in an unsafe plant. With the development of probabilistic risk assessments applicable to nuclear power plants, a tool to quantify the risk of certain plant conditions is available. The NRC has begun to use risk information together with assessments of licensee compliance with deterministic requirements and the philosophy of defense in depth to make more risk-informed judgements about plant safety.

The NRC has considered the competency of management to be a critical part of plant safety. It has been the NRC's practice to conduct performance-based inspections in all areas of facility operation and design and, on the basis of the inspection results, to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the licensee's management. The NRC is currently investigMng the development of management effectiveness assessment tools to improve the current plant performance methodology. This revised methodology will evaluate key indicators that relate to good performance in a more timely and consistent manner to identify instances in which management is not effective. These inspections will consider how management acts to reduce the occurrence of degraded conditions, to reduce the length of time that degraded conditions exist, and to reduce unnecessary challenges to safety systems.

t D. Richmond December 15, 1998 The NRC continues to look for ways to more objectively and consistently regulate nuclear power and considers findings from intemal and external audits and investigative reports, such as the GAO report, to be areas for regulatory improvement. We believe that by acting appropriately on findings from such reports, we can best fulfill our mission of ensuring that nuclear power plants are operated in a manner that ensures public health and safety.

Sincerely, Jack, W. Roe, Acting Director j

Division of Reactor Program Management Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation I

b l

i l

l l

l l

3 e

't

o D. Richmond

-3 December 15, 1998 The NRC continues to look for ways to more objectively and consistently regulate nuclear power and considers findings from internal and extemal audits and investigative reports, such as the GAO report, to be areas for regulatory improvement. We believe that by acting appropriately on findings from such reports, we can best fulfill our mission of ensuring that nuclear power plants are operated in a manner that ensures public health and safety.

Sincerely, David B. Matthews for/

Jack, W. Roe, Acting Director Division of Reactor Program Management Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation DISTRIBUTION: See attached page Document Name: G:ULBiGT980663.WPD OFFICE Tech Ed PGEB:DRPM PGEB:DRPM PGEB:DRPM NAME BCalure*

JBirmingham :sw FAkstulewicz TEssig DATE 12/1/98 12/3/98 12/3/98 12/3/98 OFFICE D: DISP (A)DRFM)y NAME FGillespie JRoe([(

DATE 12/4/98 12/7/98 [

OFFICIAL OFFICE COPY i

t

h l

l

,W Q b

LEDO Principal Correspondence. Control

.[FROM J

-DUE: 11/18/98-EDO CONTROL: Gl9980663 DOC DT:.10/20/98 FINAL REPLY:

D:cn-Richmond.

lYcchOts,'. Oregon (White House Referral)

iTO :

President Clinton FOR SIGNATURE OF.:

• • GRN CRC NO: 98-1029 Collins,-NRR EDESC ROUTING:

SAFETY.OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS Travers DEDE Thompson

Norry, Blaha Burns

-DATE 11/06/98-JASSIGNED TO:

CONTACT:

" Q

_ Collinsa

'SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS OR REMARKS:

913. ACTIop: DRPM: roe y eg IRECEit/ED: %vember %R%

ACTION

$tR RouTttJG: C.oihn3/t%gco

~~

DUE TO NRR DIRECTOR S 06 M OO BY

// /J f[

w Z.\\ mmesm@

oj,g ~

utR. tub m-

.. : 'f

ge_ v.

Sc. :

V

r

- OFFICE'OF'THE SECRETARY.

T

CORRESPONDENCE CONTROL TICKET-w.

PAPER NUMBER:

' CRC-98-10'9 LOGGING DATE: Nov

.5 98-ACTION; OFFICE:

[

AUTHOR:

DEAN' RICHMOND AFFILIATION:

OREGON

.ADDRESSEEi

! WILLIAM.J CLINTON, PRES-v

~

cLETTER DATE:

Nov 20 98 FILE CODE: IP-2' i* '

SUBJECT:

fSAFETY OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS L-ACTION:

' Direct Reply

^

. DISTRIBUTION:

CHAIRMAN SPECIAL' HANDLING:-NONE a

. q

. CONSTITUENT:

'NOTESi WHITE HOUSE REFERRAL DATED 10/30/98 FM SUE-SMITH-l DATE DUE:

-Nov'20-98' I

. i iSIGNATURE:

DATE SIGNED:

AFFILIATION:

s l

)

i c

3 1

.J

?

w.

e i

i

)

1 l

EDO -- G980663

,,s ;

4 s

'4i%

6 v

4at t

==-vyt-w-y T -

-wy-

-e--

T

OcT-19-9Q NOH $3'834 PM CABIHO COLLECT W41 84T 44uF r.ut

~'

0

^, te*

,/

.d*

,/

e-

/

v

(,

m j

1 k

j

/f Preside Clinton l j/ [

\\

The White House

{

Washington,DC October 20,1998 s

Subject:

Nuclear Roulette The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is supposed to oversee the safety of the 103 vammercial nuclear power plants in 31 states and insure their safe operation. The NRC has a staff of approximately 3,000 an a 1998 fiscal year budget authorization of $472.8 million. According to the July 1998 report by the General Accounting Office the NRC is not doing its job.

According to GAO:

1. NRC " assumes" that nuclear power plants are operating safely if they. operate as designed and follow NRC's regulations; however, all three power plants that GAO examined were operating outside of their designs.

2. NRC does not have an effective way to quantify the safety of plants that deviate from their designs.

l

3. The three nuclear plant facilities that GAO examined had l

long standing safety problems, and the NRC did not take aggressive action to insure that the licensees fixed their safety in a timely manner.

4. Although both the nuclear industry and the NRC agree that the competency of a nuclear plant's management is a critical factor in safety perform nce, the NRC eliminated the management assessment in the early 1990's,"to streamline its inspection guidance process".

S. NRC's regulations do not provide either the licensee or the public with specific definitions of conditions that define the safety of a plant.

i The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not complying with the law that requires it to insure that the operation of the i

nation's 103 nuclear power plants occurs in a manner that adequately protects public safety. Because of the negligence of the NRC, America could well be heading for a Chernoble-type disaster or worse. The NRC is apparently more concerned with accommodating and promoting the nuclear power industry than it is in protecting the American people.

im

.s Dean Richmond P.O. Dox 370 Yachats, Oregon 97498 1

I

q

-3 6

! DISTRIBUTION: Ltr to D. Richmond fm J. Roe Dated December 15, 1998

~

\\ Central File (w/ incoming) (GT 19980663)'-

PUBLIC (w/ incoming) (GT 19980663)

EDO r/f (w/ incoming) (GT 19980663).

NRR Mailroom (w/ incoming) (GT 19980663):

WTravers DEDE.

- FMiraglia

- HThompson'

. PNorry

' JBlaha SBurns, OGC.

SCollins --

RZimmerman BSheron

- BBoger -

Gillespie ~

-JRoe -

f l

DMatthews TEssig FAkstulewlicz

-JBirmingham E

. MTschiltz -

i-L.

(4 I

L t

l 1

l

+

e

- - - -&