ML20203C540
| ML20203C540 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 02/03/1999 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-3065, NUDOCS 9902120121 | |
| Download: ML20203C540 (156) | |
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?() OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS ~ ,
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ! ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS i l j
Title:
459TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE i i
. ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS i
TR:4 Aras. ! FE r ac ca:::ren i TC Em"n"ri: T E '!. M/S T.;E;; ' 4:E 7: 3;
*8'
. Docket No.:
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' Work Order No.i ASB-300-655
'f LOCATION: Rockville,MD j
. DATE: Wednesday, February 3,1999 PAGES:1 - 141 9902120121 99020'3 PDR ACFE T-3065 PDP ANN RILEY & ASSOChiTES, LTD.
1025 Connecticut Ave.,NW, Suite 1014 ,
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I ' f3 O l DISCLAIMER UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS FEBRUARY 3, 1999 The contents of this transcript of the proceeding of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Advisory l(h i
) Committee on Reactor Safeguards, taken on February 3, 1999, as reported herein, is a record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
This transcript had not been reviewed, corrected and edited and it may contain inaccuracies. i t 1 l I n s () l
t o 1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA l () i 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l 3 ADVISORY CCMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4 *** l-5 459TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 6 *** 7 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 8 2 White Flint North, Conf. Rm. 2B3 9 11545 Rockville Pike 10 Rockville, Maryland 11 Wednesday, Fcoruary 3, 1999 12 The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 8:30
- 13 a.m.
14 MEMBERS PRESENT: () 15 DANA POWERS, Chairman, ACRS l 16 GEORGE APOSTOLAKIS, Vice-Chairman, ACRS i -17 WILLIAM J. SHACK, Member, ACRS l i l 18 ROBERT E. UHRIG, Member, ACRS 19 MARIO V. BONACA, Member, ACRS j 20 JOHN J. BARTON, Member, ACRS l l 21 ROBERT L. SEALE, Member, ACRS 22 GRAHAM B. WALLIS, Member, ACRS l 23 THOMAS S. KRESS, Member, ACRS 24 MARIO H. FONTANA, Member, ACRS 25 DON W. MILLER, Member, ACRS 4 ! IdRJ RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I Court Reporters i ! 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
l 2 1 PRO'CEEDINGS 2 [8:30 a.m.] j l 3 DR. POWERS: Good morning. The meeting will now i l 4 come to order. This is the first day of the 459th meeting !
)
5 of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards. During 6 today's meeting'the Committee will consider the following: i 7 (1) status of.the proposed final version of 10 CFR 50.59 l 8 (changes, tests and experiments) ; (2) proposed improvements i 9 to NRC's inspection and assessment program; (3) proposed l 10 ACRS reports. In addition, the Committee does have a 3 1 11 meeting scheduled with the NRC Commissioners between 1:00 i j 12 and 2:30 and the Commissioners' Conference Room, 1 White I 13 Flint North, to discuss items of mutual interest. P 14 This meeting is being conducted in accordance with , 15 provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Dr. John j L 16 T. Larkins is the Designated Federal Official for the i 17 initial portion of the meeting. 18 We have received no written comments or requests 19 for time to make oral statements from members of the public i 20 during today's session. I 21 A transcript of portions of the meeting is being 22 kept and it is requested that speakers use one of the 23 microphones, identify themselves and speak with sufficient l 24 clarity and volume so that they can be readily heard. l 25 Let me call the members' attention first of all to
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3 l 1 the revisions of the schedule with the meeting with the 2 Commission. What is listed here are the presentation times 3 and we have a Commission that is extremely busy and we are 1 1 going to try to hold these times very strictly. 4 1 There is ' 5 approximately an equivalent amount of time associated with l 6 each presentation for their questions and comments. 7 Members should have in front of them some items of 8 interest. I call your attention to, first, Chairman 9 Jackson's speech considering the continuation of the NRC 10 mission, and also perpetuating a tradition of excellence. I 11 also call your attention to changes that have occurred in 12 the membership of the CRGR, and finally I call your l 1 13 attention to the 1999 Regulatory Information Conference 14 agenda that is in the first week of March. O q ,f 15 I think members will find that to be of some 16 interest and if you are interested in attending there is a l 17 protocol for doing so. It historically has proved to be of i 18 great interest. 19 I am intending to hold our agenda very tight and 20 strict today simply because we have a meeting with the 21 Commission. In fact, I am going to try to shave a little 22 off this morning's sessions. After we have completed the 23 morning sessions we probably want to reassemble here with 24 lunch at the table so that we can deal with any last-minute 25 preparations for that meeting with the Commission. O
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l l 4 i 1 Are-there any points the members would like to l () 2 3 raise during this opening session? [No response.] l 4 DR. POW 2RS: Then I propose that we turn 5 immediately to the first item on our agenda, which is the 6 status of the proposed final revisions of 10 CFR 50.59, l 7- changes, tests and experiments, and John Barton, I believe 8 you are the Subcommittee Chairman there. 9 MR. BARTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. l 10 The Committee this morning is prepared to discuss 11 with the Staff and hear the Staff's response to the 50.59 12 rulemaking since it has just come back from -- since the 13 public comment period has just ended. I i 14 As you will recall, the last discussion we had () 15 with the Staff on the rulemaking was prior to the package 16 going out for public comment. Our last letter on this 17 subject was to the EDO on the package and the comments we 18 had on that package that went out for public comment. 19 At this time I would like to turn it over to 20 Eileen -- do you have the lead on this? -- Eileen McKenna, 21 who will lead the discussion for the Staff. 22 MS. McKENNA: Thank you, Mr. Barton. 23 My name is Eileen McKenna. I am with the NRR l-l 24 Staff. I hope to be joined shortly by some of my management l ( 25 'who I think looked at the agenda and were looking at 8:45 so ! i i E i 4 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 4 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
I 5 1 they will be here in just a few moments. ( ) 2 As mentioned, I think our last meeting was in 3 July. At that time we were in the process of sending a 4 proposed rule package to the Commission, and I would like to 5 pick up from there and tell you what went on between July 6 and now, what went into putting the notice out and then the 7 public comments we heard and then where we are and where we 8 are going with finalizing the rule package. 9 Just as a reminder, this rule really was intended 10 to preserve the licensing basis that was established through 11 the initial reviews, but also to clarify the requirements 12 primarily through the means of providing definitions of some 13 of the terms that have been subject to different 14 interpretations and also, as noted, to allow some movement () 15 off the so-called zero threshold for changes involving -- 16 with increases in probability or consequences, and the term 17 that was used in the Commission SRM was a minimal increase 18 concept, so those were the intentions of the rule. 19 This is not meant to be a more risk-informed type 20 of rule which I know there's been a lot of discussion about 21 that. It's recognized it may be something to go to in the 22 future but it was not something we were trying to accomplish 23 with this particular package. 24 DR. POWERS: Well, you may not have been trying to 25 accomplish it with the package, but that doesn't restrict O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
6 1 you from being mindful of the volume of risk information () 2 3 that has come into the agency over the last five or six years. 4 MS. McKENNA: Certainly, but unless there were 5 more extensive changes made to the regulatory approach it is 6 difficult to take full advantage of all that information if 7 you are looking at the context of the design basis type 8 accidents that were part of the original licensing basis as 9 documented in the FSAR. 10 DR. POWERS: Right. I mean I guess what I am 11 saying is that there is not a religious discrimination that 12 thou shalt not use and be aware of risk information when you 13 formulate this modest revision to 50.59. 14 MS. McKENNA: Yes. As I say, it was not that we () 15 were -- exactly. It's just kind of how you do it in a way 16 that -- 17 DR. POWERS: Well, it would be useful as you go 18 through your presentation if you could tell us where you 19 have taken into account the risk information in thinking 20 about things like definitions. 21 MS. McKENNA: Okay. We'll try to do that. I 22 think the other point is that- for many of the kirds of 23 changes that'we are talking about, it really doesn't come 24 into play because if you are looking at procedure changes or 25 minor changes to systems, the assessments are really more O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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7 1 qualitati.ve in terms that there is essencially no impact on ( ) 2 anything and therefore there is no risk impact, but it is 3 not done in any quantitative way of looking at risk as we 4 consider it in severe accident space. 5 DR. POWERS: Well, I don't think -- I think it is 6 fair to say that there is a lot of use that can be made of 7 the qualitative aspects of risk analyses and I don't think , 8 risk ana.fses are confined to just looking at severe 9- accident space. I think they tell us a lot about the l 10 equipment that is essential even under singlefold types of 11 incidences. 12 MS. McKENNA: Okay. I won't spend a lot of time 13 on this next slide -- it's just background -- but it has a 14 few datapoints. We had the March, 1998 SRM which asked for () 15 the rulemaking on allowing minimal increases, so the paper 16 SECY-98-171 in July, providing that proposed rule for the 17 Commission to consider, received a September 25th, 1998 SRM 18 from the Commission that approved going forward with 19 publication of a proposed rule with a number of comments and 20 additions that they wished to see in the notice. 21 I have listed a few of them here that they wanted 22 to ask for. comment, for example on a wide range of options 23 on margin. We put in a question about whether the scope as l 24 presently defined as facility in the FSAR should be l l 25 maintained and there were some other issues that I will i O 70R4 RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 1 Washington, D.C. 20036 ; (202) 842-0034 j
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l 8 l 1 elaborate on in the next slide. l () 2 This SMR -- excuse me -- let me say we published 3 the proposed rule in October, j 4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Eileen -- 5 MS. McKENNA: Yes? ! t 6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: -- I am trying to understand- l I 7 uhat the thrust of this is. . 8 We are getting around with this SECY the issue of, ; i 9 the problem of not having explicit quantitative l f 10 probabilities in the SAR, in the licensing basis, and not l 11 having therefore a definition of minimal changes by saying l 12 if we were to license this facility again or today and there i 13 was this change, would that affect our judgment as to the ' i 14 acceptability of the facility.
h /
(,,r 15 In other words, it is stated in hera in the SECY 16 that the basis for deciding what is minimal is qualitative ! i 17 and that when people reviewed, when the Staff' reviewed the ! 18 original license they made some qualitative judgments !
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19 regarding probabilities. l 20 First of all, I wonder whether that is true. Did l i 21 people actually do that or they just followed the I 22 regulations? l 23- Second, is the industry happy with this and their 1 24 staff is happy with this? In other words, they feel this is j 25 going to work? l \ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. j_ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
l l 9 l 1 MS. McKENNA: Let me try to answer that in two () 2 parts. The first part that you asked, as to whether during 3 initial licensing to what extent the probabilities were ; i 4 considered, and I think that was considered in a relative l l 5 sense, that there were -- there's a spectrum of events that 6 was postulated to occur and that for those events that were 7 considered to be more likely the expectation was that the 8 outcomes of those events be more acceptable -- for instance j 9 that we know no fuel damage for more frequent events as an i 10 example and that the other events, for instance, ! 11 double-ended guillotine LOCA, was a less likely event. It , i 12 would be acceptable to have some degree of damage so to that l 13 extent things were, probabilities of the events were taken 14 into account. , () j 15 The second part, about where people are on
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16 probabilities and minimal -- I was going to get to that a 17 little later, but we can talk about it now -- I think given 18 the sense that people generally do want to continue to look l 19 at these things in a qualitative way that the minimal being 20 something large enough that you could see it and touch it I l 21 perhaps has a little bit of discomfort because once you move I i 22 off the well, we are not sure whether it increased or not to l 23 yes, it did increase, but we don't know how much is okay 24 before it is not okay, there is some discomfort about that 25 in a qualitative sense, and I think the general sense of the fi N/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 u _
____.____s 10 1 industry is perhaps that is more than they want to take on () 2 at this point, that just having the -- as long as we can't 3 really tell whether it changed that's okay, may be good I 4 enough for; the purposes. 5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: So " minimal" then would be 6 different for different accidents and different components, 7 depending on the original assessment or qualitative 8 assessment of probability or is it in general -- in other 9 words, if one of the original events that was judged to be 10 reasonably likely -- let's say not very likely but 11 reasonably -- if a change affects that, then you would allow 12 a larger change in the probability because the probability 13 is already relatively high than say for a double-ended 14 guillotine break, which is a very low probability event, in () -15 which case -- in other words, is the concept of minimal 16 defined with respect to the probability of the event? 17 MS. McKENNA: We did not try to do it that way 18 just because of the relative lack, if you will, of precision 19 on the assessments of the probability in the first place. 20 I think that in theory that would be the case, but 21_ in actual practice it would be more difficult to undertake, 22 so I think our present thinking is to not to try to do any
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23 quasi-quantitative -- l 24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Right. 25 MS. McKENNA: -- approach and to continue the -- I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
t' 11 1 think we used the word " attributes" at an earlier meeting, 2 the more qualitative, that you are still meeting the design
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3 requirements for that particular system, and if that is the i 4 case there is no -- not an increase in the probability of ; 5 failure, rather than trying to step too far off into minimal 6 concepts for probability when we don't really have a basis ! 7 to do that. l 8 MR. BARTON: So in the final rule your definition 9 of " minimal" is going to be there or not there or -- [ i 10 MS. McKENNA: It is going to be this qualitative ! 11 type -- I think we have given some information on the ! 12 proposed rule and we got a number of comments on ways to 13 improve that and I think that is what we would continue to l 14 use as a qualitative base to judge when there is a need to I () 15 get the approval. l 16 I want to introduce people at the side table. We i l 17 have Scott Newberry, who is now our Deputy Director for the , 18 Division of Reactor Program Management and Frank t i 19 Akstulewicz, who is the Acting Branch Chief for Generic j k 20 Issues and Environmental Projects Branch, and they may i 21 contributed to the conversation as we proceed. l 22 DR. WALLIS: I picked up on what you said a minute 23 or so ago. You used the term "We don't know if it changed i i 24 or not." Are you claiming this is a better state to be in ! 25 than trying to evaluate minimal? i- ! ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 4 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 i (202) 842-0034 t
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12 1 MS. McKENNA: Well, I think it is something that () 2 is more easily dealt with -- 3 DR. WALLIS: I think it sounds retrograde to say 4 that ignorance is better than trying to figure it out. l 5 MS. McKENNA: I think it allows room for 6 engineering judgment -- l 7 DR. WALLIS: But that is detestable. That is the 8 worst possible way of ceciding things. l 9 I am sorry -- I have broken my vow of silence i 10 already. 11 [ Laughter.] 12 DR. POWERS: Professor Wallis, the vow of silence 13 was forbidden by the Chair and you will remember that from 14 the last meeting. () 15 DR. MILLER: Professor Wallis and I may not agree 16 on that statement of engineering judgment. 17 My question is do you believe that minimal will 18 -move to a state where we'll define it quantitatively? 19 MS. McKENNA: I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear 20 your question. 21 DR. MILLER: Do you think we will move to a 22 situation where will define minimal quantitatively or do you 23 think it will always be qualitative, dependent upon
'24 engineering judgment?
25' MS. McKENNA: Well, I think at least in the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington,.D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
l J 13 1 present term that it would be qualitative. There was some () 2 3 interest in perhaps tackling a more quantitative approach, although I think in general those who are interested in that 4 would not want to be looking at the individual probabilities
- 5. of the events but a more quantitative approach that perhaps 1 6 uses some other kind of criteria, getting more into a 7 combination of the probabilities and consequences, for l
8 instance,-as opposed to trying to apply quantitatively to 9 probability of a particular event. 10 DR. WALLIS: So you're going to use the judgment 11' of the policeman as to how far the car was going rather than l 12 actually trying to measure it? 13 MS. McKENNA: Well, again, I think the point is 14 you're trying to look at the incrementals change, if you l l () 15 will, of the foot on the' accelerator and -- l 16 DR. WALLIS: Why don't you just measure it? 17 DR. MILLER: Well, it hys been a tradition, for 18- the first 30 years, or whatever it is, this term " minimal" 19 is not used, but there was the use of engineering judgment 20 very successfully. 21 MS. McKENNA: Yes. And I think -- 22 DR. MILLER: And throughout the use on 50.59 up 23 till about two years ago.
- 24. MS. McKENNA: Um-hum.
'25 We never defined " minimal" but DR. MILLERS i
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_ ~ _ . _ _ _ _ . _ _ . _ . . _ _ _ _ _ . . _ . - . . _ _ _ _ . . _ _ - . _ _ _ _ _ _ . . . - I 14 : 1 implicitly it was used. ; 1 l 2 MS. McKENNA: I think that's true. i 3 DR. MILLER: And it's been very successful.
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i 4 MS. McKENNA: If you look at the industry guidance j i ! 5 documents, I think they do embrace that kind of concept ! l l l i 6 where it's so small a change, a change that you really can't ; 7 tell whether or not it really changed, that that's not a l 8 change. And we would still think that that would clearly j i meet a minimal-increase standard. 1 9 And that's generally what l ! I 10 people have been using. 11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Eileen -- 12 MS. McKENNA.: Yes. 13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I was wondering whether if you 14 dropped the word " probability" your life would be easier. 15 In other words, say the change is so small that the 16 licensing basis is not affected, and get out of the 17 probability business. 18 Now as you had in your earlier slide, you want to 19 preserve the integrity -- 20 MS. McKENNA: Right. 21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Of the licensing basis, okay? l 22 Which was deterministic. There are some -- there are of 23 course.also this document here talks about the conservatisms 24 and so on. 25 MS. McKENNA: Right. Correct. l l [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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15 1 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: So we know that there are a lot () 2 of conservatisms all over the place. So I am preserving the 3 integrity of the licensing basis even if I allow some small 4 changes here and there. If you put it that way, then 5 perhaps all this discussion would not take place. I think , 6 the use of the word " probability" in this document is a red 7 flag, because it was never quantified. 8 DR. KRESS: And it will be difficult. 9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: And it will be difficult to 10 quantify. So -- 11 DR. KRESS: I agree with you. 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I wonder whether you can just go 13 through page by page, line by line, and just cross out 14 " probability" and don't try to justify that we had a () 15 qualitative estimate and so on. i i 16 Look, this was an engineering judgment. We l 17 licensed the facility, a lot of them are operating 18 successfully. It worked, okay? And it's very conservative. 19 When you do that, you make judgments all over the place, i 20 okay? And nobody says that that was the way and there is no 21 other way, right? When you select the parameter values of 22 the ranges in this worst case. There is a lot of room for 23 changes. I 24 So the spirit of 50.59, is the proposed change, 25 test, or experiment going to affect significantly the i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. i Court Reporters , 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
1 l 16 1 integrity of the licensing basis or not? And this will be j l [)
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2 as judgmental as the original decision of the acceptability 3 was. Don' t put the word " probability in the way Then you 4 will not get all this. 5 MS. McKENNA: It's an interesting thought. I 6 mean, I agree with you that the intention of the rule is to 7 do exactly that to preserve, to look for that, but it's how 8 you define that in a way that everyone can understand it in 9 the same way and reach the same decision. I 10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: It's three lines, Eileen. ' 11 MS. McKENNA: Yes. 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: We want to preserve the 13 integrity of the licensing basis, a lot of judgments there, 14 and we will not require prior approval of any changes that O,) l 15 do not affect that integrity. s 16 DR. KRESS: You will have to go on and define 17 attributes or something that a person -- the licensee can 18 say what changes now qualify me to say that this doesn't 19 affect -- 20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I didn't see any attributes in I i 21 this document. 22 DR. KRESS: But you're going to have to have 23 something. I mean, that -- you're just changing the words 24 there, George. l 25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Okay. All right. So you will l l [ i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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.11 l 1 say -- i 2 DR. KRESS: There will have to be more. l 3 I like your approach, but there has to be --
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. I I 5 DR. KRESS: Some definition criteria or something t l 6 that the licensee can actually use to say he meets that -- l 7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Okay. So let's take the 8 original 50.59, the three criteria, preserving the integrity , ( 9 of'the licensing basis means -- and you something on 10 initiating on accidents, but you don't use the word 11 " probability," you don't say that the probability may be l 12 increased. There was a judgment made at the time, right? { l 13 DR. KRESS: What do you say? 14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I don't know. They know 15 better -- l 16 DR. MILLER: The judgment was -- their judgment 17 was the probability -- 18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: No. i 19 DR. MILLER: In a nonquantitative sense --
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1 20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: No. The judgment was that this ! i i 21 was acceptable. I 22 DR. WALLIS: Well, the judgment was made by -- l 23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: No undue risk to public health l- 24 and safety. !- 25 DR. WALLIS: People who have now left the Agency, l;
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i 18 1 and no one knows what the basis of their judgment was, how () 2 can you go back and -- 3 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I'm sure the ladies and l 4 gentlemen of the staff can come up with the right words in 5 three minutes. l l 6 MR. BONACA: One comment I have. Although there ! 7 wasn't specifically a lot of calculations done 8 quantitatively, the design level, the vendors that designed 9 the plants used a lot of insights in probability, whatever 10 the tools may have been at that time, to design these l l 11 systems and these plants. And I think what happens with the l l 12 probability is that anytime you make a change, it may affect 13 redundancies, separation, those criteria which has an NGDC 14 which then you have to interpret in terms of have you l () 15 affected the probability. Now that's where the. judgment 16 comes in. Assume that you eliminate, for example, diversity 17 in instrumentation for some reason, that would be a USQ, and l l 18 'you can show -- you assume, you assume that that would t i 19 result into an increasing probability. l 20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But why do I have to bring the l
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21 probability at all into this? What you just said, if you l 22 eliminate diversity, you will have a USQ. Put it that way. 23 MR. BONACA: And that's a possibility. 24 DR. KRESS: Those are some of the attributes I had 25' in mind. l t
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19 1 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. ( 2 DR. KRESS: Diversity, redundancy, things 3 related -- 4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Right. 5 DR. KRESS: To defense in depth. If you affected 6 those, then you have an USQ. That's the kind of things you 7- have to expand on. 8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But it's still judgment, though. 9 It's still-engineering judgment. 10 DR. KRESS: Oh , it's absolutely judgment. Yes. 11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: You're staying within -- and the 12 question you are asking is, "Is this still acceptable?" Am 13 I preserving the -- I like these words -- am I preserving 14 the integrity of the licensing basis without saying I am () 15' judging that the probability did not change, what, more than 16 an_ insignificant amount, therefore it's okay? I don't think 17 you need that detour through probability. space. And then 18 it's clear that this refers to the basis of acceptability. 19 That's how they put it in the SECY. 20 DR. KRESS: What-you do with that, and it's -- now 21 some of those changes that wouldn't meet those attributes 22 and therefore not be allowed, could be changes that have 23 minimal change in probability, minimal change. You're just 24 -- too bad, you're going to -- this is where you've got to 25 draw a'line. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 , Washington, D.C. 20036 ' (202)' 842-0034 i l l
20 1 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: It's too bad. i
,i-(j 2 DR. KRESS: Yes.
3 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Exactly. 4 DR. KRESS: Yes. 5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: And that's something that we 6 have not made clear -- occurred to me last night actually. 7 DR. SEALE: We've gone -- ! 8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: When we go to risk-informing 9 50.59, we are not going to preserve the class of problems to 10 which 50.59 applies. We will expand it -- 11 DR. SEALE: Yes. 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Significantly. So people who . 13 complain about the additional analysis now will have a 14 cost-benefit problem in front of them. Do you want to have 15 this additional flexibility? Then you have to do something. ; 16 DR. SEALE: We've gone through an awful lot of l 17 agony here lately over what the role of defense in depth is 18 as we look to risk-informed regulation, and I think making 19 the case the way you've suggested, George, which identifies 20 these various defense-in-depth ideas like redundancy and 21 multiple systems and so forth and not building a case which 22 really can't be supported for probabilistic arguments at 23 that time puts those two issues in the proper perspective 24 with each other and I think will help us if we can get that I 25 idea across as we look into what we do with defense in depth 1 d I\
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L ! 21 ' ! 1. in a risk-informed regulatory climate as go forward. So () t 2 that's a useful thing to point out because it also properly 1
- 3 defines the issue for our considerations down the road. !
[ 4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: So what you're saying, Bob, i ! i
- 5 is -- l 1
6 DR. SEALE: You're right. l l 7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: That what I said was useful. 8 DR. SEALE: Very useful. Very useful. Because 9 for other reasons than just this issue, because it does put < l 10 those two ideas in juxtaposition to each other. 11 DR. POWERS: Please go ahead. 12 MR. BONACA: On the other hand, I'm saying that 13 from a perspective of the significance of 50.59, the fact of 14 addressing probability and consequences, which is () 15 fundamentally risk, you know, it's pretty enlightened, I 16 think, as a general regulation, and also it provides an 17 opportunity for introduction of risk-informed regulation in 18 fact if we wera flexible about how to use it. The moment in 19 which you begin to eliminate from these rule terms as 20 probability and consequences, which really qualitatively 21 were at the foundation of the whole design of these plants, 22 we are eliminating opportunity, it seems to me. Just a 23 thought. l 24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: No. But the staff is already l i 25 working on making something like 50.59 risk-informed, and i = [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. j \ Court Reporters ! 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 , Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 f (
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22 ! 1 they don't need opportunities to inject risk information
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) 2 there. They are starting, you know, by considering a number i 1
3 of options. So this here, the rule we're talking about here 4 is something that is needed urgently, right? Because the I l =5 plants out there need it. And what we're trying to do is i I l 6 rephrase certain things that are already there and clarify a { i I 7 few things. l 8 But our objective is not to give opportunities to 9 use risk information in thir context. I mean risk is coming 10 later in a different rule so if the word " probability" 11 creates so many problems, it seems to me if you can drop it 12 completely and go back -- 13 DR. SHACK: It creates problems for you, George. 14 I am'not sure-it creates problems for anybody else. () 15 DR. MILLER: What Bill is saying, I agree that 16 does it create problems for those who really use it on a 17 daily basis. 18 DR. POWERS: I don't think it really does. 19 DR. MILLER: I think that's -- 20 MR. BARTON: For those that use it -- 21 DR. MILLER: Risk insights are already'being used. 22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: How? i 23 DR. MILLER: Just their judgment on use of PRA 24 insights.
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25 'MR. BONACA: By the way, there were other
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y i 23 : 1 foundations on a number of' cycles and components and so even 2 if we know much better than whatever they could come up with 3 at^the time, even the tocology, it really forces licensee to i 4 stay within certain anticipated transient rather -- which ! 5 are really related to the number of cycles that you have on , 6 components and things of that kind, so there is a framework o l 7 and a structure but you got to be careful, you know, in my . l 8 mind, not to upset without a lot of thought about what is ! i 1 ! 9 going to happen once you remove it because ultimately it 10 paid off pretty well insofar as having safe plants out 11 there. 12- So I am only saying -- 13 MR. BARTON: Think hard before you take the word 14 out. 15 DR. POWERS: I guess I am very interested in 16 Professor Apostolakis' suggestion because my belief is that I 17 the word " probability" is causing difficulties, not because ! 18 of what probability is and how it has been used but the fact 19 that we have gone'from an era where probability was looked 20 upon in a very qualitative sense to an era now where it is 21 used in a very highly refined and quantitative sense, and 22 you get people looking at issues where probability can be ! 23 assessed at such microscopic detail that in fact it would 24 have been glossed over in the past and assumed no change. 25 The difficulty you get into then as a designer or b 4
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_ _ _ _ _ _ -~ _. .__._ _ _ _ .- _.__-. _ _ ..- _ __.._ - _. _. _ _ _... _ .. 24 1 an engineer is a qualitative sense of the probability but a () 2 concern that the regulator is operating with a much more 3 refined sense of probability. It may be that indeed you 4 don't want to eliminate the term but you want to get its 5 sense across by coming in with saying things explicitly like 6 the attributes of loss of redundancy, loss of the ability to 7 deliver safety functions in a diverse mechanism is some 8 better definition of what you mean by probability on this. 9 DR. KRESS: Let me comment on that too. 10 One of the reasons that we shy away from using the 11 words " probability" and " risk" going all the way to the end 12 of that, is because in this 50.59 space there doesn't seem 13 to be a really good way of using our only tool, PRA, to 14 calculate changes in probability or changes in risk. That () 15 is why I said one of the attributes one might use to 16 determine -- what we really are interested in is not 17 allowing changes to things that are important to safety. I 18 hate to use that word but if we define "important to safety" 19 to mean those things that contribute a certain amount to the 20 consequence, to the risk, if we define it that way, then we 21 are risk-informed, and the question is how do you know which l 22 those are. Well, you can find the ones that contribute to 23 risk. I mean that part PRAs can do, and the things that are l 24 left, the one minus that, are the things you can then say ' 25 those are 50.59 space -- we don't have to deal with those. j i ^
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m _ . _ . _ _ . _ . . . _ . _ _ _ . . _ . . _ . _ _ _ . _ . . _ . _ . . _ _ . _ _ _ _ . . . . _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 25 I 1 If you are not touching or bothering these things { 2 that are important to safety, unless you are improving 3 them -- you always allow improvement -- then you have 4 defined what you mean by minimal change with an attribute. 5 It is an attribute. These things do not belong to that set l l 6 of things that are important to safety. 7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Which the Commission does in ' l l 8 this document exactly what you are saying. On page 26, ; 9 probability of equipment malfunction -- the Commission i L 10 believes that the probability of malfunction is more than i 11 minimally increased if a new failure mode as likely as ! 12 ' existing modes is introduced. 13 Then later on they say the probability of 14 malfunction of equipment important to safety previously ( 15 evaluated in the FSAR is no more than minimally increased if 16 design basis assumptions and requirements are still 17- satisfied. That is close -- E 18 DR. KRESS: That is close to what we have. ( 19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: And say if you introduce new j r 20 failure modes, don't do 50.59, right? And I don't have to l 21 use the word " probability." 22 See, here is an attribute of the kind that i 23 everybody seems to like, me included, which makes sense to l [ 24 me, and then it says further on because we want to preserve l l 25 the integrity -- beautiful words -- the probability of ] t 1 1 1 j ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. , < Court Reporters l l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014
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26 1 malfunction of equipment important to safety is no more than l (m) 2 minimally increased if design basis assumptions and 3 requirements are still satisfied. Now that I understand. l l 4 DR. KRESS: That is a troublesome phrase for me 5 though. 6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Well, that is what it's saying. 7 DR. WALLIS: Mr. Chairman, I would like to know 8 how far along the Staff is with resolving this issue. 9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I don't think they are trying to 10 resolve this issue. Are you? 11 DR. WALLIS: Are you? I thought we were going to 12 hear a presentation now instead of a discussion among the 13 members. 14 MS. McKENNA: Okay. Yes. I will get to that (sj 15 where we are in a little bit, if you will allow me to just 16 pick everybody up back to where we were. 17 I was talking about in September the SRM, just 18 briefly from what we had from the Commission on what they 19 wanted to see in the notice that went out for comment, and 20 so we did solicit comment on a wide range of options on 21 margin. 22 We asked for ideas on options to refine the 23 guidance that we had given on minimal and also the options 24 we had given with respect to consequences, and the 25 Commission -- as I say, we had included definitions and the 1 l l (') ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters ( 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
I l 1 l 27 1 Commission asked the question as to whether there was a need () i -- l l 2 for the definitions, and also ideas about the particular
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l 3 definitions and whether they could be improved in any way. I i 4 The Commission also asked the Staff to solicit { 5 comment as to whether there was a need for a definition of 6 the term " accident." It does appear in a couple of the 7 criteria with respect to accidents previously evaluated and i 8 also accidents of a different type and I believe the 9 Commission's interest was recognizing that in the context of 10 the FSAR you are looking at the so-called design basis i 11 accidents as opposed to the full spectrum of accidents that 12 might be considered in other contexts, so we did put a 13 section in the notice about accidents and asked whether 1 14 there was a need for such a definition. '
) 15 The SRM established a date of February 19th for 16 the final rule, which we believed was extremely ambitious 17 given that the comment period would not be closing until 18 December, and just noted that we had proposed that we 19 continue to apply enforcement discretion for instances that 20 were of low significance as things went on.
21 So this is what we changed in the notice compared 22 to what you saw in the SECY paper. We added the discussion i 23 on accident, added a larger section on margin that included j 24 a number of different approaches, the one being what we had 1 25 originally offered in the paper with respect to input I I I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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f: 28 l 1 assumptions that supported analyses for tech specs. () 2 3 We also offered the possibility as to whether margin as a separate criteria could be deleted on the basis 4 that the other criteria, other regulatory requirements and 5 tech specs really would provide the envelope of things that 6 you really need to consider, and we also in the context of 7 other ways of going at margins put proposals of looking at 8 various results of analyses or identifying particular 9 parameters that may be of interest and then judging to what ! 10 degree they could be changed and still be done withn"r l ! 11 approval, whether that is a minimal type of change or whe;;, 12 there is some particular limit that has been establishe) fcr i 13 a particular design parameter, whether that would be the l 14 point at which you would judge when there is a need for 15 approval. 16 DR. MILLER: Eileen, are you going to discuss in 17 some detail where you are on the issue of margin? 18 MS. McKENNA: Yes. Yes, I will. 19 DR. MILLER: I haven't looked ahead, I guess -- 20 MS. McKENNA: I'll try to do that. 21 MR. BARTON: Before you move that slide, I don't 22 recall, on the discussion in the definition of " accident" 23- did you try to redefine " accident" or are you -- or is the 24 industry's definition in 9607 acceptable? 25 MS. McKENNA: I think the general sen se is that i l I 4 Juni RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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29 1 it is acceptable as a definition of accident previously ( ) 2 evaluated. The question of accident of a different type has 3 always been a little bit more problematic, but I think it 4 does -- kind of the balance between what you consider to be 5 accidents and what you consider to be malfunctions, they 6 kind of fall in either of the bins, but I don't think in 7 general there was much disagreement about that, which is one 8 of the reasons why we really hadn't proposed anything on 9 that in the first place. 10 I think this slide I have more or less covered 11 including the range of options that were included in the 12 notice. I mentioned I think -- 13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Are you going to discuss the 14 public comments at all? (~\ ( ,) 15 MS. McKENNA: Yes, that's the very next slide, so 16 if you want me to, I can -- 17 DR. WALLIS: Are you going to discuss your 18 conclusions? 19 MR. BARTON: That's all right, keep going. You're i 20 doing all right. l l 21 MS. McKENNA: Okay. 22 DR. WALLIS: Are you going to discuss your 23 conclusions following the -- 24 MS. McKENNA: Well, aa we advertised, I believe, 25 for this briefing that this really is meant to be a status. 4 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. [N . Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
l 30 l i 1 We have not completed our review at this point. We do plan ! () 2 to come back to the Committee at a later meeting when that ; I 3 has been done. But we did want to give you the opportunity ) 4 of hearing where we are at this point and what we were 5 hearing from the comments and where we may be going with it. I \ 6 But I can't today tell you exactly how everything's going to ! \ 7 come out. I 8 Here's the status. We received comment letters. I l 9 There were 58 submittals totaling about 300 pages of l 10 comments, and indicated there commenters, as you might l 11 expect, were largely from the power reactor licensees, 12 certain organizations, NEI, some law firms that represent a 13 number of the utilities, some of the vendors, both the NSSS 14 type of vendors but also some of the vendors for dry-cask '() 15 storage, because, as you may recall, this also was 16 applicable to Part 72 for the independent spent-fuel storage 17 facilities. And then there were some letters from 18 individuals. Nothing that was identified as, if you will, a 19 public interest group. 20 DR. WALLIS: It seems to me the only noninterested
- 21 party in this whole discussion is the ACRS.,
22 DR. POWERS: Well, disinterested as opposed to 23 noninterested. l l 24 DR. WALLIS: I suppose-disinterested is a better 25- ' t'e r m . I stand corrected. But the only one that doesn't i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ! Court Reporters l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 j Washington, D.C. 20036~ l (202) 842-0034
r. 31 1 have some personal interest in tweaking the regulations for {) 2 their own benefit seems to be the ACRS. 3 MS. McKENNA: Well, I think it reflects that the 4 rule is something that is used by these utilities on a 5 regular basie and that changes to it obviously impact them 6 the most, and so they were obviously looking for 7 opportunities to make the process more efficient frcm their l 8 own purposes, so I'm not at all surprised that that was the 9 spectrum of comment. l 10 DR. POWFRS: I notice that you also got comments 11 asking NRC to Co.1 sider an equivalent rule of maybe expanding l 12 the scope of this one to be applied in other areas such as 13 the transport packaging -- l 14 MS. McKENNA: Yes. Yes, we did.
) 15 DR. POWERS: Have you givan that any thought, or l 16 have you just set that aside as something in the future?
l 17 MS. McKENNA: No , I think we have been giving that 18 _ thought. There are some complicating factors, if you will, 19 on the transportation. There are some questions that IAEA 20' standards and DOT standards, we need to look at closely to l 21 make sure that we're compatible with those. 22 DR. POWERS: Do you really have to have 23 compatibility? l 24 MS. McKENNA: Well, I think it's just something 25 that, you know, I'm not really -- the Spent Fuel Program b j ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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i i 32 1 Office has primarily been, but we have had discussions on () 2 this. I think that they are giving that thought, but are 3 not prepared to go wholesale on Part 71 at this point. I l 4 think they're giving the hardest thought to the question of 5 the dual-purpose casks where they fall under both Part 71, 6 Part 72, and I think they believe that's appropriate to do. 7 It's just kind of the timing and how we do it. 8 More broadly, I think that given the range of type l l 9 of trar:sportation issues that there are, they're looking at 10 does it make sense to do it across the board or focus it on, l 11 say, fuel transport. So that's still under consideration, ; 12 but, you know, it has not been just set aside. ; i 13 DR. POWERS: Good. j i 14 MS. McKENNA: Let's go back to basically the 15 nature of the comments that we received. And I tried to 16 group them into a number of areas based on what were the - 17 things that we asked for or the things that were of most i 18 interest to those who filed the comments. l 19 The first one I listed there was of course margin. 20 We probably got the most number of comments on margin, and a r 21 considerable spectrum of views as well. We had those that j 22 suggested that the approach in the old NSAC 9607 on using l 23 acceptance limits was the way to go. We had a number that l, 24 . embraced the proposal to delete it as a criterion, that it ; i 25 was kind of more trouble than it was worth in terms of what l I i i () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporterr l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
33 1 it was really going to give you. We received a proposal () 2 from NEI to I guess I'll say reformulate the idea of using 3 limits to judge when there is a reduction in margin but not 4 to -- try to get away from the words " margin" and 5 " reduction," because they are things that have given us 6 difficulty in the past when you really identify well, you 7 know, margin from what to what kind of kind of questions. 8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: So the theme seems to be drop 9 words, eliminate words, eliminate probability -- 10 MS. McKENNA: Or use different words, anyway. 11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Use different words. 12 MS. McKENNA: At least in this area I think that 13 there was a strong sense that the words presently there, 14 margin of safety as defined in the basis for any tech spec, () 15 have too many threads that are not understandable and that 16 it's better to kind of-get more directly to what it was 17 really trying to do. 18 DR. MILLER: I find it interesting that there are 19 as many comments supporting deletion, of course -- 20 MS. McKENNA: Yes. 21 DR MILLER: Even from the Commission. On the 22 other hand, NEI seemed to have put a red flag on that one 23 and say gee, that could introduce some holes, so to speak -- 24 MS. McKENNA: Yes. I think -- 25 DR. MILLER: If you introduced another approach. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
34 1 MS. McKENNA: Right, and part of that is a (Oj 2 recognition I think that all tech specs are not created 3 equal, and that, you know -- so that some plants there may 4 not be any holes, others there might be, and that having an 5 additional criterion that would perhaps *.est some of these 6 other things may be useful. So I think that was the 7 thinking behind. 8 DR. MILLER: So the staff has not anyway coalesced 9 on thinking in those areas, or -- 10 MS. McKENNA: Not totally. As I say, we have this 11 proposal from NEI which obviously we're giving serious 12 consideration because it does reflect an overall view from 13 the industry, you know. In their process they did circulate 14 their proposal among their members, and so it does have a 15 degree of support from the users, shall we say. 16 At this point we are doing that same kind of 17 circulation among the staff to see are there, holes, are 18 there things that we think it might allow through the net 19 that shouldn't get through? Is there a better way to define 20 it? And one of our goals certainly is to have something 21 that is understandable and can be consistently used from 22 place to place. And I think their proposal may offer those 23 advantages I think the staff is looking at to make sure that 24 it's not too narrowly focused. 25 DR. POWERS: Professor Seale. [\- ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite T.14 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 1
35 1 DR. SEALE: Eileen -- () 2 MS. McKENNA: Yes. ; 3 DR. POWERS: When we started, when we opened this ! 4 can of worms about a year-and-a-half I gue _ ago I guess -- l 5 'DR MILLER: ' April of '97. 6 DR. POWERS: Yes. 7 DR. MILLER: Almost two years ago. 8 DR. SEALE: We heard that NSAC 9607 was a process 9' or gave a process that many utilities had used successfully ; 10 in screening their 50.59 applications, and where that had 11 been followed by the. utilities there didn't seem to be any 12 residuum of problems. It was only when they didn't follow I 13 that kind of process that they ran into difficulty, i 14 Does the staff still feel that that wen a proper i /"D l (,) 15 assessment of the situation at that time? 16 MS McKENNA: I might just modify slightly what l 17 you said. 18 DR. SEALE: All right. 19 MS. McKENNA: I think following the process kind 20 of led the licensees through the right questions -- 21 DR. SEALE: Certainly. 22 MS. McKENNA: And attributes, if you will, the 23 kind of final answer whether it was a yeu or no. I think l 24 there were probably a few cases where they might have gone 25 to yes, I can do it, whereas we might have said no, under .1 a 4 i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ~[ Court Reporters a 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 3 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
l 36 1 the rule as written, you'cannot, but that the significance : () 2 of those areas of debate was probably relatively low. 3 DR. bEALE: Um-hum. 4 MR. BARTON: Bob, as you remember, that was with 9 5 the NSAC 125, and then the industry committed in their j 6 revised 9607, they got 80 percent of the utility to sign 7 up -- 8 DR. SEALE: Right. 9 MR. BARTON: They would all sign up. I believe l 10 they're all using the revised 9607 -- 11 DR. SEALE: Right. 12 MR. BARTON: Process at this time. Which brings 13 me to the question of, and I haven't seen it on here, your 14 work en the regguide that will tie the 9607 with -- () 15 MS. McKENNA: Okay. I'll get to that -- 16 MR. BARTON: Is it coming? 17 MS. McKENNA: In a moment. 18 MR. BARTON: If it's coming, it's fine. 19 MS. McKENNA: Yes. 20 MR. BARTON: Fine. 21 MS. McKENNA: I think it's kind of -- 22 MR. BARTON: Okay. 23 MS. McKENNA: This last bullet, guidance 24 development. 25 MR. BARTON: All right. Go ahead. Just continue 1 i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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37 l 1 _w here you were then. I If you'll address it, that's fine. () l 2 MS. McKENNA: Okay. So as I started to say, on j
.3 margin that we are considering the full set of comments.
4 We're looking at this NLI proposal, which I don't know if f 5 any of you had a chance to look at -- see it, but in essence l 6 'they would offer, instead of the margin criteria, a 7 criterion that states that prior approval is required if as 8 a result of the particular change the design-basis limit for i 9 -- directly related to integrity of fuel-clad reactor J 10 coolant system pressure boundary or containment boundary 11 would be exceeded or altered, So that's the language that 12 they came up with. J 13 MR. BARTON: That's the NEI's proposal. 14 MS. McKENNA: That's their proposal. 15 DR. KRESS: The crux of that is would be exceeded 16 by whose determination, and -- 17 MS. McKENNA: Well, I think the crux of it is this 18 concept of design-basis limits that there is a limit 19 established through either regulation or code or whatever l 20 that that particular parameter must satisfy -- 21 DR. KRESS: Sure. 22 MS. McKENNA: And then as long as as a result of 23 this change that limit is still net -- 24 DR. KRESS: I know, but in order to make that ! 25 determination, somebody has to make a calculation. l l \
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38 , 1 MS. McKENNA: Correct. ( 2 DR. KRESS: And I'm asking whose calculation will 3 that be -- 4 MS. McKENNA: Well, that's why you saw on this 5 list the question on margins, the question of methods. 6 DR. KRESS: Yes. 7 MS. McKENNA: That's an issue that we are also 8 still wrestling with, because there was a method that was 9 used originally in the FSAR that was reviewed by the staff, 10 and if they're doing a change and if they use the same 11 method and you still meet the limit, I think that gives the 12 staff more comfort that, you know, in terms of preserving 13 the licensing basis as opposed to I'm changing something and 14 I'm changing methods, so thsn - , ,- m, jksls 15 DR. KRESS: So you have 15, 20 different methods 16 out there of determining, depending on the plant -- 17 MS. McKENNA: Yes. l 18 DR. KRESS: And the limit, determining this, and 19 you're saying you just are going to let each one of them use 20 their own method and see if they exceed this limit? 21 MS. McKENNA: Oh, I think what we're saying is l l 22 that they should use the method that was used before -- 23 DR. KRESS: For the SAR. I ! 24 MS. McKENNA: Which the staff has seen as opposed 25 to just using any method. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. . Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 , Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034 l
39 1 DR. KRESS: But my understanding is the staff () 2 didn't really approve that method, they just approved the 3 value that was calculated -- 4 MS. McKENNA: I'd say there's a range. Some cases 5 there were topicals or other things, the methods were 6 approved -- 7 DR. KRESS: If there's more than one or two 8 exceptions, then the general case is they did not approve 9 the method. 10 MS. McKENNA: Right. I think what we're -- like I 11 say, what we're trying to do again is to gauge the effect of 12 the change, and if you leave the methods alone, then you can 13 see what the effect of the change is and then determine 14 whether that change is acceptable. 15 DR. KRESS: Yes, but you don't know where the 16 absolute value is. The change is relevant to the -- what 17 amount of change is acceptable is -- the limit may have
- 18. already been exceeded, but you don't know that. You 19 probably are assuming that, but my question is, if you went 20 with that particular option, don't get me wrong, I like the 21 option --
22 MS. McKENNA: Okay. 23 DR. KRESS: So all I'm saying is that there is a 24 need now to go back and look at all these methods and say j 25 okay, we really ought to approve the method as being () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 i Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034-
40 l' conservative, or we have to approve the level of uncertainty () 2 3 in that method is low enough that I can have a certain level of confidence that my limit has not been exceeded. That's 4 the only rational way to do that, and it's a good way to do 5 it. I like the proposal, but I think you have to go back 6 and do something in order to permit it. i 7 { MR. BONACA: A question I have for you is -- , l 8 MS. McKENNA: Yes. ) 9 MR. BONACA: These methods were not best estimate. l l 10 MS. McKENNA: Thac's correct. They were generally 1 11 conservative analyses. 12 MR. BONACA: They had very forced assumptions -- l l l 13 MS. McKENNA: Yes. l 14 MR. BONACA: Like 20 percent decay heat -- 15 MS. McKENNA: Certainly, yes. Penalty factors and 16 uncertainties and things would apply. , 17 MR. BONACA: And so what you really want to 18 preserve is the commitments in the methods to those 19 conservatisms, okay? And by doing so, the only unknown is 20 whether or not you have assumed everything stacked in a 21 certain direction and really have a scenario where you 22 should think about the opposite way, and that is the only -- 23 but I'm saying that this is not best-estimate calculation. 24 MS. McKENNA: That's absolutely correct; yes. 25 DR. KRESS: But even conservative calculations ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l, - Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l i Washington, D.C. 20036 i (202)'842-0034 1 a
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(. I j 41 l- 1 have uncertainty in_both directions. () 2 MR. BONACA: I agree with that. That's why I l 3 said--- l 4 DR. KRESS: So you can't really say just because i l 5 it's conservative, I still have sufficient margins. You I 6 have to really.look at the uncertainties, even in a 7 conservative calculation. , l 8 MS, McKENNA: But I think also that in 9 establishing whatever those limits are there is recognition 10 of taking into account uncertainties and giving yourself 11 margin, if_you will, to some -- the conditions that you 12 don't want to be in, that you establish your limits at a 13 place that takes some of those things into account. 14 DR. KRESS: It's another conservative on the other 15 end. 16- MS. McKENNA: Yes, i 17 DR. KRESS: That's all right too. 18: MS. McKENNA: Sure. But the question of methods, ! 19 as I said, is something we are giving -- l 20 DR. SEALE: Cascading conservatism. 21 MS. McKENNA: Giving a lot of thought to. l 22 Let me go back -- from the comments, I think the ! 23 question of minimal we have talked about to a certain j 24 degree. I think'as I mentioned we got a lot of comments 25 about the guidance we had given in the notice -- some of the l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l( l
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c 42 : 1 points you mentioned.about the language, about no more than ( 2 minimally increased if'the design basis requirement for i 3 instance are met. I think we had a number of people say, 1 4 well, if-the design basis requirements are met, you know, l 5 there is no increase. l-6 I think we were trying to give a -- clearly there 7 was no more than a minimal if these are met, so that was ! 8 what we were trying to accomplish with that and so there ! ! 9 were c6mments along those lines of perhaps ways we can 10 improve those qualitative thoughts, but again I want to ' i 11 emphasize that people were concerned that the way we wrote ! 12 it made it suggest that we were suggesting quantitative ; 13 analysis of probability and certainly that's not the ! l 14 expectation, and we don't really anticipate that in general [ 1 15 that is what is going to be what happens. 16 There were a few that I think might be interested i 17 in a way that they could take more advantage, shall we say, 18 of PRA information, but that is -- it is a little harder to [ 19 weave together with the criteria based on the FSAR analyses. 20 They don't quite fit in terms of -- as delta CDF or some 21 such criteria as opposed to a consequence of a design basis 22 accident, so I am not sure we can do that in the context of 23 the current language. That may be something that would have 24 to wait to a later phase. [ 25 The other part on this minimal is the area of 4, } ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. j Court Reporters
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r 43 1 consequences and Staff had offered a couple of ideas, such () 2 as looking at the difference between the regulatory j 3 limits -- for instance, Part 100 -- and the current value i and allowing some percentage change as a means of minimal, 4 5 and I think there were still those who felt that they ought 6 to be able to go up to the limits from a risk-informed l 7 perspective, that meeting the Part 100 is still adequately 8 protective but in general people were willing to go with an 9 approach to the limits by using some percentage of the 10 remaining margin, shall we say, as a way of making sure you 11 did not get up to those limits. 12 The last part of that particular one was on this 13 question of cumulative effects and whether that needed to be 14 documented and reported in the FSAR because of, for b)
\_s 15 instance, the issue of probabilities and whether -- how 16 qualitative or quantitative that could be.
17 There was a lot of concern that that might require 18 too much effort and burden that really wasn't necessary and 19 that for the more quantitative issues such as consequences 20 or some of these other factors that the existing language 21 where if they made a change in the calculations and the < t 22 results were affected then that would be reflected in the 23 FSAR, that that was sufficient. It wasn't necessary to put ) 24 additional language in 50.71(e). I think at this point we ] l l 25 are inclined to accept that, that comment. i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. '(G'-) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
44 1 The next one there is screening. That has to do 2 with the definition of change. We had many comments that ' 3; were looking for language in the rule that would more easily , 4- facilitate a screening process that if it is a change that 5 is kind of at the level of detail that it couldn't possibly , 6 affect anything, it ought to be able to be screened out very 7 simply.without having to do an evaluation against the 8 criteria. 9 We are looking at some language thet would make r' 10 that a little easier to accomplish but at the same time make 11 sure that where appropriate it does look at the criteria and ! ! l 12 not be just, well, this doesn't affect anything and I'm , ! 13 done -- without really understanding what the effect of the l 14 change is. ' 15 Additional clarifications on the other 16 definitions -- I think I mentioned the Part 72.
~
You l 17 mentioned it, Dr. Powers,'I believe the Part 71. Some of l 18 the other comments on Part 72 were really aimed at making 19 the language in 50.59 and Part 72 even more similar. There , i 20 are some differences that exist now and it is a goal of the i 21 Staff to try to do as much as we can to align them because 22 we recognize the overlap in those who use those parts, so we 23 are looking very hard -- 24 MR. BARTON: Eileen, on the clarification
- 25 definition --
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45 1 1 MS. McKENNA: Yes --- ' () 2 3 MR. BARTON:
-- what do you mean by that?
MS. McKENNA: Okay. We provide definitions of 4- what the facility has described in the FSAR or procedures as 5 described in the FSAR. 6 MR. BARTON: Right, but as I recall there was a 7 lot of comment back on -- the thought was that the new i 8 definitions greatly expanded the scope of the rule. I 9 remember -- i 10 MS. McKENNA: There were some that thought that l 11 because of things like the analysis.
-12 MR. BARTON: Do you agree with that and intend to I i
13 change the definitions based on that? 14 MS. McKENNA: I guess I don't see that it greatly ; 15 expanded it. I think that it may have -- again, depending 16 on how people interpreted it in the past -- that it may be l j i 17 an expansion to a certain. degree, but we believe it is an j l 18 appropriate expansion and that that in combination with the 19 language I talked about on change I think may get us to the 1 20 right set of information. i l 21 So we do plan some changes to the definitions but t 22 not to the extent that I think perhaps you might have been 23 suggesting. i 24 MR. BARTON: Okay. 25 MS. McKENNA: The last couple of bullets here on j () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters
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l 46 I 1 enforcement policy -- I think there were questions about how l () 2 3 we would look at changes that, evaluations that were made a j year ago once the rule is in place or during the first few j 4 months after the rule goes into place while people are 5 getting their programs in order, so we are looking at the 6 interplay of that with what we should propose as the 7 effective date. 8 On the one hand, and obviously I think people 9 would like to have the rule be made effective as soon as 10 possible, but on the other hand we may not have all the 11 guidance developed and agreed to, so we may have a little 12 bit of a period where we would say proceed to implement and l 13 we would, you know, continue to exercise discretion if there i 14 is question of their procedures didn't quite catch up yet.
) 15 DR. SEALE: Could I ask another question? ;
1 16 MS. McKENNA: Yec. 17 DR. SEALE: Again, two years ago when the wheels 18 came off it was I think the result of the response to a 19 questioning of what the words "zero increase" had as their 20 meaning -- 21 MS. McKENNA: Maybe increase language, yes. Yes. 22 DR. SEALE: And that was the result of an 23 interpretation by a particular subset of the legal 24 profession, namely the Office of the General Counsel. 25 Now I notice here that we have had quite a few l l i (\ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
g i 47 [ 1 comments.back from law firms, but they of course represent () t 2 people with other positions on this issue, and I am curious 3 as to whether or not you have confidence that the product l. 4 you are coming up with is not going to run into a stone wall
.5 when it gets back to the general counsel after you put all 6 these modifications into it.
7 Is your modification of the concept of minimal 8 increase going to survive that kind of review? 9 MS. McKENNA: Well, obviously the Office of 10 General Counsel -- 11 DR. SEALE: Will speak for itself. 12 MS. McKENNA: -- was involved. Yes, they will 13 speak for themselves, but I will say they were certainly 14 involved in the development of the proposed rule and are () 15 involved now in looking.at the changes that we are 16 suggesting as a result of the comments. 17 That is probably the best I can answer. 18 DR. SEALE: So there is light at the end of.the 19 tunnel? 20 MS. McKENNA: I hope so, yes. 21 DR. SEALE: You just don't know if it is a gorilla 22 holding the candle? 23 MS. McKENNA: That's right. Okay. I think we are 24 on the question of guidance. 25 As you know, the 96.07 document is out there. We I \ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. fw/ l Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 1
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l 4 l 48 l 1 have had previous Commission. direction to attempt to -- they () i 2 would like to see us endorse that document or some ! -3 modification of the document if we can. 4 I think NEI has indicated they are willing to l 5 modify the document to conform to the rule'as it ultimately
- 6 gets finalized but obviously that will take some degree of 7 time to make the appropriate changes once the Commission 1
8 agrees on some lang'lage that they would like to see. l l 9 MR. BARTON: Will that go on in parallel with the l l 10 rule? ! i 11 MS. McKENNA: Yes, and that is one of the reasons , i 12 why I mentioned that we may in terms of the timing of ) i 13 implementation as to whether we delay implementation until 14 the guidance is ready or allow it to be effective with, say, : { s 15; a full implementation in a year to allow the guidance to l 16 proceed. That is kind of our current thinking -- to say l 17 make it immediate -- ~ j 18 MR. BARTON: Get the rule out and then the , 19 guidance would follow? i i L . 20 MS. McKENNA: Yes, with some -- with a period to i 21 achieve full implementation while we proceed with the 22 guidance. 23 MR. BARTON: -- with the guidance, okay. 24 MS. McKENNA: That is an issue I'll get to in a 25 moment, where we are in' terms of getting back to the i i. i i I l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. 4 I L .
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49 1 Commission. - ( 2 MR. BARTON: I understand what your thinking is on I 3 that. , 4' MS. McKENNA: Yes. That ia what we have on the j 5 comments. We are still trying to wade through them all, and ! 6 make sure we captured everything. l l 7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Would you remind me what Part'72
-8 is? I 9 MS. McKENNA: Part 72 -- requirement for licensing !
10- of independent spent fuel storage facilities and monitor ) 11 . retrievable storage, essentially dry cask type storage h 1 ' 12 facilities. 13 They presently have a section 72.48, which is ' l 14 virtually identical to 50.59. () 15 We are in the process of going through the 16 comments. I. mentioned that we had a large volume of them, i 17 The comments are on a number of different topics.
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18 What we did was go through'each of the letters and ' 19 identify in a particular comment what aspect of the rule 20 that it applied to and then kind of group together the : 2 11 comments on particular issues and to get to an overall view , 22 of, okay, in this area commenters either generally agreed or ' 23 agreed with some degree of suggestion or changes or in ' 24 certain-areas there was four or five different themes we ! l- 25 were hearing to try to help us get our arms around the , e '
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50 l' comments and the. issues.
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2 DR, WALLIS: I am concerned by this that you don't i 3 just get tossed hither and thither by all these comments, l 4 that you have some basis for a rational decision. I don't ) 5 see what it is. l l 6 Earlier you seemed to think vagueness was better l 7 than clarify and I am not sure that is a good criterion. ; 8 I think simplicity is certainly desirable -- 1 9 MS. McKENNA: Simplicity -- I i l 10 DR. WALLIS: I would like for instance i l 11 Commissioner Diaz' approach where you actually state l 1 12 something simple and then try and use that to assess all 1 i 13 these comments and I don't see that in your approach -- { 14 unless you have some logical train of thought, you won't be f^^\ \ (_,/ 15 able to analyze these comments. i 16 The big question behind it all is what is the l 17 effect of doing this on nuclear safety and I don't see how 18 you are going to assess that. I 19 MS. McKENNA: Well, I think -- 20 EDR. WALLIS: Whatever you do it's not just 21 responding to all these inputs. You have got to say, look, 22 rationally looking at all this stuff this is the way to go i j 23 and I am going to defend that position on some basis. l 24 MS. McKENNA: I think we tried to lay that out in l ! 25 the proposed rule as to what we thought the rule was trying V ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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51 1 to accomplish and how the criteria and the definitions would () 2 allow that to happen and we are still trying to use that as 3' the template, you know, if we had comments to say, well, 4 this, as you say, this part really isn't clear. Somebody 5 might interpret the words we use to mean a slightly 6 different thing. Then.perhaps we need to change those words 7 or provide'a little more explanation of the words but we 8 still were trying to operate -- 9 DR. WALLIS: I think you should. 10 MS. McKENNA: -- operate within this is a process 11 for licensees to look at their changes that they are making, 12 how does it affect their information presented in the FSAR, 13 and gauge how much of a change it is and therefore whether 14 they can make that on their own or they need-to have the NRC
) 15 be involved.
16 DR. WALLIS: I think you also need to assert some 17 principles -- this is why we made our decision -- and stand 18 by them and not get too lost in the details. 1 19 'MS. McKENNA: Yes, I would agree with tha't and as 20 I say I think it goes back to the comment about preserving l 21 the licensing basis is really what the ultimate objective is 22 and -- l 23 DR. WALLIS: That sounds good. I am not quite ! 24 sure if it means anything. ! i 25 MS. McKENNA: Well, that's why we didn't try to !
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_ _ _ . ..._.__.___.~_.._._....-_.._m _.._.-_____.-__._m_.__ - . _ _ . _ 52 1 write that as the criterion in and of itself, but that is 2 the intent and that in terms of gauging whether what we are 3 doing is on the right track, I think that is what we look to
- 4 as what does it -- does the language lead things in that 5 direction, will the changes be looked at appropriately, will 6 the right ones come to the NRC.
7 DR. WALLIS: Well, when you get interviewed by 8 television reporters saying what is the effect of this 9 legislation, you are going to say we have reduced the burden 10 on industry without sacrificing any of the safety of the i 11 plants, or something like that. l 12 MS. McKENNA: That is a good statement. 13 DR. WALLIS: Really assertive statements that make 14 sense -- we have simplified the regulations so that they are () 15 more understandable. 16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I don't know that we have 17 simplified them. Would you go that far? 18 DR. SHACK: Clarified? 19 MS. McKENNA: Clarified -- 20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Clarified is a little bit -- 21 MS. McKENNA: -- is a better word, yes. I mean 22 sometimes you sacrifice simplicity for clarity because you 23 explain more what you mean but yes, clarify might be a 24 better word. I 25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Isn't part of the problem here, 4 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 i Washington, D.C. 20036
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53 l 1; maybe the problem, the fact that in the SAR and the () 1 2 traditional deterministic licensing process we don't have a 3 metric that reflects the inpact or contains the impact of 4 all these thousands of decisions and numerous other things 5 in one place, so now you have to worry about all these 6 decisions independently, and what you are trying to do with 7 50.59 in its current incarnation is to make sure that all 8 these decisions or none of these decisions is affected in a 9 serious way. 10 All this stems from the fact that you don't have a 11 common method, namely the equivalent of CDF perhaps at a j 12 lower level, so it will be sensitive, although that is an 13 issue that we need to discuss. You don't have that common 14 thing that says, oh, gee, everything I have done to the l() 15 plant now results in this number, and I don't want to change 16 that number by much. Okay? l l 17 So this is really the heart of the problem here, 18 that you are trying to deal with a lot of different things, 19 different decision, different parameters, design decisions l l 20 individually. Then you have vagueness. ; 21 You say, well, the original decision was based on j 22 judgment to some extent, so the change will be based on 23 judgment. Isn't that true? ) t 24 MR. BARTON: Yes, but what kind of metric would i l 25 you use, becaus0 CDF I don't think is the right metric, i ! /~' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I i Court Reporters i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i __
I l 54 1 because -- I i l-( 2 DR. SHACK: This is the champion of the integrated ! 1 3- decision-making process and the enemy of bright lines. l 4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: No , no, no -- t 5 [ Laughter.)
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6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: -- no, no, no. Wait, wait, ; 7 wait, wait, wait. 8 I would not make my decision only based on CDF, j l 9 for example, but for example I can take a system, just one 10 system, and take its unavailability. Now I am way down 11 there now, okay, and take the unavailability of the system i 12 and say with 50.59 I will allow everything that will not 13 change the unavailability by more than such-and-such. l 14 DR. MILLER: Is there any reason you can't do 15 that? l 16 DR. KRESS: Of a system important to safety.
-17 DR. MILLER: Is there any rehson you can't do that 18 under the current 50.59?
l 19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. It is not allowed. There 20 is no place to put the unavailability anywhere. They will 21 take you back to the licensing basis. Unavailability was i 22 not part of the licensing basis. , 23 MR. BONACA: George is correct. In fact, to the l 24 point where if you perform an evaluation of probability 25 based on hard data, on the PRA data, and then you say that i 4 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i l \
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i I 55 L 1 shows that there is no increasing probability, oftentimes () 2 you are against the regulation because the regulation says 3 the original SER was granted based on engineering judgment. 4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. 5 MR. BONACA: And so even if you show me this 6 analytically, you haven't concluded that, and that 7 particularly where you have commitments supporting the 8 original decisions which were to do with diversity, 9 operation.and redundance, so that is really where truly you l 10 really are discouraged from using any PRA in the current ! 11 environment. l 12 I would also like to say that from what I have l 13 seen, current PRA, Level ~ 1, using CDF, can be extremely 14 successful for safety evaluations in fact if you use it 15 because what is important is the engineering analysis or the 16 discussion that tells you which way you have gone and the i i 17 soundness of it. 18 I mean you are not limiting yourself to the bottom 19 line that you can do that, but the discussion is very 20 informed typically and very credible, so there is a place 21 for PRA, no question about it. 22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But right now there isn't. 23 MR. BONACA: Right now there isn't. 24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: You have to change something !. 25 more fundamental, because if I bring up the issue of l t t i' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. i Court Reporters , 3 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 " . Washington, D.C. 20036 '
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56 1 unavailability, it was not in the original part of the () 2 3 integrity -- part of the integrity? How did you put it? I 1 have to memorize it -- preserve the integrity of the ; 4 licensing basis, so in that sense I think we should drop all 5 references to risk and probability and acknowledge this was 6 a judgment, and if we manage -- I mean we granted the 7 license so I don't see -- you know, preserving that 8 integrity should be on the same basis, judgmental, and stop 9 thinking about other things. 10 DR. WALLIS: So integrity of licensing basis is ! I 11 another way of saying the judgment of the NRC? 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. Yes. 13 DR. WALLIS: We have got to protect the ability of 14 the NRC to make qualitative judgments. l y,) {~T. 15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Well, no. Preserve the quality 16 of the judgment that was made at the time the license was 17 granted. 18 MS. McKENNA: Right. 19 DR. WALLIS: Well, I think then you are reading 20 the minds of someone who did something 30 years ago and you 21 can't do that. 22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Evidently they can. 23 DR. POWERS: And I don't think we can turn back 24 the clock either. I think we have to acknowledge that we 25 have, what, 3000 reactor years of operating experience and l l l [w)
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57 1 we have a new technology that we have exercised broadly that I T 2 has brought to us information on things like reliability V 3 that simply cannot be ignored and in fact are now part of 4 the engineering judgment process. 5 DR. KRESS: The problem of preserving the 6 licensing basis is that each plant has its own licensing 7 basis so that means something different for every plant. 8 Not all parts of the licensing basis have any relevance to 9 real risk metrics anyway -- so I don't see that as a good 10 goal. I mean I don't even think -- l 11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: What, preserve? l i 12 DR. KRESS: Yes. I don't even think that is a l 13 good goal to have, frankly. We're kind of with it to some 14 extent -- - () 15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: We are stuck with it, yes, for l 16 the time being. 17 DR. KRESS: -- but I think in terms of 18 risk-informing 50 that we don't want to use that -- 19 , DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Oh, no -- no. 20 DR. KRESS: 50.59 is part of 50, so why should I 21 not even abandon it for 50.59 also? 22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But there is a short term and a 23 long term. l 24 DR. KRESS: Yes, in the short term. l 25 DR. SEALE: This is an interim rule. b)
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l 58 1 1 DR. KRESS: You are still talking about short term j () 2 and there maybe it has some relevance in the short term, but 3 in the long term I would want to abandon that as a goal. j 4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I am a little bit perplexed by a 5 statement Mario made earlier, that the word " probability" is 6 in fact needed. Why? 1 7 MR. BONACA: No , I agree with you that typically 8 it is there to preserve certain commitments, as you said 9 before, and I am intrigued by'your recommendations, okay? I 10 think that you are correct. Maybe we would have a paramount 11 change to the verbiage and what I want to try to say is that 12 probability was used by non-probability. experts for a long 13 time in designing these plants and they looked at it in 1 4 14 terms of, you know, what is an anticipated transient, one l
) '15 that will happen.with certain frequency?
'16 So you design certain components to meet certain 17 criteria and so on and so forth, so there was a loose 18 application of the word " probability" --
19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Right. 20 MR. BONACA: -- that went so deep into the design 21 of these plants that at this stage in attempting to achieve 22 an agreement on words between the industry and the 23 regulator, it doesn't pay -- it would take I believe a long 24 time to go deep and to modify it. 25 You know, conceptually I totally agree with you, 59 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D C. 20036 (202)- 842-0034
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59 1 George, but -- 2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: What I understand you are 4 (~}. 3 saying, Mario, is that, and maybe I.am wrong, is the people 4 who put together the regulations did that. 5 MR. BONACA: Well, actually it was the designers 6 in many ways, okay? 7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Okay. I 8 MR. BONACA: The standard, the ANSI standard. 9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But then, if I ges an 10 application from Palo Verde I can review the proposal to 11 grant the license without any referenc e to probability. Can 12 I do that? Because I am using now wha': is in the books. 13 Now the guys who put them in the books used 14 qualitative judgments, but I do not hate to do that because ! /~% I l ( ,) t 15 the book says when it comes to pressure make sure this i 16 happens, when it comes to temperature tais is allowed, so in j 17 that sense the word " probability" does not appear in the i 18 licensing basis. Is that an accurate understanding? i 19 MS. McKENNA: I guess I would say that, however 20 you count them, there are three or seven criteria. Not all 21 the criteria would apply to all changes or issues, that some 22 cases the thing you are doing it only has something that 23 affects, you know, a dose thing. It has nothing to do with 24 probabilities or anything, so I would say that that's true. 25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: So Eileen, co you think it is (#'\ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (- l Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 4 (202) 842-0034
I 60 ! I feasible to go back and see whether the word " probability" 2- can be dropped? ( 3 MS '. McKENNA: I think it is something that could
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4 be considered on the timeframes that we are talking about. 5 I think it perhaps would be an additional complication that 6 . would get in the way of our achieving where we're going to 7 go. 8 The other connent I wanted to make -- 9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: We could go line by line and 10 cross it out -- 11 [ Laughter.] 12 MS. McKENNA: The other comment I wanted to make 13 on this -- 14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Use the delete button. () 15 MS. McKENNA: -- this topic where we are referring 16 to such attributes as diversity and redundancy and things, I 17 think in some cases those things are embedded in other 18 . requirements -- for instance, GDC and things like that, that 19 -even if your 50.59 criteria allowed you to consider those in 20 this context, the need to satisfy the underlying regulation 21 may prevent ycu from doing that at.yway. 22 That is always something that has to be considered 23 in looking at a change as to whether you still meet tte body 24 of regulations, not just whether this change I need, ~. need 25 to ask your permission on, but if it is something that would lO i ANN RILEY & ASSOC MTES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 ) Washington, D.C. 20036 i I (202) 842-0034
61 l 1 removed redundancy where it is required even if they asked () l 2 our permission we would say no. 3 DR. KRESS: George, you will find the word 4 " probability" in the licensing basis. l_ I 5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I will? l l 6 DR. KRESS: Yes, you will. It has to do with the 7 determination of the design basis accidents and their , 8 frequencies and you will definitely find it as part of the l 9 licensing basis. 10 DR. POWERS: But it is important to recognize that 11 the scale that was being used at the time broke it down into 1 ! 12 not decades but duo-decades. That is, it was in factors of 13 100 in which there was likely, less likely, and -- 14 MS. McKENNA: Much less likely. 15 DR. POWERS: -- and beyond the scale of human 16 reason, and I mean that seems like a crude scale to many of 17 us here, but that scale is still an operational scale if you 18 design a facility for the Department of Energy. 19 That is why I think, yes, there is e confusion, 20 George, when the -- in the modern time when we use the 21_ probability we are used to thinking about the differences 22 between 4 times 10 to the minus 4 and 2 times 10 to the 23 minus 4 -- I mean a much, much narrower scale is being used 24 now and it does cause confusion in that respect. Okay. 25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. L [ s' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. [ Court Reporters l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
f 1 1 62 l 1 MS. McKENNA: Just a couple more bullets here, i () 2 3 just in terms of schedule and approach. As I mentioned earlier, we originally had a date 4 of February 19th for the final rule and we went back to the ! l 5 Commission in December and said we really can't do justice 6 to this and give you a final rule in February. 7 What we instead offered to say -- well, we , l 8 realized there are certain issues that we really -- the l l 9 Commission has had some input on and that there is a l 10 diversity of views perhaps among the Commission. Perhaps it 11 would be more effective if we came back to the Commission 12 with some of those particular issues and allowed the i 13 Commission to have the benefit of what we learned from the 14 comments and the current thinking and give us some feedback () 15 on where we are before the Staff expended the time and l 16 effort to put together a final rule package with all its 17 accompanying accoutrements and review process for something 18 that is kind of missing the mark as to where the Commission 19 wanted us to go. 20 N So that is our current plan of attack is to 21- provide a paper. Presently the date is in fact still the 22- February 19th date but it is a little different kind of ; I 23 paper than a final rule. What it would be instead is taking j 24 those issues I had listed on the slide before, at least most ! 25 of these -- I am not uure every one will be in there -- and l . I 1 l l[ [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l l Washington, D.C. 20036 I (202) 842-0034
i I l 63 l
-1 say this is what'we have learned from the comments, this is I
() '2 what we would presently recommend -- please give us your 3 feedback, Commission, as to whether you agree or you have , i 4 other ideas and that once we get that feedback, then we can i 5 do a better job of preparing a final rule, come back to the 6 Committee with the final rule recommendations. ! 7 You will obviously see the February paper and have
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8- .the benefit of the Staff's thinking on those issues and l 9 then, say when we get some Commission feedback then go l
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10 ahead and try to put together the final package, make sure , 11- all our stakeholders within the agency are engaged. 12 We have been trying to.do that but with the ) 13 timeframes available to make sure that between us and NMSS 14 and the regions and OGC and all these others that we are all () 15 on board. It just takes time to make sure everybody 16 understands, thinks the same way and that we haven't missed 17 something in the process. 18 DR. WALLIS: I don't get the sense that you are on 19 a convergent path to resolving everything. 20 MS. McKENNA: I ren!M say probably not everything. 21 I think on most of these issues na are on a convergent path. 22 DR. WALLIS: I looked at the blizzard of comments 23 and then I look&d at the comments from the Commissioners and l. 24 it seems to me there's a great deal of work to be done to 25 figure out what is the right resolution of the various l
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64 1 points of view. 2 MS. McKENNA: I think in a couple of specific (} L 3 areas that's true. I think in most of them that we aro l ! 4 close. Margin is probably the one where there is the 5 biggest stumbling block. 6 MR. BARTON: Margin of safety is the biggest 7 issue, biggest divergence. 8 MS. McKENNA: Yes. 9 DR. POWERS: I mean in all honesty, we bave been 10 close a lot of times. I mean it seems to me that beginning , 11 with NSEC 125 and going to 96.07 tb; contention has always ' I 12 been rather close except for a couple of issues. ; 13 MR. BARTON: We are further apart now than ever. 14 DR. POWERS: I think we are too. - (f) f 15 DR. SHACK: Yes, but this time you get to rewrite 16 the guidance and the rule at the same time. l 17 MS. McKENNA: And make them match. j 18 DR. SHACK: And make them match. 19 DR. POWERS: I think that just ddds decrees of l 20 freedom in a nonconvergent algori:bm here. 21 Let me ask you about your final bullet on this 22 slide. 23 MS. McKENNA: Yes. 24 DR. POWERS: Many secm to have questioned the 25 resolve that the Staff has to go to Phase 2. I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 j (202) 842-0034 i
l I 65 1 1 Can you offer a testimonial on your resolve here? 2 MS. McKENNA: ( Well, I think one of the points in 3 terms of future changes, that really kind of came on two 4 fronts. One is the question of scope, as to whether FSAR is 5 the right set or whether that should be current licensing 5 basis or some r.isk-informed subset of information in the 7 licensing basis, and the other I think is a question of 8 criteria, whether you have some different criteria that 9 allow more consideration of, say, delta CDF or other risk l 10 metric as a decision criteria for moving forward. l 11 What I think we have suggested in the paper on 12 risk-informing Part 50 in general, which I think we still t 13 believe is probably a more important thing to do before you 14 try to take on the specific of 50.59 -- scope has been put () 15 forward as one of the first things to take on, and I think 16 that thoce kind of considerations on scope will then shed i 17 light on what the scope of 50.59 is. 18 Just in the fact that if this is the scope of things that 19 they are -- I think the words were used " regulatory 20 treatment," shall we say. Well, 50.59 is a means of 1 21 regulatory treatment, and that they will naturally kind of 22 come together. At the time that you redefine that scope, ! 23 then it may be necessary and useful to also give further l 24 thought to the question of criteria. 25 DR. POWERS: If I was a suscicious type, I would [~') ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. V Court Reporterr. 1025 Connecticut Avenue, N ,/ , Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 l (292) 842-0034 i i
66 1 say very good strategy, admire the strategy, create a 1 1
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[} V 2 blizzard of additional questions, and I can delay this thing j 3 forever. I mean, come in and say ch, well, we'll just think 4 about the scope, we'll think about the applicability, we'll ) 5 expand it here, create a lot of additional questions, and I j 6 can avoid having to make Phase 2. I I 7 MS. McKENNA: I guess we look at it as making sure 8 that whatever we do in 50.59 is consistent with the 9 underlying set of requirements in Part 50 that we're trying l l 10 to judge the changes to, and if that means that it has to l 11 wait until some of those other things get settled, I think l 12 we feel that that's perhaps a better plan of attack than 13 trying to move forward on something that may not match up 14 well with how the rest of things will come out.
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(3) 15 MR. BARTON: Well, if you think you're going to a 16 risk approach to Part 50, where would 50.59 come in your i l 17 pecking order? Pretty far down the list, I would guess. l 18 MS. McKENNA: It's probably not the first, but 19 it's not the last, I guess is how I would -- 20 MR. BARTON: It's pretty far down the list. Yes. 21 Okay. I don't know, it's just my perception of thinking 22 where you're going to go with the risk-informed approach to 23 Part 50. 24 MS. McKENNA: Well, I think in terms of, you know, 25 you've got to decide what your objectives are of the i
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67 1 risk-informing Part 50 and how you think risk-informing 50 I
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L/ 2 is not who's going to benefit you -- 3 MR. BARTON: Right. i l 4 MS. McKENNA: Considering the kinds of changes 5 that we're looking at now, it may or may not help people to 6 have to look at them in a risk-informed manner. You know, 7 there may be -- I think it was mentioned earlier that there 8 is a, you know, that if you're going to use a risk-informed 1 9 approach, then you're going to have to have an analysis base l i 10 or other kinds of things in order to support that, and 11 whether you want to do that or not as a particular licensee, 12 you know, is obviously -- 13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: No, but the benefits, though, 14 must be commensurate with the effort. () 15 MS. McKENNA: Yes. Yes. 16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: So you're not going to worry 17 about little changes here and there any more. I mean, I'll 18 give you an example. All changes that do not change the CDF I i 19 by more than 10 to the minus 5 will not be reviewed. Now 1 20 you're going to see people doing a lot of calculations, ) 21 because the benefit is tremendous. So that's something that 22 we have missed in the past. 23 MS. McKENNA: Um-hum. 24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: We thought, you know, we'll make 25 it risk-informed, but it will be the same 50.59. Well, it l' ~ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. i \ Court Reporters i _1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 ! Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
68 1 won't be. So maybe it will be worth it, worthwhile doing () 2 these extra analysis. 3 MS. McKENNA: Yes. I think the other thing we 4 have to decide is the view of a degree of hybrid of terms of 5 a CDF and any other criteria that you would want to apply, 6 you know, certainly in looking to Reg Guide 1174 as our 7 risk-informed approach, there was not just CDF, there are ; 1 8 other factors that are in there, and if you were doing it in l 9 a 50.59 context, how you would apply those other factors l 10 would have to be also considered. l 11 So I think that's -- the last bullet I think we 12 just covered in terms of the potential future changes. ; i 13 DR. POWERS: Let me say that I think if we're ; 14 going to make progress, thrust really has to be to narrow () 15 and refine the focus and not broaden it, or you will simply 16 bollix yourself up with inalterable questions. Maybe indeed 17 the strategy is start at the top with 50, because otherwise 18 you can always find some reason that the scope has to be 19 broadened because of some other rule within the system. 20 MS. McKENNA: Well, I think some of the meetings 21 we had on the risk-informed options brought that to light, l 22 that even if you changed 50.59 and risk-informed it and j i 23 didn't change other requirements, how far you can go? You 24 may run up against these other regulations, you know, that i 25 okay, we want to make this change under 50.59 but we can't ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l [\ l Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l i
69 t l 1 because it's the safety-related definition that gets in our i ( 2 way or whatever. ( ) I mean -- so that's another reason why 3 looking at in the more wholistic way we think is the way to 4 go. : ! 5 MR. BARTON: Any other questions for Eileen at 6 this time? 7 DR. SEALE: Are we going to write a letter? l 8 MR. BARTON: Not at this time. This was the 9 information or status briefing on where they were with l 10 respect to feedback on the rule they laid out for public l 11 comment. l 12 Now our schedule on this issue, we're far from 13 being through with this ourselves, at the March meeting will i 14 will review the Commission paper that Eileen talked about O. ( ,) 15 that they owe to the Commission in the middle of this month 16 which ought to talk about reconciliation, public comments, 17 and proposed positions for the final rule. They're going to 18 get some feedback from the Commission on that, and they owe I 19 a final rule on -- I think at that time we need to say 20 something to the Commission, in the March meeting, because i 21 the final rule schedule is April, the end of April, the next 22 time we will get a shot at this. Or we may not even get a 23 shot, I guess. In the May meeting we'll review the proposed 24 final rule, and I guess if we've got some problems with it 25 then, we can say something. But I think we've got to get i
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~ l 1 l 70 1 our oar in the water to the Commission in the March meeting. () 2. DR. POWERS: Well, needless to say, we get a 3 little oral communication in a few hours. 4 DR. SEALE: In a few hours. i i 5 DR. POWERS: But I think a more definitive ' 6 statement is going to be made in our March meeting. And we ! 7 might want to take some time in this meeting to think about 8 what the length and the breadth of that letter ought to look l 9 like, because it probably merits some advance planning in 10 anticipation of the kind of information that we're likely to 11 get out of -- at the final briefing. 12 MR. BARTON: If there are no other comments, Mr. 13 Chairman, I'll turn the meeting back over to you. 14 DR. POWERS: Thank you. We are now scheduled for (/ 15 a break. John's given me back 15 minutes. I appreciate 16 that. So I will have us break until 10:20, 17 [ Recess.] 18 DR. POWERS: Gentlemen, I want to come back to our i 19 session here. We're a little early for our speakers on this l l 20 ~ session, but I thought it would be worthwhile to begin the 21 session with a little internal discussion on where we j 22' thought.we should be going with the improvements on the 23 inspection and assessment program and even where we thought 24 .we were going on 10 CFR 50.59. 25 And so John, if you can give us some l l 4 l' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ! Court Reporters 4 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 l ( 202) 842-0034
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V l l 71 1 -introductions -- () 2 MR. BARTON: Well, on the assessment program, we 3 had a subcommittee meeting a week or so ago, at which time 4 we were briefed on what was in the Commission paper 5 SECY-99-007. At that time we had Members raise several ' 6 questions for the staff. The questions that were raised at 7 that time are in your package under Tab 3 under the status l 8 report on page 5, were the issues that we had raised with 9 the staff at that time. ; 10 The staff is prepared today to go give us an . l l 11 overview of the status of the process, and we should get j l 12 into our issues that we raised in the subcommittee meeting 1 1 1
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13' as laid out on page 5 of Tab 3 and try to get answers to l 14 those questions. l () 15- We do owe a letter to the Commission on the 16 integrated assessment process coming out of this meeting. I 17 guess.the least we've heard on the overall plan was details : l i j 18 - .in the overall process was details in the transition 19 plan. We heard some on the assessment process last time, I l 20 had some questions on that. 21 DR. POWERS: My understanding is the Commission's 22 been briefed on this. 23 MR. BARTON: It may have. I don't -- 24 DR. POWERS: I think I've gotten a communication 25 from Mr. Markley on questions they posed in that briefing 3 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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- 1. process.
() 2 MR. BARTON: Oh , yes. Yes, yes, yes. I've got 3 too many walls in the area to. lay. 3 4 DR. POWERS: Yes, too many pieces of paper in 5 front of you. ' 6 MR. BARTON: Too many pieces of paper. 7 There was = Commission briefing on January 20, I 8 believe. There are also questions from the Commissioners 9 that came out of that briefing. I don't know if you've got 10 copies of those. I have a copy of that. We will also , 11 question the staff on some of those issues. 12 DR. POWERS: Do we anticipate in our meeting with 13 the Commission today that they would have questions on this? 14 MR. BARTON: It's not on the agenda, but if they () 15 should ask, you know, where are we, I guess we could answer 16 that. I don't know that we have the Committee, you know, 17 agreement on, you know, our position on where we are at the 11 8 inspection assessment process, but we could answer some -- 19 DR. POWERS: We can answer status questions. 20 MR. BARTON: Yes, that we should be able to do, 21 definitely. 22 DR. POWERS: Okay. And our intention is indeed to
.23 produce --
24- MR. BARTON: Produce a letter. 25, DR. POWERS: A letter, and this issue would then O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
I 73 1 be resolved as far as we're concerned? This is one that has I () 2 recurring -- recurs for us. 3 MR. BARTON: Yes, I think as far as we're 4 concerned, Dana, this is the final action we need to do, is 5 just put out a letter on what we believe, you know, what our 6 position is on the overall assessment -- integrated 7 assessment process. 8 DR. POWERS: Okay. 9 MR. BARTON: I'm not anticipating any other 10 meetings or briefings on this. Although there are a lot of i 11 open, you know, open items in the plan. It's going to be 12 out there for trial. There are going to be pilots. And i 13 there may be an opportunity down the road as this plan gets 14 fully implemented over the next year or two to have further () 15 discussions with the staff. I don't know. 16 DR. SEALE: Wouldn't we expect -- 17 MR. BARTON: There's nothing planned at this time 18 on that. 19 DR. SEALE: Wouldn't we expect to hear something 20 about the results of the pilots -- 21 MR. BARTON: Yes. 22 DR. SEALE: And maybe we want to stake that out. 23 DR. POWERS: Well, I guess that gives me an idea of what our overall strategy here is. My right clock tells 25 me that the time has come to move back into this session,
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74 1 and the left clock tells me we may be a couple of minutes 2 ahead.
.3 DR. SHACK: It's 10:26.
4 MR. BARTON: We need to synchronize the clocks. 5 DR. POWERS: I would hope that we can synchronize l 6 clocks one of these days. 7 So, John, if you could go ahead 7.nd introduce the 8 speakers for this, and give us the appropriate background on ! 9 this issue. 10 MR. BARTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 11 The purpose of this meeting is to continue the 12 Committee's discussions in review of the proposed 13 improvements to the inspection and assessment program with 14 the staff, including initiatives related to development of a 15 risk-based inspection program performance indicators. In 16 preparing for our letter on this ubject, we've asked the 17 staff to today give us an overall picture as to, you know, 18 where they are, what are the open issues, and also I would 19 ' anticipate that Members' issues and questions that were 20 raised in the January 26 subcommittee meeting would get 21 again addressed to tho staff today. 22 DR. POWERS: And I Suess I would appreciate it if 23 you think that any of the questions that the Commission 24 posed to you in your briefing rePain unanswered or were left i ~ 25 unanswered if you have response 1 to those that you'd like to () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Repor ters 1025 Connecticut Avenu's, NW, Suite 1014
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75 1 share with us, that would be useful. ( s) 2 I got the impression from my digest of the I
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3 questions that most of them were answered by either more 4 inspection or we'll tell you after the pilots, but -- both i
.5 of which are appropriate responses.
i 6 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes, that's true. l 7- MR. BARTON: So at this time I'll turn it over to ' 8 -- Frank, are you going to take the lead on this? 9 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes. Let me give you a current 10 status on some documents that will probably be coming out in i 11 the next couple of weeks, because we're continuing to move. l 12 First, the selection of the pilot plants. We're { l 13 working with NEI and we've pretty much narrowed down the 1 14 eight pilots. NEI is working with the people at those i ( 15 pilots. One.of our criteria was hopefully that it was 16 someone participating as one of the utilities participating 17 in kind of the equivalent utility group to us so that there 1 18 was actually some knowledge within that group so that we l 19. weren't starting with a plant that's been totally uninvolved 20 and asked to be a volunteer and not know what they're 1 21- 'getting into. 12 2 We're not going to name those plants until a 23 couple of things-are done. Once we basically say shake 24 hands with the industry, we're going to need to inform the 25 Commission. We've-kind of taken on a self-imposed ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Deporters
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76 1 requirement. We'll then call the State representative that j( ) 2 works with us from that State to let them know, offer a 3 briefing to the State representatives and State people so 4 they understand what we're doing, particularly some States 5 like. Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, which are very G active in this area. So we've got some steps to do in the 7 next couple of weeks before we see the names coming out in a 8 press release. t 9 DR. POWERS: I guess I understand your reluctance 10 to name the plants, because of course there's slips between f 11 the cup and the lip here that are always potential, but let 12 me understand better criteria here. ; 13 MR. GILLESPIE: Okay. 14 DR. POWERS: There's been a lot of work in the j 15 severe accident and probabilistic risk assessment space on l 16 defining representative plants, and they, you know, you can f 17 -- all plants are different, so you never get a perfect 18 representation. But I think they generally feel they've got 19 a broad representation. The defect in their strategy was 20- they didn't ever have a replicate. There was no measure of 21 the experimental error in these pilots. Are you getting 22 what you think is a broadly representative group of plants, 23 and have you made provisions for measuring your experimental 24- error in the pilots? 25 MR. GILLESPIE: The answer is we hope we've gotten i + '., ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I Court Reporters 4 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
77 1 a broad representation, although limiting ourselves to 2 eight. There's P's, there's B's, and our perspective I'll l 3 say of performance in talking to one utility which had
'4 multiple plants, we told them which plant we'd like, and one l
5 of our criteria was some things happen to have -- there l 6 needs to be some things going on we can count. Taking a 7 plant that-has every indicator in the green zone, the
- l. 8 licensee response zone, would not be a measure of what we're 9 trying to measure.
10 So we had a mix of plants. And this utility said l 11 but we'd like you to take this plant over here, not that 12 plant over there. Well, this plant over here wouldn't 13 attemot to measure what we're trying to measure to try to 14 get it at these kind of differences. So that's the ! b 15 tentative negotiation that's kind of taking place right now. 16 DR. POWERS: I think what you told me is that the 17 things that we often think of in terms of broadly 18 representative, is it a P, is it a B -- l l 19 MR. GILLESPIE: Those things are covered. l l 20 DR. POWERS: Subatmospheric containment, is it an t l 21 ice condenser--- ' l l l 22 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes, ! 1 l
- 23 DR. POWERS: That's not nearly so important as i
24 that you get a range of performance. ; 25 MR. GILLESPIE: That's important to us, that we I I I i ! I l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters e 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 i Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 (~ ,- - --s -, - , , - - ,--- -, - , ,-
78 1 exercise the system, because if the evidence was that () 2 everything was a null set, then we certainly don't have a 3 system--- we haven't exercised anything. So the focus here 4 is really on those plants, not that there won't be some 5 excellent performers in the eight, but clearly we're looking 6 for a broad range to exercise the system to ask the question 7 are we seeing what we would expect to see? 8 The other element we're going to have in doing a 9 true pilot is let's take a-normal two-unit site that has 10 three residents. And I already said we're not picking the 11 absolute best performer in the country, so it's going to 12 'have the third resident. 13 Under this program, it's not envisioned the third 14 resident has'anything to do as part of the pilot. So we'll j () 15 be needing to devise a r.ethod of using the third resident 16 almost as a way of the independent eyes. He's going to have 17 to have a different routine to try to keep him from 18 influencing the norm, yet it gives us an opportunity to have 19 a guy on site who can kind of follow around and say did
-20 these guys go deep enough in challenges. So we've got some 21 challenges in designing the pilot just in the environment 22 we're going to be in.
'23 MR. JOHNSON: Frank, can I --
l 24 MR. GILLESPIE: Sure. 25 MR. ~ JOHNSON: Just to add a couple of other things l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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_ _ .. _ _ ..._ _ . , _ _ _ _ _ . - _ _ . _=.. _ _ .- - _. _ __ _.- _ ___._ _ ,_ _._._..__ _ .. ._ l 1 79 1- that we thought about, that are less important than the () 2 things that Frank mentioned, but they also went into it. ( 3 And that was -- one of them was we wanted to pick plants, or 4 NEI suggested plants who were members of their task group , 5 who have been working with the process all along, the 6 thought being if those plants are chosen, then they have an 7 understanding of where we're trying to go, and so we're not 8 starting from ground aro when we try to get the pilot 9~ plants up to speed. So that was something of a sort of a 10 consideration. 11 And the other thing was we found a couple of cases 12 where while there would have been a plant that NEI would 13 have suggested, we thought it wasn't a good idea, but 14 because, for example, we had a resident who was turning over () 15 and so we didn't want a lot of internal NRC things in terms 16 of changes in staff or whatever to impact the pilot. So 17 those were a couple of other considerations. 18 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes. 19 MR. JOHNSON: Okayi the other element is, and this 20 was a big question from the Commission, if there was a major i 21 academic or. philosophic hole in our package, it was the 22 scale to measure inspection results. Anyone can calculate a 23 number in a model, given you know the piece of equipment 24 doesn't work. That's relatively straightforward. But how ; 25 do you deal with the subjective results? We do have kind of l l l l[' l l
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ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025. Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 ; (202) 842-0034 ! l
80 l 1 about the-fourth revision of a draft that we're now testing () 2 some past results through, so the staff is right now ; j '3 exercising a first draft of that. I 4 They do not feel comfortable necessarily issuing } 5 it and putting their name on it until they've run some more i l . 6- examples through, so we're taking some examples from , l 7 Waterford,-I think it was, D.C. Cook, some Millstone 8 examples of things that were actually found and running them ! i 9 through what is a two or two-and-a-half-stage screening l 10 process with a first set of questions that are attempting to 11 get rid of the trivial, and then a little more in depth, if )1 12 you violated an LCO, for example,.was it one day, was it 13 seven days, was it 30 days over, to give some perspective -- 14 it's risk-informed, not risk-based -- but some perspective 15 of.importance to violating the LCO is not the end of the 16 world if your shutdown happened to take an hour longer and 17 it's seven days in one hour. So that's kind of stage 2 18 screening. 19 Stage 3 of screening is you get the SRA from the 20 region involved because it's comething that does require a 21 -little more in-depth perspective, calculational knowledge, l 22 sense of uncertainties. So we're exercising that now. 23 I would guess that we'd see a draft coming out i i 24 also in about the next two to three weeks, because this was l l 25 really a major point that we promised we'd show up with in l
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81 1 March. And they're exercising it with one major, major () 2 criterion, and that's.to have a high probability of not 3 having a false. negative. So the screening process doesn't 4 have to be perfect relative to a high-risk event as long as 5 the high-risk event doesn't get screened out. So if we 6 allow some low-risk events through the filter, that's okay, , 7 and that's the kind of perspective they're trying to test it 8 to to make sure that a high-risk issue would not 9' ' artificially get screened.out too early. So it's kind of a 10 lopsided test. We're allowing deficiencies in one direction 11 and trying to assure no deficiencies in the other direction. 12 DR. POWERS: Well, that's an interesting part of 13 your program, and one I think is pretty well thought out. 14 I'm still concerned about what I call the experimental error ( 15 in your pilots, and the way an experiment should measure i i 16 experimental error is you do a replicate. Do you have that? 17 MR. GILLESPIE: No, not a replicate in a true 18 sense. There's multiple P's and multiple B's, but there's 19 different performance -- there's different known 20 performance. I mean, deliberately picked for different 21 performance. Right now I wouldn't want to say that there's l 22 -- there's a good comment, that if we had two P's and they ; j 23 were looked at as approximately the same performance, l l 24 comparing the relative findings from the two, to see if the 25 nature of what was being seen is consistent. I, i () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters ! 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
, . _ . _ _ . . - _ _ _ _ . _ . _ . . ~ _ . . . - _ . . . . . - _ - ._.._ _ _. . . - . _ . . . I 82 ; 4 1 DR. POWERS: You're going to draw conclusions, i j L 2 and --
.3 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes, I can only say at this point l 4 we hadn't gotten that far in the thinking of the r
l 5 comparisons, but it's a good point. I understand it. And I ! 6 think we need to look at what we can do with kind of a small ! i 7 sample.
- l l 8 DR POWERS: Um-hum.
9 MR. GILLESPIE: I think in Statistics 101 at one i 10 point if your sample was at least 15, you're okay, but if ! 11 you're less than 15, you're in trouble. l l 12 DR. POWERS: There are a lot of things, many of 13 them -- I don't want to draw this analogy too far, t 14 because it can be carried to a length. ( 15 MR. GILLESPIE: No, but -- ' 16 DR. POWERS: But it does seem to me -- 17 MR. GILLESPIE: A qualitative comparison, though, i 18 could easily be done from that perspective. :
.19 DR. POWERS: I think you just need to be aware
- 20 -thatLwhen_you draw conclusions out of these pilots that l
21 there's liable to be an experimental error. Now you may not l 22 be able.to do it on this plant versus this plant. Maybe you
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can identify that experimental error on this finding versus 24 this other finding -- 25 MR. GILLESPIE: Um-hum. i
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-1 D". POWER.1: We found the same thing at two [
() 2 plants, so tr.*re must not be any error in that one, but we 3 didn't find i- at another one, and should have. Maybe I 4 there's an error there. Maybe you can get some capture of - l 5 how definitively to draw conclusions from your pilots. j l 6 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes, and this is what I talked 7 about this extra resident. We have to be kind of artful in 8 how we-use him, because all plants are operated differently. '!
- 9 DR. POWERS
- Yes.
( 10 MR. GILLESPIE: And it's unlikely that we'll find l l t ! 11 exactly.the same error at one plant or another. In fact, if 12 we do, we have to ask the question do we have a generic i 13 problem. 14 DR. POWERS: [ Laughs.) () 15 MR. GILLESPIE: So I'm hoping that if the error is l 16 in theory randomly distributed among the plants, we would 17 test is the severity of what we call something at one plant i 18 consistent with the severity at the other plant. Clearly ! 19 'that's one of the things we're exercising is our own 20 criteria. If you apply the criteria, does it make sense 21 across multiple plants? 22 But part of my thought process here is, we have to ) 23 have some outside view in because if the inspector -- if we 24 have him looking at the wrong things or at a 25 disproportionate number of things, do we want the other 1 () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. j'N' Court Reporters l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
84 1 inspector who's not part of the process to look at something () 2 that we're not looking at, one of those things that we threw 3 out because we had PIs to confirm that not looking at it is ] l 4 the right thing to do. l i 5- That we won't get by a plant to plant comparison, ' 6 because the people at each plant will be looking basically 7 -at fundamentally the same issues, the same high risk 8 components. 9 The question would be have we lost anything by not 10 looking at support systems enough, so should we take this 11 extraordinary resource which is located on the site and have 12 .him looking at the things that we actually threw out, to not j 13 look'at as much, to confirm that what we said didn't need to 14 get looked at was the right thing so we have some design of () 15 experiment work thac we still need to do on what are we 16 trying.to prove and how are we going to get some essence, 17 the supnerc J..-t we made right or wrong decisions. 18 DR. POWERS: What'you want to do is say all my 19 uncontrolled variables indeed are behaving randomly. 20 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes, yes. 21 DR. POWERS: But again I caution you about drawing l 22 the analogy too strongly. 23 MR. BARTON: Are you always going to have the 24 luxury of an extra inspector? 25 MR. GILLESPIE: No. ~ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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I 85 1 MR. BARTON: What are you going to do in that ,( ) 2 case? 3 MR. GILLESPIE: Oh, during the pilots we will. l 4 MR. BARTON: During the pilots you will? 5 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes. I am going to anticipate 6 during'the pilots we will. 7 MR. BARTON: Okay -- if there is not one assigned 8 to the site, there will be one to do the pilot? l 9 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes. If there is not one at the 10 site, we are going to have to do some external monitoring to 11 answer those kir.a of questions. 12 You know, if there is any concern when you -- the 13 public concern -- let me switch to public confidence. The 14 program is smaller. How do you know you threw out the right 15 stuff and kept in the right _ aff? That is a fundamental 34 question that we are going to have to address. 17' If it means' putting some extra people to confirm 18 that at a site that doesn't have the extra resident right 19' now, we are going to have to address it. We have to do the 20 effort anyway -- because that is a concern and that is a 21 specific public concern that we are going to have to look 22 at. 23 So there's two documents. I'll be happy as soon 24 as we are ready to relieve them in the next two weeks to 25 send copies over here and Mike can distribute them, but the } ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 L 4 2_ _
l . 86 i 1 second document,-I think, is the key one and that is the ' () 2 measure of what you do with inspection results. I probably l 3 feel more comfortable with what the Staff's done than the ! 4 Staff does right now. They want to test it out a little i i 5 more on some real results and kind of prepare a report on ' ! i 6 it. I i
- 7 The reason I feel more comfortable is right now we ,
l 8 have no scale, and probably having a scale someone could , l 9 take shots at is better than no scale at all, so that is the 10 reason I feel comfortable we.are getting there. ! 11 With that, Mike, you were going to try to touch l 12 upon some questions on the assessment process? ; ! t i l 13 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, I was going to try to touch ? i r 14 upon some questions on the assessment process. I guess what 15 we have handed out is the slide package that we handed out i 16 last time and I wasn't going to go over the slides. In 17 fact, how would you like me to proceed? Would it be best 18 for you to ask questions or me to -- 19 DR. POWERS: I would just -- L 20 MR. BARTON: Why don't you just go on. We will 21 jump in and interrupt you like we usually do. 22 DR. POWERS: Yes. J 23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Weren't there some questions l 24 raised at the subcommittee meeting? 1 25 DR. SEALE: Yes -- I' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters [ 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l L Washington, D.C. 20036 I l (202) 842-0034
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87 1 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Why don't you jump through them. V) I 2 DR. POWERS: Well, I would say just go through the I 3 presentation and emphasize those points that are a response 1 4 to the subcommittee's questions. 5 MR. GILLESPIE: We are kind of at a 6 disadvantage because we didn't get the questions. 7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: No, I mean during the 8 subcommittee meeting? Oh, you mean the Commissioners' 9 questions? 10 MR. GILLESPIE: No. Whatever is on Tab 3 of 11 Enclosure 5. 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Tab 3, page 5 is the -- l 13 DR. POWERS: Oh -- our apologies. 14 MR. GILLESPIE: How can we answer them' That's
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(3) m, 15 why I felt a little Jaked. 16 Go ahead and go down the questions and just go 17 through those first and then we'll see if we have any ! 18 residual -- l 19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: These are the Commissioners' 20 questions? 21 DR. SHACK: No , no , no -- our questions. 22 DR. POWERS: There are relatively few of them 23 anyway. I will be glad to share my copy with you. 24 MR. BOERNERT: I've got it. 25 DR. POWERS: Okay, just taking the questions, why () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l l
_. . . - _ . . _ . _ . _ _ _ _ . _ . _ . ~ . _ _ . . . . _ . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - . _ _ _ . . _ _ . - - 88 i 1 a full year pilot was not proposed -- and the answer there i
'2 is as we stated it. We really didn't want to do a full year 3 pilot. We in fact went with a six-month pilot out of l 4 consideration for the schedule that we were being asked to 1 5 . meet.
6 But.I mean it wouldn't be the first time that L 7 somebody has gone to the Commission and said your schedule 8 'is unreasonable. ! 9 MR. GILLESPIE: Well, we did that. In fact, the 10 ' original schedule was a three-month pilot and the program l 11 fully implemented in October, so what we did is we 12 balanced -- well, we would like a year -- which would be a 13 full cycle -- 14 DR. POWERS: That is the reason. You would get 15 a -- 1 i 16 MR. GILLESPIE: We said, well, we could do a 17 credible job in six months given that even in that first j I 18- year there's going to be bugs we are going to have to work 19 out and have a feedback loop, and as Mike said I think in 20 his last presentation, at the end of the first year there is j I 21 a major reassessment effort that is going to have to take 1 22 place to make adjustments. 23 So with that. knowledge that there could be a major 24 readjustment after the first year, we gave that also to the 1 25 -Commission. At the Commission presentation we said with , 1 i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. . Court Reporters i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202)'842-0034
I 89 ? l 1 that knowledge we could probably do this in six months but () 2 we are going to recognize that it is not the perfect system 3 in January, it's the best we can do with working at what we
.I 4- can work out in six months, and there is nothing much more
{ 5 in depth behind it than that compromise. 6 MR. JOHNSON: Yes. We have done some things to 7 try to buttress that, if you will. We for example are going t ' I 8 to ask plants to report PIs every molach as opposed to every { l 9 quarter for the pilots. We are going to ask them to report, 10 to go back historically and report some data even before the . 11 start of the pilot and I think we are talking about two 12 years but we haven't finalized that so we will have some PIs 13 leading up to the start of that six-month period. 14 In addition to that, we are going to try to look
) 15 at some additional plants beyond the eight plants that we 16 are talking about for a pilot to get some PIs on, so we are 17 trying to, even though it is a six-month period of time, we 18 are trying to exercise the entire process.
1 i 19 We have tried to artificially raise the amount of 20 information we have about those plants and the frequency 21 with which we get that information such that we can get the 22 most out of the pilot, but we really are sort of confined to 23 the schedule. If we want to get to a January 2000 ready to l 24 implement for all plants we really did need to try to limit l t 25 it to a six-month pilot. 1 4 Ahl! RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters
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90 ; 1 Frank, do you want to start? ' Why don't you take r 2 the second question? 3 DR. POWERS: I mean you told us the advantages. 4 Have you lined out explicitly what you think the i 5 disadvantages of not going the full year are? 6 MR. JOHNSON: Sure. We have talked about them. 7 One of the disadvantages is for example we are 8 talking about trying.to exercise the entire risk-informed l 9 baseline inspection program that we know is going to be over 10 a year cycle in a six month period of time. That is going 11 to cause us to do something artificial. 12 Either we are going to have to spread out pieces i 13 of the risk-informed baseline inspection at the various 14 pilot plants so that we have got full coverage of the () 1 15 procedures, but maybe not coverage at all the plants, or t 16 that causes you to do increased inspection at those pilot ' 17 plants to cram it all into a six-month period of time and we l l 18 know plants are not going to be wild about that, so there I 19 really would be a lot of advantages and we recognized a lot - 1 20 of advantages to doing the 12-month. 21 DR. POWERS: All of this, of course, the 22 aggregation of all these problems that have been identified 23 here in the lat five minutes is of course to increase the 24 uncertainty you have on any conclusion that you arrive at. 25- MR. JOHNSON: Right. i k ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. .f) - s/ Court Reporters 4 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 , L Washington, D.C. 20036 l l (202) 842-0034 1
91 f 1 .MR. GILLESPIE: Now let me take it on the positive () 2 side. We have actually attempted to provide a structure to 3 apply against inspection and assessment, which replaces a 4 system right now which is very, very, very, very subjective. ; l 5 It '.s not clear to me that even if we don't have j 6 the perfect system, we are proposing a system that is better 7 than what we have, and from that perspective the loss of 1 1 8 momentum from waiting a whole year, what would the [ l i 9 incremental improvement be from six months to a year? ' 10 It is not clear to me that we are not going to be ! 11 80 percent to where we should be in the incremental -- we'll 12 be at 20 percent improvement and that we can't really deal l 13 with that actually better on an industry-wide basis. It's L 14 going to be a hassle because it's going to be more ! l () 15 exceptions and we are going to get mcre comments but we will 16 be exercising the system so that is kind of a trade-off. 17 I think if we. extended this a whole year, tha idea l 18 of having a risk-informed oversight process overall would 19 lose so much momentum that it may be two years. I think l 20 that is a real danger, so we need to keep a certain effort I { 21 going and a certain commitment on the industry part and our 22 part. 23 DR. POWERS: Well, I think I would be most 24 cencerned about losing momentum on this team that has done 25 so well here, that, you know, you guys will burn out I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 1
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92 1 even"ually. () 2 3 ME. GILLESPIE: Well, I think some of the guys we have shifted, moved around, because --
-4 DR. POWERS: Quite frankly, the hard part of youl 5 work is_ ahead cf you.
- 6. MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.
7 MR. BARTON: None of these pilot plants are
- 8. scheduled for a refueling outage during this pilot program I 9 take it?
10 MR. JOHNSON: No, I don't -- in fact, we would 11 like it if.-- I haven't looked. Alan Madison, the Task n iL g Force leader, has looked at that. We actually want a plant 13 in shutdown. We want to see what happens and so wo think 14 there is a pretty good chance based on the population of j () 15 ' plants we picked, but yes, we are looking for a plant in 16 shutdown. 17 MR. BARTON: Now if several of th9 eight plants 18 get unfortunately into a forced shutdown, wh3t does that do 19 to your pilot program? Does that impact it or -- 20 MR. GILLESPIE: Oh, no , that's great. 21 MR. BARTON: Okay. 22 MR. GILLESPIE: I shouldn't say it's great until 23 we force somebody to shut down, but it means something 24 happened and the question is would the PIs in the inspection 25 process have picked it up before the forced shutdown?
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93 1 So that would not be a bad occurrence -- I~' 2 MR. BARTON: It would give you a different look
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3 but you won't be able to track the month-to-month PIs? 4 MR. GILLESPIE: No, because once they are shut 5 down, they are down and then you go into a different process 6 and this is one of the holes we currently have is we 7 promised that we would try to develop in some sense some 8 shutdown PIs. 9 MR. BARTON: That was my next question. Do you 10 have an operating program and a shutdown program? 11 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes, we are going to need a set of 12 shutdown PIs that go to multiple water sources, availability 13 of ultimately heat sink, multiple power sources being -- a 14 kind of configuration set of PIs tha: could easily be -- () 15 MR. BARTON: But that is not yet developed? 16 MR. GILLESPIE: No, and that is something we are 17 committed to doing in the next six weeks, and that is one 18 that is going to be one of the harder ones because of Staff l 19 availability with the right expertise. 20 MR. BARTON: Okay. 21 MR. GILLESPIE: By the way, if we don't, it's not 22 the end of the world because we revert back to what we are 23 doing today. 24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Sure. l l 25 MR. GILLESPIE: So it is not a total void. i l l 1 [}
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i 2 the whole pilot program, since it is a relatively short 3 period to begin with, that's all. ) 1 4 MR. GILLESPIE: Mike -- you are being silent on 5 me, Mike?
)
6 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, I am. 7 (Laughter.] l 8 MR. GILLESPIE: I was anticipating a question too. L 9 MR. JOHNSON: That's no accident. 10 [ Laughter.] 11 MR. JOHNSON: There was a question about the l 12 distinction between an oversight program and a regulated l l 13 activity or process and we talked about that quite a bit, 14 and George, that was your question. 15 Would you restate the question or give some l 16 context and we will try again? 17 l DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Okay. If you look at the 1 l 18 document the Staff has prepared and you go to Appendix H, ! l ! 19 where the performance indicators are selected, the general 20 approach is to look at the number of plants over the l 21 industry, across the industry, and say look at i 22 unavailability, unavailability of a particular system or the 23 initiating events and so on and have a histogram, which I 24 understand was supplied by NEI to you, of how well each 25 plant' performed on that particular metric, so I have now,
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95 i 1- say, 35 inputs on initiating events. () 2 3 Then the threshold for action.is selected such that about 95 percent of the plants have a frequency that is i 4 less than the threshold and five percent are above, so now ! l 5 the question is -- okay. That creates a problem in my mind. { 6' The problem is the following. An inspection 7 program is a quality control program really., You want to t j 8 make sure'if we borrow the terminology from manufacturing l i 9 that you'have a process that is producing something and=the L 10 process is acceptable. l 11 What you want to do with inspections is to make r ! 12- sure that the process has not changed, okay, with time, so , i l 13 every Monday or every first Monday of the month you take a l t . 14 sample of 10 items You do your measurements and you { () 15 declare, yes, it has not changed. A change might be a shift , 16 in the mean or increase in the variance'and so on, j f i ! 17 So the critical' item tre is or the point is that l 18 all you want to do with the inspection process is to make 19 sure that the way the plant was remains -- that it is the l 20 same.way in the future. 21 If I select the lower 95 percent, the threshold as l 22 the 95th percentile of the distribution of plant to plant 23 variability, then what happens to those five percent plants 1 i 24 that are above the threshold. I am not now making sure with i 1 1 25 my inspections that even though their frequency was higher, t
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96 1 it remains there, it has not gone up, because if it goes (~') 2 down of course it's nice. kJ 3 So I am not really -- I am deviating now from the 4 idea of quality control because I am saying the threshold is 5 at, say, three when there's a number of plants that were at 6 five, seven, and eight. What is going to happen to those 7 plants? 8 Are they going to be forced to come down to three, 9 in which case this is not quality control anymore. This is 10 now regulation, okay? Or what? 11 See, conceptually now the process has changes. 12 Instead of making sure that whoever had five remained at 13 that level or improved, now we are telling them that five 14 was not good enough to begin with. That is not inspection
) 15 anymore. We are beyond inspection now. You are telling 16 them what to do.
17 The answer we got last time was that while these 18 are thresholds that will act as a red flag that will tell us 19 something is going on and that we'll look into it and take 20 it from there and you will make sure that this will not 21 become an additional regulatory action, but this is really 22 my concern. 23 It seems to me it is a fundamental conceptual l 24 point -- what is the purpose of inspection? The purpose of l 25 inspection in my mind is this plant is operating now. It (~N ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. s (s- ) Court Reporters ! 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
97 1 has an unavailability for.the RHR system of .025. I want to () 2 3 make sure through my inspection program that it does not become .06 -- but it is none of my business. I don't have 4 the authority to tell them .025 is too high, you should 5 reduce it. Somebody else should have that authority, not 6 'the' inspection program. That was the concern. 7 MR. GILLESPIE: Go ahead, start. 8 MR. BARANOWSKY: There's a lot of stuff there, 9 George. 10 We could pick this threshold anywhere. We have to 11 pick the point in any QA process where we trip our flag, if 12 you will, and we ask ourselves are things getting out of 13 whack here to the point where we have to take some action? 14 In this case, we have picked it at the 95 percent 15 for the' green to white band. You could raise the same 16 question, by the way, with the white to yellow band. There 17 is not a regulatory requirement that would keep the 18 temporary change in core damage frequency to less than 10 to 19 .the minus 5, for instance, so these were just points that we 20 picked that we thought made some sense for us to in a graded 21 manner increase our observation of licensees to be sure that 22 these indications that went beyond those points were nothing 23 more than maybe aberrations and that in fact the licensee i I
-24 would be taking appropriate actions to maintain a level of 25 performance that is deemed to be acceptable and doesn't i
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98 1 require any NRC directed activities toward them. 2 So these are-really observction points and no l J 3 action would be taken unless there was an observation that 4 the trend was there and that there was a regulatory ; i 5 requirement that needed to be satisfied, so that we weren't j 6 necessarily talking about forcing certain availability or 7 trip frequency requirements on licensees. What we're trying 8 to find out is if'these indications in the first threshold 9 was to get the earliest one possible were indicative or 10 problems that could lead to more significant changes in 11 performance -- because our whole philosophy on this thing is 12 to take small steps first and keep everything operating in 13 the regime where we don't have major problems develop and l l 14 major regulatory responses by both the licensee and the NRC. () 15 MR..GILLESPIE: George, let me get to what I think l 16 your point is and that is the possibility of an unattended 17 result. We are going to publish these' reports. It is going 18- to show someone who's busted a threshold and while what Pat 19 said is exactly right on how we would react, there would be 20 a published report that shows a threshold broken, and that 21 has spinoff potential just as SALP scores got used in 22 financial markets and other things, so there is a 23 possi. '.ity of an unintended result, and this is something 24 after at least the first year -- I don't think we are going 25 to have enough information from the pilots, but your 4 l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 ! (202) 842-0034
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J 99 1 articulation of what the program is trying to achieve was
.2 correct.
3 One of the things that-they did when they came up l l with the 95 percent was they actually looked back at -- Pat, l 4 l j 5 I don't remember the years -- '91 through '95? 6 MR. BARANOWSKY: I thought it was.'92 to -- j l 7 MR. BARTON: '92 to '95 or '92 to '96 or '93 to ! 8 '97 -- something like that. I l 9 MR. GILLESPIE: I forget the years, and really 10 when we are setting a threshcid it is sustaining that level 11 of safety, so you are absolutely right. The problem then is 12 saying are you continuing to operate at that level of 13 safety? 14 If there is something inherent in a design which f 15 would cause someone to be outside or it's correspondingly 16 made up for someplace else becaus,e of a specific design 17 difference -- maybe it's multiple diesels or some other 18 ' specific design difference, I think we would have to commit l 19 to looking at that after the first year, to step back and 20 say what are the unintended results, because it is a 21 distinct possibility. !
-22 On the other hand, it may be a non-problem because l 1
23 we picked the baseline year, you might say, to -- I hate to 24 say we have defined safety, but from the oversight 25 perspective we have defined at least a threshold of safety I
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100 1 as an indicator in '92 through '96.
-s .( } 2 It may be that those plants today -- it may be 100 3 percent if we picked today, and so I don't know. I have a 4 hard time -- I don't want to assume five percent of the 5 plants are outside or inside. We need some experience and if 6 that means it needs to be customized because of .
7 plant-specific engineering differences, I think we have to 8 be open-minded enough after about the first year to say part l 9 of the feedback is now let's start customizing these things 10 plant to plant to plant to plant, where it makes sense, and 11 where there's an engineering difference or some -- you need 12 some concrete foundation for it, not just that they modified l l 13 three procedures. 14 I think we have to be open-minded enough to say l ((~\) 15 that that is a distinct possibility. 16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I realize that -- l 17 MR. GILLESPIE: It is the unintended effect I 18 think you were getting at. ! 19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Exactly, and I wanted to -- I 20 think it is interesting though that, you know, we have to 21 discuss this conceptual problem of what is the intent of an l 22 inspection program, because another question might be -- l 23 see, fundamentally the more I think about it, the more I am l l 24 leaning towards the point of view that this really should be 25 eventually plant-specific. ("D ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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101 1 DR. KRESS: Should be a percent change of the () 2 plants -- baseline, yes. 3 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: You should have some sort of a l 4 plant-specifi'c threshold. You can't do that right now, of j 5 course. l 6 MR. GILLESPIE: I think we are very open to that 7 comment, too. l 8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Because let me give you the I 9 other example. I don't know if we all have this thick i 10 document -- f 11 MR. BARTON: It's the SECY paper. 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, the SECY paper, page -21. 13 MR. GILLESPIE: I am not sure if we brought it. 1 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: This is the BWR RHR system i D) (, le unavailability, so the threshold is set at .015 and there ! 16 are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight plants 17 that are above it, okay? But there are also several plants !
-l 18 that have an unavailability for that system that is i 1
19 significantly lower, so let's take Plant Number 33 -- 33, l J 20 okay? That has an unavailability which is what? --
.003?
21 Something like that, 3 times 10 to the minus 3, right? 22 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes. 23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Three times 10 to the minus 3, 24 Your threshold is at 1.5 10 to the minus 2, so 25- there is a significant gap. Is the intent of the inspection a i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. [ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l ' j Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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102 1 program to make sure that Plant Number 33 nill not have an l
) 2 unavailability greater than three 10 to the minus 3 or to
[/ x_ 3 make sure thau its unavailability stays below the threshold? ) 4 In other words, are you giving now a license to 5 that plant to increase the unavailability by about an order 6 of -- i 7 MR. GILLESPIE: No. No , no , no. George -- here 8 ls one of the -- l 9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: So it is really plant-specific. I 10 MR. GILLESPIE: And you have hit one of the 11 limitations of what we have done. We have picked a limited 12 number of systems so the idea of trading cne system against 13 the other in this indication process -- it is not complete. l 14 It is not complete. (~% () 15 Now Steve Mayes's work in now Research I guess as 16 of two weeks ago, looking down longer term, would collect 17 the reliability data which would be more complete. I don't 18 want to say it is perfect. I am just kind of roughly 19 familiar with where Steve is going with it, so in the l 20 long-term the agency has a program in place which would get 21 you that sense of a profile across all the major safety 22 systems versus just picking four and saying okay, these four
- 23 are kind of indicative of what is happening to all of them, l
l 24 and it's a basic limitation. i 25 It is not that we are giving those guys license te ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
103 1 operate sloppily -- [) N/ 2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: All right. 3 MR. GILLESPIE: That is not the intent. 4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I know that is not the intent, 5 but I mean -- 6 MR. GILLESPIE: So I think Steve is on a two -- 7 maybe a two year -- 8 MR. BARANOWSKY: I just left a meeting -- 9 MR. GILLESPIE: Help me out. You are letting me 10 drown. 11 MR. BARANOWSKY: Whether we should have 12 plant-specific or peer group specific thresholds for these 13 things and we are looking into those as to what is 14 practical. f' (_) 15 When you go to plant-specific it gets a little bit 16 hard because you don't have enough data to work with to know 17 what the practical bounds are on it so we have some 18 statistical issues to deal with. Believe me, we couldn't 19 handle them in the few months that we did this over here, 20 but we know that we would likely want to see some 21 differences when you see Pla ; -- what is it? -- 78, for 22 instance is almost zero unavailability, so there's quite a 23 big spread here in terms of orders of magnitude. 24 I wouldn't disagree with that but from a practical 25 point of view, this is what we came up with for today. T ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. [s / Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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L i 104 1 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I understand that and I am not f () 2 3 particularly criticizing-this. I am just raising the point that eventually they have to be plant-specific, the ! I 4 thresholds. Now when eventually is I do not know. 5 MR. BARANOWSKY: Or peer group or something but we 6 are going to come back here with that program that Frank was 7 talking about in the not-too-distant future, a few months. 8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But this is not very novel, 9 though. My understanding is that in the maintenance rule it 10 was each licensee that set the thresholds, the criteria, so j 11 this is not unreasonable. I mean you give them general 12 guidance and then each licensee comes back and says yes, for i 1 13 me the threshold for RHR unavailability is this, i 14 I mean you don't have to do every little detail ! ( 15 because that is a burden, of course, but right now I agree. i l l 16 As long as we all understand that this is the first step, 17 that there are these limitations and that the intent of an l 18 inspection program is not really to tell the licensees what 19 .to do. It is just to confirm that what is out there, what 20 we thought was out there is indeed there. ( 21 MR. BONACA: Yes, and I would like to add one 22 thing. Your point is well-taken, George, from a perspective I 23 of really the foundation to monitoring a plant is trending I j 24 and not absolute comparison with something that may be ! 25 unrelated. I I i { ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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L i l 105 1 What I mean by that is that if'you have a very low {) 2 unavailability and you trend higher and higher, even if you , 3 don't meet the threshold it would have to be a concern that 4 you have the trend. l 5_ MR. GILLESPIE: Yes, and it is important in this , 6 process. This is the regulatory process. The intention was j '7 _that these thresholds for our intervention would be set at a l 1 8 point where the licensee in fact has the opportunity to j 9 trend without our involvement, so in fact they are kind of 10 looser for the majority of the plants, because the intention 11 wasn't for us to get involved with the small incremental ' 12 change in unavailability or on the first scram. ! 13 The intent was that the licensee has to have 14 enough freedom to actually have something randomly occur -- j () 15 we are looking for a systematic flaw, something that is ) systemic that goes across, and we are actually now saying we i 16 ; 17 are recognizing random flaws exist. You should be able to 18 trend those random flaws and correct them before they get so I 19 systematic to cross this boundary, and so the philosophy is 20 there. 21 Something George said -- there's more than 22 plant-specific here. In the future just going 7 23 plant-specific with these PIs is not enough. It has to also i 24 be complete. 25 These are four safety systems, not all the safety
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1 106 1 systems, and I am going to expect that when someone crosses A ( 2 a boundary the first thing they are going to do is come in 3 with a system that we are not tracking and say but see how 4 good this one is, so in risk space we are really not there 5 'cause this is better than our prior assumption. 6 It is going to be interesting to see how we have 7 to deal with that. I expect that there will be some plants 8 that will come in with that argument. 9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. 10 MR. GILLESPIE: So there is a sense of 11 plant-specific but there -- or peer group specific -- the 12 completeness. We have to work towards those two goals. 13 DR. KRESS: Excuse me. I would, before we get off 14 this point, I would like to express just a little bit of () 15 difference in opinion with George's concept. 16 George's concept is a good one that the purpose of i 17 your inspection is to go in and ensure that the licensee has 18 maintained its licensing basis in the sense of performance, 19 and that it is a way to do that. I think your inspection 20 program has more than that as a fundamental objective. 21 I think there are plants out there with varying 22 levels of safety, if you will, and that those that are at a l 23 level of safety that is not very good, let's say, need more l 24 inspection, need more attention, and the part of the 25 inspection program is to perhaps identify those kinds of
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107 ; 1 plants, so there is an element of absolutism. + () 2 3 You were talking about relative change, trending, for. example, versus the absolute level. I think you need a 4 little bit of both in there'and so I would say that to have 5 absolute thresholds that some plants are outside of is -- 6 probably should be part of the system also, as well as your 7 concept. ; i 8- DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But what to do about it is not ! 9 pa.rt of this. 10 DR. KRESS: Oh, that's right. You're just < 11 identifying it. ! l 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. Just identifying it. > l 13 DR. KRESS: You are not necessarily identifying 14 when the licensee is changing. You are identifying his ! () 15 relative status to the other plants, and I think that is 16 important too. 17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I think it is important, yes. 18 DR. KRESS: Okay. I i 19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But my point is that when you 20 set the thresholds, one way is to do what the Staff did, 21 given the time pressures they had. You look at the plant to l 22 plant variability and pick the 95th, approximately the 95th 23 percentile. 24 In an ideal world though, okay, I would try to j l 25 have. thresholds that form a coherent whole, which comes back L 4 I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ) I Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034 i
1
- 108 1 to what Frank was saying, that maybe they have a high RHR 2 system' unavailability because they have something else 3 somewhere else that compensates for that. Ultimately what 4~ -matters is the accident sequences. l 5- Ultimately it is the LERF, the CDF and those I i
6 things, because that is the real thing, so in an ideal world ' l 7 again you would have a coherent set of these criteria and by 8 looking at those sequences say yes, those guys have a high 9 rate of these initiators but look at what else they have, j 10 right? l 11 And then you want to make sure that that is
- 12 preserved, that is the inspection program's --
13 MR. BONACA: And what it is really pointing out is 14 preserving the function rather than the specific piece of
'15 equipment that you are using. -16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: That's right. That's right.
l 17 MR. BONACA: Because, especially the older plants, l l 18 typically, were not symmetric as much as the newer plants. 19 They have multiple systems to make up water, for example, 20 for high pressure. And so if you only look at one 1 21 component, it may be under design by the standards, but then ! 22 for a PRA, you see that you have plenty of over-compensation
- 23 -from other. So, to some degree, right now, going to look at 24 just equipment components' performance rather than bigger 25- functions like, I don't know, high pressure injection, okay, i
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109 1 you may tend to over-penalize some of the units, () 2 particularly the older ones.
- 3. DR. KRESS: Yes, but that is why they had this 1
4- matrix. 5 MR. BONACA: In degree. 6 DR. KRESS: You know, it is two out of three, or 7 three out of four. 8 SPEAKER: Yeah, and that was to temper -- ;
- 9 DR. KRESS
- And that is an attempt to take care of I i
10' that. ' 11 MR.' JOHNSON: Yeah, let me -- in fact, if I can 11 2 remind us, we are talking about a system that tries to seize l
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13 on performance indicators, or inspections used like ; 14 performance indicators, as a first sign as to whether we { () 15 ought to engage. The actions that we take are very much 16 going to need to be plant-specific, as is indicated by the 17 action matrix. You know, something that when a plant -- 18 plant A crosses a threshold, there may be factors, as you 19 are going through this matrix, and you decide that you are 20 going to do some inspection to follow-up on that, that lead 21 you to believe that the licensee is on top of it, that there 22 are other things that are going on that make this threshold 23 not be maybe as applicable for that plant. j l 24 So, I mean there's flexibility within the matrix. l 25 The actions are very much going to be based on what is going I I L l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. i i Court Reporters i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 ; Washington, D.C. 20036 i' l (202) 842-0034 t l 4
l 110 1 on at the plant. And in any -- and in all cases, as Pat l f~%, (s.-) 2 pointed out, the actions are going to be tied to our ability 3 as the regulator to take action based on some regulatory 4 requirement. It is very much our notion -- in fact, when 5 you look at the action matrix, the actions that we talk l 6 about are regulatory actions. It is not -- we are not 7 relying on some pressure or influence on licensees to 8 perform with respect to the thresholds. 9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: When -- I mean the pilots will 10 last six months, the inspection six months? 11 MR. JOHNSON: Yes. Yes. 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: And then what? At some point 13 you have to issue something, right? 14 MR. JOHNSON: Well, the approach is that we will i (~N) (, 15 have success criteria for the pilot that we provide to the 1 16 Commission, that we will do the pilot plant -- the pilot l 17 plant activity for six months. Near the end of that pilot 18 plant activity, we will go back and look at the results 19 against those success criteria and, absent an indication l 20 that we haven't been able to meet those success criteria, l 21 and we expect to make some changes to our procedures and l 22 processes based on the pilot, but, absent any indication I 23 that we have had a pilot, we plan to then proceed with full 24 implementation for all plants, and that should happen in 25 January 2000. O
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111 1 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Now, two questions. Can you () f~ . 2 include in the eight plants, I think, eight pilots, one or 1 3 two which are in the 5 percent area? So that it will be 4 interesting to see how we handle those. And, second, can ' 5 you -- do you have the time now to really think seriously 6 about the plant-specific nature of the thresholds and this t 7 coherent system that I mentioned earlier, or is that a j 8 refinement that has to come later, or it will have to wait 9 until we see the lessons learned from the pilots? I 10 MR. GILLESPIE: No, I think in parallel. 11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Parallel. 12 MR. GILLESPIE: I mean the key is going to be -- 13 and this is kind of, I will say, a new union between the 14 inspection program and research. And so we are going to O ( ,/ 15 have long-term things. And Pat, you are coming next month, 16 you said? 17 MR. BARANOWSKY: Yes. 18 MR. GILLESPIE: So you are going to see us sending 19 user requests over to research to deal with the one year, 20 two year timeframe, where we need a stronger basis for doing 21 things. 22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I see. 23 MR. GILLESPIE: And the focus in NRR will be kind 24 of on tactical, the tactical day-to-day, how do we keep it 25 going and incrementally improve it. So, yeah, we are going ['l s-
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i 112 1 to be walking hand-in-hand, so it will be in parallel. () 2 They are not going to wait for us to finish the 3 pilots to continue doing what they are doing on more risk 4 based indicators. 5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: So how about the other question 6 of whether one or two of the eight plants will be -- 7 MR. DAVIS: Dave? j 8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Please come to the microphone l 9 and identify yourself first. 1 I 10 MR. GAMBERONI: This is Dave Gamberoni of NRR. I 11 The pilot -- right now we are still finalizing the
- 12 selections, but we have chosen plants across the full range l 13 of performance. We have plants which we believe should 14 definitely exceed the thresholds.
O( ,) 15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Okay. So then it will be j 16 interesting to see -- 17 MR. GILLESPIE: Yeah. I mean that was one of the 18 things I said earlier. 19 MR. BARTON: They are not all green plants. 20 MR. GILLESPIE: They are not all green plants. I l l 21 mean the ideal industry selection would be you get all green 22 plants and you say, see. 23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yeah. 24 MR. GILLESPIE: And that wouldn't test the system. I 25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Thank you. I think we covered l l O
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-1 the third bullet as ve.l.
() 2 MR. GILLE!: PIE: Right.. Okay. Good. j
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'3- DR. APOS'ICLAKIS : Then --
t c 4 MR. BARTON: The third bullet is covered. 5' DR. APOSTOLAKIS: The fourth then. Yeah, this -- l 6 I don:t remember asking the question, but it is a good ! 7 question. 1 don't~ mind having my name. I don't think that I 8 as a committee, at least I haven't, have spent -- have- ! 9 scrutinized those little fault tree type diagrams you have ; 10 in the report, and the logic there is not always i 11 ' transparent. 12 MR. BARANOWSKY: But it is scrutable. 13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Now, of course, when you want i 14 something, you can't find it. Oh, here, maybe I am lucky. () 15 , No, I am not. 'Do you -- can you help me here, Pat? 16 MR. BARANOWSKY: Which one are you looking for/
]
.17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Any one.
.18 MR. BARTON: H --
19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Where you have -- no, no, it is 20 -not in -- 21 MR. BARTON: He is not looking at the PIs. 22 MR. BARANOWSKY: Appendix II-II? 23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: II-II, let's see -- 24 MR. BARANOWSKY: Appendix 2, I guess that is
- 25 appendix. l 4
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I 114 1 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: II-II -- two -- two-A. () 2 MR. BARANOWSKY: It is Roman numeral two-dash-two. 3 MR. BARTON: What appendix, where hre you? ' 4 MR. BARANOWSKY: It is one of these -- 5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: A, B, C. , 6 MR. BARANOWSKY: One of these charts. 7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yeah, one of those. Yeah. We 8 have A, B, C. How come you have Roman II? i 9 MR. BARANOWSKY: I think that is appendix -- 10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Oh, attachment. 11 MR. BARANOWSKY: Attachment 2. 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Attachment 2. 13 MR. BARANOWSKY: Yeah. No, it is Attachment 3, 14 Appendix 2. () 15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Attachment 3, Appendix 2. 16 MR. BARANOWSKY: Page -- yeah, that has got to be 17 it. 18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Roman II, you are right, now we 19 found the Romans. 1 20 MR. BARANOWSKY: And page 2 or 1, or whatever one 21 you want to talk about. I think that is the chart you are 22 looking for. It is about two-thirds of the way back in the 23 document. 24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Okay. Which page? 25 MR. BARANOWSKY: I am looking at Roman numeral O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 1
~ l 115 I 1 1 II-II. ! ['N}
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2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: II-II, I think we found it.
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l i ! 3 MR. BARANOWSKY: See, that one is on mitigating 4 systems. Is that -- do you have that? l 5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, on mitigating systems. The ! 6 one before was on initiating events, right? 7 MR. BARANOWSKY: Yes. 8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: See, I am sure there is logic 9 here, but if I look at it without talking to you, -- 10 MR. BARANOWSKY: Right. 11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: What do I see here, mitigating ]' l 12 systems. That's the top level, then there is design, 13 protection against external events, configuration control, 14 equipment performance, procedure quality, human performance. (3 ( ,) 15 MR. BARANOWSKY: These attributes were primarily 16 the ones that were brain-stormed out in the workshop that we 17 had in September of '98, end of September 1998. 18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Now, for a mitigating system 19 itself, you will have the unavailability as the metric, 20 right, as a performance indicator? We just discussed the 21 RHR unavailability, didn't we? i 22 MR. BARANOWSKY: Right. What we said was for l l 23 mitigating systems, that unavailability -- or availability, 24 reliability and capability were the three performance 25 attributes that we were concerned about assuring. l [} k/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
i l 116 j 1 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Now, isn't capability part of () 2 reliability? 3 MR. BARANOWSKY: Well, we went through that 4 argument, too. And some people might like to say ic is, , 5 some don't. It depends on how you want to define it. ! 6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Well, it says reliability is the 7 probability of successful operation for a period of time. 8 MR. BARANOWSKY: I guess it is a matter of -- 9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: If you are incapable of 10 operating, how can you have successful operation? , 11 MR. BARANOWSKY: I think that is from a ' 12 specification point of view. For instance, if someone
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13 didn't have the right specification, and the system was 14 tested out as showing that it could always operate, and that i 15 it was available based on record-keeping, but that, in fact, ) I 16 during an accident, its functional capability would not be ' 1 1 17 adequate because of specification, that's what the l 18 capability part meant. 19 MR. GILLESPIE: It gets at the heart of the 20 design. 21 MR. BARANOWSKY: But I mean I do the same thing, 22 when I am doing an analysis of reliability, I say if the 23 equipment is not capable, it is not reliable. l 24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Sure. l l l 25 MR. BARANOWSKY: I can't count on it. Reliability l l l j ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l~ 117 1 is can I count on it. I can't count on it. () 2 MR. GILLESPIE: Yeah, one of the problems with we 3 have here is when you are collecting data on reliability or 4 unavailability, it doesn't get at the essence of what 5 happens if it was misdesigned or modified and, therefore, l 6 its capability to provide the necessary function has been 7 degraded unknowingly. It is very reliable but it only 8 provides half the flow needed to do what needs to be done. 9 So -- 10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I wouldn't call it reliable. 11 MR. GILLESPIE: Right. Right. But, see, the 12 number -- but the number gets reported, the statistic would 13 still be there, yet, you are still open to the design 14 aspect. 15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Let me understand that. Which 16 statistic? I mean one statistic is the availability, it 17 will start. That doesn't tell you whether it supplies the 18 actual flow. 19 MR. BARANOWSKY: Correct. 20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But then in the reliability
'21 calculation, shouldn't you be looking at the actual flow?
22 MR. BARANOWSKY: Yes. I don't disagree with that 23 at all. In fact, we would ---we would take something that 24 was designed improperly and we would say it is not capable, 25 and, therefore, it is not reliable for that function. We l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ! Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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l 118 1 chose to split the things up because we were dealing with 90 2 percent of people who are inspection-oriented, not 3 reliability analysts, and that's the way they talk and 4 think, and so this jargon is based on that. 5 DR. KRESS: There is a problem with that, though, 6 George. 7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: There is no problem with it? 8 DR. KRESS: There is a problem. Reliability 9 normally is a spectrum of probabilities on whether it works 10 or not. Capability is almost a delta function. Is it or 11 not capable of doing it? And you have -- they are really 12 two different animals, and it makes some sense to treat them 13 separately, I think. 14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But reliability implies 15 capability. The system -- 16 DR. KRESS: Yeah, but if it is incapable of doing 17 it, then your reliability is zero. That's what I am saying, 18 it is a delta function, and you need to treat it differently 19 than normal reliability, which is a spectrum. So it makes 20 sense to treat them differently. I don't know how you do it 21 in a PRA, but it makes -- 22 MR. BARANOWSKY: Actually, the way we are doing it 23 here is we -- 1 I 24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Let me grant you that point, j l 25 MR. BARANOWSKY: We were going to treat it as ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters ) 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 , Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034
l 119 ; 1 being unavailable if it was incapable. { () 2' DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Okay. ! 3 DR. KRESS: Okay. That would be the way. Zero 4 unreliability. ! 5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: My point is this, is the logic 6 here the way I think it is. You have the mitigating system 7~ at the top. You have a PI, right. You have the 8 unavailability metric, or the reliability metric. Then to 9 go to the next level, I thought the thinking was what is it 10 that this performance indicator does not cover? Therefore, 11 I have to worry about it in addition to the numerical value, 12 right. 13 MR. BARANOWSKY: Yes. 24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: So you think that all of these ( 15 things, design, protection against external events, 16 configuration control, equipment performance, procedure 17 quality ar.3 human performance are not covered by the 18 unavailability? 19 MR. BARANOWSKY: No, that's not quite right. What 20 we said was, what are the attributes that the performance 21 indicator or the inspection program need to cover in order 22 to give us assurance that we really do know the reliability, 23 availability and capability of the system? 24 MR. JOHNSON: Right. What is all -- 25 MR. BARANOWSKY: We need to know these things. We i l (~ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034
l i l 120 1 couldn't identify things beyond this that we thought we () 2 needed to know. 3 DR. APOSTCLAKIS: Okay. So, now, some of these 4 are covered by the PRA and some are not. I 5 MF. BARANOWSKY: Right. l 6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: And this -- where am I going to 7 see that, not in the figure? 8 MR. BARANOWSKY: You will see it in the prior ! 9 Appendix 2 where the discussion of each of the cornerstones 10 is made. You will see this is covered by inspection, this 1 11 is ccvered by performance indicators. 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But let's go on a little bit. 13 It woula seem to me that the PRA would be a major guiding 14 force here'in determining what needs to be looked at, right? l () 15 Not just the judgment of people. 16 MR. BARANOWSKY: Right. ) i 17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I mean the judgment of people is 18 the ultimate thing, but we have to structure that judgment. 19 So, for example, you say procedure quality and human 20 performance. Why de you single out the procedure quality? l 21 I mean human. perforn.ance, it seems to me, is what you are 22 interested in. And I don't know that procedure quality is 23 the most important thing when it comes to human performance. l 24 MR. BARANOWSKY: Okay. Again, as I said. 25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: So there have been some l r i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters
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l 121 1 judgments there, some decisions already made based on (n) 2 perhaps the experience of people, but not guided by the 3 quantitative and structured approach of a PRA. 4 MR. BARANOWSKY: Okay. I can tell you this first 5 line was initially derived based on the experience of the 6 group I described at the performance assessment workshop. 7 We then brought some different folks together with a little 8 bit more PRA background, and the results of PRAs, like the 9 IPEs, for instance, in which we had summaries of the 10 important contributors to different types of plant designs 11 associated with different mitigating systems. And that is 12 where we brought in additional understanding from that 13 insight as to what aspects of these things, design and 14 procedures and so forth, were most important to pay 15 attention to, and see whether the performance indicators or 16 the inspection program covered it. 17 That's the -- basically, that was done for every 18 one of these cornerstones. l 19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But do you at some point plant i 20 to go back to the fault tree handbook or some PRA and look l 21 at how they darived the unavailability and unreliability of 22 the system and ask yourself, have these six boxes really 23 captured what the calculations do? And see -- 24 MR. BARANOWSKY: Well, I think the -- 25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: I mean get some additional l l [ ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ! k# Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034 ) i
122 l i 1 guidance perhaps what dominates. I mean, as you know, when () 2 you calculate the system unavailability, there's a bunch of 3 terms there. , 4 MR. BARANOWSKY: Right. l 5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Unavailability because the f 6 system is down due to tests, or this, and this and that. l i 7 MR. BARANOWSKY: That is why we have two risk I 8 information matrices. The first one is the generic one, 9 which was the primary tool used to derive this structure you 10 see here. Then'there is the second one which is 11 plant-specific, which says in addition to this, what do I
-12 'know about this specific plant? And, therefore, we bring in l 13 the plant-specific PRA. That is brought in in that factor.
14 The performance indicators, I don't believe need 15 the plant-specif3; PRA the way they are set up here. If we 16 were to have indicators that were more relevant to i 17 differences in design and operation, then we would have to 18 have some additional flexibility in the structure of the 19 indicator models. That's the kind of stuff we are working 20 on in the future, and that would allow us to refine our 21 whole inspection program a little bit better, but we are not 22 there yet. 23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Well, ultimately, I would like l 24 to see an argument that says, look, here is an expression 25 for the system unavailability and unreliability. Each term 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 1 1 123 1 1 represents this, so if the number is below the threshold, we l fm 6 ) 2 are covered there. What is left is something else that we
%J i 3 believe, as experienced engineers, that is important and it )
i 4 is not covered by this, we will add an extra box. So that ; 5 argument has not been made completely. 6 MR. BARANOWSKY: Well, actually, we did that kind i l 7 of thinking but we didn't jot it down for every single one 8 of these things. 9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But that is something that l l 10 eventually will make me happy. 1 11 MR. GILLESPIE: I think, George -- l 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: And I know you will make me l 13 happy. l A 14 MR. BARANOWSKY: I am going to make you happy. k_-) 15 MR. GILLESPIE: One of the ways we are trying to 16 get at a piece of what you just said is this document we 17 should have out in another couple of weeks on looking at 18 what you find. And what I mean by that is the old term 19 " regulatory significance." If you have -- six in the past, 20 if you had six to eight findings of procedural noncompliance 21 in some small period of time, several months, the licensee 22 might get a letter that says you have got a programmatic 23 failure. This is regulatory significance. It might not be 24 safety significant. 25 Part of the screening process for putting together ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l 124 1 -- because this deals with that always unknown beta factor () 2 3 that kind of goes in the front of all the terms. And one of the questions I asked the staff to do, not as -- as part of l ( l 4 the backup to attack this problem, was, given the ] 5 information that we would get from this program, how many -- i I 6' I don't know how they are going to do this -- but how many i 7 things like Appendix B violations would have to occur before l 8 it becomes safety significant? Is it six, three? Some of 9 the things we have seen in the past. Or is it 700? I mean 10 it is a phenomenal number? 11 From some work I was involved in about five years l 12 ago, I have the feeling it is a very high number. 13 MR. BARTON: I would agree. 14 MR. GILLESPIE: When I was with the Regulatory 15 Review Group, we did kind of some peer groups and saying -- 16 how much could the QA system degrade before it would 17 actually show up in safety? 18 MR. BARTON: Well, there are so many elements in 19 Appendix B and sub-elements, et cetera, it would be a high 20 number before you would say.-- l 21 MR. GILLESPIE: Philosophically, when do you get l 22 to the point where these would not show up in the 23 indications, would not.show up in inspection, so they are j 24 very subtle, yet would occur to cause the configuration of I 25 the facility so that'it would occur in an overlapping
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125 ! 1 manner, so the configuration of the facility at some time is ! yx (w/ .) 2 unsafe, or past some threshold? 3 The staff is thinking about it. It is almost an 4 unanswerable question, but we needed to start thinking that 5 way because we are going to have to have a firm basis for 6 saying -- there's, to pick the easy one, there is a 7 maintenance backlog of 1200 items at this plant. You know, 8 one might say is that safety significant? 1200 is a big 9 number. All plants count them differently. It may not be. 10 MR. BARTON: What are the man-hours, what are the 11 systems? What are -- 12 MR. GILLESPIE: What are the syctems? And do you i 1 13 -- so we are at least thinking that way now. And we almost ! 14 have to do this to deal with the other question that you l'\ (,/ 15 haven't asked about, that we do have an IOU as the staff in 16 March, that's enforcement. We have to mesh enforcement into 17 this whole scheme, because what comes out of assessment, if l 18 you are going to take action, be it an order, a notice of 19 violation -- when do you turn it over to a licensee? When 20 do you send out a notice of violation? And that is the 21 whole scale in Mike's metrics. So we have to have a sound 22 basis for why we are throwing out also what we are throwing 23 out, or you might say turning it over to the licensee. 24 I think it gets us to the essence of the trivial 25 factors, the factors that really might not matter, but yet [\' \ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
126 1 they are requirements, and you still have to comply. But [D 2 how we dispose of them is our choice. So what we are L) 3 asking, the question, is an integral hole that starts to get 4 at those insignificant factors. And I have one view on how 5 I think it will come out, but I need to let the team mull on 6 that one for a while. And so they are trying to give that 7 some thought this week as we kind of approach. How do you 8 enforce differently than you have enforced before? This is 9 a very significant change in philosophy on enforcement for 10 these kinds of items. So we are trying to get at that. 11 The last point I would like to make is plain 12 English and public readability. We have been working with 13 Public Affairs and Bill Beecher's staff, and they are about 14 -- they have put a pamphlet together, and we have gone C\ (_,/ 15 through several drafts of it. And we are going to be 16 putting a pamphlet together that takes this 400 page paper 17 down into something that is more readable for the general 18 public. And Public Affairs was very concerned that the 19 right message wasn't getting out. We eliminated SALP as an 20 institution. Gee, the NRC is backing off. Yet, under this 21 process, there will be more information available in a more 22 timely way than we have ever had before for everybody, if we 23 can put it in context. 24 So Public Affairs has kindly stepped up and teamed 25 with us to put a pamphlet together. I talked to Victor l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. [\ '} Court Reporters
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+ 1 l 127 L 1 Driggs in Public Affairs this morning. They are hoping to () 2 go to the printer late this week. So that all of us who are j 3 going out talking to people will have 100 pamphlets in our I 4 briefcases that are written in plain English. So that was 5 one of the items that we discussed here, and it is the kind j 6 of thing for reporters, League of Women Voters, public : 7 around site. , 8 Actually, I hate to say it, but it is probably l 1 9 better written than our paper, relative to understanding. 10 DR. POWERS: When you go on your evangelical 11 missions -- 12 MR. GILLESPIE: That's what we like. 13 DR. POWERS: I wondered if you speak to the ! 14 downsides as well as the upsides. 15 MR. GILLESPIE: Yeah. And, actually, we have been 16 trying to -- we are trying to be very balanced with that. 17 We-are -- and here's one of the -- the big downside is we 18 are going to be looking at less. We may have the feeling we 19 are looking more focused, and we are looking at what is 20 important, but we are clearly looking at less. And I think 21 we have -- that has a negative connotation to it. 22 DR. POWERS: Yes. 23 MR. GILLESPIE: But we may be looking at less, but 24 because we are getting PIs in and more information that 25 directly.. relate to operations, we will have -- I think we l l () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court-Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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l 1 128 j 1 will have more knowledge. I l (~h () 2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: What do you mean looking? What 3 does the word -- l 1 4 MR. GILLESPIE: Well, I think the general public, 5 and I try every once in a while to put myself in the place l 6 of that person who kind of just lives around the site and 7 just reads the paper once in a while and sees something, I . 8 think the general public generally sees that if the 9 inspectors aren't there as many hours, then they are not j 10 finding as much information. This whole concept of 11 performance indicators, I don't think -- I think it is I 12 foreign to a member of the general public. 13 MR. BONACA: That is why, you know, I asked that 14 question a week ago, and I don't see -- I still believe that I (~% l (_,) 15 you are proposing a new approach, but you are not 16 summarizing anywhere what the differences are and results 17 insofar as the areas that we are not -- you will not cover. 18 And I may feel comfortable about your assertion that you 19 looked at it, and you didn't keep the record, but the fact 20 is I would like to know what you are not going to look at. 21 And probably many other people will ask the same question. 22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: But I think we need to interpret 23 and explain the word "look." What does look mean? If you 24 look at the performance indicator, are you looking? Or 25 looking means physical inspection of an area? r i I r~% '(' ') ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
h 129 1 MR. GILLESPIE: It depends on who you are. And () 2 3 this is the quandary we are in. I believe that if you are a member of that general public population -- 4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: -They don't consider it. 5 MR. GILLESPIE: -- look is an inspector on the 6 site looking at the pump, looking at the worker doing the 7 work, looking -- being there. 8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Right. And I would then make i
-9 sure-that this pamphlet sent a message that the information 10 that becomes available to the agency from the inspection 11 program is at least as good as it used to be, and that the l 12 information does not come by looking at physical areas 13 alone.
14 MR. GILLESPIE: It probably -- it does not -- it 15 tries to say that. It doesn't go into a lot of detail, 16 because it is up here a little bit. But it is an important 17 point, George, and that iu -- l 18 DR. APOSTOLAKISi Yeah, but don't just -- l 19 MR. GILLESPIE: No, I am not dismissing it, 20 because this is our -- 21 DR. POWERS: Evangelical. 22 MR. GILLESPIE: Yeah, this is our mission. And it 23 is conceptually different. 24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: Yeah, but I mean if you focus 25 the attention on the information that the agency gets rather t ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ' ('#) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 f Washington, D.C. 20036. , (202) 842-0034 l l l I
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l l 130 1 than looking physically at areas, you are going to go a long () 2 way towards explaining -- 3 MR. GILLESPIE: And that's the attempt. Yeah. l 4 And that is the attempt, and that is our focus -- is what 5 information do you need to say the plant is safe? How we 6 get it -- but this pamphlet doesn't go that far. It is not 7 that good yet. The next printing -- the next printing -- we 8 are evolving, we are not perfect here, we are evolving. 9 DR. POWERS: I was very enthusiastic and excited 10 about your discussion ~that you presented at the subcommittee ! 11 meeting on how you respond -- how you would approach this, 12 given that the average member of the public probably has a ' 13 limited understanding of the concept of cut-sets and other ! 14 arcane vocabulary used by gentlemen of the probabilistic ; () ~5 1 persuasion. [ 16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: That's why it should be taught 17 in high schools. [ 18 DR. POWERS: And I felt that your thrust that you 19 had'in those comments of pointing out how much more you get i 20
,by this approach than you got on the other approach was an 21 awfully attractive beginning of a dialogue in this area.
22 MR. GILLESPIE: And, in fact, the day after we had 23 that meeting here, Mike -- I think'it was the day after, 24 Mike and I, Al Madison and Corny were :'u 1 Bill Beecher's 25' ' office with the entire OPA staff, including a regional rep i i i l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters t 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 ' (202) 842-0034 ;
131 1 on the phone. We were running exactly this concept, and it (m v) 2 is funny, the guy who wrote this was the regional rep in 3 Region III. So Bill actually had someone write it who was 4 separated from us. ! 5 DR. POWERS: Okay. ; 6 MR. GILLESPIE: It is interesting the way he did 7 it. And knew some -- there were some things, that he read 8 the paper, and a smart guy, and was totally kind of j 9 off-track. And so we -- I think this -- it is a first try l 10 at coming out on how to explain it. It was immediately 11 following that, so that went right from us to OPA and they, i 12 by design, had someone do it was totally ignorant of what l 13 was going on, other than hearing about it long distance. l 1 14 So I think it is a real good product as a first
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l y ) 15 go-around. So we are trying to get smarter and evolve. And 16 the technical aspects are easy, it is all this other stuff i 17 that is much harder. 18 What message do you give to whom when. Mike is 19 laughing. 20 DR. POWERS: Well, I mean the fact is that you are 21 charged with the responsibility of protecting the health and 22 safety and they would like to know how good you're doing it. 23 MR. GILLESPIE: And that's right -- and we're damn 24 good. 25 [ Laughter.] l [ ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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132 1 DR. POWERS: So far. () 2 3 [ Laughter.] MR. GILLESPIE: So far. But now we are 4 approaching the point as we get into the pilots where we are 5 going from the paper to the application in a very rapid way 6 and that is why we are going to go out and talk to the 7 states. 8 I don't know that this agency has ever taken on a 9 project of this size that is industry-wide, basically from a 10 ' concept in one January to full implementation in the next i 11 January, and we are rapidly moving from pieces of paper 12 which are easy to throw around -- was it Rickover once who ' 13 said that all paper submarines are on schedule and on time? 14 [ Laughter. ] 15 MR. GILLESPIE: So I think we are now going to 16 test the budget, the schedule, the application, the design 1 17 -. and the theory very rapidly and, you know, June is only four ' 18 months away. We are now in February. We will deliver the 19 piece of paper in March -- we promised the Commission -- and 20 it will be a damn good piece of paper. This is what I told 21 Sam Collins. He's nervous about March. I said I am not 22 nervous about March. I am nervous about June. 23 MR. BARTON: We are rapidly running out of time. 24 I think there may be some more members' questions. I l 25 There was an issue during subcommittee, a comment l O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 i (202) 842-0034
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i 133 1 made regarding executive override and the value in this and () 2 3 I don't know whether the member who asked has gotten a satisfactory response. George, I think it was you? 4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS: No, it wasn't. l 5 MR. BARTON: Okay -- then I don't know who asked ' 6 it. Whoever asked it if you are satisfied with the 7 response -- 8 [No response.] 9 MR. BARTON: Transition team makeup -- the 10 question is what is the seniormost member in the region on l 11 that team? Is it going to be a senior representative in 12' each region? 13 MR. GILLESPIE: Let me hit that. The actual 14 workers on the team are going to be generally Branch Chief () 15 level people from the regions. We have now put together, 16 and Sam will be signing out in the next day or so, calling 17 it now an Executive Council, which will likely be the Deputy 18 Regional Administrators -- i 19 MR. BARTON: -- will be part of that team? 20 MR. GILLESPIE: No, what they are going to be is 21 not a steering committee -- a murder board. We expect that l 22 when deliverables come out we will pull them together. We 23 will not be part of that. It will be basically a l 24 four-person panel that will appoint a chair and the 1 25 expectation is that that chair will sit at the Commission i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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134 1 table with us so that we can get, you might say, direct raw () 2 feedback into the system from the regions as each major 3 product comes out and at the end, so that memo is being put 4 together now. 5 It is going to be interesting to see who among the 6 regional deputy ras gets appointed to be chair, but knowing 7 in advance he is going to be sitting at the Commission table 8 with us we will probably his focus significantly on the 9 products and where they are coming from. 10 MR. BARTON: Good. 11 DR. MILLER: Is that one way you are going to get 12 some indication of regional variability? 13 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes. Yes, and difference in 14 regional comments. 15 One of the reasons we couldn't capture a deputy 16 RA -- you know the regions went through a lot of turmoil i 17 with the loss of managers and stuff we recently had. l 18 Virtually 50 percent of everyone seems to be new in whatever 19 position they are in, and there are still a number of holes, 20 and to pull a deputy RA in full-time at this point for four 21 months would have been disruptive to keeping the program 22 going, and we still have to keep the program going, so this 23 is the way we are going to address it. 24 It is going to be interesting to see who fights to 25 be chairman.of this group. l
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i 135 1 DR. SHACK: Do you want volunteers? () '2: MR. GILLESPIE: Well, the idea is they have to 3 pick among themselves so however they want to do it. No , we 4 are going to leave it to them. 5 The intent is that we shouldn't influence it. It 6 should be an independent group because they are the 7 implementers and we shouldn't dominate those -- their 8 critiques.
- j. 9 MR. MADISON: Alan Madison here. Just-so we have 10 the terminology right, we already have an Executive Council.
a 11 I was reminded of that this morning, so we will probably 12 retitle it as an Executive Forum. 13 MR. BARTON: Okay. Instead of Transition Team 14 or -- i 15 MR. MADISON: We will still have a Transition Task ; 4 ! 16 Force'but this will be an Executive Forum that will provide l 17 as Frank discussed some oversight for us. 18 MR. BARTON: Okay, Alan, thank you. 19 DR. SEALE: Could I ask, this eight pilot I l 20 candidates that you have, do you have any -- are a pair of I i 21 those run by the same operating company and in different 22 regions? 23 MR. GILLESPIE: The intent is two per region 24 because part of this is -- l 25 DR. SEALE: Yes, I know. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
136 ; l' MR. GILLESPIE: -- is a training exercise also. 2 MR ,, JOHNSON: Dave, would you come to the mike, or 3 Alan? l 4 MR. MADISON: That is not the case. We didn't 5 look at that as one of the criteria for selection. l l l 6 DR. SEALE: It will still be interesting to see l l l 7 down the road and actually I think you ought to solicit from } 8 ' operating companies whether they perceive an even l 9 enforcement or handling of this from the different regions. j i 10 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes -- we have taken that comment ) 11 back. The other interesting piece is I hope we have an 12 operating company that has -- for six months it has a plant 13 under the old system and the new system and one of the
'14 feedbacks we might ask is how did you see the difference 15 . knowing that there's some artificialities about a pilot, but 16 that will give us a comparison point.
17 MR. BARTON: The enforcement plan -- there's 18 discussion, enforcement plan, violations, severity levels, l 19 et cetera. I don't find anything regarding actions that i 1 20 lead to CALs or more severe actions. I think there was a 21 question in SRM in November '98, and I was looking through i 22 the enforcement thing and couldn't find it. Is it addressed 23 at this point? 24 How do you get from violations to severity levels 25 down to CALs or shutdown orders or whatever? I don't see l
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137 1 that in here. .Did I miss it? () 2 3 MR. JOHNSON: Well, I don't know if you missed it. The action matrix just talks about the fact that ; 4 we would take increased action including orders ofz 50.54 (f) s ; 5 and that kind of stuff. Many of the actions are considered l 6 enforcement sanctions and so the process we would use to ! 7 take those actions, if we were going to issue an order, it 8 would be the process that we use today to issue an order. 9 It's just that this action matrix, because of a l I 10 plant's performance it would drive you into that 11 consideration and then you enter that process to get the 12 order. i l 13 MR. BARTON: Okay. I had a general comment. I 14 Last time we talked about the package was put ; () 15 together by several groups,- teams, et cetera. We talked i 16 about the acronyms, need for a list of acronyms. Also, I 17 don't know what your intention is to proofread the document 18 but you will find areas where it just kind of disappears 19 into Never-Never-Land. I don't know how many there is but 20 there's an example in Attachment 4 on page 5 is one example 21 where the thing just doesn't make sense because something is 22 missing, so it looks like it really hasn't had a good j l 23 proofreading since it was put together. Does it all hold
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24 together as a document? I think you need to look at that. ) I 25 Have you got that, Mike? Attachment 4, top of page 5. ] ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O' Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 j l Washington, D.C. 20036 { (202) 842-0034 ' i
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138 1 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, I have that. () 2 3. MR. BARTON: MR. JOHNSON: It just -- Yes, thanks. 4 MR. BARTON: There is something missing there -- 5 Hat least in my-SECY paper there is. 6 DR. POWERS: Well,.if that one isn't there are 7 several other places that it looks like the cutting and 8 pasting may have overlapped a little bit or something. 9 MR. BARTON: And you need to look at that. 10 MR. JOHNSON: Right, and I think we tried to make 11 the point last time that we didn't, we didn't see ourselves 12 refining this document. This was the communication vehicle 13 to get it to the Commission and then to get it out, but we 14 do see ourselves, as Frank indicated, in going with -- to l( ) 15 put out some plain language information about the process 16 but also to then take this document and capture it into the 17 implementing procedures and so those implementing procedures 18 will get the kind of going over and we will be able to make 19 sure that we have corrected the things here. l 20 For example, the Attachment 4, I would see, I 21 speaking for the Transition Task Force a little bit, but I 22 would see Attachment 4 as very easily going into what would j 23 be a management directive that replaces today's SALP 24 management directive, for example. ! 25 MR. BARTON: Do you have any insights or inputs ; l l j l
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l l s' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters , 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
139 l 1- into the policy issues at this point? They are going to , () 2 3 have to get addressed sooner or later. MR. GILLESPIE: We have had discussions, including i 4 all-the way up through talking to Bill Travers at the EDO l 5' level with Frank Miraglia and' Pat Norry on the ! l l 6 organizational aspects that could be affected and trade-offs 7 between generalists and specialists in N-Plus-One, so -- and i 8 actually Paul Bird was there, so we have got the Human , 9 Resources people involved, so at this point it is -- they i 10 are being looked at. Nothing has been resolved but there is 11 a recognition that in general they are kind of the right l 12 issues that we have to look at. I i 1
.3 There's organizational impacts from this kind of 14 change. Now how we accommodate them and move forward has
() 15 not been decided. 16 MR. JOHNSON: Incidentally, I'll add, you know 17 there are, in fact we didn't draw out all the policy issues 18 and put them in the Commission paper but there are many more 19 policy issues and policy issues with a small "p" that we 20 will have to take on and we are trying to deal with those 21 every day. 22 For example, we don't talk a lot about the 1 23 allegation program or how that. fits in the oversight l l 24 process, but we certainly need to come to grips with that, 25 and we are working on it as we go through this transition i i I t ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters , i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014
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l [ i 140 . t l 1 period. () ~2 3 MR. BARTON: questions at this point? Do any other members have any other I 4 I have run out of my notes and I think we have 5 basically covered most of the -- I think we have covered all l l 6 of the issues that came out of the subcommittee meeting and 7 most.of the issues that came out of the comments in the l 8 Commission briefing. 9 I don't know what kind of letter we are going to ! 10 put out based on the last two meetings we have had with you, 11 but we will get a letter out from this meeting. i 12 No other comments at this point? l 13 [No response.] 14 MR. BARTON: Dana, I will turn it back to you. 15 DR. POWERS: Thank you. My perception is it will 16 be a very positive letter, by the way. The team has done an 17 awfully' good. job. 18 MR. BARTON: I don't think that's the problem. 19 It's going to be the details to support the statement that 20; says it is a positive process. 21 DR. POWERS: That will be an interesting 22 discussion. 23 DR. SEALE: The nitty and gritty. 24 DR. POWERS: I want to recess this session, ask 25- members to collect whatever they want for lunch and come l l i I . i r E O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l i Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 _ . . . ~ .
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141 1 back so we can have a little pre-discussion as needed on our 2 meeting with the Commission which will take place at one 3 o' clock, so I think we should probably count on making our ]: 4 migration over there about twenty 'til 1:00. I 5 [Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the meeting was ' 6 recessed, to reconvene at 8:30 a.m., Thursday, February 4,
'7 1999.] ;
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REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings () before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of: NAME OF PROCEEDING: 459TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS i CASE NUMBER: PLACE OF PROCEEDING: Rockville, MD () were held as herein appears, and that this is the original l transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear 1 Regulatory Commission taken by me and thereafter reduced to ' typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings. (0()^V (ilW % l Mark Mahoney 6 's Official Reporter Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
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, G DRIVE:lNTRODUCTORY f' INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT BY THE ACRS CHAIRMAN 459TH MEETING, FEBRUARY 3-6,1999 THE MEETING WILL NOW COME TO ORDER. THIS IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE 459TH MEETING OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS. DURING TODAY'S MEETING, THE COMMITTEE WILL CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING: !
(1) STATUS OF THE PROPOSED FINAL REVISION TO 10 CFR 50.59 (CHANGES, TESTS AND EXPERIMENTS) (2) PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS TO THE NRC INSPECTION AND ASSESSMENT PROGRAMS , (3) PROPOSED ACRS REPORTS IN ADDITION, THE COMMITTEE WILL MEET WITH THE NRC l COMMISSIONERS BETWEEN 1:00 AND 2:30 P.M., AT THE COMMISSIONERS' CONFERENCE ROOM, ONE WHITE FLINT NORTH, TO DISCUSS ITEMS OF MUTUAL INTEREST. THIS MEETING IS BEING CONDUCTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THE FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ACT. l l DR. JOHN T. LARKINS IS THE DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL FOR THE INITIAL PORTION OF THE MEETING. 1 WE HAVE RECEIVED NO WRITTEN STATEMENTS OR REQUESTS FOR TIME TO MAKE ORAL STATEMENTS FROM MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC l REGARDING TODAY'S SESSIONS. A TRANSCRIPT OF PORTIONS OF THE MEETING IS BEING KEPT, AND IT IS REQUESTED THAT THE SPEAKERS USE ONE OF THE MICROPHONES, IDENTIFY THEMSELVES AND SPEAK WITH SUFFICIENT CLARITY AND VOLUME SO THAT THEY CAN BE READlLY HEARD.I I I WILL BEGIN WITH SOME ITEMS OF CURRENT INTEREST. I
l 4 INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT BY THE ACRS CHAIRMAN 459TH MEETING - FEBRUARY 3-6,1999 (q ./ THE MEETING WILL NOW COME TO ORDER. THIS IS THE SECOND DAY OF THE 459TH MEETING OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS. DURING TODAY'S MEETING, THE COMMITTEE WILL CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING: (1) PROPOSED FINAL REVISION TO 10 CFR 50.65(a)(3) OF THE MAINTENANCE RULE (2) SECY-98-244, NRC HUMAN PERFORMANCE PLAN (3) PROPOSED RESOLUTION OF GENERIC SAFETY ISSUE (GSI) B-61, ALLOWABLE ECCS EQUIPMENT OUTAGE PERIODS l (4) FIRE PROTECTION ISSUES (5) PROPOSED ACRS REPORTS THIS MEETING IS BEING CONDUCTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE l I PROVISIONS OF THE FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ACT. I MR. SAM DURAISWAMY IS THE DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL FOR THE INITIAL PORTION OF THE MEETING. I WE HAVE RECEIVED NO WRITTEN STATEMENTS FROM MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC REGARDING TODAY'S SESSIONS. WE HAVE RECEIVED A REQUEST FROM MR. MCINTYRE, WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC COMPANY, FOR TIME TO MAKE ORAL STATEMENTS REGARDING LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE REVIEW OF THE AP600 DESIGN. A TRANSCRIPT OF PORTIONS OF THE MEETING IS BEING KEPT, AND IT IS REQUESTED THAT THE SPEAKERS USE ONE OF THE MICROPHONES, IDENTIFY THEMSELVES AND SPEAK WITH l SUFFICIENT CLARITY AND VOLUME SO THAT THEY CAN BE READ 1LY HEARD. p) l
p INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT BY THE ACRS CHAIRMAN 459TH MEETING - FEBRUARY 3-6,1999 ll THE MEETING WILL NOW COME TO ORDER. THIS IS THE THIRD DAY OF THE 459TH MEETING OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR I SAFEGUARDS. DURING TODAY'S MEETING, THE COMMITTEE WILL CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING: (1) THERMAL-HYDRAULIC PHENOMENA SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT (2) FOLLOW-UP ITEMS RESULTING FROM THE ACRS RETREAT (3) REPORT OF THE PLANNING AND PROCEDURES SUBCOMMITTEE (4) FUTURE ACRS ACTIVITIES (5) RECONCILIATION OF ACRS COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS (6) PROPOSED ACRS REPORTS O A PORTION OF TODAY'S MEETING MAY BE CLOSED TO DISCUSS ORGANIZATIONAL AND PERSONNEL MATTERS THAT RELATE SOLELY TO THE INTERNAL PERSONNEL RULES AND PRACTICES OF THIS ADVISORY COMMITTEE, AND MATTERS THE RELEASE OF WHICH WOULD CONSTITUTE A l CLEARLY UNWARRANTED INVASION OF PERSONAL PRIVACY. ) THIS MEETING IS BEING CONDUCTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THE FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ACT. i DR. JOHN T. LARKINS IS THE DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL FOR THE INITIAL PORTION OF THE MEETING. WE HAVE RECEIVED NO WRITTEN STATEMENTS OR REQUESTS FOR TIME TO MAKE ORAL STATEMENTS FROM MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC O
REGARDING TODAY'S SESSIONS. A TRANSCRIPT OF PORTIONS OF THE MEETING IS BEING KEPT, AND IT IS REQUESTED THAT THE SPEAKERS USE ONE OF THE MICROPHONES, IDENTIFY THEMSELVES AND SPEAK WITH SUFFICIENT CLARITY AND VOLUME SO THAT THEY CAN BE READILY HEARD. O O
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v% e STATUS OF 10 CFR 50.59 RULEMAKING February 3,1999 Eileen M. McKenna Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation l l j
O O O' '! i RULE OBJECTIVES i e Preserve integrity of licensing basis
- Clarify requirements
- when evaluation is required
- criteria for NRC approval e Allow " minimal" changes without approval
O O O^ BACKGROUND e March 24,1998 SRM directs staff to prepare proposed rule to allow " minimal" increases e SECY-98-171 dated July 10,1998 forwards proposed rule
, o September 25,1998 SRM approves publication for comment with additions and changes, including request for comment on a range of options for margin of safety and other issues such as scope e Proposed rule published October 21,1998
O O O' SRM ON SECY-98-171 e Publish proposed rule for 60 day comment period (include SRM and votes in FR notice)
- e Solicit comment on
- wide array of options for margin of safety
- options for defining " minimal" for probability
- definitions (e.g., facility, procedures...)
- need for clear definition of " accident" e Schedule e Approved proposals on enforcement discretion
O O O' CHANGES TO FR NOTICE e Discussion on " accident" e Options on margin
- what are the margins
- amount of reduction without approval
- deletion of margin as a criterion e Other inserts (voting record, request for comment) 1
O~ O O MARGIN OPTIONS e Control inputs to analyses that establish TS requirements i:nonconservative manner) e Delete margin of safety as criterion e Control results of safety analyses
- fission product barriers
- specified parameters
- degree of change allowed i:e.g., " minimal")
- evaluation methods
O O O~ CURRENT STATUS e 58 Comment letters received - 300 pages - commenters include power reactor licensees, other organizations (NEl, law firms, vendors), individuals e Key issues raised in comments . Margin of safety proposals Guidance on minimal increases in probability and consequences, including cumulative effects Screening of changes Clarifications on definitions Part 72 Enforcement policy Guidance development
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. APPROACH AND SCHEDULE e Staff is presently analyzing comments to identify policy issues for Commission action and needed rule changes d e Alternative approach to allow Commission direction on certain key issues before completion of final rule
- Paper on February 19 with comment discussion and staff recommendations concerning margin, scope and other issues
- Final rule April 30 following Commission feedback in March
- Potential Future changes to 50.59 i
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