ML20205H204
| ML20205H204 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 11/06/1985 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-1466, NUDOCS 8511150024 | |
| Download: ML20205H204 (127) | |
Text
ORIGINAL
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oo UlN11EU STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION IN THE MATTER OF:
DOCKET NO:
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS SUBCOMMITTEE ON LONG RANGE PLAN FOR THE NRC O~
LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D. C.
PAGES: 1 - 124 DATE:
WEDNESDAl, NOVEMBER 6, 1985 w?.
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA O
2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4
SUBCOMMITTEE ON LONG RANGE PLAN FOR THE NRC 5
Nuclear Regulatory Commission 6
Room 1046 1717 H Street, N.W.
7 Washington, D. C.
8 Wednesday, November 6, 1985 9
The sWacommittee met at 8:30 a.m., Dr. Max W. Carbon 10 presiding.
l 11 PRESENT:
12 i
l DR. MAX W. CARBON s
/
13 DR. DADE W. MOELLER i
DR. FORREST J.
REMICK l
l MR. GLENN A.
REED 14
.l MR. CHARLES J. WYLIE 15 f; 16 17:
18 f l
19 20 j
i 21 1
22 23 t
('S 24 4
F_ _j a morars,im.
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PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONERS' ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1985 The contents of this stenographic transcript.of the proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS)., as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at b>
this meeting accepts any responsibility for errors or
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inaccuracies of statement or data contained in this transcript.
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PROCEEDINGS 2
DR. CARBON:
(presiding)
The meeting will now 3
come to order.
4 This is a meeting of the Advisory Committee on 5
Reactor Safeguards, Subcommittee on Long Range Plan for the 6
NRC.
7 I am Max Carbon, Chairman of the subcommittee.
8 Other ACRS members present are Dade Moeller, Forrest Remick, 9
and Charles Wylie.
10 The purpose of this meeting is to discuss long I
11 range planning with the NRC.
During the meeting the 12 subcommittee will hold discussions with three knowledgeable 13 individuals on topics related to the future of nuclear 14 power -- Victor Stello, Deputy Executive Director for 15 Regional Operations and Generic Requirements of the NRC; 16 James Tribble, President of the Yankee Atomic Company Pe te r 17 Bradford, Chainaan of the Public Utilities Commission of the 18 State of Maine and a former NRC Commissioner.
19 The meeting will be open to the public attendance 20 except for the presentation of Mr. Tribble, who has asked to 21 address the subcommittee in closed session.
22 Richard Ma.jor, on my right, is the assigned ACRS 23 staff member for this meeting.
24 A transcript of the meeting is being kept for the O.
25 l open sessions, and it is requested that each speaker ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS. INC.
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identify himself.
2 We have not received any requests to make oral 3
statements, nor have we received any written comments from 4
members of the public.
5 Before we begin, let me ask if members of the 6
subcommittee have questions or comments.
7 (No response.)
8 DR. CARBON:
In turning to the session, Vic, let 9
me say we are very delighted to have you with us.
I think 10 you have a background and judgment that can be very helpful 11 to us in our deliberations, and we appreciate your help in 12 terms of the format and the discussion that we will have 13 today.
14 I did send you, or more specifically, Ray Fraley 15 sent you a letter which describes I think in pretty good 16 detail what we are shooting at and the direction that we are 17 trying to go.
18 Our format in these discussions has been to 19 invite the guest to speak on general topics and make any 20 general comments that he or she might care to about the 21 subject in general and then to get into perhaps discussion 22 of the individual topics that we have listed at the back of 23 the letter, depending on how the quest would like to break 24 down the amount of time and the amount of ef fort and I-,')
25 discussion.
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We would welcome having this sort of discussion 2
as we go along and hope you will invite questions and 3
proffer cuestions as we go.
4 If you don' t have any questions on what we have 5
said, let's go right ahead, and I will turn the nickel over 6
to you.
7 MR. STELLO:
Where I thought I would at least 8
start is the sort of questions that the letter was hoping to 9
have some advice on, and I will take it from there and try 10 to bring out what I think are some views and ideas that I 11 think are important, that the subcommittee might want to be 12 thinking about.
13 The first question ist doIagreethatt}eNRC 14 should have a long range plan?
15 I don't think there is any question in my mind 16 that there really is a need, perhaps more so now than in the 17 past.
18 The reason for that I think is quite apparent.
19 We have gone through a number of major changes, starting 20 back about 19, early 1970, when we had projections for a 21 thousand reactors by the year 2000.
22 Our task then was to try to develop a review l
23 process to deal with the very, very large workload of 24 construction, and of course in the intervening years we have g-25 had an awful lot of issues that got a great deal of public ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC, 202 347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336 6646
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attention.
2 The emergency core cooling hearings were going 3
on.
Three members of GE lef t and raised a lot of issues 4
about what we were doing, whether it was right or wasn' t 5
right -- Bob Pollard, when he lef t, and the criticisms.
6 And we have had major, major impacts on the 7
regulatory process over those years.
8 Of course, I don' t think any of the more dramatic 9
things with -- the Arab oil embargo started an avalanche of 10 cancellations and deferments of plants, and then we had 11 Three Mile Island.
12 We have had an awful lot of lessons learned, and
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\\l 13 you look at where we are today, it seems reasonably clear 14 that in the next few years we are going to have a 15 hundred-odd reactors in operation and there aren' t going to 16l be any more in the pipeline.
At least that is the short 17 te rm.
18 What then becomes the question I think you need 19 to deal with is:
well, what is the viable 10-year future 20 likely to bring to us?
21 I will come back to that point because I think 22 that is an important one, as to how should one go about 23 trying to deal with that single question.
24 DR. CARBON:
Let me comment in here, too.
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25 Perhaps I should have said this earlier.
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I think.ths Commissioners are geperally aiming to a
2 look about five years ahead and base this on the PPG 3
document to a consid,erable extent.
We are definitely trying 4
to look at the minimtun five years and at least' 10 years in 5
the future.
6 MR. STELLO:
The rea' son I made the comment the 7
wahIdidisbecause I thlhk part of what you want to be 8
doing for the next five years clearly will depend on what 9
you think the future will find for 10 y6,ars beyond that.
I 10 want to come back to that.,in particular because it is a very 11 intpostant point.
12 The next issue is:
should the ACRS -- can and V
13 should they contribute to such a plan?
14 I think clearly tho ' advice of the ACRS on many of 15 the issues that will arise or come up,--
I want to come back 16 again as to how I view the ACRS involvement.
w f'
17 Doss the overtil+ spi 5 roach, as outlined, make 18 sense?
Here is where I want to back up and msybe ask a 19 question.
20 I am not,soisure f can see what the overall 21 approach is.
This is a part of an approach, as best as I 22 can see it, and certainly doesn' t have what I think is the 23 most important part of a long range planning.
That is the 24 overall approach.
25 I think to have af overall approach there has to ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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.73 hl DAVbur-1 be significant, substantial involvement of the key managers 2
in the agency, for sure the Commissioners, at least the 3
principal office directors, and to one or another degree 4
their staf fs.
5 There are techniques available to do this under 6
.the general heading of strategic planning.
I am not so sure 7
that is exactly what we would want to do, but at least it 8
lays an overall concept.
It starts with a very broad 9
picture of what are the agency's responsibilities.
10 I think you all know what those are generally.
11 They are restated in the PPG, and that structure is 12 generally outlined.
The PPG goes on to identify elements in
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13
, various levels of deEaT1~.~~
Indeed, your letter attaches a 14 number of issues that are clearly subelements of some 15 overall approach.
16 I don' t know that I am expert enough, but I would 17 hope that there are people who are expert enough that can 18 assist in making sure that this overall approach is laid 19 out.
20 Now, I understand OPE is about to or has or very 21 shortly will enlist a contractor who I assume will have that 22 expertise to lay out this broader and larger framework in 23 which you can build in these smaller issues in the right 24 context.
('J 25 But without that overall approach, I think I see ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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significant problems in really trying to decide whether 2
indeed you have a plan.
3 Lot me suggest what I think in the final plan 4
would have to somehow be developed.
5 You start out with the question of what about 6
future reactors, reactors that come under the framework of 7
advanced reactors, reactors that are within. the framework --
8 f alling within; a standardization policy yet to be f
9 formulated.
What does all that mean?
L 10 Well, it seems to me that a regulatory agency, in 11 order to develop what that policy ought to be needs a fairly 12 clear picture, as best that can be developed, on what it is 13 that the market wants.
We can have policy to standardize a i
14 whole variety of reac' ors, and if there isn't anybody ever c
15 interested in building one of those, I don't know we will 16 serve any' purpose.
17 So it seems that the first step that has to be 18 taken is something clearly that we at the NRC can't do, and 19 that is:
what does the industry we regulate expect that 20 they will want to do in the future for five or 10 years?
21 The kinds of things that I am hearing about what 22 the industry sees are not yet very clear.
There was a group 23 formed under John Ward.
They sent in a letter -- and I 24 will make sure I send a copy down to the subcommittee --
(_)
l 25 that spoke to their view of what kind of standardization ACE-FEDERAL REPORTEPJS, INC.
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policy they feel is needed because of what they think the 2
interest will be in building new plants.
3 Questions arising from that context are, for 4
example, an issue of building a plant identical or very much 5
like one that exists that one can go to and say:
6 I see the final design; the drawings are 7
complete.
I look at the operating record.
It is good.
I 8
look at the maintenance for the plant; the maintenance Ji 9
systems that are in place are good.
The maintenance is 1
i 10 good.
The training programs they have in place and the kind 11 of training they need for the people that are there are 12 already established.
('T 13 The operating history for the plant is very 14 favorable, and hence in terms of someone who wants to build 15 a plant, there is a lot more confidence that they could 16 build something.
There is a high expectation of success.
17 There's at least some people in the industry who 18 feel that there is going to be a desire to build those kinds 19 of plants.
20 And then there's what I call the advanced plants, 21 the CESSARs and GESSARs and later plants that we have looked 22 at that are coming down the line.
And then there's the 23 advanced boiling water reactors, advanced pressurized water 24 reactors and, even beyond that, conceptually more advanced h'
25 designs.
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But what do we as regulators need to have in 2
place to deal with this?
3 Here, if I can take a moment to go through the 4
kinds of issues that you raised, they are clearly, in my 5
view, related to that broader, larger question and need to 6
be integrated into some larger picture.
7 You did raise as an issue the question of 8
standardization.
You did raise the issue on how to improve 9
safety to the extent that they maybe ought to be improved.
10 Newer plants.
11 These issues, I think, become part of that 12 program that you are looking for for the future.
13 What are all of the kinds of things that you want 14 to have about a reactivated plant?
15 DR. MOELLER:
I wanted to offer'a comment.
16 I thought your suggestion of wr st does the market 17 want is excellent, or what the nation -- meaning the 18 President and the Congress -- what ideas they have about the 19 U.S. meeting its long range energy needs.
20 You probably are going to talk about that later?
21 MR. STELLO:
Yes.
22 DR. MOELLER:
It seems to me if Congress, you 23 know, passed legislation that has committed the nation or 24 encouraged the utilities to do one-thing or the other, that Q#
25 could heavily influence what the NRC does.
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MR. STELLO:
I struggle over and over again with 2
who is it that is doing that.
3 If you look at the country now, I don' t know, we 4
must have $50 billion worth of mausoleums dotting the 5
countryside of plants that have been stopped.
We are 6
clearly still importing an awful lot of oil.
These plants 7
certainly could be used to offset importing, at least in 8
places, some oil.
How much I don' t know.
9 What ought the energy mix for generating 10 electricity be, and who is it that ought to decide that from i
11 a national policy perspective?
Ought it be DOE?
Ought it 12 be Congress?
k,m),
13 I think the National Academy of Sciences --
14 prcbably all of those -- have been writing reports, 15 projecting what the future might be.
We need a clear 16 policy.
17 I guess thore is a question of whether we ought 18 to have that policy, but someone needs to deal with that 19 issue.
20 What seems clear to me is not the NRC.
We can't 21 do that.
That is not clearly our task, but that task 22 clearly I think must be done to try to really lay out then 23 what are the significant issues as regulators that we are 24 going to face, given what the forecast of that future would 25 be.
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I have questions of that type, and that is about 4-g i
2 I can say, they are questions.
3 Will there be more plants constructed or not?
If 4
so, what type will they be?
5 Will there be regulatory reform needed?
6 If you read and listen to the speeches of the 7
industry, it is clear they believe regulatory reform is 8
necessary.
It isn' t just NRC regulatory reform.
I think it 9
is much broader than that.
10 They are looking for, clearly, reform in the 11 financial institutions, reform in the public utility 12 commissions.
The issue of CWIP continues to come up.
And 13 unless the questions get - answered with respect to financing,
- 14 it will have a significant effect on whether or not we will 15 ever build more plants.
16 Then I had the question also for myself:
who is 17 it that ought to generate the kind.of information that I 18 have been talking about?
I didn' t know who it was that 19 ought to generate it.
I just knew it wasn't something that 20 the NRC could or should generate.
21 But unless it is available, I think at this 22 portion of the long range planning is going to be 23 deficient.
It has again, in my view, many, many i
i 24 implications because as we take these issues, as we see the L O-i 25 long range plan develop, then I see very specific tasks ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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related to these overall goals and objectives that have to 2
be identified.
3 Then they go into the agency.
Who does them?
4 How much of it is research, and what are the tasks they are 5
responsible to achieve, on what schedule to accomplish this?
6 If it is developing additional review guidance, 7
then NRR becomes involved.
They need to develop things.
8 They have specific tasks and issues, again consistent with 9
some overall plan or schedule in each office.
It is 10 identified in the resources that they have to apply the 11 accomplishment, the resolution of all of these issues 12 related to a big task such as the one that I have been O) 13 speaking of.
14 What will the future bring?
Well, we don't know 15 that.
I don't know to what extent it is knowable, and in 16 any short term I suspect that it is a matter of a timeframe 17 of six months to a year that it probably won' t be better 18 known than it is today.
19 We will have to make the best use of available 20 information and make the best judgments we can to move 21 forward.
I don't believe I see an awful lot more 22 information generated in the short term.
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With respect to how the future will change in 2
terms of new plants, I think we have about all the 3
information that's available.
How about the operating 4
parts?
It seems there is a fundamental ' question raised here S
also.
Clearly, our task is to assure that these plants are 6
operated safely.
7 But do we want to make them safer than they are 8
now?
If so, how much?
How do you decide?
What does it 9
mean to even raise the question?
10 Here again, if you start by raising that very 11 question -- do I want to increase the level of safety of the 12 operating plant? -- I think you have to come to grips with
,_b 13 the answer.
14 Is there a need, or isn' t there?
15 Well, how are we tempted to try to answer those 16 questions?
One policy that's been kicked around for a long 17 time is the Severe Accident Policy Statement, which tried to 18 deal with that.
Incidentally, I did notice that that was 19 not a specific issue, technical issue, that you've listed.
20 You seemed to extract the policy or philosophy inherent in 21 the Severe Accident Policy and subsumed it into some other 22 issues.
23 It wasn' t clear to me why that was done.
24 DR. CARBON:
I think, probably, we were taking 25 things in the future and ignoring things that are currently ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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happening, decisions about to be made.
We didn' t say 2
anything about ATWS, assuming that it was covered.
3 DR. REMICK:
Vic, you put in a slightly different 4
perspective than I've ever thought about kind of the 5
standard plant issue of the utility that already has a plant 6
and already has a site, and has all the drawings, has the 7
organization, has the training programs.
I've never quite 8
thought of that, that the utility might come in with not 9
necessarily a standard plant but a previous plant.
10 Do you feel that the staf f has the flexibility to 11 shorten the review process under that type of circumstance?
12 Or would you be looking for a full-blown two-year review or
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13 whatever it was with hundreds of questions on that duplicate 14 plan t?
15 Does the staff have the regulatory flexibility to 16 shorten that review process?
I'm sure ACRS would be 17 involved, and so forth.
But I've never quite thought of it 18 from that standpoint.
It's not a standard plant, it's a 19 replica plant, I guess.
20 Would the utility have to look at that type of 21 extensive review on an already-designed plant?
22 MR. STELLO:
If it were just one plant, I don' t 23 suspect you'd find substantial improvement in the review 24 process.
But, supposingly, with a particular plant, you t
25 wanted to build a number of them -- I don't know what that ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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number is.
Four or five -- the Duke sixpack, let me take 2
that as an example.
3 You have decided here was one plant that I had, 4
and let's assume that Duke decided they were going to find a 5
.way not just to build one more plant at that site, but 6
perhaps four or five.
Then I see the potential for creating 7
some substantial savings in the regulatory process.
8 But far, far more in terms of savings, in terms 9
of the construction of the plant.
On the other side, if 10 they are going in that direct. ion, at least it's my view that 11 if I were a utility executive, I'd be thinking pretty hard 12
.about whether if I had a very successful plant, I'd want to O
13 build some new plant or just get another one that I h.ad a 14 high degree of success with, especially when I could take 15 advantage of all of the training programs.
I know how to do 16 them and I know they're successful, and I've developed them 17 and I can apply those kind of training programs directly to 18 my new staff.
19 I get to learn a lot about it.
I'd know it
- 20 well.
I'd know what its idiosynchrosies are, and I could 21 deal with the kind of maintenance and surveillance.
22 I think those are issues that would be very
'23 important to me.
The existence of a complete set of 24 drawings before there's even a hole in the ground, that I O
25 know I have all the design questions dealt with.
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1 and I think important, too, is through the review process so 2
that everyone has agreed to it, changes are changes that can 3
be made all the way through into the final design process.
4 I think that would be very, very important.
5 I think, at least I sense there is a lot of 6
interest to want to do that kind of thing, especially in 7
what I'll call a transition period.
That is, a period where 8
we are now with no orders coming in.
9 I don't know what the right timeframe is but it's 10 probably within that five to 10-year timeframe when you'll
'll see standardized designs come up, because the investment for 12 developing the drawings for a completely new design, or at O
13 least some sense of final design, drawings is a very, vsty-14 large financial commitment.
I don't know that the vendors 15 and architect-engineers are going to put that kind of money 16 up front without something to buy.
17 So, again, there would appear to be at least 18 questions that are apparent to me that will be significant 19 in the market forces that are out there, and will need to be 20 dealt with.
But the regulator can' t answer them except we 21 hear them and it suggests to me that we will probably have 22 to deal then with the regulatory process that that may 23 happen.
24 Now, the bottom line question is the one you
.O 25 raised:
How should we regulate plants like that?
What ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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should be the regulatory process in place?
That was a 2
question I was going to come to a little bit later, but 3
since you've raised it, I thought I'd try to give you an 4
answer.
5 I want to develop this idea now of operating 6
plants, the plants in existence.
We come to grips with the 7
question:
Is that level of safety okay or isn' t it?
And we 8
need to come to grips with what's the policy?
Does this 9
agency have that view?
10 I think the Severe Accident Policy Statement l
11 suggests that we were satisfied, but I did identify some 12 things that we wanted to do for the future and it did lay 13 those out.
14 Again, I think you've captured some of those in l.
(
15 the issues that you've raised in the letter I received.
You t
l 16 did raise the question of safety philosophy.
But it seems 17 to me you need to sort of answer that question in order to 18 deal with this broader objective:
Are we going to move in 19 the next five to 10 years to change the current level of i
20 safety of operating reactors?
In what way?
And by how l.
21 much?
22 Are we going to use PRA technology for that 23 purpose?
If so, how?
24 I'm a believer and I've become convinced that the 25 kind of structured thinking that comes out of the PRA ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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methodology is important -- very, very important -- in 2
trying to answer that question.
Lest we may be taking wrong 3
turns, I think we need to somehow make that a part of the 4
solution.
The Severe Accident Policy Statement and all the 5
elements contained therein, the unresolved safety issues, 6
how ought they be handled?
7 Certainly, for new plants, it is raised.
To what 8
extent ought they be handled for operating plants and how 9
they have the potential for generating an awful lot of 10 additional backfit issues.
11 Then you raise the question:
Are the backfit 12 systems that have been put in place okay?
I think they 13 are.
I think that the rule that the Commission recently 14 promulgated in its revision of 5109, the Manual chapter we 15 have been developing and which the committee has already 16 seen in an earlier draft, is important in laying out that 17 policy.
18 The CRGR review process for dealing with the 19 generic issues, I think are all very important elements of 20 that process.
The activity that's been going on in NRR, 21 going back taking a look at the proliferation of tech specs, 22 have we developed a set of licensing requirements that's 23 creating a diversion to the utilities?
24 I've heard stories where utilities have been into h'
25 14 simultaneously operating LCO's for tech specs at one ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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time.
And I asked myself, well, now what's the management 2
of that utility concerned about?
It's clear to me that the 3
thing that's going to be on his mind is not letting one of l
4 those actions take his trip off.
5 So we're starting to get diverted.
Are we smart 6
enough to make sure that we have identified that was so 7
important that we're clearly preoccupied with and need a 8
reexamination, it's been getting it?
-9 Now, again, let me just cite that what I was i-10 trying to do was lay a broad philosophical question on the
.11 table to identify the kinds of issues you have identified in 12 your paper and some others.
And then say that these are all 13 part'of that..
l l
14 We need to decide the degree of completeness, but 15 to really have a truly long-range plan.
Those tasks have to 16 be assigned to someone or they won' t get done, and people l
17 have to believe it's important that those tasks get done.
18 There have to be resources devoted to them.
There have to l
19 be milestones and schedules developed for them.
l 20 If you will,.it's going to integrate the budget l
21 process into them because having identified a particular 22 important issue that we need to work with, if the agency 23 doesn' t devote the resources to them, how will they get 24 done?
O h
25 If you don' t devote any resources to it, then, by I
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definition, it could not have been a very high priority.
w 2
And if the notion that it is important and it's necessary to 3
get it'done, then somehow the end result has to be that the 4
commitment to put the resources to get it done was part of 5
the process.
6 If that isn' t part of long-range planning, then I 7
don't know you've accomplished very much; just talking about 8
an issue or philosophizing an issue does not get it done.
9 We need eventually to have the end result, which is a 10 complete process, breaking it down into all of its 11 subelements and then tasking it.
12 Let me emphasize again that I think the beginning O
13 of this process, as I said, has to involve the leaders'of 14 the agency.
It becomes so important so that everyone now 15 believes these are the important things to do, that 16 contribute to this overall, long-range plan that's being 17 developed.
18 If you don' t have that commitment from the 19 manugers, from the top throughout the agency, then I don' t 20 think you have that kind of commitment and dedication to get i
21 it done.
And you've seen over and over the tasks that ACRS 22 has thought were very important and you get real frustrated 23 with us because you keep asking us about the progress, and 24 we didn' t think it was so important and we didn' t make the O
25 kind of progress you wanted us to make.
l l
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It's a classical management problem.
That 2
commitment clearly has to be there.
So that's again very, 3
very important.
4 DR. REMICK:
I agree very strongly with that, 5
Vic.
Part of the process for the last two years has been 6
the strategic planning process.
Unfortunately, it's doing 7
what you're suggesting, but hasn' t been carried out to too 8
great an extent.
- 9 We have just reams and reams of plans on paper 10 and I keep arguing that what we need is not strategic 11
_ planning but strategic thinking to support what you say.
I 12 think whoever is the leader should gather around him, his
-O 13 top echelon of advisers.
They have to be reasonably small, 14 but not too small a group, and you do strategic thinking, t
'15 If you carry it out at too low a level down, you 16 just end up with reams and reams of paper and nobody can 17 possibly comprehend the entire mass.
You do need the 18 involvement of your top managers and it has to be integrated i
19 then into your budget.
20 MR. STELLO:
Yes, I think so.
21 DR. REMICK:
The process we're in after two years 22 of basically drawing up plans but now, this year, we 1
23 integrate it into the budget process.
24 MR. STELLO:
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horses, being the most important and significant issue, and 2
you wind up compromising over particular hobby horse.a.
And 3
miss the overall objective.
4 But, a t the s ame time, I think you can involve 5
the lower level managers if you take program-office 6
directors as being part of that process, as part of the 7
feedback and input into that process.
They-can be having, 8
if you will, a sort of mini-strategic within their own 9
offices to try to pull out from their staffs what they also 10 think is important, and bring that knowledge with them to 11 this overall planning.
12 To be accomplished, that's the kind of process 13 that I see eventually.
Again, we ought not just plan for 14 the sake of planning.
We ought to have some idea in mind of '
15 how long we're going to devote to this.
Make some decisions 16 and get it done.
Lay it out and then recognize that it's a-17 living kind of thing.
As we exchange and learn more about 18 it, we can periodically revisit it.
19 Someone mentioned a cartoon to me.
We were 20 talking about this yesterday.
In the newspapers in the last 21 two or three days, a little cartoon about an executive 22 sitting at his desk shouting out to his secretary:
"Didn't 23 we do something about strategic planning here two or three 24 years ago?
You see if you can find it for me."
25 If that's what happens, let's forget it.
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that's the kind of strategic planning we're going to have, 2
it's a document we put in the file someplace and go back and 3
look at it every two or three years, I think it's a waste of 4
. time.
It's~got to be something that all of us that are part 5
of this process, the staff, including the ACRS, has got to.
6 It might not be all of what you'd want or all of 7
what anybody wants but then, it has to have that commitment 8
that thin is in fact what we're going to do.
9 If the commitment isn' t there to do it, I think 10 we're wasting time.
It doesn' t provide the management tool 11 that we need.
12 Well, I've dealt with two broad issues and I was G(~s 4
13 going to go on to some others, namely, the question of, to 14
.me, the most important, significant, fundamental part of 15 what we do -- is the safety of the operating plants.
I've 16 talked about what the future for the newer kinds of plants 17 ought to be.
18 I think, in terms of broad issues, there are 19 clearly others.
You didn' t deal with questions like 20 operating reactors.
You didn' t deal with questions like 21 materials licensing and safeguards.
Well, you mentioned 22 safeguards in terms of design for the plants, but safeguards 23 in the broader sense.
24 I don' t believe I even saw the word " inspection" O
25 in any of the issues you raised.
These are clearly very L
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significant questions.
Thirty percent of this agency's 2
resources are devoted. to the inspection process.
How ought 3
those resources be used?
They are probably on the order of 4
perhaps[as much as 50 percent of the professional resources 5
of the agency.
That's a significant part of what we do.
6 You need to again go back and look at how we've 7
been regulating.
Is the audit inspection process that we 8
have the process that we ought to have?
Have we, when we 9
have licensed the last of the NTOL's, is there, as we look 10 to the future, a different way in which to approach the 11 concept of how to, quote, " inspect plants", how to integrate 12 the licensing activity and the inspection activity to do a O
13
.better job in assessing the plants?
14 I think that's a very important_ question and it 15 would become I think far more important as you look to the 16 future, because you' re going to strictly an agency, and at 17 least for the near term, the more significant fraction of 18 those five years for sure, are going to be dealing with the 19 question of operating issues.
A big part of that is clearly 20 going to be inspection.
21 22 23 24
()=
25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 How are we to change it, first of all?
Is it 2
okay or isn' t it?
Are we satisfied?
Can.we improve it?
If I
l 3
so, how?
4 How should the other offices get integrated?
How 5
can you take the strengths and weaknesses of a licensing 6
activity and combine that with the strength of an inspection 7
activity to make the overall net result of what you do i
8 better?
9 I think there are ways in which we go about doing 10 that.
11 We have seen some of it, for example, in the 12 Turkey PoiEt inspection of a month or so ago, where you O
13 combine the expertise of inspectors, designers, systems 14 analysts from the NRR part of the process, and the 15 contractors and go in as a unit and make the assessment and 16 try to come to grips with what are the inherent fundamental l
17 problems associated with whatever it is we are inspecting --
l 18 the concept of trying to integrate more efficiently and more l
19 effectively.
20 So maybe I should have started with that issue 21 because it is so much more than the agency's resources that 22 are involved, and what ought we do about it?
23 I said I was surprised to see the issues that you 24 raised, that such a large fraction or portion maybe the ACRS O
25 doesn't pay much attention at all to inspection.
Maybe it ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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doesn't deal with what is really going on, and hence the 2
preoccupation in terms of thinking that there is a 3
significant issue there as to what to do.
4 Or maybe the ACRS is in fact completely satisfied 5
with the inspection process.
I doubt that that is true.
6 DR. REMICK:
I think it is probably the former.
7 First of all, you mentioned materials licensing.
8 We specifically decided that our focus was just 9
going to be on power reactors.
We felt that we couldn' t get 10 into materials licensing, and so forth.
So that wipes out 11 that part of inspection.
~
12 I do agree with you, I think we have kind of 13 overlooked the other inspection, other than in the 14 adversarial relationship aspect.
It certainly is hidden in 15 that because it does affect the adversarial relationship 16 between the regulator and regulated.
17 The one thing we did not mention is the 18 enforcement, the fines, the penalties, and so forth, which I 19 think is a significant part of the adversarial 20 relationship.
21 MR. STELLO:
I was going to come back to some of 22 these issues.
I was trying to give you -- first, I am
.23 dealing with the answer to the question of approach.
24 My first comment was I didn't see an approach 25 presented, and I was suggesting to you what I see as an ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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approach of how to go about it, and what basically I have 2
been describing-is this overall approach, and then I want to 3
come back and deal with some of the issues, and all I have 4
been doing right now is trying to whet your appetite in 5
terms of making sure that you have been thinking about the 6
kind of thing you say you have been involved with for the 7
last two years.
8 That structure somehow before we finish has got 9
to be in place or I don't think we are going to accomplish 10 it.
11 DR. REMICK:
Roger Matson pointed that out very 12 strongly when he was here, on the need for that.
Of 13 course, OPE is, as you say, hiring the consultant to help 14 them know what the framework of a strategic planning process 15 should be.
16 MR. STELLO:
I am not married to the fact that it 17 needs to be " strategic" planning, but whatever it is you do 18 do, it will have substantial elements of that.
19 The reason I say that is strategic planning 20 probably works very, very well in the business community, 21 where you have a chairman of the board, then his staff, and 22 all the way down.
We are working with a commission form of 23 management.
24 I am not so sure that the process that I envision 25 would go on -- would be the same sort of process because you ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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have to allow for this collegiality to take place, to make 2
the first decision.
3 I am not so sure that will be easy unless, of 4
course, there is another alternative, and that that the 5
Commission would assign this to the EDO and say you run it 6
as you would a business, a company, and then bring it to me 7
and interact with it at tha t poin t.
8 DR. REMICK:
I think you are right.
It depends 9
very much on the organization.
10 But a couple of years ago, I used the argument, 11 how can you plan in research?
You don't.
You don't know 12 what you are going to do until the next day.
But it turns
(~N kl 13 out there is a lot of planning yo,u can do on how you run 14 your of fice, as a service function and so forth, 15 anticipating what the needs are going to be.
16 So it does really apply even in the research 17 area, not to what you are doing in the laboratory but 18 certainly in how you administer research.
19 I am speaking of the university community now.
20 So even in a commission setting, I think there are probably 21 lots of things that would apply that could be adopted.
22 It is easy to say it is hard no matter what the l
23 organizational structure is.
24 DR. CARBON:
It almost seems to me that in a i
/^T
~l 25 commission structure like this you need some sort of ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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strategic plan, if that is the proper word, even more than 2
you do in an industrial group where one man makes the 3
decisions and says this is it, because if you have got five 4
commissioners, each with different ideas on where we ought 5
to be going, it is chaos.
6 MR. STELLO:
I agree with you completely that the 7
need is there.
I was talking about the mechanics.
8 If you try to have five commissioners with equal 9
authority to vote an issue, being the head, if you will, of 10 the strategic planning process, I think it will make It 11 difficult.
So the mechanics of it could be to have EDO or 12 OPE or somebody else act as their agent, develop the
'( s)
~
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13 document, ang then bring it to them for their interaction 14 and collegiality at the end rather than mechanically being a 15 part of it as it unfolds.
16 Right now, I think, as I see it going, it looks 17 like it would be the latter.
They will be looking for a 18 document, a strategic planning document to be prepared and 19 presented to them for their review.
I think that probably 20 is about the only efficient way to go about it.
21 DR. REMICK:
I would think it would be something 22 like the preparation of the PPG, where there are drafts, but 23 they work it and come to some kind of a consensus.
24 I would hope they would have at least that O
25 involvement, and I think that has worked fairly effectively, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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don't you, the PPG process?
2 MR. STELLO:
Sure, and I think the PPG has an 3
awf ul lot -- af ter I finish all this, what I wanted to say 4
here this morning -- I went back and I reread the PPG and it 5
ain' t that bad in terms of laying out the structure we have 6
been talking about.
7 But it did not contain the concept of coming up 8
with truly a five-year plan.
If it did, it would have a 9
different character.
But it has got an awful lot of 10 information that I think is needed to do that.
11 It doesn't tie into the budget process, but if 12 you take it and take the EDO staff guidance and then the O
13 PPG, I think the fundamental information you are going to 14 need, a lot of it, is already there.
15 I don't want to miss at least commenting on the 16 research reactor issue.
17 I think as regulators what we do does in fact 18 provide either an incentive or lack of an incentive for this 19 country to continue to provide the leadership in the 20 research reactor community.
I am somewhat disappointed and 21 I get depressed every time I go meet with that community and 22 find examples of where we are losing rapidly our leadership 23 in the research reactor community.
24 And at least a question comes to mind:
to what 25 extent we as regulators fail to provide the environment in ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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which the research reactor community can thrive?
2 Is it the result of what we have done, or is it 3
the result of other elements of the Federal Government in 4
terms of lack of commitment to funding to keep the research 5
community as vital as I think it ought to be?
6 Does it provide the kind of educational 7
facilities we want for the kind of engineers and scientists 8
that go into this business?
9 To the extent we ' lose more and more of our 10 research reactors, we lose more and more that capability.
I 11 think it is something that certainly in terms of overall 12 planning for a. regulatory agency there ought to be at least
,'"]
13 some consideration of what it is that we do that affects 14 that vital part of our educational process and resource 15 process.
16 I think it is important that that get on the 17 table.
Have we done something, or is it something that we 18 should have done but didn' t that is causing us to decay in 19 our research ability?
20 I think it would be very, very unfortunate if we 21 become a second or third-rate nation in terms of research 22 capability.
This just doesn' t mean power reactors, across 23 the board in all of its applications.
24 DR. REMICK:
Vic, along that line and just off 25 the top of my head, without thinking about it, what you say ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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is absolutely true.
2 One thing that could be done, I think, that would 3
be helpful is if the Commission themselves every couple of 4
years without there being an issue would invite in some of 5
the research reactor people for kind of a discussion of how 6
things are going and are there problems and things that the 7
Commission might be aware of that are causing problems.
8 Even with you and Bill, I think that would go a 9
long way in establishing some relationships, showing some 10 interest.
11 There wouldn' t have to be an issue.
That is the 12 time that it usually happens.
It is security.
It is HEU or 7
13 some kind of confrontation.
14 But I think just every couple years, if the I
i 15 Commission, either at the commissioner level or at your '
16 level, had a meeting and had a roundtable type of thing --
17l you would take some beatings, of course, but not 18 necessarily.
I think af ter a couple of those there would be 19 a communication network.
20 MR. STELLO:
I have done it a couple of times, 21 but it has always been in the context of where they were 22 looking for somebody to beat on.
23 DR. REMICK:
I beat on you in that category a few 24 years ago.
Il 25 MR. STELLO:
Yes.
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But again\\ppI was' impressed by the comments because
,(
2 they are genuine real.Iorserns that they express over the r
- 3 loss of research capability, of'where we are relative to 4
other countries.,
'e 3,,,e 7,
5 The f66t is~ I have' gone to other countries and d yseen thi 9 ifesearch capabilities.
They are indeed 6:
l+%s.urpas,singourcapability./
7 1
8, I think we ought to be concerned about that, and
/
9 st least. it ought to be an issue that gets integrated -into
," r,
10
- this process.
There may not be an awful lot of agency. -
1 m
11 resources in it, but I thisk in' terms of the impact that it
/,,
lit
-can have overall, where/we go -- maybe the problem iswe
,- J 13 don' t pay enough atten'cion to it, as you suggest, and we 14 need to just allow more discussion and find if there are 15 things that we can do.
16 g,-
DR. REMICK:
By the way, this fits into something
,~
L 17 Cade has pointed out a,numoer of times.
For every long r
18 ran'ge [Ean wher6 are yo@ going to get the manpowe'r.. resources 9
19
.to' carry out a l'ong range plan?
That gets into that.
20 A lot c)f the manpower is going to.come from 21 universities that have research reactors -- not' all of them
. 22 but some of them --- at 1sast people with some limitad A
23 operating experience, and so forth.
,i.
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24 So it does fit-into that question of KRC manpowrer y
l O
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l 25 as well as industrial mr.npower.
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.O)DAVbur k-1 MR. STELLO:
Sure.
The same with our 2
laboratories.
3 I want to make sure I cover one issue.
You 4
don't again raise it, but I think part of 'the way in which 5
we operate as an agency has really, really significantly 6
hampered overall effectiveness and efficiency.
That has 7
really hurt by having this agency spread out the way it is.
8 If there is one thing I want to come out loud and 9
clear, it is:
what is it that we can do?
Whose door can we 10 knock on?
How can we plead, beg, borrow, do whatever we can 11 to get some activity to find a way to consolidate this 12 agency?
s 13 To have the staff have to come down here to ACRS 14 meetings, traveling back and forth, for us to even talk to 15 each other having to get into a car and drive one place or 16 another, it just makes it very, very ineffective and 17 inefficient to discuss technical issues, to talk about our 18 problems and comments.
So the whole question of the 19 administration of the agency.
12 0 Again, what you have got to remember, it is not a 21 trivial part of our resources.
22 What is it that causes us to be so inefficient?
23 Clearly, consolidation is an issue.
24 How well do we do in training and employee
- (9
'/
25 relationships?
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We have an enormous task in terms of data 2
processing and control of information, government reports.
3 You must know this in spades, with the kind of documents l
4 that you get.
5 So there's a lot of administrative tasks that if 6
we don't put the resources and say we are going to solve 7
these problems, what are these problems, and make them part 8
of that plan, I guarantee you one thing.
Five years from 9
now we will sit around this table, and they will not have 10 been done.
11 So while you didn' t emphasize those, recognize that this is again a substantial part of our' resources.
But
.12 13 to accomplish a lot of the other things that you talked 14 about, they aren' t going to ont done without this 15 administrative process being in place, and what is it that ll 16 needs to be done' to ide.ed it, articulate it, get the t-17 resources put to get it done.
18 If you don't do that, the only thing I am certain 19 of is that it is not going to get done.
20 Again, I want to make the broad point.
That is 21 the broad point that the long range planning process needs 22 to be comprehensive.
You can' t do -- what is it in the ACRS 23 letter -- picking up several issues and saying I only want 24 to talk about these issues.
I don' t know why you only want O
25 to talk about these issues, but that is all you want to ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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talk about.
2 That is wrong.
That will not be effective in 3
getting a long range plan, and if you, because of your
+
4 prestige as a committee, influence the Commission to -
5 narrowing its thinking in this way, you are going to do a 6
disservice to accomplishing a good long range plan.
7 If there is one comment that I want to make --
8 and I needed to warm up to this to be very critical of what 9
you have done -- that is it.
You are detracting from it by 10 narrowing it into half a dozen technical issues.
11 That is wrong.
It must be comprehensive.
It 12 must be all-inclusive.
That is what has to be done because I1 13 even the issues you raise, unless the rest of it is there, 14 you are going to hurt the process by not being comprehensive 15 and making sure you have dealt.with the entire process.
16 Now, that goes right across the board.
You have 17 got hearing boards and panels, and what are they going to be 18 doing?
What ought they be doing?
Where are they going?
19 You have got a lot of satellite offices that come 20 in.
You have got the lawyers and how they are integrated 21 into the process.
OGC, OPE, the Office of Congressional 22 Affairs.
23 All of these are resources.
They need to be 24 spelled out.
They need to be part of what you are doing.
.(3 25 It is nothing more than to just simply say I don' t want to ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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devote more than X resources to the Office of 2
Investigations.
This is about all that we can stand.
3 Maybe that is the wrong answer.
With the way 4
investigations are going, you may have to over the next five 5
years have a different view on that.
I don't know.
6 But if it isn't comprehensive, you are going to 7
wind up robbing Peter to pay Paul., and the net result is a 8
lot of thing's that really need to be done and are not going 9
to get done without being comprehensive.
10 So broadening this thing into being truly a long 11 range planning document, that is an absolute requirement.
12 If it is not there, it is not going to be a good document, gs 13 and I don' t think it will serve its purpose.
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 t
21 l
22 23 24
~i' 25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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The reason I broke out administratively these 2
kind of things is that I hope you agree they' re important.
3 If you didn't have somebody in resource management writing 4
on a piece of paper, nobody would get paid.
And I think 5
you'd have a very unhappy environment.
But they're very 6
much a part of this agency.
They are needed.
They are part 7
of what we need.
8 You' ve got an awf ul lot of data that we' re trying 9
to get processed through using the advent of the PC's that 10 have come down the pike.
We' ve bought a lot of equipment.
11 We have a lot of resident offices.
We've got a lot of other 12, offices.
How ought they be used?
Who should use them?
'l l
l 13 What information is needed?
How can it make our job more 14, effective and effici+nt?
How can we help get these other 15 things done by using that kind of stuff?
16 DR. REMICK:
Vic, I'd like to make a comment on 17 that.
I fully agree the plan should be comprehensive.
18 That's why the subcommittee I think has arrived at the 19 decision that a part-time advisory committee can't write a 20 long-range plan for an agency of 3,000 and some employees.
21 I think the one thing we perhaps have done though 22 is stimulate the concept of the long-range plan.
I don' t 23 think we necessarily originated it, but I think we kind of 24 stimulate the process.
n
~
25 So I think, to the subcommittee and committee's ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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. credit, that's one service we have provided.
I don' t think 2
we've come up with anything else for the long-range plan.
'3 MR. STELLO:
No.
The fact that the prestige of 4
- the committee is behind saying this is an issue that's 5
important has, by itself, performed an important 6
contribution.
Having a meeting such as this, inviting 7
people to give their views and developing a record that
~8 others can look at as to what's important and why again are 9
going to be important documents and important information 10 that need to be included in the process.
11
'To the extent my views are shared by others, 12 they become indeed important; long-ranga planning will 13 include some of these kinds of concepts I'm talking about.
14 I think, in my view, it's very, very important that they 15 do.
16 That doesn't necessarily mean I'm right, but 17 tha t's my view.
The view is in f act shared by a lot of 18 other people and perhaps they will cause it to move in that 19 direction.
20 DR. CARBON:
Incidentally, we have sent one 21 letter to the Commissioners dated August 13th, and it does 22 some of the things that Forrest mentions and encourages that 23 should be in a long-range plan.
24 It also says some of the things that you've said O
25 here, and I think I've been remiss in not giving you a copy ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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- 1 or calling the letter to your attention.
We ' ll ge t you a 2
t copy after this meeting, I guess.
That's about the earliest 3
we can do lt.
But you may be interested in what we have 4
said so far.
5 MR. STELLO:
I'm going to be running out - of 6
time.
I've got at least a couple of more points that I 7
wanted to make that I thought out in advance.
Then I wanted 8
to go by the issues in your letter.
9 DR. CARBON:
We can go until 10 o' clock, 10 incidentally.
11 MR. STELLO:
There are a lot of external things 12 that we have set up in the agency.
We have an office that 13 deals with the state relationships and the states are 14 evolving into a variety of different roles in terms of 15 regulation of this industry.
16 One has. to be cognizant of how that will evolve 17
- in terms of what impact that may have on us, be it good or 18 bad.
We need to understand how it's evolving.
And if it's 19 evolving correctly.
20 Let me take, for example, a concern that is 21
' increasing, at least for myself.
I've had several 22 opportunities to interact with a variety of representatives 23 of PUC's.
I went to a conference of the directors recently 24 and they are a significant force.
And I'm worried and
'O 25 concerned that some of the incentive programs we're putting ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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together, they could be creating an environment which can 2
detract from safety.
One has to be very aware and mindful 3
of that.
4 It's evolving.
It 's something that's evolving 5
even as we speak.
I don't know the direction it will take 1
6 but, clearly, it needs to have identified how we' re going to 7
interact, how we're going to deal with it.
What problems is l
8 that going to create for us in the next five years?
It's at J
9 least theoretically possible a PUC can issue an incentive i
I 10 program for which there's no question that it's going to 11 tmpact safety.
12 We've gotten close.
Bill Dircks has sent some
('>T I
13 letters to public utility commissions.
This has gotten to I
l 14 be a problem.
We need to be mindful of these external 15 things.
i.
16 A continuing question that continues to get 17 raised, especially over the past five or six years, does 18 this agency have any responsibility at all in terms of 19 providing information or education to the public about the 20 business that we are in -- regulating?
21 Do we have any responsibility?
If so, what is 22 it?
What should we do?
What need we do?
23 At least in my view, the public has a right to be 24 fully informed on what's going on.
We are an open agency.
b l
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25 They are aware of what goes on in this agency as it comes ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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out in the media, but we don' t have any program of going out 2
and truly educating.
We have one pilot program which I 3
would tout as an example of an enormous success.
4 After TMI, Joe Fouchard and I got together and 5
put together a program to go out with people in the media --
6 editors, TV, whatever -- and invited them to a seminar where 7
we pretty well explained what it is that regulators do, what 8
nuclear power plants are.
And it's been very, very 9
well-received.
10 Again, I was really impressed with the very first 11 one we had.
One of the first questions from a reporter was:
12 Can a reactor explode like a bomb?
That's a question that n'U 13 comes up from~hiyh' school kids over and over.
14 The thing that struck me is that here is an 15 individual writing for the media who has as a question in 16 the back of his mind:
Can a reactor explode like a bomb?
17 And you have to ask:
Can he really write 18 effectively if he has those kinds of questions still on his 19 mind that aren' t answered?
20 The idea of education of the public and the 21 education of the media and certainly for the education of 22 the media is very important.
23 DR. CARBON:
Vic, could I go back to your comment 24 a couple of sentences ago about the state PUC's?
Just last 25 week, the vice president of a nuclear utility company ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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talked about the need for regulatory reform'and as we 2
discussed it, it turned out that he felt that getting along 3
with the NRC is quite easy and he had no problems.
4 His problems were with PUC's.
When we come back 5
to your first point, that we have to have a clear picture of 6
what the market wants and what the market will buy, what the 7
future is, and so on, certainly in terms of anything beyond 8
the current operating reactors, it looks like 9
unquestionably, the PUC's are going to play a major role
. 10 there.
11 You have mentioned their impact on safety and 12 that certainly is an important point.
Have you thought Il
\\'
13 about how they may be a major influence on where the whole 14 nuclear power business goes in the United States in the 15 future?
l 16 MR. STELLO:
I think the problem is certainly 17 real for nuclear, but I think the problem with the PUC's is l
18 far more significant for the utilities because it's not just l
19 nuclear, it's any plants.
It's any activity that they 20 undertake where they are going to be second-guessed by the i
21 PUC on a lot of other issues, and where the utility 22 executive is making a decision where he may be betting his 23 company on what the PUC does or doesn' t do.
24 That kind of reform I suspect is of major O
f 25 significance to the utility industry.
I'm not so sure that ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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it's something that we as regulators in the NRC can do very 2
much about, except to recognize what they do and how it may 3
impact us.
4 And, clearly, when it starts to impact us in the 5
area of safety, we're going to get very, very concerned.
It 6
will be a significant force in my mind.
I've heard a lot of 7
the utilities suggest the comment you just made, that that 8
is far and away the most significant concern at the moment 9
of what to do with the PUC's.
10 I dont' know whether that's an issue that 11 Congress would or should or could deal with, or whether 12 that's just between the utilities and their PUC's, or just 13 what's going to happen.
I don' t know how to approach that.
14 Nor do I think the NRC can do very much about it.
15 But it's a significant force out there that needs 16 to be recognized.
17 Charlie, perhaps you can shed some light on 18 this.
19 MR. WYLIE:
While you were talking, there are at 20 least three events that took place when I was with Duke I
21 where the Commission had something to do with it.
Du ke, for l
22 ex ample, had bought uranium reserves to assure they had fuel 23 in the future.
And Duke sold them because the utility 24 commission wouldn' t condone that in the rate base.
(^';
J 25 Also, the coal mines.
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because they bought the coal mines to assure a good supply 2
of low sulphur coal for their plants.
But you can buy spot-3 coal on the market cheaper than you can operate those 4
mines.
And the Commissin would not allow that dif ference in 5
.the rates.
6 So they sold their coal mines.
That's certainly 7
not in the best interests of public health and safety, or 8
the econmic interest of the public.
9 MR. STELLO:
I think those are the kinds of 10 things that I don' t know that we as regulators can do much.
11 MR. WYLIE:
In the area of research, you know, a 12 lot of utilities have been hit by the utility commissions, l')
'\\
13 that unless you can directly show that that research paid 14 off right now for the public, they don' t allow that in the 15 rates.
16 MR. STELLO:
Those are the areas I'm talking 17 about, where there is what I think is a direct impact on 18 safety.
I've heard comments come up with utilities wanted 19 to put in better quality equipment for balance of plant for 20 which there wasn' t an NRC requirement.
And, in effect, they 21 get challenged:
The NRC didn' t make you do that.
Why did 22 you do that?
The utility really can' t do a thorough job in l-23 designing and buying equipment for his plant because that's l
24 really what's needed in order to have a reliable plant, and
/
l 25 a reliable plant has a nexus to safety.
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'l Then I think it is of concern to us.
Those are 2
the kinds of forces that I have in mind when I talk about 3
what direction the PUC's are going.
If they tell utilities
'4 they can' t do any research at all in terms of finding out 5
how to design _or get available a better product to do a 6
better job froc. safety point of view or a reliability 7
point of view, I think that ought to be of concern to us, 8
how we're going to deal with it, how we're going to apply 9
resources to make sure we continue to be aware of it; and 10 how important we -believe that is is something that ought to 11 be part of the process that we're thinking through.
12 It was in that context.
FEMA is another example O
13 of emergency planning, our. relationship with other federal 14 agencies.
That's clearly an. evolving area, emergency 15 planning.
It's not something that is an issue that's going 16 away.
It's requiring more and more of our resources.
Is it 17 proper to require more and more of our resources?
18 DR. REMICK:
It's an area where I admire the 19 wisdom of the Japanese again, where the committee is a 20 combination of our Department of Energy, our Nuclear-21 Regulatory Commission and our PUC's.
They have as a goal 22 safe, dependable, economic electrical energy.mupply for the 23 country, so they can weigh those things and adjust them to 24 make sure that the rates are such that people can include O
25 safety and reliable plant.
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MR. STELLO:
When it's decided to regulate 2
something, the money.available to do that is a part of the 3
process.
That clearly makes things a lot easier.
4' DR. REMICK:
They probably wouldn't say when the 5
regulator wants it.
It's when the regulator and utilities 6
jointly agree that it's necessary; that's their approach.
7 They jointly decide that it's in the best interests, that 8
it's safe, reliable and economic to do it.
And they do it 9
cooperatively.
10 MR. STELLO:
They have a different regulatory 11 environment than we do.
And I've often wondered how much of 12 their better performance of their plants is a result of the
'~]
13 regulatory process that's in place rather than anything 14 that's really fundamentally different.
They do go about it 15 differently.
16 DR. REMICK:
They have a couple of hundred people 17 in MITI for nuclear; that's all.
18 MR. STELLO:
What I did is I tried to give you as 19 I was thinking through how to approach this overall broad 20 framework as a suggestion of how to integrate all of this 21 thinking into an overall plan, and that was really to try to 22 answet the questions that were asked.
Alternatives, what 23 other approach ought to be followed?
24 And what I've just done for the last hour and 15 O
25 minutes is to try to outline, if you will, again, the very, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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very broad, very, very general terms -- in very, very broad 2
and very, very general terms an overall approach.
3 Now let me turn if I can to pick on a few 4
issues.
Simplification is the first one, and I have some 5
comments in varying degrees on all of these.
6 The first comment, the first thought came to mind
'7 when I read what you'd said about simplification, if you 8
look at what plants in the country seem to have better 9
operating records, they seem to be the simpler plants, the 10 older plants, the simpler designs.
The correlation seems 11 very, very strong and it certainly ought to raise:
Have we made complexity evolve in a way in these plants that have 12 13 created problems?
14 The one tha t stands out, let me just offer, is 15 Davis-Besse.
The system that they put into the plant to 16 detect and take automatic action for a massive rupture of 17 steam and feedwater lines, as you recall, that system was a 18 very significant system in creating the event they had.
19 That was a degree of complexity.
20 Why did we do that?
Did we do that because of a 21 lack of confidence that the operators would be able to take 22 the actions that were necessary at the time?
Did we make 1
23 the j udgment that the likelihood of that kind of massive i
24 rupture was indeed so likely?
Or maybe we really didn' t 1
b
' s' 25 think through the f ull implication of having that degree of ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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complexity in making the overall balance, whether that in 2
fact would improve safety or not.
3 A lot of those judgments have been made long 4
before we had available to us the kind of systematic, 5
methodical thinking that goes with the PRA.
That brings me 6
to the next question about the transition from deterministic 7
to probabilistic, the process of simplifying by going back.
8 To the extent we wanted to devote some resources 9
to going back and reexamining a lot of those kinds of 10 decisions that added that complexity, I think can be very, 11 very useful.
But you need to be careful ab'out not making it 12 such a broad, philosophical statement that, again, nothing OkJ 13 happens.
14 What I'm suggesting is let's not go that way.
l 15 Let's take, a number of issues with a particular target for i
16 resolution of reexamining how to accomplish simplification, 17 even in existing plants.
I don't know to what extent the l
l 18 utility industry would be interested in removing some of I
19 that complexity in an existing plant or not.
20 Maybe we ought to be sure that when we pick 21 issues that they really are issues and the industry in fact 22 thinks they would want to review them, that they are 23 complexities.
24 So how we go about simplification is more where I
.r\\
kl 25 wanted to go.
It isn't clear that we as regulators should i
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sit here in isolation and decide to what extent is - that 2
complexity there.
3 Perhaps there's a way to go about this so that 4
the industry can find a way to look at where it is that this 5
complexity has been added.
That, in fact, may have an 6
untoward ef fect and let them ask us in cooperation with us 7
to sit down together and reexamine a select number of those 8
things and come up with the regulatory position.
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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I think, though, if we are going to do this, to 1
2 make sure that we are working on things that are clearly of 3
interest to the industry.
I also know the industry has not 4
got a lot of resources available out there to go back and 5
thoughtfully go through that question.
6 But I suspect, Charlie and Glenn, that people 7
like yourself would already have ideas.
People like you out 8
in the industry probably have a couple of things that come 9
to mind that we ought to be thinking about.
10 So I think maybe I ought to ask.
Do you think 11 the industry could do that, identify?
/
12 MR. WYLIE:
I think so.
I think that is probably 13 the right approach, as you suggested, is go out and have an 14 effort with the industry to examine and see where plants 15 could be simplified.
Certainly the leak before break 16 concept.
Certainly, simplified plants, removing constraints 17 for maintenance.
18 DR. REMICK:
How about physical security.
19 MR. WYLIE:
That is another one.
20 Maybe some approach could be taken that would 21 free up these plants, such as the decay heat removal 22 systems, dedicated.
Let's say, okay, you can still shut 23 this plant down safely.
So le t's remove some of the
<~
24 restraints, physical security constraints, and open up these 25 plants.
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MR. STELLO:
What I am dealing with is the last
'w 2
paragraph here saying, "The likely thrust would be for the 3
staf f to initiate basic system studies."
4 I think that is wrong because I think we ought 5
not to be doing basic system studies in areas for which data 6
just isn ' t there.
7 What we ought to do before we do anything is find 8
a way in which to allow for key people in the industry to 1
9 bring forward -- how many can you handle?
Half a dozen 10 issues, a dozen in the next five years or so?
Get those 11 identified and then let's work on those, not this 12 across-the-board, blanke t thing.
I am tired of those.
We
(~)
\\'
13 do them all the time, and we don' t get a great' deal-~ happen 14 out of them.
15 Let's pick some specific things that we can go 16 back and examine and look at them.
17 Where have we in our zeal to regulate, thinking 18 that we are doing the right kinds of things?
Maybe we will 19 do it and go back and reexamine it and change it.
Then when 20 we change it, we have the assurance that we have done 21 something that the industry is willing to accept and make 22 that change that will make that bnprovement.
l l
23 If that isn' t there, then I don' t know that you 24 have accomplished a great deal.
25 MR. REED:
Are you saying that maybe there ought i
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-1 to be -- maybe this is illegal, immoral, unethical, and 2
whatever, but that there should be perhaps a joint 3
industry / regulatory planning interface?
ll
.M R.. - STE LLO :
For simplification, sure.
I haven't 5
asked.any lawyers if it is illegal, but I can' t believe 'it c6 is illega'l to ask the people we regulate where are the 7
things that we.have done that you think we are creating 8
safety problems.
9
.I think it is our duty.
If we have created a 10
~ situation that has an impact on safety, we have a 11 responsibility to find those out, and I know of no better 12 way to do that than to ask the people who run these. plants
]' '
13 what we are doing.
14 You have asked me on a couple of occasions.
You 15 weren't bashful.
16 MR.: REED:
That was government in the sunshine.
17 Some thing Mr. Denton just did -- and maybe it is 18 weird -- he sent out this scheme.
I think it is for 19 simplification and enhancement of decay heat removal and all I
- 20 those things that John Flack and I have been working on.
He 21 send it out to EPRI.
He sent it out to the Owners Groups --
l 22 CE, Westinghouse, and so on.
Hey, look at this idea.
What l
23 do you think of it?
'24 MR. STELLO:
What I am proposing, though, is to 25 go to the issues we aren't working on and ask the industry ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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what complexity did we build into these plants which you 2
think may in fact be counter to safety or creating an awful 3
lot of difficulty in operating and running this plant, with 4
really no benefit to safety, and identify whatever number is 5
reasonable to take on.
6 What I was objecting to, Glenn, is the paragraph 7
saying the likely thrust would be for the staff to initiate 8
basic system studies to review which safety requirements are 9
really important for different types of plants and which 10 systems have not yet evolved.
That kind of blanket study is 11 what I am objecting to.
12 Let's do something concrete that is useful and
, 13 helpful and we know that the industry would accept.
14 MR. REED:
At what level would you go out to seek 15 this advice?
16 MR. STELLO:
I would want input from people that 17 were very knowledgeable about the plant.
18 MR. REED:
Not necessarily then the MBA budgeting 19 people?
20 MR. STELLO:
Oh, God, no.
Top managers.
21 MR. REED:
So you are going to try to get the 22 technical expertise interface?
I 23 MR. STELLO:
Yes, that would be where I would 24 go, not licensing kind of engineers.
They may be able to be (2) 25 the coordinator for it, but the real ideas and the real ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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thoughtful suggestions I think have to come from people who 2
are knowledgeable about the plant.
3 DR. CARBON:
Vic, let me suggest that, as you are
(
4 looking at the clock, probably we ought to wind up in about 5
five minutes.
6 MR. STELLO:
Okay, I will just stop talking in 7
five minuter.
Let me just quickly go to safety philosophy.
8 I am convinced that we need to make a transition 9
from deterministic to probabilistic.
In fact, I wonder if 10 there really is a dif ference between the two.
11 When we stop to think about it, maybe the 12 difference is now we are writing down all of the kinds of
< ~s 13~
things.that went into "de terministic" judgment the best we 14 know how, using PRA techniques.
You never want to ever get 15l away from the judgment.
You are clearly always going to 16l j
make a judgment.
17l It might be that diversity in auxiliary 18 feedwater, notwithstanding whatever number that is a good 19 idea, because there are a lot of things we just don't know 20 enough about to do that.
21 The transition?
I think we are there.
I think 22 we are already in that transition and are relying more and 23 more on the kinds of insights we get from probabilistic 24 assessments.
a r
25 Let me skip down to cover a couple of other ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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important issues, and let me raise one that I don' t think c.
2 that I see in here.
That is a technical issue.
3 Reactivation of existing plants.
There are some 4
people like Westinghouse who deal with Bechtel and Marble 5
Hill, the reactivation for those kinds of plants could be 6
very, very important.
7 Unquantified conservatisms.
That is an area that P
I continue to worry about because I am concerned that 9
sometimes these very large conservatisms dictate things in 10 the design that in reality detract, and I have a classical 11 example that sticks in my mind all the time.
12 That is a bulletin we issued a number of years
~
13 ago.
We made people change.
We were getting a lot of 14 problems with contamination of oil in the compressor systems 15 with air-operated valves, and we put kits in to use a 16 dif ferent material that was resistant to the degradation 17 from oil.
18 The problem, when the oil got in there, it made 19 more than one valve stick and f ail, a common mode kind of 20 failure.
21 Then we did some tests using environmental 22 qualification of the new material that showed way out at 10 23 to the 8 th rads you started to deteriorate, and the 24 immediate regulatory response was let's go back and make 25 them put the old material in.
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We said, wait a minute, you know, it isn't clear 2
that is the right thing to do.
It may make plants a lot 3
less safe using the 10 to the 8th rad number, which is 4
clearly a f ull-blown, f ull-scale core melt through the 5
vessel.
6 It isn' t clear to me that we ought to be 7
dictating designs on that kind of basis.
So there is an 8
area that is important in this, and I think the source term 9
work is going to precipitate reexamination from that 10 context.
11 But there are a lot of others -- ECCS.
I 12 remember some meetings four or five years ago where there
'NJ 13 was a real concern that we should be making design decisions 14 based on these very, very -conservative techniques of ECC 15 analyses.
Will we in fact be counterproductive in doing 16 tha t?
17 So there are a lot of areas where 18 over-conservatism is clearly causing us to move in the wrong 19 direction.
20 My time is running out.
21 Adversarial relationship.
I want to make sure I 22 get that one because that one bothers me.
23 I think it is true that an awful lot of lack of 24 moving on and getting things done is the result of an 25 adversarial relationship, and we have commented about the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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way things are in Japan, Forrest, a minute ago.
l 2
They don' t have this kind of climate, and I think 3
it really detracts significantly in terms of our ability to 4
move forward with issues.
I think there is a sense of 5
probably -- and I have used the words -- maybe they are 6
harsh -- a lack of trust of the industry and the industry 7
having a lack of trust in the regulators.
8 Maybe it is warranted, maybe it isn't, but I 9
think it is wrong.
It is counterproductive, and I think we 10 need to find a way, while still being a tough but fair 11 regulator, still being able to do it professionally without 12 this adversarial relationship, shouting and screaming.
13 I Not that I mind the shouting and screaming that 14 much.
I like to do it myself.
It is good.
But we ought to 15 be able to get ' rid of what I think is fundamentally a lack 16 of trust.
17l With tha t, Mr. Chairman, I have not allowed you 18 to ask me many questions, but I didn' t get to say all of 19 what I wanted to say, but most of it.
20 DR. CARBON:
Is there a last-minute, 30-second 21 question?
Just one?
22 MR. REED:
I just have to get in my punch line.
23 I have about eight punches with which I hit people.
Do you think the root perhaps to adversarialism 24 t
25 reduction is via the designated representative system x- '
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similar to the FAA?
2 MR. STELLO:
I don' t think that will do it.
3 MR. REED:
It puts professionals working with 4
professionals.
l 5
MR. STELLO:
I agree with you, but I think this 6
lack of confidence, lack of trust -- when I go to a plant 7
and I ask a question, are you willing to raise this issue 8
because you disagree with it and say we don' t think we ought 9
to do it and debate that with the staff, the candid answer I 10 get sometimes is, well, we wouldn' t do it because we are 11 afraid of retribution.
It is with other inspectors and l
12 regulators.
O'-
13 DR. CARBON :
Sorry, the 30 seconds is up.
14 Vic, we greatly appreciate your coming and 15 meeting with us.
You are highly respected, and we take your 16 words and judgment, we weigh them heavily.
17 Thank you.
18 Let's take a 10-minute break, and let me remind 19 the audience that we will be reconvening in closed session 20 and we will not be transcribing the closed session.
21 (Whereupon, at 10:00 a.m., the meeting was 22 recessed, to reconvone in closed session.)
23 24 f~
(- /.
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AFTERNOON SESSION 2
(1:05 p.m.)
3 DR. CARBON:
Let's formally reconvene the 4
m'ee t ing.
First of all, we're just delighted that you could 5
take the time to come and meet with us.
I think we can 6
benefit from your input from several backgrounds, your past 7
Commissionership and also active at the state level.
8 I think personally that the State PUC's play an 9
important role in all this.
What we've done in terms of 10 format is to ask the guest if he or she would discuss 11 general points first and we suspect, probably, you'll have 12 some general comments to make.
We'll discuss those for part 13 of the time and then perhaps get to specific topics, either 14 the technical or regulatory process, or what ha": you.
15 If that format sounds reasonable, we begin by 16 asking for general comments about the whole subject that i
17' we ' re talking about.
I might say that the letter that was 18 written to you perhaps had some past flavor.
19 The Commissioners have decided definitely to go 20 ahead to develop a long-range plan.
We and they I guess 21 both began thinking this about a year ago independently.
22 And we're still channeling our input to them.
23 They, in turn, are having OPE put some things 24 specifically together.
They're thinking heavily along the 25 range of, say, a five-year program.
We're thinking, to a ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 considerable extent at least, beyond five years; maybe 10 2
years, or sor.e such thing.
0 3
With that background, I'll ask if;thd'other w
4 members have questions or comments at the moment.,
5 (No response.)
!^
6 DR. CARBON:
If not, we'll turn to you.
7 MR. BRADFORD:= Thank you very much.
I feel a bit 8
mismatched with you all in the sense that my own background ll ?
9 isn't technical,' of course, so my comments will be heavily 10 on the regulatory process side.
11 DR. CARBON:
That's quite all right.
12 MR. BRADFORD:
Really not at all on.the technical
!L' 13 side.
14 As you know, I've been about three and a half l 'i years away from the NRC now.
And with the exception of 16 occasional labors of one sort of another at Maine Yankee, I
-have dot 5been much involved in safety matters at all.
17 So
- , f p
18 thke those cautions for what they' re worth.
I may make some ogtjirvations that may be out of date.
19 i
20 I also suffer from the problem I think of most 21 commissioners, ac least those who came from outside of any 22 direct familiarity with the nuclear industry, in that, never hav{ng been on the NRC staf f or involved with a nuclear 23 24 utility directly, I don' t even today have a good day to day
!3#
25 feel'for the work of the staff.
So my comments are heavily a
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oriented from the perspective of one who came and served on 2
the Commission and left again.
3 That having been said, I started out sort of 4
taking it as a given, of course:
How can you be against the 5
long-range plan?
And how can anyone possibly think that 6
that was a good thing to have?
7 I guess I still feel that way but, as I thought 8
about it, I did come away with the feeling that perhaps 9
there was one task that I'd give a somewhat higher priority 10 to as part of the process of developing that plan, or 11 alternatively putting in what needed to be done on the 12 plan.
And that was to come up -- well, give a very high
-)
13 priority to the concept of managing for safe ~ty as' apart from 14 all of the technical issues.
15 That was one of the things that needed, in my 16 view, more review than the question of technical priorities 17 in the agency.
Just the workings of the NRC.
18 A lot of that is really subjects that you at the l
19 ACRS can' t do much about; I recognize that.
But there l
20 really are I think some fundamental questions in terms of 21 the way the Commission is set up and operates.
22 When I first came on the NRC in '77, one of the 23 high priority tasks was consolidation of the H.
Street 24 Building and the Bethesda Building.
I don' t know what's 25 happened in Bethesda since 1982 but, obviously, the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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H.
Street Building is still on H.
Street.
I see that Star 2
Wars seems to have taker. over some of the lower floors.
But 3
there was a time in '80 and '81 in fact when the answer 4
seemed to be to bring fair parts of the staff down here.
5 Part of the question is of course consolidation 6
but more important is the question of why, in nine years, 7
hasn't anything happened?
There has to be something about 8
the way things get done at NRC, some significant lesson to 9
be learned in understanding the f ailure of consolidation.
10 I know, when I was here, consolidation was 11 yimportant.
It seemed important to me anyway, not just 12 because it would cut down on commuting time but because the 7
13 entire integration of the agency would be favorably as a 14 result of just all kinds of conversations that took place in 15 cafeterias and elevators and the hallways that don' t take 16 place today.
17 Also, under the heading of managing for safety, a 18 concern that I had when I was here, I don' t know that it 19 would hold today -- I suspect that it would -- is that I 20 j ust didn' t have the sense that information with regard to 21 particular problems flowed very quickly or very well.
I 22 shouldn't say'"within the staff", although, again, I haven't 23 spent much time in Bethesday, but at least from the staff to 7_
24 the Commission.
)
4 25 It was a process in which the Commission wasn' t ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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sending out a clear message that it wanted -- how should I 2
put it -- except in the wake of Three-Mile Island for a 3
brief period, there was a pretty constant emphasis from the 4
Commission on getting the good news.
And while the rhetoric 5
was always one of "Yes, of course we want full attention 6
also given to the problems of public health and safety," the 7
actual sort of practice in terms of who got awards, what got 8
attention at Commission meetings wasn't such that it 9
encouraged the individual staff member who is trying to 10 decide whether their career would be better advanced by 11 putting more time into pushing the license a little faster,
'12 or putting more time into raising a safety' issue that they 13 thought important.
14 Again, the kind of thing that I think needs doing 15 and has needed doing for several years now is perhaps the 16 bringing in of an outside firm of management expertise just 17 to review the way the NRC does business.
18 Any long-range plan would benefit from a serious, 19 open-minded management review of the Commission and its 20 practices.
I have my own views about the balance between 21 the resolving of safety issues and the emphasis put on the 22 licensing process.
But that isn' t really the point that I'm 23 trying to make so much as it seems to me, in the NRC, at 24 least as I knew it, there is an awful lot of wasted effort,
)
25 a considerable amount of frustration, a number of deadends z>
2 r
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that the present, overall structure is not well geared to s
2 handle.
I think that would frustrate any long-range plan, 3
any technically-oriented long-range plan, no matter how much 4
effort and good will go into it.
5 I asked myself at one point in taking a look at 6
this exercise what a long-range plan would have looked like 7
had it been drawn up in past years and what would have 8
become of it.
And I'm not sure that was a completely useful 9
undertaking.
But I have the feeling that the long-range 10 plan of, say, 1975 would not have been very well carried out 11 in the years between 1975-1980; or the one for '78 in the 12 years between '78 and
'83.
(
)
13 And I think the reason is essentially that the 141 planning process, again, no matter how well done, would not 15 have been able to cope with the fact that the Commission has 16 a lot of trouble in carrying out, first of all, in 17 articulating its priorities; and, secondly, to the extent 18 that it's able to articulate them, in getting them carried 19 out.
20 So it seems to me the most important precondition 21 of a successful plan is to deal with that problem.
I don't 22 pretend to know what the conclusions of such a review would i
23 be, but I think it's an important preliminary undertaking to 24 what you' re trying to do and what the Commission is trying 7s 25 to do through this long-range planning process.
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DR. REMICK:
Doesn' t that say that it has to be a 2
written document?
That you have to constantly revise it?
3 MR. BRADFORD:
That's true, too, but even if you 4
have a living technical document and reviso it effectively 5
and well, I think the carrying out of it is going to 6
flounder.
Just assume that I'm speaking as of the year 7
1980, as of the spring of 1982.
A lot may have happened 8
since then.
9 If this were the spring of '82, I would not be 10 very sanguine about a plan, no matter how good a plan it 11 was, without a concommitent review of the actual workings of 12 the Commission.
There are some questions that the
'h' 13 Commission itself can cope with, such as whether it should l
14 be singly etdministered, three Commissioners or five?
They 15 don' t have the power to change it.
They of course can have 16 opinions on it and make. recommendations, but I suppose if 1
l 17 five Commissioners concluded it should be a single 18 administrator, four of them could stay home.
l 19 But, at that point, there would have to be i
20 recommendations to Congress as well.
21 Let me turn now to the letter that you 'sent me 22 and the issues within it.
I can' t add a lot to the 23 collection of issues that you have.
I certainly can' t add 24 anything from a technical standpoint.
As one who has some
_GJ 25 f amiliarity with the concerns of the state commissions as ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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they look at the nuclear power plants that they regulate, I 2
can tell you that the ordering might be quite different.
3 A lot of state commissions now are very 4
concerned, for example, about the nuclear waste management f
5 question and what's going to become of it; and about the f
6 credibility of the process for arriving at a long-term I
7 repository.
l l
8 We' re concerned of course to regulate the flow of l
9 funds, but we're also concerned because, as long as that 10 seems to be an unresolved issue, it hangs over the operation 11 of the power plants themselves.
12 We just had a referendum in Maine yesterday in
.)
13 which a proposition carried., which, on its face, doesn't 14, change matters very much.
That is, it just says what the 15 public voted for was a proposition that said they wanted the 16 right to review and approve any low level waste storage 17 f acility agreed to for location in the State of Maine.
18 What's more significant though is that tha t 19 wasn' t -- or I would not have said that that would be the 20 kind of issue that would have gone to referendum.
And I 21 would not have guessed that the referendum itself would have 22 succeeded.
It was in fact opposed by both the state 23 government, the governor and by Central Maine Power Company, l
l 24 and it got just a shade over.
percent of the vote.
,_sb 25 And I think it essentially, well, as I say, the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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language is f airly innocuous on its f ace, is a reflection as l
2
.to a very strong public concern over waste.
3 As I say, it actually applied to low level 4
wastes, so I'm sure there was some public confusion between 5
low and high level waste.
And there's a very strong concern 6
out there and it isn' t being helped by, for example, the DOE 7
turnaround on the question of whether sites had to be 8
characterized before they could be whittled down.
9 So that I think maintaining the credibility of 10 the NRC role in the waste management process from the point 11 of view of the state commissions has perhaps a higher 12 priority than I would have guessed' if I were still sitting
.h 13 here at the NRC, because it is such a volatile public 14 issue.
15 DR. CARBON:
Before you leave that, could you 16 expand briefly and point out if it exists, the specific 17 reasons, why the public is concerned?
18 Is it that they are truly worried about high 19 level waste having a bad influence on groundwater?
Or, is 20 it tha thought that they just don't know what the story is 21 and they don' t trust Washington and DOE?
~22 MR. BRADFORD:
I think a lack of trust is a very 23 large part of it.
With that, of course, comes the effect on 24 groundwater, the possibility of transportation-accidents in O
l 25
.a general sense, that somehow the people who will be ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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responsible for disposing of the wastes can' t be trusted to 2
do it in a way that won' t do harm.
3 As I say, I expected the proposition to get a 4
substantial vote.
I didn't expect it to get over 50 percent 5
and I have no idea what the long-term legal implications 6
are, whether the state in fact has the power to impose 7
requirements like this.
But just as an expression of public 8
misgiving, it's quite a strong one.
9 Maine, af ter all, hasn' t been in the position of 10 Washington or Nevada or New Mexico as one of the highly 11 visible candidate sites for high level waste repositories.
12 Most of the low level waste that's being talked about is
-(
13 Maine Yankee, and a very small percentage from hospitals.
14 The proposal essentially has been to start at Maine Yankee, 15 which is on a different site.
16 So the actual level of controversy in Maine, or 17 the actual factors contributing to the controversy, is 18 nowhere near as inflamatory as, for example, for the first i
19 high level waste repositories.
And, yet, _there's obviously i
20 a substantial backlash.
21 Now on the other hand, it is an off year.
The 22 pecple who turned out probably tended to be those who had 23 strong feelings about nuclear wastes and in a general 24 election, the result might have been somewhat dif ferent.
- I 25 But, all of that having been said, it still was i
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a surprising result -- surprising to me anyway.,And I think 2
a pretty clear harbinger of difficulties down the road when 3
high level waste is going into a state, where there has been 4
an. ongoing campaign over it for a number of years.
5 6
7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
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DR. CARBON:
Still one queecton.
Is it perhaps 2
really a concern with nuclear waste or wastes in general, 3
with all the discussion about chemical waste?
4 MR. BRADFORD:
That's a good question.
We have 5
had toxic waste problems in Maine.
It may, well, I'm sure 6
there's an interplay between them.
People are now much more 7
conscious than they were a few years ago about the fact that 8
when you stuff something in the ground, it's likely to show 9
up somewhere else.
10 That consciousness, I'm sure when you stir 11 radioactivity into the equasion, it only makes it worse.
(])
12 People just aren't aware that there are places being 13 considered.
Waste repositories really aren't quite like the 14 ones that are being used for toxic waste storage.
There's a 15 much greater sense that things move around under the ground.
16 But as far, for example, even several years down i
17 the road, interest in again building nuclear power plants, i
18 starting another generation of them in the future, as far as 19 my part of the country anyway is concerned, there's just no 20 way in the absence of an agreed-upon waste solution that 21 that,would be politically feasible, even though, 22 technically, obviously, you can store the wastes for a long 23 period of time on the site, this issue isn't going to go
()
24 away short of an eventual, agreed upon repository, I don't 25 think.
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.Yet, what we've seen in Maine and certainly what 2
we've been seeing out in the West is that it's going to be 3
hard to get that repository.. The only implication of that 4
.for what you're doing here I think is the integrity, both 5
technical and regulatory, process integrity of the NRC's 6
role in the waste management plan and the' licensing process 7
needs to be safeguarded very jealously.
8 If it is perceived that the NRC is essentially 9
sort of going along with whatever the DOE process requires, 10 it can'only inflame the kinds of concerns we've seen.
11 In fact, one more comment about the campaign in 12 Maine.
It was not, by and large, a positive one.
The
()
13 proponents of the referendum proposition really did not l'4 focus on' technical concerns anywhere near as much as thef
'15 did on the untrustworthiness of institutions.
It was very 16 much a negative type of campaign.
17 It gives you some idea of the extent to which the 18 public is susceptible to that kind of approach.
19 Well, I wouldn't want to over-generalize at the 20 same time.
There are plenty of states that have a great 21 deal more sophistication with regard to nuclear issues than 22 the ones in the Northeast, the ones that have had major 23 nuclear facilities for longer.
I don't know that the same 24 kind of campaign would turn out the same way there.
It
()
25 might-well not.
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Another issue that matters a lot within the state 2
regulatory commissions, again, because.of the financial 3
implications, is decommissioning.
It's on your list, but 4
it's fairly far down.
The States really do need to know as 5
soon as possible what an approvable path for decommissioning 6
is likely to look like, so they can figure out what it's 7
likely to cost.
8 We like to price our electricity in such a way 9
that the current customers pay for the full cost of their 10 facilities.
The people who are consuming today's kilowatt 11 hours1.273148e-4 days <br />0.00306 hours <br />1.818783e-5 weeks <br />4.1855e-6 months <br /> should be paying something toward the ultimate cost of 12 decommissioning the facility, and that's been a hard target
()
13 to get a fix on in the last few years.
14 So, again, that's an issue that I know from my 15 l time here was constantly kept on the backburner in terms of 16 its importance as a safety issue, compared to other safety 17 issues.
18 But, in terms of issues that make a difference, 19 it's a somewhat more significant one.
20 I didn't pick it up, although maybe it's in 21 here.
This is the only even vaguely technical comment I 22 will make.
But there must be a host of issues that go with 23 the fact that the plants are getting older, that they may 24 behave somewhat differently in the years 20 through 30 than
{}
25 they have up to now.
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9270 07 04-75 F~SDAV/bc' l-I didn't see anything in the list of issues that V
2 seemed specifically geared.
3 DR. CARBON:
It's certainly on our mind.
Along 4
that line, I might comment chat many utility companies I 5
think are looking that maybe they can operate plants over a 6
50 or 75-year lifetime, 60 or 70 or something.
There is 7
certainly some attention being given to that, and it's 8
probably a question that's going to need considerable work.
9 MR. BRADFORD:
I guess, on a five-year horizon, 10-there still won't be that many plants that will be 20 years 11 old.
By the time you get out to 10 years, it will be fairly 12 substantial.
(]).
13 I noticed on the first page of the letter that 14 you sent to me, there isn't any specific mention of cost-15 effectiveness as something to be considered within the 16 long-range. plan.
Is that a conscious exclusion?
The 17 Commission has always been a little ambivalent about the 18 extent to which it's willing to say it takes costs into 19 account.
20 But I should have thought we'd crossed that 21 bridge around '80 or '81 and agreed that we did in fact take 22 cost into account.
23 DR. REMICK:
You mean, the cost benefit 24 considerations?
()
25 MR. BRADFORD:
Yes.
Some of the PPPG exercises ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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wound up recognizing that cost benefit was a legitimate gggDAV/bc 2
factor and not something that we ought to be unduly shy 3
about admitting.
4 DR. CARBON:
It certainly comes into things like 5
backfit rules, and so on.
We would appreciate your 6
expression of your views on that.
7 MR. BRADFORD:
When you say on the first page 8
that the primary goals of the long-range plan should be 9
acceptable, I think you'd want to recognize 10 cost-effectiveness in there.
11 DR. WYLIE:
From what standpoint?
12 The analysis of safety improvements or
()
13 backfitting for safety?
14 MR. BRADFORD:
Well, both backfitting and the 15 areas in which the NRC, the way in which the NRC prioritizes 16 its choices of areas to which to pay attention.
17 DR. WYLIE:
Backing up to your comment on the 18 plant performance, are you thinking in terms of the safety 19 aspect of the plant?
20 MR. BRADFORD:
Yes.
21 DR. WYLIE:
The probability of an incident, or 22 the effect of aging on safety systems?
More that type of 23 thing?
24 MR. BRADFORD:
I guess I don't see the
()
25 distinction.
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'l DR. WYLIE:
In one case, it's the probability of
.V 2
an incident and the ability to cope or mitigate the 3
consequences.
Is that what you had in mind?
4 MP. BRADFORD:
I had both in mind.
I wouldn't 5
know how to go about distinguishing between the two in terms 6
of which was more important.
I suppose, if you don't feel 7
you're any more likely to have an incident, well, it still 8
matters but if there is some likelihood of an incident, 9
you'd still need the systems.
10 Pressurized thermal shock was the one issue when 11 I was on the Commission which the older the plant got there 12 was clearly an increased likelihood that the event in
.(}
13 question would occur.
14 But I don't know that there aren't others.
15 DR. CARBON:
If you were to phrase a bulletin on 16 that first page, would it be something like:
17 To regulate in a cost-effective fashion?
18 Is that sort of the gist -? what you would say?
19 MR. BRADFORD:
Yes.
Actually, somewhere in one 20 of the PPPG documents in 1980 to
'81, we really wrestled 21 with that for a long time.
We finally got something that at 22 least the majority of the Commission was fairly comfortable 23 with.
24 DR. REMICK:
It is being utilized in setting
()
25 priorities on a number of issues, cost benefit analysis.
l l
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Not everybody agrees with it, but the staff is using that.
2 And you're right, we did not address it in here.
3 MR. BRADFORD:
There's a sort of ambivalence that 4
runs through a lot of the exercises like long-range 5
plannings that PPPG, the safety goal.
You have to start 6
with some notion as to whether you think the Commission is 7
doing a satisfactory job in all respects today, and has done 8
up to now; because I think you get quite a different 9
long-range plan if, as a group, you feel that the answer to 10 that question is yes.
11 In which case, you're essentially presumably 12 behind it.
Then if you agree there are three or four
')
13 clearcut shortcut means, then, obviously, one of the goals
}
(
14 of the plan would be to remedy those.
It's sort of an 15 awkward thing for the ACRS to perhaps do.
But I do think it 16 will be hard to get a very clearcut, long-range plan if you 17 don't go through for yourselves the process of answering the 18 question whether or not you're satisfied with the 19 continuation, let's say, over the next five to 10 years of 20 the matters of the last five or 10.
21 That's really all I have by way of general 22 comment.
23 DR. CARBON:
I have questions on two or three 24 general things.
I think, for our comments and long-range f~')
25 plan to be very meaningful, that sort of starts out with x-i ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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.what the future looks like for the industry.
R.)
2 What is the NRC going to be called upon to do two 3
years from now?
Five?
Ten?
Fifteen years?
What do you, 4
from the state's standpoint, see as the future of the 5
nuclear business?
Is it going to be revived?
Are we going 6
to build coal plants or are we not going to need plants?
7 What's acid rain going to do to things?
8 MR. BRADFORD:
I'll give you two answers, if I 9
may.
One is the concensus of the National Association of 10 Utility Commissioners answer, and one is my own.
My own 11 view, at least for the State of Maine, is that we aren't 12 going-to have interest in another nuclear plant, certainly (m) 13 not one that would come on line in this century.
r 14 Conceivably, I guess, one could be started.
15 Largely, because we're seeing an extraordinary 16 amount of cogeneration.
We may be a fairly unique state in 17 that respect.
We have a lot of papermills and very few 18 people and the combination of that and power available from l
19 large hydrofacilities in Canada, plus what we can do through 20 conservation, seems likely to see us through until the next i
21 decade very comfortably.
And the power companies are doing 22 that.
23 I'll leave my own view at that.
Within the 24 National Association of Utilities Commissioners, you get a (s) 25 much, much broader distribution of outlooks, ranging from r
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other states, that would come out about where I did.
To 2
those who feel that nuclear power really has served their 3
state and region very well and it's a shame they're 4
foreclosed from going forward with it at the moment, and 5
that they expect to see some fairly high level of growth in 6
demand, say, 3 to 4 percent annually, and that they do 7
expect by the early nineties to want to license their 8
plants, whether that's politically realistic in their states 9
or not, I just don't know.
10 But I think there are a lot of states -- I should 11 say, a significant number of states -- that have that 12 interest.
And if they got the right combination of factors, l' ;
13 that is, relatively high growth in demand for central v
14 station generated power continuation of relatively low 15 capital costs, four or five more years, without a Three-Mile 16 Island in terms of reactor safety and satisfactory progress 17 toward solving the waste disposal problem, would expect to 18 see a return to interest in nuclear plants.
19 I think in any of those regions, if there is a 20 plant needed this year or next, they would expect it to be 21 cold.
I just don't think there's a utility executive out 22 there right now whose prepared to take on Wall Street, to 23 say nothing of the anti-nuclear community, with the 24 consequences of a decision to build a nuclear plant.
vn 25 But I am sure there are utilities commissioners w)1 1
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who don't foresee that situation lasting more than 4 to 5 2
years, which is roughly the estimate I gave after Three-Mile 3
Island-for how long it would last then.
4 So don't put too much. stock in it.
5 DR. MOELLER:
Following up on something 6
Dr. Carbon mentioned, is Maine significantly affected by 7
acid rain?
8 MR. BRADFORD:
Yes.
9 DR. MOELLER:
Does that influence people in terms 10 of their selection of sources of power?
11 MR. BRADFORD:
Of course, the acid that we get 12 doesn't come from the plants in Maine.
It would come from f( )
'13 the coal plants in the Midwest, not well-sited, well-run 14 nuclear plants.
15 I,
incidentally, said that.
The last time I used i
16 that particular sentence, I was speaking to one of Ralph 17 Nader's Critical Mass groups just before I left the NRC.
18 And I just about forfeited my membership and credibility in j
19 that company.
But it's certainly true.
20 As a New Englander, I'd have to say we are 21 certainly seeing far more by way of adverse environmental 22 impact from coal plants than we would in, say, megawatts 23 that were coming from at least nuclear plants that performed 24 up to the standard, at least now.
()
25 DR. MOELLER:
What percent of Maine's total ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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electricity would Maine Yankee represent?
Is it 10 percent
- U
.2 or 25?
3 MR. BRADFORD:
It depends a little on how you 4
count it.
Maine Yankee is only half-owned by Maine 5
Utilities.
The other half is owned out of state.
If you 6
just do it by megawatts, Maine Yankee is about 40 percent of 7
the total-demand in the State.
But the amount of Maine 8
Yankee owned in Maine is only half.
9 On the other hand, the Maine Utilities own pieces 10 of Vermont Yankee, Connecticut Yankee and Seabrook.
The New 11-England Region, as a whole, I think, is about 30 percent 12 nuclear.
4 t
{')
'13 DR. MOELLER:
Yes, that sounds right.
14 Now, you mentioned the papermills' cogeneration.
15 Are those coal-fired or oil?
16 MR. BRADFORD:
For the most part now, they're 17 burning wood waste.
'18 DR. MOELLER:
And then generating electricity 19 using the waste heat?
20 MR. BRADFORD:
We're actually getting more 21 electricity from the two Scott Paper Company mills, one in
~'
22 Westbrook and one in Somerset, than we will from Seabrook or 23 Central Maine Power, which is getting 100 megawatts from 24 those two mills, as compared to 70 for its share of
()
25 Seabrook.
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DR. REMICK:
Paper mills are traditional 2
cogenerators.
The first job I had as a young engineer was 3
working in a papermill where they had boilers, coal-fired 4
cogeneration.
It's not a new concept.
5 MR. BRADFORD:
No.
One of the things that has 6
some appeal about it is that, while it seems new in the 7
sense that we haven't done much of it recently, it is a 8
technology that doesn't have a lot of mystery to it.
9 There are people now actually who are building 10 just straight wood-burning power plants in Maine.
But none 11 of those are in operation yet, so it remains to be seen.how 12 their economics will actually work out.
13 l (r-)
Several municipalities are now burning their 14 wastes and generating electricity, or planning to, and all 15 of them are paid what's called the avoided cost rate.
That 16 is, the Commissioner center rate, which is calculated to 17 displace the equivalent amount of power if the utility 18 itself had to build or buy.
19 DR. REMICK:
If they had to build or buy it 20 today.
21 MR. BRADFORD:
Well, no.
You get a contract for 22 15 years.
If all you want to do is supply power for the 23 next year or two, then, essentially, the rate you have to 24 meet is the price of oil.
But if you are prepared to supply
/
)
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as well.
That's a little far afield except that it's that V
2 rate that has brought all of this capacity out of the 3
woodwork so to speak.
4 When Central Maine Power first put that rate into 5
place, essentially they wound up backing it up with 6
auxilliary process.
They expected to get between 50-100 7
megawatts and they wound up getting between, I believe, 8
300-400 megawatts.
And the process is still going on.
9 California, I guess, has had an even more 10 dramatic experience.
11 12 f]
13 14 15 16 17 18 19.
20 21 22 23 1
24 0
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DR. REMICK:
It's wholly dependent on those tax s/
2 credits.
3 MR. BRADFORD:
It's dependent on those tax 4
credits and, of course, it's not in place yet.
It's one 5
thing to sign a contract and another to finance a whole 6
facility.
I've gotten myself into a certain amount of hot 7
water, I think, by calling cogeneration potentially the 8
nuclear power of the 1980s in the sense that we have to be 9
careful, there's a lot we don't yet know of how it's going 10 to play itself out.
We could be in for some unpleasant 11 surprises.
12 DR. CARBON:
Did I understand you correctly to
()
13 say that the cogenerators are paid, or they have to meet the 14 price of generating electricity from oil?
15 MR. BRADFORD:
In the short run, what the law 16 requires is that the utility pay to any third party 17 supplier, whether as a cogenerator or of a woodburning power 18 plant or a hydro dam, that they pay to that third party 19 supplier the price of the electricity that they don't have 20 to generate themselves.
21 The original logic was that since in many parts 22 of the country, marginal kilowatt hour of electricity came 23 from oil, this essentially would displace a lot of oil.
24 And, in New England, that means that, right now, in an
()
25 efficient oil-burning plant, the running costs are on the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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order of 4.5 cents a kilowatt hour.
That's what you can get 2
if you're in a position -- if the papermill is prepared to 3
supply power in the short run.
4 But, in the long run, perhaps doesn't make a firm 5
commitment.
On the other hand, if you're prepared to supply 6
for 15 years, then the calculation includes three or four 7
years of essentially just oil displacement.
But, after 8
that, you begin to get credit for displacing the need to 9
build some new capacity in the utility system as well.
10 When we first calculated a long-time levelized 11 rate for Central Maine Power, it came out at about 9.5 cents 12 a kilowatt hour.
That's what you'd get for all the kilowatt
)
13 hours1.50463e-4 days <br />0.00361 hours <br />2.149471e-5 weeks <br />4.9465e-6 months <br /> for 15 years.
And it started out on that level.
.s 14 The price level has failed so it started out in 15 the five cents range and then went up to the point where it 16 was displacing.
It has not displaced Seabrook II.
And when 17 you factored in the avoided cost of displacing Seabrook II, 18 you wound up with an overall 9.5 cent levelized cost, or you 19 could start off taking five and wind up getting 14 or 20 something.
21 Actually, more like 20.
22 MR. REID:
How does cogeneration work out with 23 respect to the potential for pollution?
I would think that 24 smaller paper company plants would have pollution.
'( )
25 MR. BRADFORD:
They have to comply with the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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State's Clean Air criteria.
They can't operate unless they gggDAV/bc 2
get the air pollution permits from the environmental 3
agencies.
As long as they're displacing oil or coal they 4
are probably better.
I'm not Air Chemist but my 5
understanding is they are just less of an air pollution 6
problem.
7 MR. REID:
Are you seeing them using gas for -
8 cogeneration?
You say they're displacing coal or oil.
9 MR. BRADFORD:
They're burning wood.
10 MR. REID:
A substantial majority are burning 11 wood?
12 MR. BRADFORD:
Again, in Maine, yes.
You see, l
13 Maine has an awful lot of trees and not very many people.
14 And the companies have gone in for what's call whole tree l
15 l chipping.
The only power plant I've ever visited that 16 wasn't a nuclear plant -- I'll take you off in a bit of an 17 anticdote -- is the Scott Paper Company mill.
I began by 18 going out into the woods with these guys.
And they had
~
19 these large devices that go into the woods.
And they just 20 cut the tree off by clipping it at the base, picking it up, 21 sort of stowing it on a track and going on.
22 Eventually, they have six or seven trees 23 vertically on the platform.
Then they go out to the woods, 24 lay the trees down.
This avoids the problem of dragging j
25 trees through the underbrush and wrecking all the new ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS INC.
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growth.
l--V
-2 Something else comes along, attaches a chain to 3
it, drags it a hundred yards to where the chipper is 4
waiting, and it really cara take a tree this big-around and 5
turn it into matchsticks in about 30 seconds.
Just go right 6
through it.
7 And it throws the matchsticks into the van of the 8
truck.
Once the truck is filled up, it just drives off.
9 Another one comes in, parks at this assembly and drives off 10 to the papermill where the wood chips are put into a 11
_ process, where actually the truck itself is tipped up 12 vertically and emptied that way.
.(])
13 In terms of the things that can go wrong in an 14 untried system, the first few trucks that came in, some of 15 them didn't have vents.
And it was sort of a beer can 16 effect.
The truck of course had never been designed to be 17 dumped by being tipped up vertically.
It was supposed to 18 just turn itself up a little bit and have everything run out 19 gradually.
Instead, having the ground actually go under it 20 caused such a rush out that the trucks caved in.
21 That problem has been solved by putting in 22 insulation and vents.
The chips then just go right into the 23 furnace.
i 24 I had assumed that this kind of effort would wind l
.(])
'25 up using so much wood that if one were doing it on a large i
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1 scale, which is a big commitment, with the huge amount of T'}DAV/bc C
2 forest -- I'm told not by the people in our Department of 3
Conservation.
They're very enthusiastic about it because in 4
their. view, Maine's woods haven't been kept up very well and 5
have a lot of undesirable growth in them.
6 For power generation, it is desirable to burn 7
mostly hardwood for papermaking.
It's desirable to have 8
mostly soft wood.
They looked at this as a great 9
opportunity to thin out a lot of hardwood forests.
That is 10 not a useful resource anyway.
And bring back the soft wood 11 forest which was hit pretty hard by the spruce budworm.
12 So, from the State's point of view, they get a
(')
13 number of benefits.
The forest is apparently going to be I
14 better off in 10-15 years as a result of all of this than it 15 would have been without it.
The dollars being paid for the 16 fuel, instead of looking around for No. 6 oil, they hire 17 Maine woodcutters.
As a result, there are a lot more jobs 18 and the property tax base shoots up.
19 If what had been regarded as waste trees suddenly 20 had value, from the State's standpoint it appears to be a 21 very good deal.
Having been through some nuclear power 22 difficulties, I do keep cautioning people that the same kind 23 of things were being said about-nuclear power in the fifties 24 that are now being said about cogeneration in Maine in the
()
25 eighties.
i ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS. INC.
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That, as I say, has gotten me into some ' kinds of 2
trouble.
3 NR. REID:
I guess you have to watch the paper 4
company marketing aspects.
There may be marketing aspects.
5 MR. BRADFORD:
It works both ways if I've 6
understood what you're about to say.
It certainly is true
~
7 that if the papermill closes down, you then have a problem.
8 MR. REID:
No.
I'm' thinking of the act that 9
people who are in the business of producing paper want 10 softwoods and hardwoods are in their way.
They may say that 11 hardwoods have little value, although they might have lots 12 of value for furniture or some other thing.
Perhaps they'd 13 rather just burn them.
'\\
()
14 MR. BRADFORD:
I've asked a couple of our state 15 agencies to take a look at this type of question, whether we 16 really do have a good handle on what the different 17 potentials and demands on the resources are.
There are not V
18 a lot of people making furniture out of those hardwoods in N
19 Maine today.
1 5 i
6 20 But even the hardwood operations, the sawmills 21 and such, seem to benefit a lot from this because they can 22 ship their sawdust to be burned.
And again that's something 23 that had been?df no value.
24 MR. REID:
This is where I got confused.
I
()
25 didn't realize that papermill people were going out taking ACE-FEDEhL REPORTERS, INC.
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the hardwood trees and shooting them into the furnace.
V 2
Nowadays, there's hardly anything left but a pine needle 3
from the point of view of the papermaking process.
4 MR. BRADFORD:
They're actually using the 5
hardwoods.
6 DR. REMICK:
There's one aspect on the 7
cogeneration I'm not sure I understand.
You indicate that 8
in certain cases you can have established a 9.5 percent 9
cost.
10 MR. BRADFORD:
Nine and a half cents per kilowatt 11 hour1.273148e-4 days <br />0.00306 hours <br />1.818783e-5 weeks <br />4.1855e-6 months <br />.
12 DR. REMICK:
Now, I'm curious.
In the typical
~'t 13
. utility, you'd be paying somebody that, but what would be (J
14 their current cost that they are generating electricity?
15 What's the difference there?
It must be higher.
They must 16 be generating electricity at those utilities at half that.
17 MR. BRADFORD:
Not half but, say, 6 cents, 5 18 cents.
19 DR. REMICK:
So the public is paying that 20 difference.
They're able to pass that through, I assume?
21 MR. BRADFORD:
Yes.
The logic is that the public 22 is better served over the wide plan.
That is, sometime 23 around the seventh or eighth year, when the overall system 24 costs have gotten to 10-11 cents, the public will still be 25 paying 9.5 cents for that particular plant's output.
- But,
{}
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-1 in the early years, it looks like a bad deal.
It especially v
2 looks like a bad deal if you realize that the paper company o
3
.itself can be buying electricity from the power company at, 14 say, 5 cents because of the transmission voltage customer.
5 They pay less than the system average cost.
At 6
the same time, they're selling electricity to the State at 9 7
cents.
That causes a certain amount of eyebr'ow-raising, 8
understandably so, until people look at it over the long 9
haul.
None of which is to say the paper companies don't do 10 very well under it.
They obviously do.
And, in all 11 likelihood, there's a certain amount of windfall profit in 12 it for them.
.CN 13 The only justification for that is that the-J 14 consumer presumably isn't any worse off.
The consumer isn't 15 paying any more.
N 16 MR. REID:
One of the burning issues over the 17 year has been something called CWIP construction work in 18 progress.
Thinking on what you're talking about, I'm just 19 wondering if that isn't sort of a CWIP through the backdoor.
20
_, MR. BRADFORD:
No.
In fact, it's the reverse 4
21 because the customer doesn't pay anything until the plant 22 starts producing.
That is, the entity responsible for the 23 financing is not the utility.
24 So all of the stress, for example, that Public
(])
25 Service of New Hampshire, in time goes to Seabrook, is ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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transferred to the third party supplier, if they get into gggpAV/bc 2
trouble during construction, then it doesn't show up in the
.s 3
cost of capital.
If, for some reason, someone builds a 10 megawatt 4
5 woodbuilding power plant and they can't finance it, that's 6
their problem.
It's not,Bangor Hydroelectric Company's 7
problem.
So CWIP is essentially the utility's way of trying 8
to alleviate some of the strains of financing its 9
construction program by having the customers pay for it as 10 it goes along.
With cogeneration, that doesn't apply.
11 MR. REID:
The paper company finances it until 12 the time it starts and it's 9.5 cents per kilowatt hour (O
13 generated?
v 14 MR. BRADFORD:
Yes.
15 DR. REMICK:
Do you have any tax incentives to i'
16 encourage that?
17 MR. BRADFORD:
You mean, separate from the state 18 tax?
No.
The big tax incentives are in the Federal Tax 19 Code and they expire in '86.
What the effect will be on 20 that market, we don't know yet.
21 DR. REMICK:
I understand California has both.
22 MR. BRADFORD:
Yes.
California did something 23 else, as I understand.
I may not.
When they set their 24 equivalent of the 9.5 cent rate, they didn't make it for a
- ( )
25 fixed amount of capacity.
We did.
Once the utility ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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provides 50 megawatts, the rate comes down and down, because 2
the-price of the power being avoided gets less and less.
3-So I have to say, as I understand it, they seem 4
to have touched off something c2 an open-ended gold rush for 5
people to sign up that quite a high rate.
Also, they had to 6
shut the doors a couple of months ago.
They were just 7
getting more capacity than they could handle.
They had 8
quite a high rate, more capacity _than they needed.
9 But in the petrochemical and other industries 10 that they have out there that we don't have in Maine, they 11 just have a lot more potential.
There are some gigantic 12 projects in the Houston aroa also.
f"S 13 We've gone a little far afield, I guess.
-u) 14 DR. CARBON: _ Another question somewhat along this 15 line though.
To help us look into the future, some people 16 suggest that instead of having the current organizational 17 structure where utility companies generate electricity and 18 distribute it, we may have power generation companies in 19 future that will cross state lines and are not regulated by 20 state public commissions, and so on.
21 Do you. foresee anything like that?
22 MR. BRADFORD:
I know some of my fellow 23 Commissioners, Phil O'Connor in Illinois in particular, and 24 Paul Levy in Massachusetts, feel very strongly that that's
()
25 the way we're headed.
I don't have a clear-cut view of ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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that.
I suspect if the demand for electricity is too high V
2 for the cogeneration from other sources to meet a 3
deregulated system in which third party suppliers are 4
providing the generation, we'll have real difficulty coping 5
with the need for a thousand megawatt central generating 6
station.
7 It's hard for me to imagine anybody else building 8
a utility capable of doing that, but that may just be a 9
failure of imagination on my part.
If you turn it around, 10 if it does turn out that over the next three or-four years 11 we had strong interaction in which utilities are not 12 building generation, I suspect that has substantial
(])
13 implications for the likelihood of nuclear plants being 14 built in the future.
It's awfully hard for me to imagine a 15 consortium of nonutilities auilding a plant.
I suppose it 16 could happen.
17 Bechtel could do it.
18 DR. CARBON:
It seems, from.what's been 19 apparently discussed in the past, that you can pernaps see 20 Bechtel and Westinghouse or somebody taking over Marble Hill 21 in Southern Indiana and finishing that.
22 MR. BRADFORD:
I should have put that in as an 23 aside.
There are some plants that might get finished under 24 that system but you get beyond those.
That's where I have
(}
25 some difficulty.
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'9270 08 12 96 DAV/bc 1-wu, there'are a number.of plants e.round the 2
country that, under the right circumstances, might get 3
finished.
4 5
6 7'
-8 9
10 11 12
~
13 j
14 15
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DR. CARBON:
Can you see them selling electricity V
2 not under the regulation of the state utility commission?
3 MR. BRADFORD:
Maybe not.under the regulation of 14 the state, but if they are prepared to compete for places in 5
these decrements with the cogenerators and other third party 6
providers, there is no reason why the state regulatory, 7
commission would not support those.
In fact, I think we 8
would encourage it.
9 DR. CARBON:
I guess buying power from Canada is 10 a lot like that, isn't it?
It is coming in strictly so much 11 electricity and so much cost?
12 MR. BRADFORD:
In New England, at least, the 13 ' price is essentially set at 80 percent of the mixture of 14 fossil fuel in the NEPOOL system. That is a combination of '15 oil and coal, which you essentially add up the dallars and 16 divide by the number of kilowatt-hours and then take .8 of 17 that. That is the price per kilowatt-hour that the 18 Canadians get. 19 There is some limit. I haven't reached it yet, 20 but there is some real limit to the extent that any region 21 that would want to rely on another country for its overall 22 electricity supply -- there are different ways to look at 23 it. It makes some difference whether it is all coming in 24 over one or two parallel lines through the same place or ~({J 25 whether it is coming in partly from Quebec or partly from ACE-FEDERAL REPORTEPS. INC. 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336 4 646
9270 09 02 98 T^TDAVbur 1 New Brunswick. V 2 DR. CARBON: Both, I suppose, from the technical 3 and political standpoint? 4 MR. BRADFORD: The Canadians, incidentally, want 5 to mix into the sources of supply from which we would be 6 buying Fort Preau 2, which would be another nuclear unit. 7 So we haven't gotten to the point yet. 8 It is hard for me to understand of fhand how Fort 9 Preau 2, which hasn't been started yet, will be cheaper than 10 Seabrook 2, which has. We don't understand real well how 11 the Canadians can do that from scratch at less cost than to 12 finish one that is 30 percent along. {} 13 MR. REED: Maybe that relates to what we have 14 heard. One of the big problems is U.'S. regulatory apparatus 15 as far as the cost. 16 MR. BRADFORD: Maybe that is right, although I am 17 one who has been pretty skeptical about the attribution of a l 18 large part of the cost to the regulatory symptom itself. I 19 You have to go through the individual plants to l 20 get a good understanding of where the individual sources 21 come from, but there is a tendency to assume that NRC here, 22 for example, is contributing a great deal to the cost. 23 But as long as the hearings are going on while 24 our plants are being built, it is hard to see that the (~) 25 hearings in and of themselves add a great deal to plant x-ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336 6646 1
9270 09 03 99 f~}DAVbur 1 costs. It is also hard to see how regulation at this point v_ 2 could add a great deal to the costs of the second unit. 3 Anyway, it is-pure speculation. 4 I am actually perhaps coming at it from a 5 different premise than you are. I rather doubt the 6 Canadians can build Fort Preau 2 more cheaply than 7-Seabrook. If it turns out that we can, then that may well 8 be right. 9 What I am really saying is that I don't think it 10 is true, and before we would buy a plant source I think we 11 ought to think about that. 12 DR. CARBON: If that turned out to be the case, (} 13 'who should be looking into that -- the NRC? 14 MR. BkADFORD: There is one other possibility, 15 which is that the Canadian government subsidizes the 16 construction and the cost would at least appear cheap. The 17 state PUCs would look into the question of whether or not it 18 was cheaper. If it turned out to be cheaper, then I would 19 think all of the above. 20 DR. CARBON: Including the ACRS? 21 MR. BRADFORD: Especially, due to my 22 understanding that the CANDU plant tends to be more 23 expensive up front. 24 DR. CARBON: If that turned out to be true, () 25 should the ACRS be concerned about it, if we are looking at ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336 4646
~ 9270 09 04' 100 'TDAVbur 1 a long range plan? V 2 MR. BRADFORD: There are some interesting 3 technical questions that come up. Should we be building a 4 CANDUs is the first one. 5 DR. CARBON: There would be surely heavy safety 6 implications, both good and bad. If they can build it 7 cheaper, it must be through lesser QA/QC or lesser ECCS ~ 8 standards. MR. BRADFORD: I just don't know. 9 10. MR. WYLIE: I think it is a matter of they build 11 it on a shorter cycle because they are more standardized 12 with those plants. /"'N() 13 DR. REMICK: I think Seabrook is not a good 14 example. It has been going on for so many years that there 15 must be a tremendous interest cost on the investment so 16 far. 17 MR. BRADFORD: But that wouldn't be how you 18 calculate the benefits of finishing because that interest 19 cost is going to have to be carried whether you then go off 20 and build Le Preau 2 or whether you finish. So what you 21 ought to do is compare the cost of Seabrook 2 on a going 22 forward basis. 23 DR. MOELLER: What percent of Maine's electricity 24 is imported from Canada? () 25 You said you didn't want it to become too much. F ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347-3700 Nationwide coverage 800 33 4 646
9270 09:05-101 PSDAVbur -1 Is'that 10 percent? V 2 MR. BRADFORD: It is relatively small now. It is 3 .less than 10 percent now. I ought to get that figure for 4 you. 5 New England Power Pool made a commitment for 6-Canadian purchases which will push it up fairly 7 substantially between now and 1995. We have one New 8 Brunswick-purchase of our own, and we have a tieline with 9 New Brunswick. 10 I should get the number for you. 11 DR. REMICK: Peter, you are in the unique 12 position, having been a former Commissioner. (} 13 Is there anything from that perspective you could 14 provide as advice to ACRS on what its role should be in the 15 future, what its role has been in the past, what type of 16 things.should it be concentrating on perhaps.to be of most 17 use? 18 MR. BRADFORD: Let me go back to where I began. .19 Having no technical background, I am probably less 20 well-versed than almost any other NRC Commissioner in the 21 kinds of things on which the ACRS spends most of its time. 22 So I don't feel at all comfortable saying you 23 should be spending more time on this technical issue and 24 less on that one. (} 25 DR. REMICK: Do you think the ACRS has outlived ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336-6o46
9270 09.06-102 - f3 DAVbur' 1 its purpose? U 2 MR. BRADFORD: No. I think, like the NRC itself, 3 the purposes are clearly changing as, on the one hand, we 4 have more and more operator experience to go by and, on the 5 other hand, fewer and fewer licensing projects coming up. '6-But I think the ACRS, both by its existence and 7 by the actual -- the advice it provides, provides a certain 8 very valuable function and eval.ates oftentimes by the 9 tangible results. I think it would be fair to ask what 10 would happen if it wasn't there, and I think it is important ~ 11 for keeping technical honesty and technical thoroughness -- 12 " honesty" is sort of a loaded word -- of the agency under l J) 13 scrutiny. 14 I think that is important. 15 DR. REMICK: It keeps the staff on its toes. 16 MR. BRADFORD: I hope so. That is second and l l 17 thirdhand, from what I have heard. i 18 Having been in the position of being often in a l-i 19 dissenting role on the Commission itself, I also have to 20 guard against commenting in ways that reflect the way I wish I 21 Commission decisions had come out rather than in the way 22 they actually did. 23 I would have given a certain amount of more 24 challenge to the Commission at times in the way it is () 25 proceeding from the ACRS. Of course, I would have welcomed ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336-6646
9270 09 07 103 fDAVbur 1 it from anywhere. So that is not necessarily an adverse u g i 2 comment on the ACRS. 3 I do remember in the wake of Three Mile Island we
- 4 had a go-round in which we asked the ACRS' views as to 5
whether Babcock & Wilcox should be shut down for a while. 6 The staff did wind up coming back a month or so later and 7 recommending that after all we should shut down the B&W 8 plants. 9 That is an event that has always sort of bothered 10 me, in that while I don't to this day feel that I am 11 technically capable of appraising who is right, I would have 12 expected the ACRS to get to that decision if either the j() 13 staff or the ACRS were going to come to that conclusion that 14 B&W plants should just be shut down for a while. 15 I would think, in my view of the wa/ the system 16 ought to work between the ACRS and the Commission from a 17 dispassionate outside view, to go slowly with these until we 18 know what happened. 19 Well, that is the event which again I had the 20 greatest concern about. It doesn't go to the underlying 21 usefulness of the ACRS. 22 MR. REED: You made a comment at the outset about 23 that there were some plans for consolidation and location of 24 buildings of the agency, which I think we have heard before () 25 in this session. But then you talk about we didn't get the ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347 3700 Nationwide Coverase 800 33H646
r-9270 09 08 104 gggDAVbur 1 message after Three Mile Island of what to do about B&W. 2 I am new on the ACRS, and I find that messages, 3 let's say in the conveyance of information and judgments, 4 proceed very slowly. 5 Suppose we got the physical structure that puts 6 everybody all under one roof. Do you really think other 7 " government in the sunshine" things would allow any speed-up 8 of the message process or a better message process, better 9 information, or better information flowing to the 10 Commissiloners to judge, or what? 11 MR. BRADFORD: I hadn't thought of it until you 12 just said it, but I think consolidation would be a useful ) 13 antidote to the very problem that the sunshine law 14 exacerbates. 15 That is, for the most part the Commission really 16 only sees the staff in these formal settings upstairs when 17 the staff comes down to review specific problems in the 18 sunshine, and the amount of informal contact between 19 Commissioners and their staffs on the one hand and the 20 agency staff on the other is very limited. 21 In the event of consolidation, there would be a 22 lot more of it out of the sunshine, since the sunshine law 23 is essentially designed to focus on interaction of 24 Commissioners with Commissioners. It is an unfortunate ( ) 25 byproduct of it, if not something that the law intended, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-33M;646
9270 09 09 105 1 that in an agency where the' Commission only sees staff when .jggDAVbur 2 it is also seeing other Commissioners -- or a Commissioner 3 only sees the agency staff when he is also seeing other 4 Commissioners, that 80 percent of Commissioner-staff contact 5 takes place'in the sunshine. 6 If we were consolidated, that percentage would 7 probably drop to something like 30 to 40 percent. 8 MR. REED: With the restraints I have 9 experienced, I think I see. You mentioned that you are not 10 a technical person, and some of the Commissioners today are 11 not. 12 I wonder how you make informed judgments from 1() 13 what I think is a meager amount of real technical input that 14 you get because it is so formalized or it is,an ACRS letter 15 that has been much massaged by going around the table for at -16 least a day and all the real technical juice has been 17 squeezed out of it. 18 I wonder if part of the future long range plan 19 ought'to be to improve communications somehow between the 20 people who make the final judgments, the Commissioners and 21 the ACRS and the staff. 22 I don't know that a building is going to do it, 23 not knowing much about Washington. But I know something is 24 necessary. () 25 MR. BRADFORD: The building would help. As I ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336-6646
9270 09 10 106 J';DAVbur 1 say, I am trying to use the building as an example of the v 2 larger problem, and that is why I really return to some sort 3 of outside management review of the overall interaction 4 between the Commission and the technical staff as to whether 5 there weren't a bunch of other ways in which to improve it 6 as well. 7 An illustration of why the building isn't a 8 cure-all, I guess, is, when you think about it, the ACRS and 9 the Commission after all are in the same building, and yet 10 there has always been a source of concern as to whether the 11 ACRS has enough interaction. 12 DR. REMICK: We are meeting mostly monthly now. (^T. 13 So that is different. A/ 14 MR. REED: In very formalized, stilted 15 surroundings. 16 MR. BRADFORD: But at least there is no physical 17 barrier to your -- if you wanted -- stopping upstairs for a 18 cup of coffee in a Commissioner's office, or vice versa. 19 MR. REED: We hardly know that. I wondered where 20 I was going to get some coffee. 21 MR. BRADFORD: There are other reasons why it 22 doesn't happen. There doesn't happen to be a cafeteria in 23 this builuing. 24 DR. CARBON: I did not realize the sunshine law, 25 as far as NRC is concerned, is aimed at the Commissioners (} ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336 4646
9270:09.11 107 .[^'DAVbur 1 themselves,'to make sure that when.they make decisions it is 2 in the open. 3 MR. BRADFORD: That it is in public. 4 DR. CARBON: That is the primary thrust of it. I 5 didn't know that. 6 MR. BRADFORD: That is right. It'doesn't come 7 into play until a quorum of the Commission have gotten into 8 the same room. 9 So if two Commissioners want a staff briefing, at 10 least as far as the law is concerned, there would not be 11 sunshine implications, and certainly one Commissioner could 12 meet with anybody at any time. -(]) 13 DR. CARBON: Once there is a quorum? 14 MR. BRADFORD: That is right. 15 That, incidentally, is a considerable problem in l l 16 what otherwise seems to me is a very good idea, which would 17 be to reduce the Commission to three in number. When you 18 have five, at least two Commissioners can get together and i i 19' talk together. When you have three, if two get together it l 20 is a meeting. 21 DR. REMICK: The flip side of that is that if one 22 Commissioner wants to touch base with the other 23 Commissioners, he has got four visits he has to make. You 24 can't narrow it down to below four visits. -( ) 25 MR. BRADFORD: Unless he so persuades the person ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 Nationwide Coverage 800 336 6646 ., _ _ _.. _.. - _. _ __ _ _ _ - _ _ _ 347-3700 _____. ~,_._ _ _ _.-.
-9270 09 12 108 vbur 1 on the first visit that that person will become his 2 emissary, that is right. 3' That is why the interaction of the Commission 4 and staff is so important, because there can be, without 5 giving public notice, a gathering in a large room. But the 6 Commissioners themselves can't. 7 8 9 10 11 12 (Q 13 v 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 .24 25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 347 3700 Nationwide Coversse 800-336 6646
9270 10 01 109 [~J}DAVbw 1 DR. REMICK: There is another side to this single 2 building, and that is the staff getting to know each other. 3 They are now isolated from one another. Many times one 4 office doesn't know what the other office is doing. 5 MR. BRADFORD: That's quite right. It's not just 6 the commissioners at all. In fact, you know from your 7 experience at OPE, there ycu're dealing in some part with 8 OPE staff people who have actually been on the staff, so 9 that they really know people. If it weren't for the j 10 separation, they would, in all likelihood, spend some time 11 mixing, but the astonishing thing about that situation is, 12 as I say, it was not a new commitment, a relatively new (]) 13 commitment, not brand-new, when I came on the Commission in 14 che summer of '77, I was amazed to hear people saying, it 15 would take at least until '80 or '81, to find a building and 16 move the agency into it. 17 I come from a small state where these kinds of 18 things get done, I won't say quickly, but it doesn't usually 19 take three or four years. Yet here it is 1985, and they're 20 no closer to it than they were in 1977. 21 DR. REMICK: I would guess if there were still a 22 joint committee, it would have been accomplished a long time 23 ago. 24 MR. BRADFORD: Maybe so. (]) 25 DR. CARBON: I am afraid we've distracted you ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 80 4 336-6646
.lT -9270-10 02 110 T^NDAVbw 'l from.some'of the things that you were going through. V MR. BRADFORD: No, actually, you did me the favor 3 of asking me th,ings that I knew something about. 4 (Laughter.) 5 No, I've reached the end. 6 MR. WYLIE: Let me ask the question, going back 7 -- you'll pardon me for going back to this question of the 8 effects of aging on plant performance, and you state some-9 instances. 10 I assume that you're supporting research efforts 11 by the Commission. 12 MR. BRADFORD: Yes. n l (i 13 MR. WYLIE: They have some-_ going on now. As you 1s / r i. 14 know, the Commission had a hard time with its research 15 budget this year in Congress. l 16 MR. BRADFORD: I don't know the extent of it. 17 It's always been the most vulnerable target. s 18 MR. WYLIE: Particularly when you cut budgets. 19 It was pretty rough this year, particularly in the research 20 budget. r 21 DR. CARBON: Have you kept up with the safety 22 goals? 23 MR. BRADFORD: No, I really haven't kept up with 24 them much. I see one or another Commissioner, usually Jim (]} 25 Asselstine, because he is the liaison with the National ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-147 3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336 4646
-] r-
- 9270 10 03-111 1
Association of State Utility Commissioners. I just keep up ggDAVbw 2 anecdotally with what happens, but substantively, no, except 3 -through Seabrook and Seabrook, I can't discuss with the 4 Commission. 5 The Attorney General of Maine has intervened in 6' that case solely because we're sort of at the outer limits 7 of the emergency-planning horizons, but as a result of that, 8 our state is an intervenor, so I can't discuss it. 9 DR. CARBON: I have a question about your 10 interpretation of what research the NRC can or should do. I 11 used to believe that the NRC really wasn't authorized or 12 encouraged, at least, to do research which might lead (} 13 specifically to lowering regulatory requirements. What I 14 mean is, perhaps'a question comes up and arbitrarily a 15 conservative regulation is set up by the NRC, as a practical 16 thing to do. Then the question comes up, well, we know, 17 this is overly conservative. Whose responsibility is it to 18 do the research necessary to arrive at a realistic limit, 19 not one that's over conservative and not one that's underly 20 conservative, certainly. I had always believed, until 21 recently, that it was considered that-this was industry's 22 responsibility, and that the NRC was not authorized to do 23 research like this. 24 Is that your view? -() 25 MR. BRADFORD: I had never heard that. It sounds ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336-6646
L9270'10104 112 DAVbw 1 like'a general description of a source term. .~ 2 DR. CARBON: That would be an example. 3 MR. BRADFORD: In the discussions the Commission 4 had.on the research budget, I -don't think I ever heard that 5 argument made. That doesn' t _ mean that it wasn't out there 16 as guidance in the Staff's mind. It just isn't anything I ~ 7~ ever heard myself. 8 DR. CARBON: You've never heard there was a ,9 limit, that the Commission or-NRC should not? 10 MR. BRADFORD: No. I was surprised by one 11 element of the research program. Shortly after I came on, 12 the Staff did a presentation, in which they showed that they (} 13 had successfully developed a package for carrying plutonium 14' in airplanes, because there had been a concern on 15 airworthiness tests, crashworthiness tests had not been 1 L 16 performed. I was surprised the NRC had actually gone out l 17 and developed a package. i 18 That seemed to me to be something industry should 19 have done. We then could have tested it. it's one 20 step further that we were talking about. In fact, I ( 21 wouldn't have any problem with research of the sort you were 22 discussing, although I must say, I need a few more days to 23 digest this referendum, but it seems to me to have gone so 24 much on appearances. They devoted so much of their argument (} 25 to the proposition that the state government and the power ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336 6646
. 9270 10 05 113 f^^DAVbw 1 companies were in league with each other and couldn't be U 2 trusted.. And I'm sort of starting to rethink the extent to 3 which I'm prepared to more or less be indifferent to the 4 appearances, as long as I'm satisfied that the underlying 5 work is, itself, honest and thoroughly done. I think one 6 does have to recognize that if it offends the public 7 sensibilities too much, there's a price to be paid for it, 8 that if, in fact, nothing is substantivel'y wrong there, it 9 may be research of the sort that waters down. 10 Regulatory programs fall into that category. I 11 hate to think of it that way, both we, as economic 12 regulators and the NRC, as safety regulators, should always (]) 13 .be interested in information which shows that our 14 assumptions are off in either direction or in any 15 direction. 16 DR. CARBON: And as something close to that, 17 should the NRC do research to come up with new safety 18 concepts or processes or something, not to do design, not to i 19 do design plans, but to do safety concepts. DOE does not, 20 in the LMFBR area. At least they don't now, but they j l l 21 haven't done much for the last 20 years or so. I 22 MR. BRADFORD: I'm getting pretty far out of any 23 field in which I would be entitled to have a firm opinion, 24 but offhand, I'd say no, that at the point in which you're () 25 actually talking about developing new hardware. ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 3364646 m
L9270 10 06 114 f{QDAVbw L1 DR. CARBON: It's not so much developing'it, but \\_/ 2 perhaps someone has a concept of~a safety scheme-that if it 3 worked, it would offer big advantages, and it will take some 4 research for someone to show that, yes, the basic idea is 5 correct, it will be reasonably practical, not carrying 6 through the design units, not knowing for sure just how it 7 would work or anything like that, but just to prove the 8 concept, that here's a way we could make a big advance in 9 safety on nuclear power plants. 10 MR. BRADFORD: Can you give me a "for instance"? 11 DR. CARBON: I've thought of lots of them in the 12 past. () 13 MR. REED: How about the A-45 dedicated auxiliary 14 feed system? Money is being spent on that. 15 DR. CARBON : Explain that in more detail. 16 MR. REEDS. Under the A-45 task, what laboratory 17 is it, the one out in Arizona,.I guess it is. l 18 DR. MOELLER: Palo Verde. 19 MR.-REED: The Palo Verde people have called in 20 United Engineers as a subcontractor. They're actually i 21 looking at a dedicated auxiliary boiler feed system to ( 22 improve the core melt risk by a factor of 10. 23 DR. CARBON: This, then, would be a new 24 approach. The question is, is it feasible? ({} 25 MR. BRADFORD: The trouble with having the NRC ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347 3700 Nationwide Coverase 800 33H646
9270 10 07 115 T~;DAVbw 1 do htat is that ultimately in a contested proceeding the - _j 2 Commission is going to get asked to approve that. 3 DR. CARBON: The concept or the design? 4 MR. BRADFORD: Both, I should think, or at least 5 some part of what the Commission spent the money to develop, 6 might be a contested item in the hearing and at that point, 7 it really is better not to have the Commission deeply 8 involved in the development of it, as well. What the 9 Commission can perfect 1 validly have done is spend money 10 testing the assumptions as part of the process of licensing 11 it. You just caused me to think of a separate concern that 12 I at one time had about the way in which the research ~S (d 13 program worked. It came up, I think, both in fire 14 protection and the equipment qualification tests. 15 Several years ago, now, but at that time at 16 least, the tests were said to be tests of tests rather 17 than tests of actual pieces of equipment. And as a result, 18 whatever it was that failed the Sandia fire test, but it was 19 said by the Staff not to have serious safety implications, 20 because that particular configuration didn't exist in any 21 power plant, to which my question was, why not? Why are we 22 testing configurations that don't exist? It would be just 23 as efficient to test the ones that did. And the answer was, 24 well, we're testing the tests rather than the actual (~) 25 equipment. I came away from that, feeling that there really R/ ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 2 336-6646
9270 10 08 116 T^NDAVbw 1 was a place for the recearch program for tests that tested G 2 the actual equipment. 3 Obviously, we can't have a LOFT program all the 4 time, but for various types of tests that tested the actual 5 equipment rather than the codes or the tests themselves. I 6 don't know how much progress was made on that. There seemed 7 to be a surprising amount of resistance to it. I don't 8 know. I've lost track of it. 9 MR. WYLIE: You mean the fire tests at Sandia? 10 MR. BRADFORD: The fire tests themselves. We got 11 agreement within the Commission sometime in '77, '78, that, 12 in fact, what was to be tested should be an actual ({ ) 13 configuration. I also think, if I remember correctly, that 14 the first actual configuration to be tested wasn't for 15 several years after that. It was several years before 16 anything actually got tested. 17 Whether that is still a fair question to ask 18 about the research program, the testing program, I juct 19 can't say. I would be interested, actually. 20 MR. WYLIE: I know that Sandia is running tests 21 which do simulate actual plant conditions and it's, I think, 22 produced some rather valuable information as to how you can 23 start fires in control rooms, cable trays, and what have 24 you. () 25 Also, they're doing some tests on the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 147 3700 Nationwide Coverase 800 33(HM46
9270 10 09 117 {~]DAVbw 1 simultaneous effects of radiation, cabling, under simulating Q/ 2 conditions down in the test reactors out there, which I 3 think, in my opinion, is very valuable testing. And I don't 4 know who else would do it, if they didn't do it. 5 MR. BRADFORD: I'm not saying Sandia shouldn't do 6 it. 7 MR. WYLIE: I basically substantiates their 8 position that they should do these things. I think there's 9 a lot, a world of tests that are not being done, that could 10 be done to substantiate positions and even relax 11 requirements, some of these way out table separation 12 criteria and things like that that have been developed just ( }) 13 out of people's ideas, theories. 14 MR. BRADFORD: Can I ask your indulgenvce to make 15 a phone call. 16 (Recess.) 17 DR. CARBON: One question in particular I'd like 18 to ask, we, over the past umpty-ump years have talked a lot 19 about filtered vented containment, and it seems to me that 20 the theory has great benefits to it and some problems, but 21 we come up to the question of would it be used if we had a 22 TMI 2, and we're building up pressure in the containment and 23 came to the question of allowing the gas, or whatever, to be 24 filtered in and to go out through the stack with no {]) 25 governor. No state official will ever permit voluntary ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. i 202-347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 8C4 334Wi646
9270'10 10 118 AVbw 1. release like that. 2 Could you express a view on that? It could be 3 quite in.portant in safety. 4 MR. BRADFORD: The situation you have in mind is, 5 pressure is built up within the containment. 6 DR. CARBON: And you are w ried that'it will 1 7 keep building up. You don't know for sure, perhaps. You 8 don't know for sure where the containment would fail or how 9 drastically it would fail, but you're concerned that you can 2 10 reach some breach. One way to prevent it, certainly, and 11 control it, would.be to open up the door to a good filtered, N s 12 vented system. ~Would you use it? Not you, but would people (] 13 allow it to be used? Would public opinion? Would the-14 governor? Would state officials, or would th'sy say ro? 15 MR. BRADFORD: I'm inclined to think that during 16 an emergency, people behave. I am trying to find an 17 adjective that is precisely enough to'be usefW., I would 18 say there would be some likelihood, there wduld be a better l l 19 likelihood that it would/be used, if it were in place in an 20 emergency, in which the choices seem to be worse than it l ? 21 would be, allowed as an abstract matter tosstart.with. I \\ 22 am not saying this very well. At Three Mile Island,,you 23 remember, it took months to get permission to vent the 24 krypton gas, but my guess is, if the choice had been between 25 venting the gas and facing a situation in which the () ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 347 3700 Nationwide Coverase 800-336-6646
9270 10.11 119 T'NDAVbw 1 containment might have ruptured, it would have been much L) 2 easier to get permission to vent the gas. At the same time, 3 if you back up and hypothesize the licensing process, in 4 which what was being asked was, approval of a containment 5 configuration in which one day a governor might face a 6. choice like that, he might well get denied or objected to by 7 the state at that point. 8 One the other hand, I'd hate for you to take my 9 words very heavily on this, because it is a difficult 10 question. I haven't given it any thought. What are the 11 trade-offs? Suppose you don't have the filtered 12 containment? At that point, how much stronger containment () 13 do you have to have to deal with this type of situation? 14 How much more expensive a power plant is it? 15 DR. CARBON: I can't answer. I don't have the I 16 facts. You could certainly go to bigger and bigger dry 17 containment. I just donh't have facts and figures on 18 costs. 19 MR. BRADFORD: What the governor is going to say 20 when you ask for permission to vent is, what's going to go 21 out? Are you going to tell him? 22 DR. CARBON: The main thing in going out, I 23 believe, would be simply noble gases. I think that we can 24 reasonably filter -- I think we can reasonably filter almost (} 25 everything except the noble gases. ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336 4 646
9270 10 12 120 7"'s DAVbw 1 DR. REMICK: I don't know that that's a decision V 2 the governor should make. I realize the governor might step 3 in and say don't do it, but it's actually, in my, view, a 4 federal preemption. It is a safety issue. 5 MR. BRADFORD: As a matter of law, it's probably 6 a preemptive question. 7 DR. CARBON: But in a practical case. 8 MR. BRADFORD: In fact, that was true of the 9-krypton, as well. 10 DR. CARBON: Is there a way to answer that 11 question. I know it is unfair to ask you on the spur of the s 12 moment what the answer is. p () 13 MR. BRADFORD: I think you can say with some 14 confidence that if the decision were up, say, to the 15 Chairman of the NRC, which it may well be, under the current 16 combination of emergency research and federal preemption, an 17 approval to that would be given at the point at which the 18 trade-of f would be some sort of containment rupture. It is 19 much harder to be confident about state officials' rasponse, 20 partly because of politics and partly because the state 21 official will have'less training in radiological health and 22 safety, and being brought face to face, not only with that 23 decision, but with a whole host of others that he or she 24 never expected to be dealing with. () 25 DR. REMICK: I can see the problem of the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-33646 4
9270 10 13 121 gggDAVbw 1 governor coping with that type of situation. I can see 2 other analogies. Suppose that there was a day and there was 3 a lot of rainfall and they needed to so something to relieve 4 pressure on the dam. I guess I have no problem with seeing 5 a governor say, let some water to save that dam. It seems 6 to me, and I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the 7 state can make that type of decision without any difficulty. 8 Nuclear is so much -- there is so much 9 uncertainty and lack of knowledge. 10 MR. BRADFORD: The governor is unlikely to see 11 that noble gases and water are that similar. 12 DR. CARBON: And in fact, they're not, in a way, ( }) 13 because if you let some water out, it probably wouldn't hurt 14 anything. 15 DR. REMICK: Maybe if the governor had his 16 hunting cabin down there, and it would flood something, 17 yes. o 18 MR. BRADFORD: I was assuming that with the 19 amount of water to be released, there would be some damage. 20 DR. REMICK: Yes. 21 MR. WYLIE: This is not on our agenda, but it is 22 a question I am interested in your comments on, 23 particularly, since you've had experience, you and the TMI, 24 the Commission had a study done by Brookhaven regarding how (v) 25 to investigate accidents. Brookhaven, of course, basically ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202 347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 80 4336 6646
9270 10 14 122 l jggDAVbw 1 represented a statutory investigation. An organization was 2 set up very similar to the National Transportation Safety 3 Board to investigate accidents, employing the use of a party 1 4 system, where there will be experts from the industry to 5 assist with the investigation. 1 6 I don't know how familiar you are with that, but 7 I would like to know your views about that type of approach, 8 rather than, say, the way the Commission does it now, 9 where they want an ad hoc group, where they investigate 10 incidents such as the Davis-Besse incident. l 11 MR. BRADFORD: In the context of Three Mile 12 Island, of course, the Staff had sort of a special inquiry ( }) 13 group, but heavily staffed by Commission personnel. I 14 assume that the Davis-Besse wa's NRC-staffed. 15 MR. WYLIE: Yes. 16 MR. BRADFORD: Did the Brookhaven report 17 contemplate having the investigator's report back to a 18 separate board of some sort? 19 MR. WYLIE: Yes, it was a separate statutory 20 board set up under the Commission. 21 DR. REMICK: A Commission office. This would be 22 a new Commission office, staffed by a cadre of people. In 23 the time of an accident they would have experts lined up 24 that they could call in from the industry to come in and ^ ( ') 25 help with the investigation. ~s ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 80 4 336-6646
9270-10 15 123 l I^hDAVbw 1 'MR BRADFORD: The problem we used to have with g 2 that whole idea was that the kinds of events that trigger 3 these were sufficiently rare that you couldn't justify 4 having a full-time group with no other purpose in it. It 5 was part-time NRC Staff, and a lot of the problems of 6 independence. 7 I think there is a lot to be said for that. We 8 clearly had problems after TMI, both real and apparent 9 conflicts, people investigating things they had in the past 10 made regulatory decisions about. 11 Those were never satisfactorily resolved, at 12 least the appearance problom. I think there is a lot to be -(]) 13 said for being able to' call on a special group that isn't l 14 tied to regulatory decisions. The problem is that if even 15 if you're talking on the industry, you still haven't got 16 that much independence. You are still calling on people 17 that may have some interest in the plants that they 18 responsible for, unless you are pretty careful to look for l 19 people who-really can come at it without too much of an ax l .20 to grind. l
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s~ l 21 MR. WYLIE: Of course, the NTSB does the same i 22 thing. They call on the aircraft members. 23 MR. BRADFORD: That's correct, and in fact, there 24 really_is a tendency, if the event is serious enough, for ) 25 the people to rise to the occasion with some degree of ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347-3700 Nanonwide Coverage 800-33(H5646
m-9270 10 16 124 7m DAVbw 1 self-interest. (_) 2 DR. REMICK: That's what they told us. It is 3 under those circumstances that technical people rise to the 4 occasion. 5 MR. BRADFORD: I have a small scheduling bind. 6 If I could ask your indulgence. 7 DR. CARBON: I think we've pretty much asked all 8 tho questions. 9 Are there any last ones? 10 (No response.) 11 DR. CARBON: If not, let us thank you very much 12 for your input. 13 MR. BRADFORD: It's been a pleasure revisiting. -{ 14' If you get to Maine, please let me know, and we will arrange 15 a visit to the woods in Maine. 16 (Whereupon, at :2: 55 p.m., the Subcommitee 17 recessed and thereafter entered into Executive Session.) 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 ([) 25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 312-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336 4 646
I CERTIFICATE OF OFFICIAL REPORTER h n v This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION in the matter of: NAME OF PROCEEDING: ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS SUBCOMMITTEE ON LONG RANGE PLAN FOR THE NRC DOCKET NO.: PLACE: WASHINGTON, D. C. DATE: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1985 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (sigt) 4 (TYPED) DAVID L. HOFFMAN Official Reporter Ace-Federal Reporters, Inc. Reporter's Affiliation l lO D g,- 4, -,m--- ,}}