ML20205K502
| ML20205K502 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 04/07/1999 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-3070, NUDOCS 9904130251 | |
| Download: ML20205K502 (137) | |
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OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS 0r NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION-q ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOil SAFEGUARDS ~
Title:
MEETING: RELIABILITY AND -
PROBABILISTIC RISK ASSESSMENT, PLANT OPERATIONS, AND
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REGULATORY POLICIES AND PRACTICES Tron ho l CRlbzug M/s $ I(( /
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LOCATION:
Roclaille,MD DATE:
Wednesday, April 7,1999 PAGES: I - 134 99041302S1 990407 PDR ACRS T-3070 PDR duOO1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
1025 Connecticut Ave.,NW, Suite 1014 '
f Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 A3RS1 W Ci}V:MW 70M!elif0 Of $8 30mmibert a
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%d DISCLAIMER UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS APRIL 7, 1999 The contents of this transcript of the proceeding of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Advisory (Oj Committee on Renctor Safeguards, taken on April 7, 1999, as reported herein, is a record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
This transcript had act been reviewed,. corrected and edited and it may contain inaccuracies.
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA e/
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5 MEETING:
RELIABILITY AND PROBABILISTIC RISK ASSESSMENT 6
AND REGULATORY POLICIES AND PRACTICES 7
8 Nuclear Regulatory Commission 9
11545 Rockville Pike, Rm. T-2B3 10 Rockville, Maryland 11 Wednesday, April 7,
1999 12 The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 8:30 I
13 a.m.
14 MEMBERS PRESENT:
)
15 GEORGE E. APOSTOLAKIS, Chairman, ACRS 16 THOMAS S. KRESS, Member, ACRS l
17 MARIO V.
BONACA, Member, ACRS l
18 JOHN ;T.
BARTON, Member, ACRS 19 ROBERT E. UHRIG, Member, aCRS 1
i 20 WILLIAM J.
SHACK, Member, ACRS 21 DON W. MILLER, Member, ACRS 22 MARTO H.
FONTANA. Member, ACRS i
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23 GRAHAM B. WALLIS, Member, ACRS 24 DANA A.
POWERS, Member, ACRS j
25 ROBERT L. SEALE, Member,,ACRS
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PROCEEDINGS (O) 2
[8:30 a.m.]
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3 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The meeting will now come to 4
order.
This is a meeting of the ACRS Subcommittees on 5
Reliability and Probabilistic Risk Assessment and on 6
Regulatory Policies and Practices.
I am George Apostclakis, 7
Chairman of the RPRA Subcommittee.
Dr. Kress is the S
Chairman of the Subcommittee on Regulatory Policies and 9
Practices.
10 The ACRS members in attendance are:
John Barton, 11 Mario Fontana, Mario Bonaca, Don Miller, Dana Powers, Robert 12 Seale, William Shack, Robert Uhrig and Graham Wallis.
13 The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the 14 staff's approach for revising the Commission's safety Goal
(T i
q J 15 Policy Statement.
The Subcommittees will gather 16 information, analyze relevant issues and facts, and 17 formulate proposed positions and actions, as appropriate, I
18 for deliberation by the full Committee, which is here, I J
19 believe.
Michael T.
Markley is the Cognizant ACRS Staff 20 Engineer for this meeting.
21 The rules for participation in today's meeting 22 have been announced as part of the notice of this meeting 23 previously published in the Federal Register on March 22nd, 24 1999.
25 A transcript of the meeting is being kept and will
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be made available as stated in the Federal Register Notice.
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2 It is requested that speakers first identify themselves and 3
speak with sufficient clarity and volume so that they can be 4
readily heard.
5 We have received no written comments or requests 6
for time to make oral statements from members of the public.
7 We will now proceed with the ating, and I call 8
upon Mr. King, Mr. Murphy to begin.
9 MR. KING:
And Mr. Barrett.
10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay.
Because somebody else is 11 here.
Okay.
12 MR. BARTON:
And the other guy, 13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
And the other guy.
14 MR. KING:
All right.
For the record, my name is A(,
15 Tom King, I am Director, Division of Risk Analysis and 16 Applications, which is a new title, a new division, i
17 effective about two weeks ago, in the Office of Research.
18 With me is Joe Murphy, Senior Advisor to the Office 19 Director, Ashok Thaddani in Research.
Rich Barrett, Branch l
20 Chief for -- and I will let you say the name of your branch.
1 21 MR. BARRETT:
Probabilistic Safety Assessment
{
l 22 Branch, NRR.
23 MR. KING:
NRR.
We are also expecting today an 24 NMSS representative and OGC representative, since what we 25 are going to talk about cuts across the other offices and i
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the Legal Department as well.
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2 MR. MURPHY:
OGC is here.
3 MR. KING:
Okay.
OGC just walked in.
We had 4
talked to the Committee and Subcommittee last year about 5
potential revisions to the Reactor Satety Goal Policy and, 6
ultimately, sent a SECY paper to the Commission identifying-7 11 areas that were potential candidates for revision based 8
upen a number of reasons.
9 We had proposed to the Commission we take some 10 additional time to study those areas and come back and give 11 them a recommendation.
What we are here today to talk about 12 is going to be a change in direction from that, not to 13 abandon looking at those issues, but maybe t o put them in a 14 broader context and take a step back.
()
15 Let me just sort of give you some background 16 information that leads up tc where we are.
That is the SECY 17 paper 98-101 is the one I am referring to.
We are currently 18 on the hook to provide the Commission in July 19 recommendations on those 11 issues.
That is not a revised 20 policy statement, it is just recommendations on where the 21 revisions should take place or not take place, and then.if 22 the Commission agreed we would go forward and revise the 23 policy statement.
Then we owe them a status report.
24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
We have not seen this, right?
25 Have we seen -- no.
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MR. KING:
You have not seen -- I mean you have l
2 seen the SECY-98-101, that was last year, May of last year, I
3 but you have not seen anything since then.
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The 11 items.
5 MR. KING:
Well, the 11 items were --
6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
We received the 11 items.
7 MR. KING:
Yes, they were in the -- in fact, I put 8
a list, the very last page of the handout is just the list 9
of what those 11 items are, and we had discussed thoce 10 before.
11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
12 MR. KING:
Several things have happened since the 13 SECY went up last year.
One, NMSS has continued down the 14 road of trying to figure out what is their risk-informed
/3) 15 regulatory framework, what should that look like for 16 application to their activities.
In fact, they just sent a 17 paper up, the number is SECY-99-100, it is very recent, only 18 about a week ago, that provides the Commission a recommended j
19 framework for risk-informing their activities, including the 20 possibility of developing safety goals for a number of their 21 activities.
3 22 It is before the Commission for notation vote, so 23 whatever the Commission comes back and says, they will 24 proceed and do.
But they have to face a number of the same 25 issues that the reactor folks faced.
In fact, when you look
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at our list of 11 issues, from the Reactor Safety Goal l
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. Policy, by my judgment, six out of the 11 are generic, they 3
apply acrocs 5..e board to what the ager.cy does.
The1 concept 4
of. adequate protection, for example.
The risk-infermed 5
regulation, what is it?
I mean it applies to everything.
6 So, does it make sanse to go back in and just deal 7
with those in the context of the Reactor Safety Goal Policy, 8
or does it make more sense to step back and say let's think i
9 about a mlicy that maybe lays things out in a mere I
lo i
hierarchial fashion, that takes these generic things that i
11 apply across board to the agency, lays'down what the 12 l
agency's policy is, and then, under that, you can fit in the i
13 specifics
".r the reactora and the specificc for the 14 non-reactor things.
That is basically the thinking that has 0) 15 been going on in the past couple of months.
g, 16 We have also had criticisms over the past six 17 months or so between Congresa, and the industry, and GAO and 18 even public interest groups, and this CSIS, Center for l
l 19 Strategic International Studies.
They have all sort of 20 highlighted the f act that we' don't -- we have scattered 21 guidance, it is inconsistent.
There has been inconsistent i
22 t decieica maxing.
Things haven't been transpatent and clear.
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23 We need a good definition of safety.
All of those things 24 tend to point to the fact -- or, to me, at least, the need
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25 that maybe we ought to step back and start from the top and f-
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lay out in one place what the agency's safety philosophy is.
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2' DR. POWERS:
1,nen critics pronounce that you don't s
3 (
have a definition of safety, and they do that, seemingly, on 4
about a 10 year cycle, some critic announces the NRC does 5
not have a good definition of safety, do they point to any 6
other regulatory body within government that has a 7
definition of safety for their particular realm?
8 MR. KING:
In reading the GAO report, they did not 9
point to any other that I saw.
10 l
DR. POWERS:
Are you aware of any government 11 agency that hsu a definition of what safety is that isn't --
32 I mean the NRC definitely has a definition has of safety, 13 but I mean people don't like that because it has a certain 14 arbitrariness to it that they claim makes it inappropriate
()
15 for safety as a definition.
And I am wondering if anybody 16 else has a definition of safety that would cerve to tell us 17 how one goes about providing a definition of safety.
18 MR. MURPHY:
I am unaware of any, Dana.
19 DR. POWERS:
I am unaware of anyhedy else that has 20 one.
I think it is a criticism that I refuse to take very 21 seriously, because I don't think it can be done.
And 1 22 think that they make this criticism because they know it 23 can't be done and that it is just an easy one to do, and it 24 plays well in the press.
25 I don't think I take them seriously when they say
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there is no definition of safety in an absolute' sense, a
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2 mathematically rigorous sense, where there is not some 3
arbitrary or political element to it, because I think that, 4
in the end, what is safe dictates on a societal and a 5
political context.
6 What is safe in the United States may be safe in 7
Switzerland.
What is safo in the Soviet Union may be 8
grossly risky in Great Britain.
And there is no fundamental 9
constant of safetyness in this world for which I can say, by 10 being in this situation, I have no risk whatsoever, except 11 unless you are dead, I suspect.
1?
DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But then you don't know.
13 DR. POWERS:
But I don't know.
14 DR. WALLIS:
It might be very risky, depending on 15 how you have lived.
16 MR. KING:
I don't disagree with anything you 17 said, and I don't think we are talking about a numerical 18 definition or an absolute definition of safety.
I think --
19 I mean it seems to me the agency has making a lot of safety 20 decisions for as long as they have been in business.
But I 21 can say that some of those, you know, they haven't been 22 consintent at all times.
I can say the guidance --
23 DR. POWERS:
Consistent, it'is not a question --
24 MR. KING:
The guidance hasn't been laid out in 25 terms of a document you can pick up and say, okay, this is i
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1 how they approach safety, this is how decisions are made in
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2 terms of cost benefit or adequate protection or'whatever,-
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you know, whatever the decision criteria are, and I think 4
that has caused some confusion.
It has caused confusion 5
among the staff.
I mean you ask staff members, you ask 6
senior managers in this agency -- What is adequate 7
protection?
What do the safety goals represent? -- you get 8
different answers.
9 DR. MILLER:
Do you think your goal of defining 10 rafety is attainable then, or defining safety such that it 11 Soes provide this overview or overlying context so everybody 12 can make a decision?
13 MR. KING:
I think it is certainly attainable to 14 put down in one place the concepts, the process, some
()
15 qualitative definitions of how safety decisions are made.
I 16 don't think it is possible to define adequate protection or 17 define safety very precisely, but I do think it is possible 18 to do better than we have done.
19 MR. MURPHY:
I think our goal here will be to 20 provide some clarification.
The criticism that I have heard 21 has been along the line of, what is the dividing line 22 between adequate protection where we require a change, 23 regardless of cost, and the safety enhancement, which j
24 requires a cost benefit analysis to justify the change?
We 25 haven't donc perhaps as good a job as we could defining
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where that border is.
Will we ever come up with a ln}
2 mathematical definition of it?
I think the answer is'no.
3 But I think we can clarify it better than we have so far..
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DR. POWERS:
Let'me ask you this question, when
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5 people lay these criticisms down, why don't people challenge
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1 6
them on this and ask the, okay, what would a def3nition of 7
safety look like?
What would,an absolutely rigorous 8
dividing line between adequate protection and safety 9
protection look like?
Because I think it is always going to 10 be a fuzziness to that boundary.
You can sharpen it, you 11 can improve it, but I am reminded that we maintain huge 12 institutions in this country to interpret a very terse i
13 Constitution, it has very clear language in it, because-14 people do have different interpretations of the same words.
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15 And the fact that people interpret the safety goals 16 differently within the agency is not a surprise to me at 17 all.
18 DR. FONTANA:
Because this has to be done in the.
19 context of other options that are available.
It.has to be a 20 relative thing.
In other words, if you.had real cheap, free 21 energy, and it was totally safe, then you wouldn't pick one 22 that would cost more and be less safe, would you?
So in a 23 broad scale of things, in a real world, it is the options j
24 that you have got.
Given that, you say now I have got this 25 particular technology, how safe is safe enough?
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Well, the' safety goals, as you state, relative-to
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2 other technologies, is probably pretty good.
You know, it stated in its most broadest form,.it says that 3
shouldn't 4
a risk shouldn't be greater than other industries ruid that 5
sort of thing.
You know what I am talking about.
6 So the hard part is trying to define adequate 7
protection when you are trying to determine, well, do I do 8
something with respect to adequate protection or do I go to 9
cost benefit?
Now, you have got a problem.
What is 10 adequate protection and what isn't?
And I think that is 11 your problem.
12 DR. WALLIS:
Well, I think your answer is part of 13 the question I had for you, and I have some answers.
I want 14 to see if your answers have anything to do with mine.
The l
15 question I have is, why are we revisiting fundamentals after 16 almost 30 years?
And the agency has worked perfectly well.
17 These debates have gone on for about 30 years.
18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It was the ACRS that asked them j
19 to do it, Graham.
20 DR. WALLIS:
Is that why you are doing it?
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Let's not raise that question.
22 DR. KRESS:
Well, they thought after we asked it 23 that it was probably a good idea.
24 DR. WALLIS:
Why now and what is it,about the now 25 situation which demands that you do something now?
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1 MR. BARRETT:
I think there are some reasons for fI 2
saying why now.
I think this is a time of flux within the sd 3
agency.
We are making some fundamental decisions about how 4
to apply our resources.
We are being asked to set down 5
criteria by which we apply resources to various activities.
6 We are being asked to examine the impact we are having on 7
the industry in terms of unnecessary regulatory burden.
8 And I think at a time like this, when we are 9
asking some fundamental questions about how we prioritize 10 our resources and how we interface with the industry and 11 other stakeholders.
I think it is a natural question to say j
12 well, if that is the case when do you stop?
13 i
DR. WALLIS:
Well, I have a much more focused 14 answer than yours.
I mean you are spreading the answer to 15 everything.
16 MR. KING:
But I think Rich has got an important
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i 17 point.
Yes, the agency has functioned.
We functioned along 18 the lines of a defined set of design basis accidents in a 19 prescriptive way to deal with each of those, and we have 20 used that over a number of years and now we are finding -- I 21 mean it's not that we just found out, but we are starting to 22 du something about the fact that those are a limited set of
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23 occidents.
They don't really get to some of the more 24 risk-significant, safety significant accident scenarios and 25 systems and so forth.
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On top of that we have got a burden on the-l
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2 industry that probably shouldn't be there and given 3
deregulation coming down the road,'and the cost pressures on 4
utilities, I think it is unreasonable for us to say we are 5
not going to do anything about that, so we made a decision 6
to do something about that.
We call it risk-informed 7
regulation -- and then that raises ~a bunch of questions --
8 you know, what are the criteria we are going to use to make 9
those kinds of decisions.
30 DR. WALLIS:
You're right.
You're getting to my 11 answer now.
My answer, looking at all this, is that you s
12 made a commitment to risk-informed regulation.
If you are 13 going to do that, you must answer certain questions.
14 The first one is what are the risks.
Otherwise, n
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15 you are just waffling, unless you say what they are, 16 clearly.
17 The second question then is how are they measured?
18 Unless you have a measure of these risks, you can't do 19 anything.
Just again -- you waffle -- qualitatively make 20 judgments.
21 Then the third question you have got to ask is, i
22 well, you have got these risks and you have measured them.
23 How do you use those measured?
Of course, you can expand 24 this, but I think if you focus on that, saying the focus of 25 all this is to have a rational way of implementing I'
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risk-informed regulation, then you have to do.certain 2
things.
Then you won't get involved in'all the fringe
.3' stuff.
Right.
5 DR. KRESS:
Was one of your questions'what are the 6
uncertainties?
7 DR. WALLIS:
Well, the uncertainties come into 8
that.
Part of measuring risk is to measure' uncertainty, 9
obviously.
10 DR. KRESS:
And what you do with it is relating to 11~
uncertainties too.
12 DR. WALLIS:
Well, I hope that what you do with it I
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13 is it gets less uncertain as we move on and know what we are 14 doing.
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15 DR. KRESS:
I know, but what to do with it does 16 depend on the uncertainty.
17 DR. BONACA:
On a pragmatic basis I would like to 18 say that I am interested, when I look the 11 issues -- I 19 wasn't familiar with those -- and I see risk during 20 temporary plant configurations.
I am gratified to see that.
21 As a minimum pragmatically, I think, you know, addressing 22 the issue of some completeness in the way that you are 23 translating these high level goals to practical aspects of 24 plant operation, that that is a very encouraging thing and I 25 ama interested to see how you are going to link that.
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DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Also, now the goals are supposed-
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2-to be used on a plant-specific basis, which is a big change.
3 MR. KING:
Yes.
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I mean they did exist before, 5
but I don't really know what role they played.
6 DR. KRESS:
They were supposed to judge the 7
effectiveness of the regulatory system.
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes,, but --
9 MR. KING:
if NMSS embarks on developing safety 10 goals for their activities they are going to have to face 11 the question is this generic, is this -- you know --
12 activity-specific?
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Coming back to the definition of 14 sarety, do you think that their criticism really is much 15 more -- I mean they are asking you to do this in terms of 16 risk?
Is that really what that is?
17 MR. KING:
No, I don't think -- we are not being 18 asked to do it in terms of any particular parameters.
19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
What is safe enough?
20 MR. KING:
I think if we are going to embark on 21 this, it is ap to us to decide what makes sense in terms of j
i 22 the components of the definition.
Is there a risk 1
23 component, a defense-in-depth component, some qualitative 24 lines of defense or whatever you want to call it component?
25 We haven't figured that out yet.
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DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I remember that when the safety
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2 goals were being developed that everybody was saying that 3
they would answer the question how safe is safe enough, so 4
in essence you are defining safety-that way, although we now 5
know that just the numbers do not, because you have to 6
include other things.
Not everything is in the numbers, but 7
maybe they don't have any -- I mean it's just a request to 8
define again how safe is safe enough.
9 Is that what they mean by definition of safety?
10 MR. KING:
No.
No, I think the focus is on --
11 this isn't in your handout, but you have seen this before, i
12 the three region chart when we are talking about if you put 13 on a risk scale where increasing risk goes up, you have got 14 what we call adequate protection up here, and there is no
)
15 clear boundary as to where that is or how that is defined, 16 but there is some point where risk is higP nough that you 17 want to make people do something about it.
18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
In one of our letters in fact, 19 we --
20 MR. KING:
Yes.
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
-- we urge you to do something.
22 MR. KING:
And you have got the safety goals that 23 define how safe is safe enough that recognize, even though 24 the safety goals are a number, it's really more than that.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
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MR. KING:
I mean even though a number may say you
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2 don't need the containment building, we are still going to 3
have a containment building.
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Is that really -- I mean -- a 5
dogma?
Because I know some people who are preparing a study 6
to come to you and say the containment is not really 7
needed --
8 MR. KING:
Well, we faced that on the --
9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
-- for a new design.
10 MR. KING:
Well, we had that on the MHTGR.
We 11 don't need a containment --
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Right.
13 MR. KING:
-- litcle fuel pellets are 14 containments.
We've got a trillion of them in there.
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15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I mean we keep saying that, you 16 know, that we will never accept --
17 MR. KING:
Yes, we never accepted that argument.
18 What we accepted was we will think about it.
You prove to 19 us how good ycur fuel is -- and they went off to prove how j
20 good the fuel was, and it wasn't as good as they had 21 claimed.
q 22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
We will give it increased 23 management attention -- even though Mr. Holahan is not here.
-l 24 DR. FONTANA:
Is this significant, that the chart 25 does not have, on the right-hand side, reduction of I)
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regulations warranted?
2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
What?
3 MR. KING:
It's got regulation over here-4 DR. FONTANA:
I know.
It says additional 5
regulations may be warranted and regulations not warranted.
6 There should be another one that says, low enough that says, 7
we have regulations that can be reduced.
8 MR. KING:
That's clearly right.
9 DR. SEALE:
-- regulations not warranted.
10 MR. KING:
I mean if you took regulations and 11 looked at what they achieve in terms of safety, you would 12 find some of them are down in here thac maybe go beyond a 13 level of protection that is justified and I think we are 14 talking about a risk-informed regulation that is taking 15 things down here and bringing them back up here.
16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I would change the words on the 17 right column though.
Either drop them completely or change I
18 them.
I don't think additional regulation may be warranted 19 is really what you want to say.
You want to say that you 20 will do cost benefit evaluations, right?
l 21 MR. KING:
I also put this up to get back to 22 Dana's question.
23 DR. KRESS:
Yes.
bave another question about 24 this.
That's one figure with the risk, sort of generally 25 stated there.
Do you envision there may be four or five of 9
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'l those, different.ones -- one for a risk of prompt fatality,
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2
- a. risk for injuries,'a risk for latent, a risk for societal, 3
a risk for --
4 MR. KING:
If you were~ going to put some numerical 5
indications on here, yes, the scale would be different 6
depending upon --
7 DR. KRESS:
Depending on what risk you are talking 8
about.
9 MR. KING:
That's true. Yes.
This is just to'get 10 the concept across.
11 DR. KRESS:
I understand.
12 MR. MURPHY:
It's definitely a multi-dimensional' 13 function.
14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It is a volume and space really.
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15 DR. POWERS:
You indicated you put this chart up 16 to address my question and then I guess I wonder why.
17 MR. KING:
Well, let me ask you a question.
18
[ Laughter.]
19 MR. KING:
If I may.
20 DR. POWERS:
Right now I will ask you a question.
21 MR. KING:
.All right.
22 DR. POWERS:
Why one of the questions -- when the 23 assertion is made the NRC dQes not have a dufinition of 24
. safety, why isn't the response look here?
25 MR. KING:
That is precisely why I put this up.
OJ
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Where is official agency documentation can you find this?
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2 You tell me where that is.
3
'DR.
POWERS:
What you are saying is that, okay, 4
you may have failed in providing a document that you can 5
hand to someone and say do you want to see our definition of 6
safety?
Here it is.
It does not alter the fact that you in 7
fact have a pretty good definition of what safety is.
8 MR. KING:
I think I wouldn't state it quite that 9
way.
10 DR. FONTANA:
I'd like to caution you about that.
11 DR. POWERS:
I think you are unduly apologetic.
I 12 think that if I went to any other agency and said, okay, 13 show me your definition of safety, that they would be 14 appalled that I would ask the question.
They would scramble O)
(,
15 around.
Tr.ey would probably ignore me, as a matter of fact.
16 But I don't think they could show you anything this 17 sophisticated.
18 MR. BARRETT:
Dana, I think, first of all, I think 19 it is a fair question to ask.
If we would go off and we 20 studied this and we failed to come up with something that 21 meets all of the rigorous standards that we, as an agency 22 and as a technical community, like to try to meet, then we 23 might want to go back and say that.
But I think it is a 24 fa question to ask a regulatory body, if we can define 25 somehow what is safe enough.
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DR. POWERS:
If the question were what's safe
(
2 enough, I think I would be much more tolerant of the 3
question.
The question is what is safe and that, I am much 4
less tolerant of that question.
What's safe enough is a 5
much more tolerable question.
6 MR. MURPHY:
I think we're asking two different 7
questions, Dana, and neither one of them are quite what 8
you're saying.
We're asking what is safe enough, the lower 9
boundary, on that chart, and then what is absolutely
.10 r_<. ired, what is adequate.
11 And it's this concept.
Now, the best exposition 12 of this kind of thing that I have seen is in the document 13 that was put out by the health and safety executive in the 14 UK, called the tolerability of risk, where they have
()
15 described, in somewhat murky terms, essentially a 16 three-region regulatory environment.
17 Some of the stuff that EPA has stated in terms of 18 what risk they would accept from carcinogens is fairly 19 quantitative.
They have tried.
I don't think they're at 20 the level of sophistication we are, but there has been some 21 effort there.
They're not talking a three-region concept 22 like this, though.
23 DR. WALLIS:
Joe, you've used the right words 24 again, that safety is acceptable risk.
I don't think we 25 need to argue about what it did.
And risk, as I said
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.before, is'something you have to be clear about.
You have'
}.
2 to be able to express.it and make everybody understand.
3 And then acceptable becomes the key word.
4 Acceptable has go to be, in my view, what's acceptable to 5
the people who are at risk.
And so you can't operate in a 6
vacuum.
You've got to operate in the poli'.ical world, you 7
have to operate in a public world, Eventually, whatever you 8
do has got to be scrutable to intelligent members of the 9
public and say, yes, I agree, that is acceptable to me.
10 MR. MURPHY:
I agree with you 100 percent.
11 MR. KING:
And I think the reactor safety goal 12 policy took a sbot at that ten years ago, 15 years ago, in a 13 qualitative t.4s e.
It was, I thought, worded in a way the 14 public could understand.
I think now the agency..a facing 15 the same questions in the non-reactor world and revisiting 16 some of the issues in the reactor world.
17 DR. WALLIS:
So what's the problem?
I think we go 18 back to my previous question.
We have a lot of history.
19 We're doing things pretty well.
What really is it that 20 needs to be fixed in terms of being clearer about risk and 21 acceptability?
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
For one thing, the safety goal' 23 policy statement is not stated this way 24 MR. KING:
The safety goal policy statement talks 25 about this area right here.
We don't have a similar thing j
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that talks about this up here.
We have a legal concept and ex
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2 we make judgments, but we don't have anything that defines 3
it.
4 MR. BARRETT:
I would go further than that.
I 5
think that we're a long way from gettirq consensus within 6
the agency that adequate protection should be defined on a 7
risk scale.
I think that -- and maybe I can engage OGC in 8
this conversation at this point, on their views about this 9
But we have a fair number of regulatory documents 10 out there that define adequate protection in a way that's 11 totally unrelated to risk.
12 DR. WALLIS:
Yes, I think this is appropriate.
13 MR. BARRETT:
It defines adequate protection in 14 terms of the adequacy of the regulatory process, as opposed r
4 15 to being something that's measurable.
16 DR. WALL 2S:
Safe enough and adequate protection
)
17 look sort of the same, have the same flavor, to me.
If you 18 had something like optimum protection, where safe enough is 19 sort of the ground floor and then you go up from that until 20 there is no payoff to putting in any more regulation.
21 MR. T.ARRETT:
Right.
22 MR. KING:
There are people that confuse the j
23 issues that think adequate protection is the same thing as 24 how safe is safe enough.
i 25 DR. WALLIS:
Well, optimum.
If you're going to do I
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tradeoffs in a cost-beneficial region, you really need words (A) 2 like optimum.
Adequate seems to me a strange word to use.
3 DR. FONTANA:
Wait a minute.
What that top one 4
really means is that when you're going to flat-out shut 5
something down.
That's what it means.
6 MR. KING:
Shut something down or not worry about 7
the cost of providing that protection, because it's so 8
important, you've got to do it.
9 MR. BARRETT:
Well, I'd get back to what,cu say, 10 yes.
Under what circumstances is a plant authorized to i
11 operate?
And that has a lot to do with the concept of 12 adequate protection and it's different from -- it's 13 different from -- we know that there are limitations to the 14 risk methodologies.
We know that there are variations from
(~s\\)
15 plant to plant in the things that dominate risk, whether 16 they're internal or external events, whether they're 17 transients or LOCAs or what have you.
We know that there 18 are -- that given those variations, we even know that 19 there's variations in the risk of the plants.
20 But we've licensed all these plants and we've 21 said, by licensing them, that they're providing adequate i
22 protection of public health and safety.
And if we have a 23 statement of adequate protection, a recent one, it's the one 24 that was given by the Commission when they defined safety 25 and compliance.
I believe it as97-008.
They said that YO ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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adequate protection is presumptively provided by compliance
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2 with the regulations.
\\
3 So where we have been dealing as a regulatory 4
agency, as a political agency, is defining adequate 5
protection in terms of the process, the regulations, the 6
regulatory process and compliance wish it, not a numerical 7
definition.
8 I think we're a long way from gathering together a 9
consensus that there is a numerical.
So I don't want you to 10 conclude that because we put a slide up here that shows this 11 that they're somehow or other --
12 DR. BONACA:
I would like to make a statement in 13 this regard, which is interesting.
I'm totally supportive 14 of something like this and I know that I've seen pragmatic
/~(_j 15 use of something similar in the past for specific 16 applications.
17 But assume that you are down to where you have the 18 line, additional regulation is unwarranted, which is in the 19 safe enough region, and you find the issue that, in and of 20 itself, will drive you to the border of that green margin 21 there.
22 The one individual issue skews your contributor of 23 risk.
Wouldn't this kind of commitment hold you back from 24 doing anything about the specific issue, even if, in and of 25 itself, that may drive up significantly risk in-the region?.
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How would you handle that?
[))
2 MR. KING:
I'm not sure.
You're saying you're 3
down in here?
4 DR. BONACA:
Down deep in that.
5 MR. KING:
And you find something that --
6 DR. BONACA:
You find one individual issue that, 7
of itself, contributes significantly to increase risk; 8
however, still leaves you in that region there.
9 MR. KING:
Right now, the guidance is you would 10 not do anything about that.
11 DR. BONACA:
But wouldn't you have some provisions 12 to look at it from the perspective of that would skew all 13 the -- for example, from a PRA standpoint, maybe your 14 contributors, your profile, the profile for the plant, in a g
(
15 way that you -- I'm trying to understand how you would deal 16 with that.
17 DR. KRESS:
You're saying why not extend that cost 1
18 benefit on down into that region, too.
19 DR. BONACA:
I'm not proposing that.
I'm only 20 saying that there is a -- you may find something that in and 21 of itself contributes something like 20 percent to a core 22 damage frequency.
23 DR. KRE3S:
Even though the core damage frequency 24 is pretty low in the first place.
25 DR. BONACA:
Yes, and uncertainty attachid to that
)
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may say that you should do something about it, but now you Oi 2
tie your hands in setting that framework without a provision gu) for some considerations on the site.
I'm only saying that s
4 as you define the framework, you have to leave some 5
provisions for accommodating unique sites that you may have.
6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think that's related to what I 7
wanted to say.
I think the words here should be chosen very 8
carefully.
We have a letter from NEI saying that if you 9
elevate the CDP to the fundamental safety goal level, then 10 plants that are above it will be declared as unsafe and so 11 on.
12 Well, we have the same issue here, because if you 13 call the lower regions safe enough, then there is an 14 implication that if you're above it, you're not safe enough.
(3
(,,/
15 So perhaps what you can do is describe thet-e 1
16 regions; in other wor.t.s, take your words " additional 17 regulation not warranted" and put that in there as a name, 18 as a title of that region, and then cost beneficial, again, 19 additional regulation may be warranted / cost-benefit analysis 20 will be carried out, something like that, and then the top 21 one seems to be all right, i
i 22 So in other words, you are describing these in 23 terms of the regulatory action and I think that would 24 include Mario's concern, because it's not necessarily the I
25 NRC that will do what you just said-Maybe the owner should l
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do that.
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' DR'.'BONACA:
I'm:only saying that, however,'in-31 defining something'of;this~ type, which is very valuable,- in:
1 my judgmer,t!'o there has Eo be some consideration for whatever 5.
you may find in-the futu.;e that may. leave you in'that region 6
there.
Maybe it's so significantiin and of itself that-7 something had"to be done.
i 8
Now, I agree.with you, the owner should.do-9 something<about it, but there has to'lue some --
10 DR. FRESS:
I.think youirun head-on into the 11 backfit rule and that'~ Mhere'the problem comec in doing.
12 that.
.They' re hands are tied'in tilat region 13
- MR. BARRETT:
Let me take an example, twist your-14 example a little bit.
Suppose we believe a licensee is:way.
()
15 down in that very, very low; risk region and we find somehow 16 that their corrective action program is completely broken.
17 So it'i going to be very difficult f or you '.o 1
18 quantify the impact on risk of a completely broken 19 corrective' action program.
20 In the current regulatory regime, you woulu say' 21 that they are outside of compliance with the regulations.
22 You could make a case, if it were bad enough, that they're 23 no longer providing adequate protection.
24 So in'a sense, there.is a value of having this' 20 dichotomy of between process and-risk.
Now,.maybe you would u
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i say, well, no, I really don't care that much.
If I believe n,(v}
2 the risk is that low, I really don't care if they have a' 3
completely broken process like a corrective action process 4
or what have you.
5 I'm n.t sure that we want to draw that conclusion.
6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But here, again, when you put 7
risk values on the left, couldn't you argue that it's not 8
just the number that counta?
So if your corrective action 9
program is not working, then perhaps the numb you have 10 calculated is not believable anymore and you have this 11 unquantified contribution that really moves you up.to 12 another region, because this is not going to be risk-based.
13 DR. BONACA:
But then there is a need for 14 complimenting or supplementing this kind of concept with (O,)
15 some stated provisions, so that there is a true 16 communication.
17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
There would be a text and if you 18 want communication, I think the top region should be really 19 dark blue, the lower light blue, and the in between --
20 DR. BONACA:
Shaded.
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
-- shaded, then you're on your 22 way of communicating.
23 DR. FONTANA:
Getting back to the top one, the 24 words have to be carefully chosen, because that's really 25 going to be a flexible -- in the real world, that's going to
()
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- be flexible thing,.because depending'on what the n
(
)
2 alternatives are -- let's say, for example, we're in an oil w/
3 shock or something like that and the only choice you've got 4
-- one of the few choices you've got of getting electrical 5
power is nuclear or whatever.
C In a real world, that level u* whether you're 7
going to shut a plant down or not is going depend on what 8
alternatives you've got.
9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But it's not the job of this 10 agency to decide that, Mario.
11 MR. BARTON:
That's right, 12 DR. APOSTOL4KIS:
Somebody else has to decide 13 l
that.
As far as these fellows are concerned, if you are 14 there, you shut down.
Unless Congress comes back and says
)
15 national security dictates that you should move the boundary 16 up.
17 DR. MILLER:
Well, you would have a diagram like 18 that for all the ways of generating it and that becomes 19 outside of the agency.
20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think we're getting into a 21 dream world now that you will have something like this for 22 coal and gas.
23 DR. FONTANA:
No, no, in the real world.
Let me 24 make one more point.
How many nuclear plants have been 25 ordered in the last 25 years comopared to gas-fired --
-[
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gas-fired. combined cycle?
That is a societal decision made
(( )
2 by the utility.
3 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Right, but let's not confuse the 4
decisions here.
The decision whether to go with gas versus 5
nuclear is not up to this agency.
6 DR. FONTANA:
Exactly.
7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
This agency operates on the 8
assumption that you have a nuclear plant and you make 9
decisions to make it safe, and it operates under the current l political climate and the advice or instructions received 10 11 from higher-ups.
12 Now, if there is a national cmergency, I don't 1
1 I
13 think that the Commission will decide these things, or maybe i
14 they will, but --
i 15 DR. FONTANA:
No.
All I'm saying is to not get 16 into a legal box, I think the words defining the top one 17 have to allow for some flexibility.
Ib DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Not here.
I don't think -- no.
I 19 I think somebody else higher up has to intervene and say, 20 well, yes, there is a national emergency, so keep running.
1 21 So let's not confuse che decisions.
The decisions 22 are different level decisions.
23 DR. WALLIS:
But Mario is right, then, and this is 24 parenthetical, cost not a consideration is really not true.
25 You're saying the risk cost is so big at the present time
[)
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that it's unacceptable to be above there.
(
2 But if circumstances change. that could move.
3 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It could move, yes.
4 DR. WALLIS:.So the cost not a consideration is a 5
bit misleading.
6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Cost not a consideration --
7 DR. WALLIS:
Society has to balance the risk cost 8
versus the benefi t cost, even up there.
9 DR APOSTOLAKIS:
It'e assumed that under present 10 conditions and something like that.
11 MR. MURPHY:
Let me interject a thought.
When the l
12 backfit rule was written, we didn't have -- initially, we 13 didn't have an upper region.
We said we had a cost 14 beneficial space.
And that was taken to the courts and the 15 courts told us we were wrong, that we needed a space of adequate protection where we would take action without 16 L
17 consideration of cost.
18 And perhaps Gary can elaborate on that more than I 19 can, but the -- that was a fundamental change in the backfit 20 rule that came out of the Federal courts, rather than the 21 agency, that defined, in legal terms, this upper region of 22 adequate protection as something where we would not consider 23 cost.
24 Did I say that right, Gary?
25 MR. MIZUNO:
.I think that's pretty accurate.
I
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th.nk that the agency's position going into the 2itigation,-
s 2
and I've seen the legal memos that were written prior to the 3
litigation, it was OGC's position -- it. uas OGC's, position 4
and remember that there were two different legal offices, 5
It was OGC's legal position at the time that, 6
I guess, the position that I've heard being discussed.here 7
that says that it's a societal decision, cost must 8
necessarily be part of the determination as to what is 9
necessary for adequate protection, that cost cannot be 10 divorced from that concept, which I personally think is a 11 valid one.
12 That was the position that was taken by OGC in the 13 litigation and was expounded in the course of developing the 14 backfit rule and the court basically rejected that and said,
(
15 no, they understocd the concept as saying adequate 16 protection represents a cc*icept where cost is irrelevant to 17 the decision, that there is some safety threshold in some 18 fashion that the agency must determine whereby the 19 protection must be provided, otherwise the cost to society 20 or the -- the consequences to society are unacceptable, such 21 that the agency should not allow the regulated activity to 22 proceed.
23 DR. POWERS:
I think the court's thinking on this
)
24 was that the societal cost associated with that upper 25 region, the decision to beer that societal cost had already
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1 been taken by the Congress and it wasn't in the purview of
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2 ;
the agency to adjust cost there.
That decision.had already I
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3 been made.
4 When they cndertook the idea that there woull be 5
peaceful uses of atunic energy, that 7ac not a decicion that 6
Congress took lightly, to allow commercial enterprises to j
l 7
have control of nuclear material, was not an easy decision, 8
and they made the decision and said, yes, we'll do this and j
9 if an entity wanted to avail itself of that opportunity, it j
i 10 bore a cost that the Congreas declared that the society was
)
I 11 willing to bear, and they didn't give that to the NRC as a
{
12 decision-naking tool.
13 So Graham is right.
There indeed is a cost-benefic tradeoff 14 made up there, it's just not made by this agency.
It's made g
by the policy-makers.
I i
/
15 s-1 16 MR. MIZUNO-I would agree.
By the way, for the 17 reporter, my name is Gary Mizuno, from the Office of General 18 Counsel.
Sorry.
19 DR. KRESS:
I'G ike to return to the J
)
20 dimensionality of this concept, the framework.
If you l
21 revisit the safer-goal statement, of course, one of your j
22 first tasks is going to be to determine how many dimensions 23 it does have and wnat those consist of.
24 I'd like to suggest one dimension to this thing 25 that doesn't seem to get brought up very often and let's put
(
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it in tenns of -- let's say one of these dimensions on risk l
2 is, say, the individual risk of prompt fatalities or LERF as 3
a surrogate for it.
4 The implication is that it has a lover bound, safe 5
enough region, and it has a specific value.
I think another 6
dimension to this ought to be the uncertainty in the 7
determination of that, as actually another dimension in 8
determining what level it is.
9 How, I don't know how you deal with that 0
uncertainty in terms of defining the acceptable value, but 11 it has to be one of the dimensions some way, and I uanted to 32 throw that in as -- you need to be thinking that as part of 13 the concept.
14 MR, KING:
I agree.
15 DR. BONACA:
That's exactly why I was concerned 1C about the individual issue, because the two things together, 17 if you tie them together, this is going to tie your hands to 18 tbn point where you might find that individual issues and i
19 the uncertainties associated with the overall risk profile 20 for the plant may give you a lot of trouble in not making a 21 change at that time and so you want to have a way of
\\
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22 verbalizing that so that there is no surprise for the 1
a 23 licensee at that time and you have a scrutable process.
24 Yea want to -- that was one of the fundamental 25 reasons.
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'l MR. KING:
I agree with you.
I view that as sort
(~')
2 of an implementation issue and, you know, the reactor safety
\\m/
3 legal policy tried to deal with that by saying let's use 4 'l mean values and then some general'words on defense-in-depth 1
5 and so forth.
6 DR. KRESS:
And that's one of the areas I think 7
the statement fell short.
8 MR. KING-And that's one of the areas we talked 9
about enhancing it we go back into the reactor safety goal 10 oolicy, but I agree with you.
11 DR. BONACA:
I just had one brief question, 12 because I want to let you go ahead.
But is there any l attempt at some point to link this to the cornerstones?
13 l
14 MR. KING:
To the cornerstones?
j 4
i t
1E DR. BONACA:
I mean, here wa are going from the j
16 very high level down to the implementation, I'm sure you'll
{
17 have some words about that, but I would be interested in 18 understanding how the issue of --
19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Actually, the cornerstone guys 20 should connect with this, not these fellows.
This is the 21 hign level policy, and they are doing it.
They are doing 22 it.
I mean, they're not doing it in this form of the three i
l 23 regions, because they don't have it.
24 DR. BONACA:
Let me give you an exatcple.
I heard i
25 about corrective action program broken here.
I also heard ANN RILEY &' ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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from the presentation in the other case that cultural issues
(
2 will not be monitored about the cornerstones.
That's fine.
3 I'm only trying to see how this thing is going to come 4
together.
It is mosaic and clearly you cannot only have the 5
implementation people doing it.
The linkage has to be both I
6 ways and I just was curious to know if you are thinking 7
about that.
8 MR. MURPHY:
Let me say that the CSAS report, 9
which is still in draft form, in its present form, is making 10 the recommendation that we try to tie adequate protection into 'he cornerstones.
I don't think we have reacted to 11 c
12 that suggestion yet, but, of course, the report isn't final 13 yet, so I don't know if it will be in their final report, 14 but it's in been in the last couple drafts.
15 I think that will be one of the recommendations 16 coming out of that study.
17 MR. KING:
And that is an option for defining 18 adequate protection.
I mean, today, we acknowledge that 19 you've got to define it, but we don't have any proposal to 20 put in front of you, but that's clearly an option.
21 MR. BARRETT:
In a sense, the cornerstones, the 22 definition of the cornerstones is a very high level 23 definition.
It just basically takes what's importanc to 24 risk and says these are areas that are importanc to risk.
-I 25 think where you get down to answering that quection is in i
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I
[
1 the development of the significance determination process, i
j 2
which is a process that's being deve.1oped as part of the new 3
assessment process.
l h
4 It's a process whereby the NRC will take an 5
individual inspection finding and put it through various i
F-hoops to see if it rises to the level of a finding that will 7
he brought to the assessment process.
8 And it's very difficult to go from this level of
)
9 goal to some -- to a determination 'ike that, But what l
10 we've tried to do in developing the significance j
i 11 determination process is to say that at some level, we're i
i 12 shooting for something that might be a ten-to-the-minus-six 23 issue.
Well, what types of things might be commensurate 14 with that level, not necessarily can we calculate a 15 ten-to-the-minus six.
16 So there is an attempt to make a link, but the 17 link is not very rigorous at this point.
18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It seems to me, since we are 19 speaking of cornerstones, that the safety goal policy 20 statement.hould not limit itself to the risk configuration, 21 to the risk method, the ultimate consequences, in other 22 Nords.
23 There ought to be there somewhere -- let me give 24 you an example.
Let's say that you have a plant that, in 25 L terms of the risk matrix, does fall into the safe enough r
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i region, what is called today safe enough region.
g 2
Yet, that plant has a high frequency of initiating l
3 events.
They have extra mitigating systems, so the total 4
risk is low.
According to the cornerstone idea, that's not 5
acceptable.
So there is this additional consideration that 6
is introduced by the inspection and enforcement people that 7
say, well, we would like uo see it be safe enough, but also 8
come sort of a uniform distribution or some sort of a --
9 MR. BARRE'IT:
Defense-in-depth.
10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes, de'ense-in-depth.
11 MR. KING:
A balance.
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Right.
So I really think we 13 should not introduce concepts like that in other documents.
14 The high level documents should have provisions for those 15 things.
So what you call safe enough or what you call cost 16 beneficial and so on is not determined only by risk or the 17 couplt
' subsidiary goals, there ought to be a statement 18 someplace that in addition to this, we want to see ABC.
19 I think the cornerstone document already gives you 20 a good start with that, because then the overall policy will 21 he in one document and it will be implemented then in other 22 documents.
23 MR. KING:
In a few slides, you will see that.
24 These issues will come up in a few slides.
25 DR. APOSTOLAK7.S:
So you're already doing that.
1 l
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Good
?s (V) 2 DR. KRESS:
And when you do that, the natural 3
question always comes up how.much of ABC are we going to 4
have, and that has to be tied to uncertainties.
I=hateLto 5
keep bringing that up, but it has to be dependent on the 6
uncertainties in your determination in some way.
7 DR. MILLER:
So, Tom, you're caying that if you 8
have zero uncertainties --
9 DR. KRESS:
Yes.
You umst be real.
We're never 10 going to have that.
11 DR. MILLER:
I understand that.
But if we 12 approach that, we thcn change the balance significantly over 13 14 DR. KRESS:
You very well could, yes, and it would O
(,/
15 be cost beneficial.
16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
Remember the example I 17 gave where you don't have any epistemic uncertainty.
Core 18 damage -- in a new design, core damage will occur if you 19 throw six dice and they all show six.
There is no epistemic 20 uncertainty.
It's purely aliatory.
21 The only comment Mr. Holahan made is make it seven 22 dice and I agree.
Then I will not need a containment.
23 DR. MILLER:
So if containment is going to be 24 defined on it, wo have to have seven dice.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
That's what he said.
If the
/
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1 core damage. frequency is equal to seven= dice showing six at.
I\\
'2 the same' time,.and we will make sure they're independent.
O 3
One die is tossed in Washington, the other in'Los Angeles,--
4 by different people.
B 5
DR. KRESS:
So now we're never going to have pure 6
aliatory.
7 DR. AFOSTOLAKIS:
No, I know, but in principal, 8
though, we are dealing with the epistemic uncertainty here.
9 DR. KRESS:
That's right.
10.
DR. BONACA:
But that's exactly the point I was
'll making.
You have a-good point.
The whole regulation, it 12 seems to me, is based on a lot of apportionment to different 13
-- and balancing those and that's why we're asking this 14 question, because ultimately this is not allowing for that
()
15 to happen.
So you will have to reconcile the two of them.
16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
And the other thing is when you 17 speak about defense-in-depth and all that, do we really want 18 to tie this too much to the current generation of LWRs?
19 DR. KRESS:
I think you are better off rethinking 20 things like that., but you are saddied with that baggage and-21 it has to --
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
As long as we have some sort of-23 provision that would allow you to do something else.
24 DR. MILLER:
It should be. generic enough that it 25 can apply to any reactor.
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DR. KRESS:
Yes.
It ought to be generic and apply
[
}
2 to any reactor.
That's right.
'%.J 3
DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But a lot of the numbers that 4
we've been using the last several years really are 5
LWR-specific.
6 DR. KRESS:
LWRs, absolutely.
7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Right, like conditional 8
containment failure probability.
9 DR. KRESS:
The concept ought to be applicable to 10 any reactor system.
11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay.
12 DR. KRESS:
And we'll be saddled with all that 13 baggage.
14 DR. MILLER:
This concept is --
Ct {)
15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The concept, yes.
y 16 DR. MILLER:
This concept is applicable --
17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
To anything.
18 DR. SEALE:
We're not prepared to ask the question 19
-- or to respond to the question of whether or not we need 20 the containment at this time, but we should have the ability 21 to ask it when it gets appropriate.
j i
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Exactly, because d.t should not 23 take a revision of the high level safety goal policy
)
24 statement to rethink that question.
25
-DR.
SEALE:
Exactly.
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DR. KRESS:
This would apply'co a reactor with no.
(v) 2 containment.
3 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes, but this is not the whole 4
concept.
5 DR. KRESS:
And that's why I said uncertainty has 6
to be a dimension on that thing.
7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think shades of blue are good.
8 We've spent about 25 minutes on this viewgraph.
9 MR. KING:
I have two more things to say about 10 this viewgraph.
11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Go ahead.
12 MR. KING:
One is the new plant oversight process, i
13 which you have been briefed on, has performance indicators 14 and there are various levels of. action depending on what l
/~h
(,)
15 that performance indicator is telling you in terms of the 16 performance of certain systems in the plant.
17 Basically, they have an approach that works its 18 way down.
They have the green, white, yellow, so forth.
)
19 When you get down to red, which is shut the plant down, they
)
20 had to face the question does this define adequate 21 protection or not.
What they've said is, no, that's not 22 adequate protection, that's some level above adequate 23-protection, but we're going to make sure we take action to 24 shut the plant down before we get into this adequate 25 protection region.
So this whole concept is embodied on (k-)
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l 1
that process, as well.
2 The other thing I wanted to say, getting back to 3
the court case and so forth, the items that are up here are 4
out of existing documentation.
The safe enough region, 5
defining the safety goals, this is in the backfit rule, the 6
court cases.
7 We're not proposing to reopen -- re-challenge the 8
court case.
What we're proposing to do is given this system 9
and these terms that have evolved over time, put together a 10 more top-down description of what they mean and how they're 11 to be used and how this all fits together.
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But the words safe enough are 13 not imposed on you.
You're not changing any court rulings 14 by changing those words.
I understand the adequate
, j 15 protection, but safe encugh may be -- some people may be 16 sensitive to that.
But if you're above it, you're not safe 17 enough.
18 MR. KING:
I have no objection to revisiting the 19 words, but the words chosen for this viewgraph came from 20 that.
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I understand.
t 22 MR. KING:
Okay.
Why are we here?
- Well, 23 basically, we're here to get your feedback on his this a 24 worthwhile thing to do.
Like I said, we've had some 25 internal discussions over the past month or two about doing sj ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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-this'.
What you're hearing'is a-summary of where we stand in-
!2 our' thinking about this.
'It's very preliminary in? terms.~of-3
. what this high' level --
4 DR. WALLIS*:
I'd like to go back to my point.
5 Instead of worrying about whether it's worth doing,Jwhy.
6 don't you consider what you have to do in order to get to'a-7 risk-informed world?
You have to do that.
There is-no 8
debate.
If you're going to get there, there are certain' 9
things you must do.
Focus =on that instead of all this fluff 10' about whether or not you need to think about safetyfagains
'11 and so on.
Then you can figure out what way you should put 12 your effort.
13 MR. KING:
I think one of the: things'this would do 14 would be facilitate-getting us into the risk-informed world,
()
15 the reactor side and'the non-reactor' side, by trying to 16 clarify what the criteria and the goals are.and how they're 17 to be used so that you can start to put together the details 18 of implementing that in the field.
I 19 I guess we'd like your feedback.
Whether you want J
20 to do that in a letter or not, I'll leave that up to you.
I 1
21 guess my own personal-preference is, yes, I'd like to see a 22 letter, if you're willing to write one.
23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So-what is the new concept that 24 you are bringing forth today?
That you want to have a 25 safety policy; statement that unifies-all the activities of-
~
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'the agency, that's the new thing?
That's why you are asking
)
2 for an extra year?-
3 MR. KING:
Yes.
Yes.
It puts together things 4
that apply across the board to the agency at some high level 1
5 and then deal with the reactor-specific things and the 6
non-reactor-specific things.
They-could be in the same.
7 policy or they could be separate policy.
That remains to be
~
8 determine'.
But th,/ would then be put within this larger d
9 framework and these top level things would provi.de. guidance 10 as to what needs to be considered when you get down to 11 reactors and non-reactors.
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So the previous slide that we.
13 spent so much time on is not the reason for this, because 14 you could have done that anyway, for the reactor safety
)
15 goals.
That's not why you're asking --
16 MR. KING:
One of the things -- we had -- when you 17 go back and look at our SECY-98-101, one of the things we 18 were talking about doing, if we were just going to go into 19 the reactor safety goals, was talk about this as it applies 20 to reactors.
21 DR APOSTOLAKIS:
Right.
22 MR. KING:
But in thinking about it, this applies 23 to more than reactors.
24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Sure.
25 MR. XING:
So let's step back and talk about this
']
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.and talk about other things that apply across the board ino
'( )
2~
_these higher level documents.
That's one of the things that
-3 triggered us to do this.
4 DR. SEALE:
You mentioned earlier that this was a 5
multi-dimensional problem when you take on that broader 6
definition.
Have you decided what all those dimensions are?
7 I mean, specifically, you've said the non-reactor thing.
8 MR. KING.:
Yes.
9 DP. SFALS:
All right.
What's in the list of 10 non-reactor things?
11 MR. KING:
NMSS, I guess.
It's NMSS stuff.
12 There's a whole -- you go and look at SECY-99-whatever it 13 was, I brought it with me here,99-100.
14 DR. POWERS:
When you speak of NMSS, you cover a
()
15 fair waterfront there.
16 MR. KING:
Yes.
17 DR. POWERS:
You cover everything from licensing 18 Yucca Mountain to some sources used for medical processes, 19 with some fairly large industrial radiation capabilities.
20 MR. KING:
Yes.
21 DR. POWERS:
It seems to me that you tread into 22 some fairly difficult terms if you take the entirety of NMSS 23 and are you willing to do that?
I know one tar baby I-24_
wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, if I could avoid it-.
25 MR. : KING:
We_got the author of SECY-99-100 0
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sitting at the table here and I'll let' him talk to Ciat, but
()
2 I think, as I read the NMSS paper, it acknowledges that 3
there are some things that really aren't amenable to 4
risk-type applications.
There are others that are.
The 5
standards are clearly going to be -- they are different now 6
and maybe there's good reasons they should be different, 7
because the population at risk is different.
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But one of the biggest 9
differences, in my opinion, between high level waste 10 repository regulation and reactors is the time scales.
So 11 you have unified principals.
That would be difficult, 12 wouldn't it?
Because in reactors we're used to speaking in 13 terms of frequencies per year and there is an understanding 14 there that you have a 100 or so reactors with a lifetime of
()
'5 40 or 60 years and so on.
16 In the other case, you're talking about thousands 17 of years.
So I think it's going to be challenging to come 18 up with a --
19 MR. KING:
Maybe you're suggesting a high level 20 goal for future generation type risk.
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
22 MR. KING:
Maybe that's needed, I don't know.
Let 23 me let Seth talk about that.
24 MR. COPELAND:
Without --
2F MR. MARKLEY:
Please identify yourself.
(
)
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MR. COPELAND:
Seth Copeland.
I'm in the Division I
)
2 of Waste Management in NMSS.
As Tom mentioned, I'm the
\\_J 3
contact on a paper that NMSS just put out on a framework for 4
risk-informed regulation in NMSS.
It might be well to just 5
take a_ couple of minutes to walk through what the background 6
is that led to that paper.
7 Quite simply, when the Commission was doing its 8
strategic planning, as I'm sure you're all well aware of, 9
one of the direction-setting issues that was identified was 10 risk-informed performance-based regulation.
11 In the SRM that came back to the staff on that, we 12 were told to start looking at NMSS for opportunities to k
13 become more risk-informed and performance-based.
14 We did a paper that went up last summer,
()
15 SECY-98-138, that was kind of a preliminary look at our 16 programs and some pot - 'bilities.
SECY-99-100 gets into a 17 lot more of the concre-e planning about where we're 18 intending to go.
19 That said, what is a significant part of that 20 paper is a recognition that in NMSS, we do not have any kind 21 of policy that corresponds to the existing policy statement 22 on safety goals for operation of the power reactors.
23 If you think about that, that's a pretty 24 significant gap when you start talking in terms of 25 risk-informed regulation.
It means that we don't have (9
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identified risk metrics, we don't have goals.
What we have 2
instead are some assessment techniques and we've still got 3
to work out where we're going with them.
4 So we're going to have to do some effort to 5
develop these metrics and goals and I think that the point 6
of the effort that Tom is talking about is that as an 7
agency, we're going to end up with some sort of goals, 8
metrics and so forth for dealing with the NMSS activities, 9
similarly something for reactors, and I think questions 10 would naturally start to arise about what do the two have to 11 do with each other.
It's one agency.
How do you deal with 12 risk as an agency?
13 So this is a way that I think we can integrate the 14 thinking and hopefully come out with a solid approach acre 15 the agency.
i 16 MR. KING:
Yes.
Why do we protect people to o.
j l
17 level when it's one activity and to another level when it's 18 another activity?
Maybe that's okay, but have we really 19 taken a look and seen -- made the case that it's okay.
So i
20 it's that kind of top-down thinking that we're talking 21 about.
22 DR. SEALE:
Does what you're planning to do impose
)
23 a kind of backfit on the relationships that the Commission 24 has with the agreement states?
25 MR. KING:
Well, I think it's clear the agreement ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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states have'to be brought.innas a key' stakeholder in this
(
2 whole thing and~ talk about this and they're going t'o be very 3
interested in what.the_impl1 cations areLfor them, and I 4
personally haven't thought much other than recognizing that-5 that needs to be done.
I haven't really thought much about-6 that.
7 DR. SEALE:
Almost certainly, you're expending 8
their resources, if you expect them to comply.
So now 9
you're in a relationship that's not all that different than 10 the relationship that you have with the power reactor 11 owners, and these guys have got 50 Senators -- I mean 100, 12 I'm sorry, 100 Senators and_so on.
13 A year may be a pretty ambitious schedule.
14 MR. KING:
Yes.
The year, I've been told many
()
15 times to take the one year off this viewgraph, and you're 16 probably right.
This is an effort that's going to take more 17 than a year and I will adjust that.
18 DR. POWERS:
If it-gets prottacted, trying to do 19 the comprehensive thing that you envision here, can you 20 divide it down into things that don't take a year?
In other 21 words, is it an all or nothing or is it a step at a time?
22 MR. KING:
I certainly don't think it's an all or 23 nothing.
24 DR, POWERS:
To quote Mr. Murphy, do we need to do 25 the unified field theory or can we start with nutonium ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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mechanics and then progress to the Maxwell equation?
(D
/
2 MR. KING:
Which is what we're doing now.
No,
I-
)
3 think things like getting a better definition of 4
defense-in-depth could be done as a piece without having-5 that held up by everything else.
There's probably some 6
other pieces you could do.
7 DR. POWERS:
Despite the difficulties of the 8
defense-in-depth that they're having at Yucca Mountain.
9 MR. MURPHY:
I think the difficulties that arise 10 in different parts of the agency, one of the problems we 11 have is that occasionally we are fragmented and I'm unaware, 12 for instance, of the problems that NMSS is facing in a 13 variety of their regulatory actions.
14 If nothing else, this will bring us aware of the (O,/
15 problems.
The fundamental of nature risk is different in 16 many of the activities that NMSS licenses, and their risk 17 comes from normal operation rather than reactors, in many 18 cases.
19 There are different concepts like this that we 20 need to be aware of as we develop further.
So can we do it 21 piecemeal?
Yes. But I think what this will do for us is in 22 doing it piecemeal, we'll still be aware, in a more integral 23 way, of what's going on.
So that there will be less 24 pitfalls for us to fall into than if we did it totally 25 isolated and piecemeal.
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-1.
DR. POWERS:
I'm asking within a context, not with 2
send Rich off and have him'do~ defense-in-depth, but for 3
heaven's sake, don't talk to Joe, because;he has weird 4
views.
5 MR. KING:
Yes, whatever.
If you're doing a 6
piece, it's got to be a piece'across the agency.
7 DR. POWERS:
I'm wondering if it isn't better.to 8
think about laying out the proposal in terms of pieces 9
within an overall context, and I would be willing to lay 10 that piece out and say I will do defense-in-depth, but it
.11 will only be applicable to reactors because I know that 12 there are special issues that arise in waste disposal that 13 have yet to be resolved and, at some point, I'm going to 14 have to unify the two definitions, but I don't have to have n )
15 an end-all definition on day one.
16 MR. KING:
I would hope things like higher level 17 considerations you'd need to do without just looking at 18 reactors; for example, the paper, I think several of you 19 authored a paper about the role of defense-in-depth and is 20 it a principle by itself or is it some way to deal-with 21 uncertainties when you're doing -- looking at risk, for 22 example.
23 I mean, those kinds of things, the agency ought to 24 be able to say, yes, defense-in-depth la a principle, if 25 that's what they decide, and it's more than just a way to O'
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account for uncertainties and that would apply to Yucca'
()
2 Mountain, it would apply to reactors, and everybody else, or 3-it may be the other way around, whatever it is.
4 But I would hope at that level, this higher level 5
guidance could deal with that without having a specific 6
definition of defense-in-depth that applies to reactors, if 7
such a definition is needed, if you can't come up with 8
something broader than that.
9 Maybe I'm confusing the issue here.
1 10 DR. WALLIS:
I have a question about thic develop i
11 a proposal.
When does the work get done?
I mean, a l
12 proposal usually lays out work to be done in ths future, 13 going to some plant.
Is that another five years of work or 14 something?
I had hopes that something would come out of rN 1
(,)
15 this in less than a year, which would be useful.
It looks 16 as if all that's going to come out in a year is a proposal 17 to do the work.
1 18 MR. KING:
What I'm proposing -- we had sent you a 19 draft SECY paper with an attachment.
It sounds like you 20 didn't get it.
21 DR. KRESS:
We got it.
22 MR. KING:
You did get it, okay.
But what I'm i
23 envisioning is that later this month, we go to the 24 Commission with this paper that recommends we embark on 25 developing this high level document and then in a year or b)
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whatever the right time is, we come back'with a draft of
/)
2 that that they can review.
v 3
DR. WALLIS:
So it's not a proposal.
It's a.high 4
level draft, a.high level document you're getting in a year.
5 MR. KING:
Yes.
It's something that they could 6
then take and issue for public comment.
7 DR. WALLIS:
A deliverable after a year.
s 8
MR. KING:
A deliverable, yes, and I have been 9
told a year is --
10 DR. WALLIS:
You have not yet got the plan which 11 says what you have to do to get there.
12 MR. KING:
We've thought about the number of 13 stakeholders involved and the number of workshops we're 14 probably going to have to have and a year might be not too
()
15 realistic, and we need to think about that some more.
16 DR. WALLIS:
I'd be tempted to give two or three 17 people the job of doing the job in a month and see what they 18 come up with, as a rough run to find out what it would take if you tried to really do the job and not just talk about-19 20 it.
By the time you have stakeholders and go through all 21 these motions, then your thought processes get atrophied.
22 The ability to be creative and intellectually stimulated 23 disappears.
24 I think if you had some bright people figure out 25 what would need to be done.
1 j^) -
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DR. MILLER:
Lock them in a room.
G 2
DR. WALLIS:
Lock them in a room and say you come
}
3 back with a really good plan on this.
You might succeed.
4 MR. KING:
Seth, did you want to say something 5
about agreement states?
6 MR. COPELAND:
Well, yes.
I guess it's apropos to 7
the suggestion
.Tt was just made, and that is that the 8
agreement states are a principal stakeholder, at least with 9
certain of the NMSS activities, and as Dr. Seale was 10 pointing out, they have a very substantial role and we would 11 be in the position of allocating their resources, which, in 12 some cases, are very limited, both in terms of the people, 13 the money resources, but also they have not been involved in 14 risk assessments and risk methods to any significant degree 3j 15 in the past.
36 So there is a staf fing problen
't would be 17 created for them.
As was mentioned a coup:n minutes ago, a 18 large part of our risk is in normal operation, normal 19 cxposure to workers, not accidents to the public.
20 So there are issues that are extremely important 21 that involve stakeholders and I think we would be somewhat 22 concerned about going too far without stakeholder 23 involvement for that reason.
24 DR. SEALE:
I can point out, I attended a meeting 25 here about two months ago where the Commission had some l~
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people who talked to some state representatives on the m
)
2 potassium iodide issue and there were four state agencies 3
represented there and every one of those state agencies was 4
under the same kind of pressure that everybody else is under 5
to reduce the intrusiveness of their activities on the 6
people they regulate.
7 They are cutting back on the number of people who 8
look at machines, to find out whether or not there is stray 9
radiation, deterioration in the focus of X-ray machinec and i
10 things liko that.
11 That's resources and so you could stir up a real 12 hornet's next when you get into that.
13 DR. MILLER:
But how is that all relevant to high 14 level safety?
I think it's irrelevant.
15 DR. SEALE:
The point is in implementing a high 16 level safety situation, you are likely to make decisions I
17 that allocate resources for these people and they are going 18 to se very adverse to accepting that.
19 DR. MILLER:
It's outside the scope of the agency, 20 though.
21 DR. WALLIS:
The reason for doing this must be 22 because it has positive benefits and if there are benefits 23 from sorting out the safety goals and measures of risk and 24 so on, then the sooner they're sorted out, the better.
But 25 if there is some positive benefit, we seem to be getting ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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into all the reasons why it's difficult to do.
2 So maybe you could focus on what's the payoff of 3
doing it, then you have more reason to finish the job.
4 DR. MILLER:
I think it goes back to your point earlier, 5
Graham.
If we start worrying about all the stakeholders 6
and all the states and all that stuff, you'll never go
?
anyplace.
If you don't sit in a room and say here is what 8
we should do and not worry about resources and states and so 9
forth, if you start worrying about that, this issue is down 10 the drain, I think.
11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But the issue of -- the question 12 really -- then reason why you want to bring the stakeholders 13 in is not so much to see whether they have the resources to 14 do it, but to see whether they have any other concerns that 15 perhaps are not covered by the current p?ans.
16 In other words, you want t a up with a policy 17 statement that will address everybody's concerns.
I think 18 that's really the issue here, not the resources.
19 MR. KING:
But, I mean, clearly, people are going 20 to be interested in terms of what's this mean for, what am I 21 going to have to do different if we do this.
If what you do 22 different is smarter regulation, more efficient regulation, 22 I would think they're going to be in favor of it.
24 DR. MILLER:
But earlier, Mario Fontana raised the 25 point of, well, we have to look at this in the context of 9~
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1 other energy sources and so forth and we said we don't want
(~'
2
.to do that.
I think the same thing is the issue here.
If-
%)
3 we look at all the other outside contexts, then we have to 4
define a scope.
5 MR. KING:
All I'm saying_is when people look at 6
.this, whether it's the states, the industry, the public, 7
they're going to say what's this 'Toing to do to me, what am 8
I going to have to do different, an3 they're going to look 9
at it that way.
10 The industry is going Lv cay is it going to cost 11 me money or is it going to save me money.
States, probably 12 the same thing. Public interest groups might say, well, is l
I 13 it going to improve safety or not improve safety.
)
14 DR. WALLIS:
You have to bring them into it.
{(.)
15 MR. KING:
You have to bring them into it.
16 DR. WALLIS:
You have to justify why you're doing i
17 it, is there something in it for you guys.
j i
79 MR. KING:
We can't avoid those discussions and j
19 I'm not proposing we avoid those discussions.
20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So are we discussing today the 21 objectives, content and structure of such a safety policy?
i 22 MR. KING:
The next few viewgraphs are sort of
)
23 some ideas as to a structure, a content of this high level 24 stuff.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay.
Go on.
)
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MR. KING:
Okay. 'Page'three, I think we've 1
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2
.already talked about most of this, which is why do this at
()
3 all, and'some of the points we've already talked about'in 4
terms of. clarity and consistency and facilitating 5
riak-informed regulation., consolidating guidance,-how would 6
this be used when we're all done.
7 1 think it would be used certainly to help.NMSS in 8
putting together their. safety goal.
9 DR. WALLIS:
It would help if you could provide-10 some measure of this.
It may sound good, but.maybe you
' 11 could say we're losing the agency, as an industry, a billion 12 a year because of inconsistency and lack of clarity and-13 we've got to sort that out.
Some measure of what the 14 problem is, what the payoff is from solving it.
()
15 l DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But the measure cannot be only
~
16 in terms of dollars, right?
It's also a matter of public 17 confidence.
8 DR. WALLIS:
But I'm not so clear that the agency 19 goals are not consistent and clear.
You've got to have some 20 measure of what's the payoff.from improvements and when 21 people see that clearly., then they'll get behind you.
22 If it's not expressed clearly, then you have to 23 keep on always facing the question why are you doing this.
24 DR. APOSTOLAEIS:
I think the second bullet really 25 does not apply to the safety policy statement.
It applies (9
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1 MR. KING:
Okay.
Page three, I think we've
{}
2 already talked about most of this, which;is whyfde thin at 3
all, and some of the points we've already talked about in 4
terms of clarity and consistency and facilitating 5
risk-informed' regulation, consolidating guidance, how would 6
this be used when we're all done.
7 I think it would'be used certainly to help NMSS in 8
putting together their safety goal.
9 DR. WALLIS:
It would help if you could provide 10 some measure of this.
It may sound good, but maybe you 11 could say we're losing the agency, as an industry, a billion 12 a year because of inconsistency and lack of clarity and 13 we've got to sort that out.
Some measure of what the 14 problem is, what the payoff is from solving it.
(
15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But the measure cannot be only 16 in terms of dollars, right?
It's also a matter of public 17 confidence.
18 DR. WALLIS:
But I'm not so clear that the agency 19 goals are not consistent and clear.
You've got to have some 20 measure of what's the payoff from improvements and when 21 people see that clearly, ther they'll get behind you.
22 If it's not expressed clearly, then you have to 23
. keep on always facing the question why are you doing this.
24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think the second bullet really 25 does not apply to the safety policy statement.
It applies
)
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61
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to the' regulations, because the current regulatory structure
-(D 2
really did not emanate from the safety goals.
7 xd 3
So I think that's a good point.
The safety goals l
4 themaelves are clear.
The policy statement, if'you read it, 1
1 5
you understand what it says.
It says the regulations, that i
)
l 6
they suffer from lack of clarity and so on.
i 7
Now, what's happening now is thac we are moving 8
into risk-informed systems, so the regulations themselves y
k 9
will have to become risk-informed, which means they will l
10 have to rely on the policy statement more and more and to 11 achieve clarity and consistency, you want to start at the i
12 top.
13 That's really what's happening.
So the clarity 14 and consistency are not things that are missing from the I
15 existing safety goal policy statement.
I don't even know s
16 what consistency means at that level.
17 DR. MILLER:
You're saying that we can't have i
18 risk-informed existing safety policy?
19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
We cannot, no.
We need more.
20 We need more.
21 MR. KING:
Let me give you an example.
You've got 22 the safety goal policy, you've got the regulations, you've 23 got the agency strategic plan.
24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
25 MR. KING:
It's not clear to me how they're b-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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consistent.
f
(
2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Exactly, because they were done 3
under different states of knowledge.
4 MR. KING:
So maybe the agency's strategic plan 9
would change if we come up with some good philosophy. policy 6
high level document.
7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Now, the public confidence, I 8
think, will be also increased if you go back to what we were 9
saying earlier about the cornerstones and so on.
That's the 10 whole idea of defense-in-depth.
Just the safety goals in i
11 terms of risk probably would not increase public confidence, 12 because, again, you can have several initiating events 13 someplace, but in terms of risk, did not lead to anything, 14 the public confidence is shaken.
r
-(
15 So if you have public confidence in mind, then the 16 safety goal policy statement will take a certain -- will 17 have a certain flavor.
You will have to address the issue 18 of cornerstones and defense-in-depth, in other words.
19 MR. KING:
Yes, I agree.
I agree.
And it's more 20 than regulations, too.
It's the plant oversight process, 21 it's the enforcement program, all those things.
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So I really think that these 23 bullets, second and third, really refer to risk-informed 24 regulatory cystem, not to the safety policy, the top safety 25 policy.
So the argument there should be that in order to O
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achieve these at the lower levels, you have to make sure-
- (
2 that y'ou have a solid foundation at the top.
That's'what' N
3 you are doing in this task.
4 MR. KING:
Yes.
5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But you are not really promoting 6
regulatory stability.
You are
-- you are promoting in the i
7 sense that you're making sure'that your top goals will'be-8-
. appropriate for the development of a stable risk-informed 9
regulatory system.
10 MR. KING:
But to the extent these. top goals shape
]
11.
things like inspection, enforcement, regulatory analysis, 12 guidelines, they are going to promote --
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
That's right, that's right.
14 DR. WALLIS:
Let me say that I suggest that the 15 bottom to all this, the only one that'really' matters, the i
16 other ones come along with it.
I'm a bit pu::zled here 17 because the Chairman sat in this room about a year ago and 18 said the train has already left the station as far as' is risk-informed regulation goes and you're telling me, I 20 think, that it doesn't have a track to run on yet.
21 So where is it going?
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
To Phoenix.
23 MR. KING:
I'm not telling you it doesn't have a 24 track to run on.
I'm telling you that maybe we need a 25 bigger headlight.
[D ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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DR. WALLIS:
You're sending out.the surveyors and (e) 2 the train has supposedly left the station.
s/
3 DR. MILLER:
Maybe it's on the wrong track.
4 DR. WALLIS:
What would be. wrong if you simply f
5 said we want to do number four, this is what we're going to 6
have to do in order to do it, to get i t done.
I.think a lot 7
of these other things would come along witn it.
8 l MR. KING:
I don't disagree with that.
That might 9
be a better way to state it.
10 DR. WALLIS:
And you'd have it much more focused 11 on what to do and -- on what to do first.
12 MR. KING:
I like that.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
On the other hand, the danger 14 there is that you may be criticized that you're tailoring ID
(,/
15 the top level safety policy statement of the Commission to 16 accommodate the implementation and I think you can have a 17 good argument that, no, that is really a statement of 18 principals.
19 If you have difficulties implementing it, well, 20 tough.
21 DR. MILLER:
In terms of it being risk-informed as 22 an integrated process.
23 DR. KRESS:
We would say this is needed whether 24 you're going to risk-inform the regulations or not.
25 DR. WALLIS:
But the real incentive for doing it ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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is number four and the rest of it you should be doing
)
2 anyway, no matter what.
v 3
DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
No, because people, for example, 4
some people are unhappy that the policy statement does not 5
say anything about land contamination.
This has nothing to 6
do with risk-informed regulation implementation.
7 DR. WALLIS:
It must be, because --
8 MR. KING:
It could be.
9 DR. WALLIS:
If land contamination is a risk, then 10 it's got to inform the regulation.
11 MR. KING:
If that's a goal and there is some 12 possibility.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
So you have to state the 14 goal.
L I
15 DR. MILLER:
The goal has to be part of what is 16 the risk.
17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But it's not the implementation 18 that you're facilitating.
Implementation ie --
19 DR. WALLIS:
You can't run the train unless you 20 know where it's going.
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Why?
It wouldn't be the first 22 time?
23 MR. KING:
And that's one of the issues, when we 24 get to slide five, we're going to talk about that.
25 All right.
beginning with slide four and through h
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the end is to talk about some thoughts on what the scope and
()
2 content of this thing could look like.
Again, these are 3
preliminary thoughts, there is a lot of work yet to be done.
4~
Starting off with scope, this high level part, to 5
me, would -- you try and cover the things that apply to all 6
regule' I activities.
That would include the public and the 7
worker.
It would include normal operation and off-normal 8
operation accidents.
You raised one, George, maybe the time 9
span of activities should be somehow factored into that.
I 10 think that's something important to think about.
11 Environment versus people is another one that 12 needs to be thought about.
That shows up on the next slide, 13 but maybe it should be on four, as well.
Then at least one 14 of the thoughts, a thought that I had was in the same high 2
i
(-(
15 level document, you would start to fit in the 16 reactor-specific and the non-reactor specific pieces, QHOs, 17 CDF, LERF, whatever it turns out to be could fold in there, 18 as well.
So you have it all in one place and it all starts 19 from the top and works its way down.
20 DR. MILLER:
Aren't those partly implementation, 21 not policy issues?
Policy should be a very high level..
It 22 abould be accommodating for this.
23 MR. KING:
But the QHOs are policy.
If you have a 24 high level document that says you want to make -- that the 25 risk to the public is just a small fraction of the cther-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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risks:they're'normally exposed-to, that's a high level
(
2 statement.. And-for the' reactors, you.'ve got the QHOs that 3-try and put a number on~that.-
4 For NMSS stuff,ewhat does that mean,' whatiis Whe 5
public?' It's'different than'it is for reactors.
Maybe you-6 start t.o have some QHOs.for that.
7 DR. MILLER:
Let's go.to-the next overhead.
Your 8
next overhead, I've got lots of comments on.
9 MR. KING:
All right.
Let's go to this one.
10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
now, worker protection, that's 11-not in the current statement.
12 MR. KING:
It is not in the current reactor safety 13 goals.
14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yet, the agency does protect 15 workers.
16 MR. KING:
The agency does have an ALARA policy.
./
Why shouldn't that be a high level goal?
18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Sure.
19 MR. KING:
It only shows up in an. appendix to Part 20 50.
21 DR. KRESS:
I think anything that you have as a 22 regulatory objective in your regulations ought to stem'from 23 your.high level policy statement.
So that certainly is a 24 reasonable thing to have addressed in.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
By the way, speaking.of that,
~
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I'm reading attachment one of what you sent us.
It says the
()
2 objective.
The documenting in a hierarchical fashion -- to 3
document in a hierarchical fashion those high level policies 4
and practices that shape regulatory requirements and 5
decision-making and ensure compliance with the Atomic Energy 6
Act.
7 Is it implied here that you will document also the 8
objectives of the agency's activities?
I mean, if you state 9
policies, that implies objectives, or chould the objectives 10 be spelled out separately and say to document in a 11 hierarchical fashion that those high level objectives, 12 policies, and practices that shape regulatory requirements.
i 13 j
l 14 MR. KING:
Yes, I agree.
You're right.
The word O) i 15 objectives should be in there.
s, 16 DR. WALLIS:
Can I ask about timing?
This is a 17 major undertaking which could shape the future of the 18 agency.
It seems to be you're making a proposal at the time 19 the current Chair is -- does the timing make sense?
Yoa may 20 find you get reorganized in three months.
21 MR. KING:
I just got reorganized two weeks ago.
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So that's just about right.
l 23 DR. MILLER:
Graham, policy-makers come and go and --
24 DR. WALLIS:
But this is going to happen and there 25 is going to have to be a new Chair that says I'm going to j
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make1this happen.
2 MR.. KING:
Clearly;.the Commission, I mean,L.even-3' if the current Chair or the new Chairisays I-like it'a'nd the L4 other --
5 DR.'WALLIS:
So one' strategy is to write the 6
objectives for that boss and' hand it.to him or her.
7 DR. MILLER:
But the Chairman is=not the boss.
~
8 MR. KING:
What triggered this was-st'arting with.
9 the Congressional hearings back in July and'everything that.
10 has happened since then in terms of criticisms of the agency 11 regarding lack of clarity, consistency, goals, objectives, 12.
whatever you want to call it.
That's what' triggered this.
13 That's why.it's timed the way it is today.
We've reached 14 the point where we said maybe it's worth doing something.
()
15 DR. WALLIS:
You're looking for -- this is -- what 16 is the timing of this going forward to some key 17 decision-making in terms of the Commission?
18 MR. KING:
The end of this month.
Do they like 19 this idea or don't.they like this idea, they want us to 20 pursue it or not pursue it.
If they say yes, then we're 21 talking about over the next year or whatever drafting a-22 proposed policy.
I Okay.
Slide five I call possible elements of this 24 high level policy.
The straw. man that we sent you. starts 25 out with some qualitative goals for public and worker T
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protection The first two, dealing with individual members
[-s V) 2 of the public and societal risks are basically the same ones 3
that are in the reactor safety goal policy.
4 I looked at those and they looked pretty good to 5
me as across-the-board type of high level goals.
6 DR. MILLER:
On bullet two, what happens if there 7
is a significant change in other societal risks?
Let's say 8
-- I'll go back to what Mario Fontana said.
What if we have 9
an oil embargo and nuclear is suddenly the only way to 10 generate electricity?
11 MR. KING:
Or a cure for cancer.
12 DR. MILLER:
It could go either way.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Then the Congress will have to 14 take action, Don, not the agency.
'3
/( )
15 MR. KING:
Right.
)
16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The Congress will have to direct 17 the agency to do something.
The agency by itself --
18 DR. MILLER:
So we say
.1 percent or better j
i 19 societal risk.
20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Right.
21 DR. MILLER:
And those risks, say, they go up by a
]
22 factor of 100, we said.1 percent of other societal risk.
j i
23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The other risks, they mean from 24 similar activities, not from not having oil.
25 DR. MILLER:
I'll just use an example.
Not being
(
)
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a significant addition to other' societal risks.
2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Sure,. and the joke at'the; time..
3 was citizens quit smoking, the other risks' go down,.so we 4'
have to retrofit.
5 DR. MILLER:
Well, the other risks have gone:down 6
since
'86.
7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Sure, sure.
8 MR. KING:
The numerical values we're using now, 9
we can relate the QHOs to some risk to the individual and 10 that's based upon societal risks, fatal cancers from 11-whatever -- Joe probably knows the dates, but it's probably; 12 at least 15-year-old information.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The 70s, I believe.
14 DR. MILLER:
So right now we're tagged to risk of
()
15 an individual in 1975.
16 MR. MURPHY:
We really are.
The numerical values 17 we used were ones that we developed right after WASH-1400, 18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Sure.
19 DR. MILLER:
So are we going.to change that?
20 MR. MURPHY:
When the safety goal policy came out, 21 we started with the calculation in the '70s and came out in 22 the '80s.
Clearly, I am unaware of~anybody that went back 23 that says this is based on an assumption that roughly 25 24 percent of fatalities in the United States came from cancer..
25
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I think that number is still pretty much right,
[-
2 but I don't know anybody that's gone back and looked at the L
3 st&tistical data to verify it.
4 DR. KRESS:
The prompt fatality risk was about 5
five-times.en-to-the-minus-seven when the goal was first 6
put out.
it's about three to 7
two-times iata-to-the-minus-seven.
So people have just 8
checked to see how much it changed over the years.
9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But it seems to me that one 10 thing --
11 MR. NURPHY:
But, again, it was the accidental i
12 death rate.
13 DR. KRESS:
That's where it's coming from.
14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Isn't the one-tenth of one p)
(,
15 percent there to really allow for such small variations?
16 It's not meant to be taken literally that the thing goes 17 down from five-ten-to-the-minus-three to 18 four-ten-to-the-minus-three and now we take the 1000th of I
19 that.
It seems to me that the 1000 range there gives you 20 enough stability.
21 DR. MILLER:
So we don't have to change that.
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I don't believe so.
23 MR. KING:
And when we developed the LERF, backed 24 out the LERF value that's in Reg Guide 1.174, we made some 25 pretty conservative bounding type assessments on that.
J l
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DR. APOSTO AKIS:
But one thing, though.
When you i
2 say that the societal risk to life and health should be 3
comparable to or less than the risk from other similar 4
activities, is there an assumption there that all 5
electricity-producing activities impose risks on the order 6
of 1000th of all other risks or is this unique to nuclear?
7 DR. SEALE:
No.
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
No what?
i 9
DR. SEALE:
I don't think there has been any 10 specific comparison to the risks associated with other ways 11 of producing electricity.
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So why are we saying then that 13 it would be comparable?
Clearly it's much lower.
14 MR. MURPHY:
This is a statement from the existing
']
15 safety goals.
j 16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I know, but the actual number is 17 not comparable.
In fact, I saw a paper recently from 18 Germany where clearly the risks from all other 19 electricity-producing activities individually were 9-ter 20 than the nuclear risk.
21 MR. MURPHY:
I think what it means to say is that 22 it should be either comparable or less.
Ir other words, it 23 should not be greater.
24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I don't see that.
I think that 25 would be --
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MR. MURPHY:
The comparable to or less than is the n
,i 2
phrase.
\\_)'
3 DR. MILLER:
AndLsince.we don't know what they 4
are, we just make the statement and go on.
5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I don't understand why it shoul'd 6
be less.
7 MR. MURPHY:
What I read as comparable to or less 8
than as meaning is it shall not be greater than.
9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes, but then we turn around and 10 say it should be 1000th, which is much, much less.
It-must
'11 E1 risk aversion.
12 MR. BARRETT:
It is risk aversion.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It is risk aversion that's 14 buried there.
()
15 MR. BARRETT:
You have two criteria.
It's the l
16 second criterion that drjar., you down.
17 MR. KING:
It's the end of that sentence that 18 drives you to the one-tenth of one percent.
19 MR. BARRETT:
It's the part that it's not a 20 significant addition to other societal risks.
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I know this is from the current 22 statement, but it's really puts too many things together.
23 MR. MURPHY:
The other societal risks, that's why 24 when we quantify for other societal risks, _ we took, for 25 instr.nce, the accidental death rate, not the death rate
['ss)
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associated with electrical power generation.
g 2
DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But are you going to revisit the 3
decision of one-tenth of one percent?
4 MR. KING:
I was not envisioning revisiting the 5
one-tenth of one percent for reactors.
6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But it should be on the table.
7 We may not have any feeling one way or another now whether 8
to increase it or decrease it, but it should be on the 9
table.
10 MR. KING:
For reactors, I was not envisioning i
11 revisiting that.
For NMSC stuff, I don't know whether 12 one-tenth of one percent is the right number or not.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But then you have imposed on 14 yourself the condition of consistency or some sort of 4
h 15 consistency.
So maybe the one-tenth of one percent for 16 reactors would lead to something that would be unacceptable 17 or impractical.
So it seems to me it should be on the 18 table.
I mean, if you start again --
19 MR. MURPHY:
You may need to bring in a risk 20 averse type concept.
21 DR. WALLIS:
You have to bring that in.
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think risk 3 version is a 23 driver behind thir 24 DR. WALLIS:
Because a coal plant does not have 25 the potential to contaminate the whole state of D
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2 DR. BONACA:
The coal nlant1is a continuing ~ -
~3-accident, as we --
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It's a continuing accident?
?
5 DR. BONACA:
However, it is.an acceptable 6
accident, I guess, because you don't know where'the wind-7 blows and you don't see it, it doesn't scare you, whatever.
8 So to me, it's totally aversion that has been driving-this 9
issue.
10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It is something we'll have.to 11 discuss in the future.
12 DR. BONACA:
And you can write on the paper that 13' the plant is spitting out all'this stuff and the people are 14 statistically dying of cancer, statistically, that's the h
15 whole issue.
16 DR. SEALE:
There are things that you don't have 17 any control over that affect that number.
The most 18 significant thing that has happened in the last 50 years is 19 the Mine Safety Act of 1968.
20 I mean, it used to be approximately one a day was 21 killed in coal mining every year in this country.
22 DR. MILLER:
Now, what is.it today?
23 DR. SEALE:
It's a lot less than one a day.
24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
And.actually for communication 25 purposes; _I'would rephrase that,
.ndividual members ofithe
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public bear. insignificant additional risk to life and
/
- safety, b
3 MR. KING:
Why would you rephrase it?
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think it Ess different 5
impact than saying no significant.
i
(
6 DR. MILLER:
Say that again.
7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Insignificant ir r ts _a sf no 8
significant.
9 DR. KRESS:
Sounds the same to me.
10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think the impact of the world 11 insignificant is --
12 MR. MURPHY:
There is a subtle difference.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
There is a subtle difference, 14 thank you.
/~
(T) 15 DR. WALLIS:
No sounds better.
16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Insignificant.
17 DR. WALLIS:
Insignificant, and then you can 18 quibble about --
19 DR. MILLER:
No is absolute and can't be defined 20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It is a positive statement that 21 it is insignificant.
I 22 DR. WALLIS:
We can spend forever on this.
If you i
23 don't watch you, you're going to get into the morass here of 24 25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
They've been through it before.
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DR. MILLER:
It's called opening a can of worms.
[~)
2 MR. KING:
Yes, this is clearly a can of worms.
V 3
DR. MILLER:
A big can, a lot of worms.
4 MR. KING:
The third item would be a new item 5
dealing with the occupational risk and bringing the ALARA 6
concept up as to a high level agency goal across the board.
7 Exactly what the wording would be, I haven't -- I don't have 8
a proposal for you at this point, but that would be the 9
topic.
10 DR. WALLIS:
Let me go back to my original thing.
11 If you were simply to say we're going to implement 12 risk-informed regulation, what do we have to do, do you have 13 to do all this or can you use whatever is presently on the 14 books for these goals?
15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Can you do what?
g 16 DR. WALLIS:
Can you implement risk-informed 17 regulation with the present statements of goals for public 18 and worker protection?
19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
No.
20 DR. WALLIS:
So they identify the features which 21 need changing and work on them.
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
We have a good example.
23 DR. WALLIS:
Open the can of worms.
24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The group that's developing the 25 new regulation on inspection enforcement had to introduce an i
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. additional element'there.
The cornerstones.
These do not
()
2-flow from theitop level policy, right?-
3-DR. MILLER:
Absolutely.
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So that's.what you are crying to 5
-- and that's, in fact, what Tom was referring to, I.think, 6
when-he mentioned clarity and so on.
I mean, you can't 7
introduce new objectives every time.you do a new regulation' z
8 that do not ficw from the top statement.
9 DR. MILLER:
Okay.
Let's go back to your 10 statement.
If it'doesn't flow, what has to be changed'to
'11 make it flow?
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Well, that's what that is 13 saying.
14 DR. BONACA:
To me, this is like a development --
()
15 this is like a. strategic plan, right?
And then it boils 16 down'in tactics and special assignments.
So you can have 17 scrutability.
It may be complex, but I think it can be 18 done.
I think you're attempting to do it.
That's what'you 19 do.
20 You're trying to set up a strategic plan that says 21 this is our objective, we define it, we just build it, and 22 then later on it will have to be tied to implementation 23 steps, such as cornerstones, so we can all-understand why 24.
-you think that the cornerstone is important or is not 25 important.
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DR. MILLER:
We could define a policy where the
'[
'l 2
cornerstones aren't part of it anymore or are we assuming
%J 3
the cornerstones are there and we're going to define a 4
policy to fit the cornerstones?
Which way are we going to 5
go here?
6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The cornerstones would fit in 7
here.
8 MR. KING:
The cornerstones would fit under here 9
somewhere.
10 DR. MILLER:
We've already said the cornerstones 11 are part of it no matter what.
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
You're putting it in a way, Don, that 13 doesn't sound good, no matter what, and I think what you and 14 Graham are telling them is you're making suggestions how to l
O(,y 15 go about to do this.
You're telling them, you know, think 16 about what you would need to add to the existing statement 17 to come up with something that would allow you to implement 18 the risk-informed system.
19 They may very well do this, but they are not 20 presenting it as such.
They're saying we have to revise the 21 statement.
j 22 DR. MILLER:
So we're going to revise the 23 statement and we're going to forget about cornerstones and 24 so forth.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
No, we're not going to forget
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about it.
(~
( j%-
2 MR. KING:
We're not forgetting about 3
cornerstones.
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
You're putting it as if we 5
either forgot about them or consider them as a boundary 6
condition.
7 DR. MILLER:
We're not going to do either one.
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Well, there may be something in 9
between, but the truth of the matter is that there are 10 objectives out there that certain stakeholders have that 11 they want to be satisfied and just by talking about risk in
)
12 terms of the traditional metrics, you are not satisfying 13 them.
14 You know, Bob Christy has come here and said it's 4
15 none of your business regulating anything as long as the 16 ultimate risk metric is below the goals.
He has said it 17 many times.
IS So here is a stakeholder who believes that you can 19 regulate only in terms of early and latent fatalities and 20 the answer from the agency, in my opinion, has been a 21 resounding no, we're not going to do that.
22 Now, why?
We have to say here in the safety 23 policy statement some objective that will not allow us to do 24 this.
25 DR. BONACA:
Actually, this may suggest, in the (f)
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process, some of the cornerstones.
' r')
(V 2
DR. KRESS:
I agree.
I just didn't want them to 3
go in to ray the cornerstones are a fixed product and we're 4
not going tc change them.
5 DR. APOSTOLAI;IS:
No, no.
.I don't think they 6
implied that.
7 DR. BONACA:
1 agree with you.
In fact, I think 8
it's backwards going to the cornerstones first.
9 DR. KRESS:
I totally agree.
10 DR. BONACA:
I think we should have gone this way, 11 but that's okay.
12 DR. KRESS:
We can maybe change the cornerstones 13 14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Because these guys are higher
()
15 level.
Now, before we move on --
16 DR. WALLIS:
The cornerstones, actually, the work 17 on cornerstones was completed.
There was a finite objective 18 that people reached in a reasonable time and we were very 19 pleased with it.
And I think part of what we're saying here 20 is if you take on all this can of worms, when are you going 21 to ever finish.
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Well, they promised a year.
23_
MR. BARTON:
No, they promised to write a proposal 24 in a year.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
No, no, no.
Tom said that --
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DR. WALLIS:
But then you've-got to implement it
.(
2 and all kinds of stuff down the road.
This has to have 3
effects on the regulation and so on and it's a long, long 4
road.
5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
In other words, what you're saying, 6
Graham, is that they should take a minimalist approach.
7 DR, WALLIS:
I've said it' ten times today.
If you 8
say we're going to do risk-informed regulation, what do we
'(
9 have to do as a min;' mum to get it done. let's do it, then 10 you don't get involved --
11 MR. KING:
We embarked in putting Reg Guide 1.174 12 together, we tried to work within the existing guidance, the 13 reactor safety goals, reg analysis guidelines and so for;h, 14 and we ran into some problems.
There were holes in the
()
15 guidance, there were inconsistencies in the guidance.
16 For example, one of the holes is what about I
17 temporary increases in risk, should there be some limit on 18 that, we don't want things to go up in spikes, should that 19 be something that this high level policy deals with and if 20 so, what is it that you want to -- what is the goal or the 21 objective.
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Also, these now will be 23 plant-specific, right?
The original statement was not --
24 DR. MILLER:
You can't have a policy that's f
25 plant-specific.
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DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The numbers you put there should
()
2 be such that they could be used on a plant-specific basis.
3 DR. MILLER:
But you don't want a policy.
4 MR. KING:
When you get down to implementing it r
5 for reactors, for example, the current practice is to use it 6
on a plant-specific basis, the policy ought to be written to 7
do that.
8 It ought to document that that's what we're doing 9
and how we're doing it.
That's not documented anywhere now.
10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think if you say that I really 11 want to have a risk-informed regulatory system that covers 12 all the activities of the agency, then you are satisfying 13 Dr. Wallis' concerns.
14 MR. KING:
We could continue to work on individual
()
15 pieces ; hat are causing is problems, like temporary risk 16 cpikes and trying to deal with that.
This is an alternative 17 that, yeah, it does open some cans of worms, I agree, and, 18 again, the feedback we'd like from the committee is, is it 19 worth doing this.
20 DR. BONACA:
I think, in fact, this could even 21 drive later on your budgeting process, I mean literally.
22 Once you have a strategic plan, know what you have to do, 23 how you apportion it, how you communicate it, how you tie it
)
24 down to your cornerstones and activities, it can even give 1
25 you budget ideas, where you should put your money.
j
(
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85 1-I mean, it is a process of organizing
[V) 2 intellectually what you are to do given that you have these 3
goals and I think it's -- I mean, I --
4 DR. WALLIS:
For example, you could say there is a 5
certain payoff to reducing the uncertainty about cause of 6
some accident and actually express that in terms of the 7
reason for doing the research.
There is a real payoff in 8
the way you treat risk because of a result of these 9
uncertainties and, therefore, you have to do some research 10 and here is the payoff, this is what you expect in terms of 11 change of some boundary on some risk metric, some 12 regulation, as a result of reducing uncertainty.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So I guess the motivation then 14 for doing this has not been stated clearly enough and what (O
15 we're trying to achieve, what the product will be.
,j 16 DR. WALLIS:
What's the payoff.
17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes, the payoff.
Okay.
I 18 propose we break now before we move on to the issues.
We'll 19 reconvene at 20 minutes to 11.')0.
20
[ Recess.]
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
We're back in session.
We are 22 discussing issues.
23 MR. KING:
Yes.
These are issues associated with 24 what these qualitative goals for public and worker 25 protection should be.
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1 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
'I'd like for Dr. Kress to ID 2
be here because you have a statement in'the attachment two-
[d 3
of what you sent us that land contamination will likely.be y
l 4
covered by societal goals.
.5 MR. KING:
Maybe I should mention that.
We have 6
the 11 issues from second paper last year.
It's not like we 1
7 haven't done anything on those.
We've been thinking about 8
those and ultimately have to come back to the Commission 9
with some proposal on those specific issues.
)
10 I can let -- Joe has been taking the lead on the
)
11 land contamination and the relation to societal goals and I 12 can let him talk about that, if you want to get into that.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Go ahead.
1 14 DR. FONTANA:
Could I ark a clarification?
On the
!( )
15 land contamination, the "'O concern is only with health, is 16 4
that true?
17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
With what?
18 DR. FONTANA:
Health.
The reason I keep bringing j
19 up that we ought to do land contamination, I'm thinking in 20 terms of what societal costs are also in terma of dollars, 21 and if you do the total cost in terms of dollars and you 22 take the cost of taking that land out of circulation, that's 23 an answer.
24 MR. KING:
Let me answer it this way.
Currently,.
25 the OHOs are based upon what we call life and health, which 4
[')
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are early and latent fatalities.
Not cancer incidents, not
<~s
(
2 4 dollar cost for treatment or contamination or anything else.
}
3 It's fatalities only.
1 4
DR. FONTANA:
Then I understand your argument when i
S like Tom says that it's subsumed in the QHOs.
With respect' 6
to health ic is, but with respect to total dollars out of 7
pocket it isn't.
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
tio.
It's subsumed in the sense 9
that I think that the accident sequences that lead to severe i
10 I land contamination are the same as the ones that lead to j
l 11 latent effects on society, right?
i 12 DR. KRESS:
absclutely, and you could put dollars 13 to any one of chose risks.
It's not easy, but you could put 14 dollars to them.
-s
.Q,.,
15 DR. FONTANA:
But with land contamination, that j
16 wouldn't be enough.
17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
He says that there is maybe a 18 different --
19 DR. KRESS:
I don't think that exercise has been j
20 done.
21 DR. WALLIS:
There are also safety aspects.
22 DR. KRESS:
It probably would not be enough, but 23 1
24 DR, WALLIS:
If you contaminate the state of 25 Tennessee, you lose Tennessee, but you also have'the effect
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88 1
of all those' people from Tennessee who have to go somewhere
[
2 else.
Even that could be --
3 MR. BARTON:
Guantonomo Bay or Turkey.
It would 1
4 probably be an improvement for Tom.
5 DR. KRESS:
Are you considering that a benefit?>
6 DR. SEALE:
Contamination.
7 MR. MURPHY:
Years ago, we looked at some cf this, 8
as you recall.
There was a study in the early '80s, I 9
believe, that was -- I believe it went by the name of the 10 Sandia siting study that looked at taking things like
.I 11 WASH-1400 source terms and putting them at sites and
')
12 exercising the MACC code and see what the costs were and l
)
13 what the level of contamination was and based on the MAX 14 calculation, which had some problems in its economic models, 15 but it gave you some information.
16 If you recall, a couple months ago, I talked to i
l 17 the committee and tried to point out that there is a balance j
18 to be made and it's made outside this agency essentially; 19 that is, a tradeoff between a person rem and dose in land 20 contamination.
21 Right now, that is set by the protective action 22 guidelines, which are. set primarily by EPA as to when you 23 would interdict land and when you bring bad. in.
24 But the assumptions ycu make on that. if you don't 25 want any person rem, then you lose a lot of area that gets l
- ).
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/
1 interdicted and if you're willing to take a substantial
)
2 amount of person rem, there is very little area that gets 3
interdicted and that decision as to how land is interdicted 4
is essentially beyond the jurisdiction of NRC.
5 We used, for our planning purposes, the protective 6
action guidelines that EPA and, I guess, FEMA is a part of, 7
but -- so in the calculations that we have done in our risk 8
analyses, we've used those kind of numbers.
J 9
Quite frankly, while a code like MACCS can be used 10 to generate dollar values of the type you're talking about, 11 it doesn't do it very well.
Mainly because we have not 12 spent the money to update the economic models in that from 13 what was done at the time WASH-1400 was done.
14 So where WASH-1400 -- where the model that's 15 presently 1.: MACCS may think it's decontaminating a peanut p
i 16 field, it may instead be a shopping center and all the 17 differences associated with that in terms of how you do the 18 economic modeling.
To really go back and do that, you'd 19 have to totally redo the economic modeling in that code.
20 Up until now, we haven't seen a pressing need for 21 that and I think it's been on the back burner, in our minds, 22 for years, but it's never risen to the point of a high 23 priority in the world we f ace now in looking for resources 24 and efficient use of them.
25 Dut I think,.in fact, the reason for saying it's l
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covered by the societal, there really is a tradeoff between-f) 2 person rem and square mile of interdicted.
%J 3
DR. KRESS:
But I think in a new policy statement, 4
you have to ask yourself why are we concerned with 5
regulating reactors, what are we concerned about.
We're 6
concerned about people's health and killing people or we're 7
concerned about interdicting land. 'That is one of the 8
concerns and then you have to oc something to say, well,'if 9
we do put down quantitative measures'of things, we have to 10 say, in this policy statement, we have taken care of our 11 concern about land interdiction, for example, because of 12 something.
5 13 I think you have to think about it, you have to 14 put it down as one of your top level problems and decide how
,G
(_)
15 to deal with it.
You may very well not end up with a metr 2c 16 1
I 17 MR. MURPHY:
And we're going through that thought 18 process.
19 -
MR. KING:
And that's what this bullet, the last l
20 "
item here is directed to.
l 21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
By the way, is that Sandia 22 report available?
l 23 MR. MURPHY:
Ye s, it's old You may have to get 1
24 it on microfiche anymore.
My copy has long gone in the 25 trash, but it 's - -
i 1
l L[ /
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1 NR. KING-I've got one upstairs, if you want to j
2 look at it.
3 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Maybe you can make a copy.
4 4
Thank you.
5 MR. MURPHY:
One of the things that I've been 6
kicking arounc* in the back of my. head and I want to say 1 7
haven't discussed this.with anybody else on tne staff level 8
and gotten their concurrence on it, is that we could use 9
something like the existing protective action guidelines l
10 that we have from EPA that I believe say you woald let 11 somebody return to the land if they would get -- if I 12 remember tight, it's four rem in five years or something L
13 like that.
14 Using that kind of criterion, you could go in and 15
-- using the guidance t' rom other agencies that would control 16 that decision, look at what the risk it for an individual 17 having the land contamination and essentially setting a goal 16 that was comething like one in a million for having your 19 property interdicted for comebody within a reasonable close 20 distance to the plant.
]
1 21 That seems like a feasible kind of calculation to 22 make.
23 DR. FONTANA:
But I think you need to clearly 24 state up front what it is that you're doing, because if 25 you're talking in terms of health effects and those sort of
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things, what you just said is correct.
(
2 If you're~ talking in terms of economics of land 3
being put out of circulation, it's a little bit different.
l 4
In other words, if you're in a nation where agricultural 5
land is absolutely essential, you just can't-efford to get 6
much of it put out of circulation, then you're going.to.have 7
a different value that's not directly related to the man rer.
8 value of --
i 9
MR. MURPHY Yes.
Colleagues in Switzerland have 10 told me this is an exceedingly important thing in their way-11 of thinking because of the nature of where the plants are 12 and the prevailing wir.ds in Switzerland, an accident could 13 take out much of the farmland of the country.
It is 14 something they worry about.
15 We may not need to worry about it as much, but 16 that gets into the discussion we had early in the meeting 17 that says the nature of the safety goal, it's a top-down 18 thing coming from the public, and that may change as you go i
l 19 from location to location and country to country.
20 MR. KING:
Just a piece of information.
When we 21 modified Part 100 a couple year ago, we did look at the land 22 contamination issue because Part 100 defines a low 23 population zone.
It says you don't want to have the plant 24 close to a population center more than 25,000 people, and we
'25 wanted to see was that distance reasonable in terms of if l
i
[]
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the large city was iust on the other side that boundary,
) (( )
2 what's the likelihood of contaminating and have to abandon 3
the large city, and it turned out.it was less than one in a 4
million per reactor ' rear.
5 And if you read the statement of considerations on 6
the rule, we went forward and told the Commission that and 7
everybody seemed to have a nice -- you know, be receptive 8
to, yeah, that's low enough and we're happy with that.
So 9
we kept the low population wcrds in.
10 Again, that's kind of consideration that maybe we 11 cught to think about at the high level for reactors.
Do we 12 want to bring that up from a statement of considerations to 13 14 DR. KRESS:
I think you do because that's one of D.
(,)
15 the societal risks as opposed to an individual risk and it's 16 addressed in your regulations and if it's in the 17 regulatione, it ought to be a derivable from your top level 18 statement.
19 So somewhere in there you need to have some l
20 consideration.
21 MR. KING:
But, again, it was based upon the 22 NUREG-1150 plants and, again, if you're talking about future 23 plants, does that make a difference; if you're talking about 24 MOX cores, does that make a difference.
I don't know.
25 That whole analysis is based upon the five O
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1 NUREG-1150 plants and the releases and the likelihoods of
)
2 those releases.
/
3 DR. APOSTOhAKIS:
Now, what do you mean by should 4
cancer incidents and chemicals be considered?
5 MR. KING:
Right now, the QHOs are based upon 6
fatalities, early and latent fatalities.
j 7
DR. KRESS:
Nobody wants to get the cancer, a
whether they die or not, right?
9 MR. KING:
Right.
DR. KRESS:
That's what it's saying.
1r i
11 MR. KING:
Getting cancer is a cost to society.
12 It's a cost to the individual and it's a cost to society.
13 Should the rirk coefficient for cancer incidents be used, 14 not the risk coefficient for fatal cancers.
'N i
)
15 DR. KRESS:
I think that's a very reasonable 16 thing.
17 MR. KING:
It's too bad Dana isn't here, because 18 he brought the issue up at ACNW, when he sat it on the 19 linear non-threshold hypothesis meeting from a couple of 20 weeks ago.
21 DR. KRESS:
It's what I call the risk of injury.
22 MR. KING:
That came up on the KI issue.
One of 23 the public comments on KI was forget about fatalities; yeah, 24 a lot of thyroid cancer doesn't normally lead to fatalities, 25 but it sure causes a person a lot of harm and grief and 3
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expense and why shouldn't that be factored in, and it was
[J
}
2 factored in.
3 DR. KRESS:
And it is in your regulations.
You 4
have things like the 25 rem in 10 CFR 100.
To some extent, 5
it is brought about by that sort of thinking.
6 MR. KING:
That was to get below no observable 7
health effecto, right.
8 DR. KRESS:
So when you make your top level 9
policy, I think you need to think about those things, 10 because it is one of your objectives.
11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
And chemicals.
12 MR. KING:
And chemicals.
Actually, Joe brought i
13 that up, things like enrichment facilities, where the hazard 14 isn't from the uranium, it's from the fluorine that the (Oj 15 uranium is mixed with.
Shouldn't, at least maybe in some 16 special cases, we talk about that.
Maybe not across the 17 board.
18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Is societal risk going to be 19 calculated now so that it will not end up being again i
20 individual risk?
My understanding now is that we do talk 21 about societal risk in the current policy statement, but the 22 way it's_ calculated really it comes down to individual risk.
23 MR. KING:
Yes.
And I think the qualitative goal i
24 is pretty good in the current policy statement, but you're 25 right, it's not calculated societal.
n.
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DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Quantitative statement in the
[/
t 2
future, you can make sure it's a true societal risk.
\\_
3 MR. KING:
That's one of --
4 MR. MURPHY:
That's one of the things we're 5
looking at.
6 MR. KING:
That's one of the 11 issues from last 7
year's paper.
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay.
9 IGR. KING:
We don't have answer today, but that 10 we're looking at.
11 MR. MURPHY:
Some of the people who do that 12 calculation tel. me because of the averaging that goes on 13 and the way they do the individual risk, that you will get a 14 consistent set of numbers.
A true societal risk calculation
()
15 will always give you the same relationship back and forth, 16 so that it's effectively a duplicate.
17 But if that's true, it's not obvious, because I've 18 been looking at the calculations for a while and it's not 19 obvious to me yet.
I think we probably do need such a 20 thing, but we want to think about it a little bit more.
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Because then you will have 22 frequency consequence curves in terms of number of people 23 affected.
24 MR. MURPHY:
Yes, particularly, if you're looking 25 at what I said earlier in terms of looking at this is a way i
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of handling land contamination, because of the relationship
()
2 between that and the PHEs and the land interdiction, then 3
you really do need the societal risk to make that argument.
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
How about protection of the 5
environment now?
What exactly does that mean?
6 MR. KING:
That's the land contamination issue, 7
but it could be broader.
It could be ground water, it could 8
be lakes, rivers. I don't know, but it's a catch-all to 9
cover the land contamination.
10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So you're going to have to find 11 the appropriate metrics.
12 MR. KING:
Clearly, I need to find the appropriate 13 metrics.
Is it just health effects, is it the dollar cost.
14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
And, again, the question of
()
15 whether you are protecting the environment by having goals 16 on life and health and injuries that come up.
i 17 MR. KING:
Exactly.
i 18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay.
Shall we go on?
19 DR. KRESS:
It may very well be that when you --
20 if you start out looking at a whole list of these kind of 21 objectives, one or more of them may control your final i
22 thing.
You're just not sure which yet.
23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Right.
Okay.
j 24 MR. KING:
Okay.
That was sort of the concept for 25 some high level goals on protection.
Then the next piece in 1
[
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98.
1 the structure was what I call the approach to meet the fD 2
goals, which really is the three regions, the viewgraph we
'O 3
spent an hour on, defining what that is, trying to define 4
adequate protection in some fashion, if that makes sense, 5
the issue of the cost-benefit region, should that be 6
mandatory or should the agency -- even if they find 7
something in that cost-benefit region that would pass the 8
backfit test and from a safety perspective could be 9
implemented, should the agency be required to implement that 10 new requirement or could they just say, no, I'm not going to 11 do it.
12 Right now, there are three places, three backfit 13 rules.
There is one for reactors, there is one for 14 independent storage of high level waste, and there is one
(~h q,)
15 for gaseous diffusion, and they're basically -- two of them j
16 are identical.
One of them is a little different, but the j
17 basic thrust is the same.
18 I think they're all interpreted -- may Gary can 19 expand on this.
They're all interpreted as the staff has i
20 the discretion whether to apply that or not.
Even if they i
21 find some safety problem that could pass the test, they 22 don't have to do anything about it.
23 DR. WALLIS:
What you really mean on this j
l 24 viewgraph, the top really is a region of insdequate 25 protection.
I get confused by the words here.
[}
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MR. KING:
Yes.
(U) 2 DR. WALLIS:
But what you really mean is if you're 3
above-there, the protection is inadequate.
4 MR. KING:
Yes.
5 DR. WALLIS:
And it's very misleading to say this 6
region is adequate protection or inadequate protection.
7 MR. KING:
The backfit rules are clear.
If you 8
find something out in here --
9 DR. WALLIS:
Adequate is below there.
10 MR. KING:
Yes.
If you find comething --
11 DR. WALLIS:
You have to be careful.
12 MR. KING:
If you find something up in here, 13 you've got to do --
14 DR. WALLIS:
It's inadequate, n()
15 MR. KING:
The agency has to do something about 16 it.
If you find something in here, the current rules do not 17 require --
18 DR. WALLIS:
The British, of course, have a'better 19 figure here.
20 DR. KRESS:
I raticed he prefaced that by "of 21 course."
22 DR. WALLIS:
In that-the measures are in terms of 23 the actual -- the thing on the axis, which is risk, is 24 unacceptable risk and there's broadly acceptable risk.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But I want to point out that
['
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there is a-letter, accompanied by a report, written by the f
2 ACRS in 1980, where a three-region approach was proposed and 3
. subsequently rejected by higher-ups.
It was' proposed when 4
they were debating -- the agency was debating the original 5
safety goal policy statement and we have cited it in one of 6
our letters.
7 So that, of course, was a great document, in my 8
opinion.
9 MR. KING:
The other thing I want to mention is, 10 as I said, there are three places there is a backfit rule 11.
and there's a bunch of places there is no backfit rule.
12 The regulations that deal with fuel fabrication 13 facilities don't have a backfit rule.
This kind of high 14 level guidance could at least pose the question to the
)
15 Commission, you know, do you want to put some uniformity in 16 this and how do you want to interpret thic.
17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The thing that bothers me a 18 little bit, and T sense bothers other members, judging from 19 the question they're asking, I mean, this slide and the one 20 before, this project appears to be too ambitious, though.
21 I mean, you are really changing a lot of' things 22 here, qualitative goals, quantitative, combination, land 23 contamination, protection of the environment, workers, q
24 everything.
25 Do you really think you can do that in a year?
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mean, that really is a major issue, I think, and maybe 2
that's why Graham and Don were insisting earlier that you 3
1cok at what you really need to do to make sure that the 4
risk-informed system can be put in place rather than 5
revisiting the whole thing.
6 I think that's r real issue here.
7 MR. KING:
Here I'm not sure is the right time.
8 Do we want to do this at all is a fair question.
9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Or do it in piecemeal fashion.
'. 0 MR. KING:
But I'm not sure this is --
11 DR. WALLIS:
Do we want to is the wrong question.
12 It should be why and what's the payoff.
13 DR. BONACA:
I think this is really important that 14 you do this, in my mind, but the next question is who is
)
15 going to do this.
16 MR. KING:
Jce.
l 17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
That was an easy answer, 18 DR. MILLER:
I'm still not certain what we're 19 trying to do, let alone why we're trying to do it.
I worry 20 about policy that's trying to accommodate everything in the j
21 world, and the policy should not be doing that.
The policy 22 should be high level and broad enough that it will i
23 accommodate.
24 But once you -- if you start looking at all the 25 bits and pieces, you're going to be in a morass of worms and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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'l
.you'll?never get-a policy.
()
DR. APOSTOLAKISi I can'see you-coming up'with a-
~
3 reasonable document that will have high. level principles and 4
qualitative statennnts.
The moment you start getting into 5
quantitative statements regarding NMSS activities, reactors-6 and cther things, one year doesn't sound like a reasonable 7
amount of time.
8 MR. MURPHY:
I think our plan was that for the one 9
year, to compliment those type of qualitative statements.
10 Recognize that when you get into the more quantitative and 11' the lower level, thef may well differ from a different NMSS 12
-- between NMSS activities and what the reactor people are 13 doing.
14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So should.we have --
p()
15 MR. MURPHY:
What we should know is why they 16 differ.
There is no problem with them differing, and that 1
17 wouldn't necessarily be part of this whole scheme.
The.
28 scheme is to lay out that upper structure.
19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So when we write our letter, can 20 we say that you stated that this will be only qualitative, 21 high level document and that it will not really go down to 22
-- because from the slides, you don't get that impression.
23 It says quantitative combination, all sorts of things.
24 I mean, I can see a document being produced in a 25-
-year that states principles and tries to cover-all the ANN RILEY &. ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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103 1
activities of the agency, but if you tried to get into more
(
)
2 detail than that, I just don't know that ---and this is not 3
the only thing you guys are doing.
You're doing other 4
things, as well.
5 DR. BONACA:
And maybe you shouldn't commit to it.
6 What I mean is that, you're right, because it's almost an 7
exploratory effort.
On the other hand, the reason why I 8
think it's so important is that there is a lot of 9
disjointedness right now between these high level goals that 10 you have in some locations, how they relate to activities of 11 the staff, areas that you essentially oversee, and it's 12 disj ointed.
13 What you're trying to do is put some logic there 14 and my main concern would be that you don't over-commit
'O (j
15 right now about what kind of deliverable you're going to 16 have.
17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
That's exactly the point.
18 DR. FONTANA:
But it depends what it is we're 19 talking about.
If it's a case of Joe and some people 20 getting together and coming up with something that can be 21 put out for review, I think you can do it in a year.
If 22 you're talking about getting all the reviews and agreements 23 and all that kind of stuff, it's hopeless.
You're not going 24 do that.
So I'm wondering what it is you're talking about 25 you want to do here.
()
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MR. KING:
What I'm talking about is developing a
()
2 draft of this document in a year that will have some input, 3
some workshops with stakeholders, some internal review, but 4'
not something the Commission is going to. sign off on as a 5
final document.
6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So it seems to me the 7
quantitative part then cannot be part of this.
I mean, you 8
really have a lot of issues to investigate.
9 MR. KING:
I think the scope, to me, would be the
'10 high level piece.
11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Which is the principles.
12 MR. KING:
Just principles.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Qualitative principles.
14 MR. KING:
And maybe some of the reactor piece
()
15 because --
16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Because you already have 17 something.
18 MR. KING:
We already have something there and 1
19 we've already identified the issues that we think are 20 important to look at in the reactor side.
The NMSS piece, 21 in my view, would not be part of this.
That would come in 22 later.
23 DR. MILLER:
If you look at your experience with 24 Reg Guide 1.174, what finally got things started was we set i
25 up a set of high level principles, like George says.
Then i
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we went from there and started talking all the details and
( ')
2 then that iterated _on the-principles.
They changed a little v
3 bit, but the principles remained the same.
I think that's.
4 where you want to go.
5 Of course, 1.174 has far less scope than this, but 6
the concept, the approach we took there was right.
7 DR. SHACK:
But certainly the decision to whether 8
you should define adequate protection quantitatively or 9
qualitatively is as high a level of discussion as I think 10 you can get.
Whether you can debate whether the number that 11 you end up with, but I think it would be -- you know, I 12 think that certainly would seem to me an element that ought 13 to be discussed as a principle.
14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Let me understand that.
They "i) 15 can talk about the three-region approach as being 16 appropriate without specifying at which level for reactors 17 and at which level for NMSS you enter the inadequate 18 protection.
That's what I'm saying.
19 DR. KRESS:
But the high level document ought to, 20 Ceorge, have embedded in it a way that you can arrive at 21 those different things.
22 MR. KING:
The policy should say you will do it.
23 DR. SHACK:
Or at least the decision that you're 24 going to put numbers on them --
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But I sco that as being i
(}
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different.
Yes.
I agree with that, but I don't understand 2
Tom's comment.
I mean, are they going to prescribe how 3
you're going to do it?
That's tough.
4 DR. KRESS:
Yes.
Yes.
That's what I meant.
5 Let's take that three-region thing.
You've got one for 6
reactors.
Well, you've got a whole set of them for reacters 7
and then say you've got a set of them for NMSS.
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Right.
9 DR. KRESS:
And you have to say at some point 10 we're going to define what these levels are.
11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
12 DR. KRESS:
And I think the high level document 13 has to specify how you're going to do that.
What are the 14 principles you're going to use to go from this concept to O
,,)
15 the actual numbers?
What are the principals you're going to 16 use to derive the numbers?
That's what I think you have to 17 have in this document.
18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes, in terms of what kind of 19 considerations would go into it.
But I don't think they can 20 tell you -- by how, I thought you meant to tell p' le how 21 you would actually do it, do first this, then do that.
And 22 if you say no, you have to talk to stakeholders, you have to 23 consider the possibility of this and that.
24 DR. KRESS:
The technical how.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes, the technical hov.
That's N
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'all that:I meant.
()
2 DR..KRESS:
The technical how is what I meant.
3 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
The technical.'how.
4 DR. KRESS:
How you would actually translateLthe 5
concept into real numbers.
6 MR. MURPHY:
Let me'try something a little.
7 different.
I think what we need to do is articulate not the 8
detailed technical how, but what. considerations-go into 9
developing that.
10 DR'. KRESS:
That's r'ght.
i 11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
That one is fine.
12 DR. KRESS:
That's what I meant.
13 DR APOSTOLAKIS:
Because you can do that even 14 now.
We know pretty much what has to go into it.
)
15 DR. KRESS:
I didn't mean you tell them you go use 16 MACCS and calculate this, that and all this.
The 17 principles.
18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
For example, an obvious
- M ng is 19 that, as we said earlier, for some of the NMSS activities, 20 the time scales are so different, that this clearly has to 21 play a role in defining the regional inadequate protection.
22 But how that's going to be done, you know, you can't figure 23 it.out in a year.
There are so mar.y things you have to do.
24 DR. WALLIS:
Well, maybe1you can.
What's missing
.25'
.for me is how bad are things today.
Maybe things are very l L ANN RILEY &-ASSOCIATF.S, LTD.
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good today and all you have to do is perturb what's already
()
2 on the books slightly, in which case you don't have a very 3
hig job to do.
4 MR. KING:
I think a lot of this effort is going 5
to be pulling together bits and pieces that show up at all 6
different levels in the agency and putting _them in the right 7
. context, in the right hierarchy.
8 DR. WALLIS:
Sometimes we seem to be talking --
9 DR. KRESS:
That's not part of the policy.
10 DR. WALLIS:
-- starting from scratch.
You're not 11 starting from scratch.
You're starting from something which 12 has worked over many years.
13 MR. KING:
I think some of this stuff, even though 14 we may be doing it today, has never been looked at as
()
15 policy, and maybe it ought to be looked at as polic'.
16 DR. MILLER:
The first high level principle is I 17 assume you're going to have a three-level approach.
- That, 18 to me, is the very highest le 7el.
19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
That is very high, yes.
20 DR. MILLER:
That's the highest level principle 21 you're going to have.
22 MR. KING:
Things like the backfit rules, should 23 they be mandatory.
If we find a safety significant item, I 24 mean, that's practice today that it isn't done that way.
To 25 me, that's policy.
j
)
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109 1
MR. BARRETT:
It ought to be raised up.
2 MR. KING:
The Commission ought to make that
,.(
3 decision, not the staff.
4 DR. MILLER:
It's not policy, yet you have a 5
three-level approach.
6 MR. KING:
The three-level approach is policy.
7 MR. MURPHY:
That would definitely be policy.
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Right now it's not stated as 9
policy.
10 DR. MILLER:
No.
In fact, to some extent, it 11 would be interpreted as being contrary to policy.
12 MR. MURPHY:
Th'a three-level approach is -- the 13 best document you can find describing it is a June 15, '90 14 SRM on the safety level application.
It's not a policy
()
15 statement, but at least 'the Commission has spoken towards 16 it.
In a lot of other areas, the Commission hasn't really 17 spoken.
18 DR. MILLER:
It seems like the Commission has to 19 speak to it more explicitly than through an SRM.
20 MR. MURPHY:
We think so, too.
21 DR. BONACA:
The other thing I wanted to point 22 out, you may transition to risk-informed Part 50, wouldn't 23 this be an important element to start at this level?
I see
{
l 24 it is a critical step that you have to do, just put together i
25 these thoughts that you have, whatever commitments or i
l
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whatever ideas, and maybe we'll find -- because otherwise l')
2 you're not going to make a move on Part 50.
V 3
DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But these guys will not get into 4
the details of how you would define the envelope of design 5
basis accidents in the future.
6 MR. KING:
The first thing on Part 50 is trying to 7
risk inform the scope.
What is that definition going to be?
8 9
DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Is it going to come from this?
10 MR. KING:
We're going to have to ask ourselves 11 the same questions; what's the cutoff, is it going to be 12 some graded kind of thing or is it going to be one size fits 13 all, what's the relation of that to adequate protection.
14 All those questions have to raised.
p(,)
15 Are you going to use the risk metrics that are in lf 1.174 or some others?
1 17 Yew, what's the definition, risk metrics, 18 defense-in-depth, other qualitative things.
I don't know.
19 MR. BARRETT:
All those decisions will have to be 20 made in parallel with this effort, because we're going to 21 get guidance from the Commission to start that, I think, 22 soon.
)
23 DR. BONACA:
So at this point, it should be an 24 important point to give momentum to this effort, because 25 there is a will to move to a risk-informed Part 50 and if i
()
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you really believe that it's important.
()
2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think what's important now is 3
to define the deliverable in a year, because this can easily 4
get out of hand and maybe you will come back next year and 5
say we need another year.
6 DR. FONTANA:
But I don't think you ought to be 7
overly timid on that, either.
I think if there are some big 8
ticket things that have to be tied together and, say, 9
correlated with each other, I think they ought to try to do 10 that.
11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But the point is that we have to 12 have a deliverable.
13 DR. FONTANA:
- Yes, I hear some statements saying,
)
14 well, bite off as little as possible because that's all you O) 15 can do in a year, and 'I'd go the other way and look at the
(
16 big picture and try to --
17 DR. BONACA:
But I think in many ways, Mario, it's j
i 18 exploratory.
It says that you really don't know.
.I mean, 1
19 unless Joe has a better feeling, you really don't know how 20 far you can go or how far you -- so the best thing to do is
]
21 not to define or commit to a deliverable that says we're 22 going to deliver the world and then never get there.
That's 23 the only thing that --
24 DR. FONTANA:
No, that's not what I'm saying.
25 What I'm saying is that there are elements of the whole
[')
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regulatory structure, as we were saying before, that just 2
don't connect with each other, and I think this is a 3
vehicle, I think, to rationalize some of them and bring some 4
of them up under these goals, so that one can go from these 5
goals to whatever regulatory structure they end up with.
6 I don't think it's going to take a year for Joe to 7
come up with something that can be thrown out for the dogs 8
to tear to shreds, which you're going to tear up anyway.
9 It's going to take a lot longer than that to come to a final 10 conclusion on anything, like the old safety goal, how long 11 did it take to get that thing through.
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Six years.
13 DR. FONTANA:
It was more than that, wasn't it?
14 MR. MURPHY:
I think it was more than that.
15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It depends on when you start j
16 counting.
I mean, if you start counting the first time l'
people said we need something that says how safe is safe i
18 enough, no.
You have to start counting when some serious 19 effort was undertaken.
20 DR. FONTANA:
And what I'm talking about --
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I thought it was six to seven 22 years, wasn't it?
'79 to
'86, something like that.
23 MR. MURPHY:
It came out in
'86, yes.
24 DR. FONTkNA:
So what I'm talking about is what it 25 takes to get to tre beginning of that process.
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DR. MILLER:
I thought TMI was
'79.
()
2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Let me change the question.
Why 3
a year?
Why don't we say the qualitative part is very 4
important, we'll do that first, maybe in six months or nine 5
months?
Why does it have to be a year?
6 DR. BONACA:
Why don't we ask Joe what he thinks 7
he can do?
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
That's why I'm asking.
I'm 9
asking.
Because you have already done some thinking.
It's 10 not that you're starting today, right?
11 MR. KING:
We've done some thinking.
We've had a 12 bunch of issues that we think need to be discussed and some 13 decision -- it seems to me -- you know, Dr. Wallis said why 14 don't you get a few people in the room and hammer something
()
15 out.
You could do that.
We could hammer something out in a l
16 month.
But then that's not something I'd want to take to j
l 17 the Commission.
That is something I'd want to start sitting
{
18 down with this committee, ACNW, NEI and the industry, the 19 states, and start talking about.
20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think, Tom, in terms of 21 people's perceptions, perhaps it would be better to have a 22 more specific time table rather than say give us a year, and 23 maybe do things like that and say, look, in t.wo months, 24 sa' re going to go back to the advisory conmittees with' a i
25 draft plan and then in six months we'll do this, and that I j
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think will give much more credibility to the request.
(m) 2 MR. KING:
I agree.
We need to lay it out,
/
ss 3
DR. KRESS:
Because a year sounds awfully 4
arbitrary.
5 DR APOSTOLAKIS:
It sounds arbitrary and then, 6
you know, 1 really Jan't want to sound rude, but in a year, 7
you may come back and say, gee, there are so many issues, we 8
need another year.
I think if we have a more specific time 9
table, then people will -- it will make the whole request 10 more believable.
11 DR. KRESS:
And I think the other decision is 12 should this be the full overarching thing or should it be 13 some part of it.
14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Exactly.
()
15 DR, KRESS:
And there seems to be a difference in 16 opinion among people around the table.
17 DR. SEALE:
I can define this task in a slightly 18 different way that makes you scratch your head about the 19 year.
The traditional approach was we did deterministic 20 analysis, we did bounding calculations and basically we had 21 the concept of adequate protection with the idea that there 22 was a cost-benefit analysis that sort of underlaid the whole 23 thing.
24 Then the lawyers came across and said that 25 adequate protection was, in fact, a kind of boundary line, a e
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115l 1
criso boundary line of some sort that we had to work with.
l
)
2 Then somebody came up with the idea of the nafety l
/
)
3 goals and people began to think in terms of risk analysis.
t i
4 Very quickly we found that adequate protection, as it was
)
5 defined, was an inadequate concept.
We needed more detail 6
in what it meant.
The three levels emerged and we got into j
7 the process of doing 174.
j i
1 8
Now we're in a situation where we punched through 1
9 in that area and we see other things that are haginning to 10 be impacted, particularly this assessment and evaluation 11 process for the plants and all of that; how do we -- and is 12 it a plant-specific or a fleet-specific goal and so on.
13 The goal we're looking for now is what we really 14 want to do is to take the sea of the safety goals and
)
15 adequate protection and any other of these fringe -- now 16 fringe, but now identified importal.t things that help us do 17 these other safety-related risk-informed evaluations and put 18 them iIto a unified policy statement.
And the narrow 19 version of that is to do it for Part 50.
20 Can you do that in a year?
The broader version is 21 to do it for all regulation.
I don't know whether you can 22 do Part 50 in a year, so I'm not sure you can do all of the 23 regulations in a year.
?.4 MR. KING:
I think if we limited ourselves to the 25 reactor safety goal policy, what we had told the Commission 3
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was we would come back in July and tell them where it needs
,,s( )
2 to be upgraded and if they agree, we go off and revise it, 3
send it back for their consideration.
j l
4 DR. SEALE:
What you're saying is what you'd like 5
to do is to do that plus get a commitment, in principal j
I 6
anyway, to expand that kind of approach to encompass all of j
7 the activities of the Commisfeion that are appropriate to 8
risk-informed decision-making processes.
I 9
MR. KING:
What I'm saying is let's not rush iLto 10 the reactor piece without stepping back and looking at the l
11 over-arching -- a number of these things are over-arching 12 type things.
13 DR. SEALE:
That's the other hal f of it.
34 MR. KING:
Let's work on this over-arching piece.
3 (Sh I
(_)
15 In parallel, we can think contintc to think about the 16 reactor piece and then the NMSS piece we know is coming down 17 the road, but that's -- we don't look at that right now.
1 i
18 But recognizing that in thi s aver-arching piece, ve have to 19 fnctor in the impacc on them and their ccusiderations.
20 But let's focus on this over-arching piece because 21 4 it's going to help NMSS in their individual aspects.
And a 22 number of these things that we had to face in the reactor 23 arena are over-arching things.
l 24 DR. SEALE:
And you don't want to build up some 25 temporary things that you have to tear back down if you --
/]
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1 MR. KING:
We're going to deal with over-arching e~s
)
l
)
2 thing's.
Let's not deal with them in the reactor arena.
N_ '
j 3
Let's deal with them in the right arena.
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So let's see now.
How would-5 this work?
I mean, you seem to be agreeable that maybe a 1
1 6
more specific time table would be appropriate.
(
7 MR. KING:
Yes.
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
When are you going up to the
)
9 Commission?
10 MR. KING:
Right now, we're scheduled to have a I
1 11 paper at the end of April.
I 12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So we don't have time to see i
13 that table if you. plan to prepare that by that time.
l 14 MR. KIN 3:
We're supposed to come back and talk to
)
15 you tomorrow at the full committee.
16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay.
Well, if you guys think 17 18 MR. KING:
We can think a little bit overnight 19 about it.
It's not a difficult thing.
20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
What can be done in nine months 21 or six monthn?
Not one month.
I mean, we can have 22 subcommittee meetings in between.
I'm not talkirq about 23 that.
But in terms of a deliverable to the Commission.
I 24 mean, we can meet in a month, if you like, and talk about j
25 some preliminary ideas, but that's among ourselves.
But in P
l
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118 1
terms-of a finished product, I'think that would go a long
[')
2 way towards convincing the Commission-that we are serious
.v 3
about this, we really want to do it, and we're' fully aware 4
ci: what it takes to do it.
5 MR. KING:
Let us think about the schedule.
6 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay.
Great.
That would be 7
great.
8 MR. KING:
And we can talk tomorrow about it.
9 DR. KRESS:
And part of that is that we have to 10 come up with some decision on whether it should ne the 11 over-arching concept or some part of it and another 12 important question you're anking of us is should we retain 13 active protection as a presumptive meeting of the 14 regulations or should it actually have a quantitative --
s
(
15 MR. KING:
I'm not asking that now.
16 DR. KRESS:
You're not asking us for those now?
17 MR. KING:
Not right now.
When we get into this, 18 we're going to have to deal with those issues and at some 19 point down the road, we're going to have to take a stand on 20 this stuff.
But all we're asking for now is that we're 21 stepping back and trying to deal with these bigger issues in 22 this over-arching fashion.
)
23 DR. KRESS:
I see.
24 MR. KING:
Versus proceeding down the path of i
25 reactor safety goals only.
l l
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1 DR. FONTANA:
That's what I think you ought to be m
2 doing.
3 l MR. KING:
That's all we're asking for now.
4 DR. KRESS:
We can deal with these other issues 5
later.
6 MR. KING:
All of these questions and issues are 7
things, when we get back into it, we'll be revisiting and 8
trying to come to some consensus on where d3 we go with 9
these things.
10 DR., APOSTOLAKIS:
So what do you want to do?
Do 11 you want to continue with your slides or have a discussion?
12 MR. KING:
We've got two more slides.
Let me just i
13
)
i 34 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But they're &long the lines of 15 the discussion so far, except for the slide eight, although 16 different itself I chink needs~some discussion and in your 17 attachment one you say that regulatory requirements should 1
la provide a balance between prevention and mitigation.
You 19 had reactors in mind there.
20 MR. KING:
No.
I had everything in mind.
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Everything.
22 MR. KING:
Now, whether --
23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Now, ACNW, I think, has looked 24 into the issue of different for the repository and they were 25 kind of negative, as I recall, l
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MR. BARTON:
Yes.
[j' 2
DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
And I don't even know what
\\
3 mitigation means.
i 4'
MR. COPLAN:
But not negative on the concept j
i 5
itself, but in the way it gets expressed in the regulation.
1 6
DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But what is mitigation in the 7
case of the high level waste repository?
8 DR. KRESS:
Barriers.
9 MR. KING:
Engineered barriers.
I mean, the stuff 10 goes in in canisters and I don't know what else is in there, 11 but it's not like they just dig a hole and throw it in.
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But that's prevention.
Why 13 isn't that prevention?
Mitigation, in my mind, is you have 14 core damage and you do something that would mitigate the
. (n (j
15 consequences.
16 MR. KING:
To me, prevention is you're providing a 17 repository that has adequate cooling and heat capacity and I
18 so forth.
1 19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
And the barriers.
20 MR. KING:
So that the cladding doesn't fail.
l 1
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Right.
22 MR. KING:
Now the cladding starts to fail, what 23 are the mitigating barriers that keep all this stuff in 24 there anyway.
4 25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But the biggest mitigating l
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x 3'
121 iit barrier.is the.' medium, the host medium.
It;would take l2
' forever for the. stuff to be L 3' MR~ KING:
But do.we want-:to pick a medium?f,I.
4
.mean, ym' re. picking a -- th( geology is such tha. it-does 5
that.
'6
.DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
7 MR. KING:
So to me, it's not -- they're.not-8 disconnect there.
9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Well, again, if you define as.
10, accident release to the biosphere, that's a mitigating 11 measure.
12' DR. POWERS:
I think you run into difficulties-13 within the design teams working in repositories on the 14 concepts of mitigation and prevention.
But I think they 15 just need to accommodate their language.
I mean, when they.
16 sell it to you or they bring an application to you, they're 17 going to have to accommodate that language.
I-don't think 18 it changes any_of the design.
19 DR. FONTANA:
I think it varies with time.
Isn't 20 that thing going to be ventilated for the first hundred-21' years?
22 MR. KING:
I don't know.
Seth probably knows.
23 M"
COPLAN:
Probably, yes.
24 DR. FONTANA:
So that's going to change with time.
25 MR. KING:
.The prevention versus mitigation, what
(
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_122
-1
-- should the Commission talk about what the balance should
'(}
2 be in there.
I mean, should we put most of our emphasia'on
! prevention?
2
'l 4
^
DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Again, the problem, as I see it, 5
is it depends on the system you'ro' talking about.
There is 6
so much condition'tc thinking in' terms of light water 7
reactor technology, that even for reactors, if you have an
~
8 evolutionary design, you may want to rethink the whole 9
thing.
10 DR. KRESS:
You have to have some principle in.
11 mind that tells you how to make that decision.
You could 12 very well envision a policy statement that says for light 13 water reactors, we're going to have this much prevention and 14 this much mitigation.
I mean, that's not unthinkable.
- O 15 DR. APOSTOLAKIS
fio, it's not.
j 16 DR. KRESS:
But it would be better to have a 17 principle.
]
18 MR. KING:
When it gets down to the reactor piece.
I 19 20 DR. WALLIS:
That's too much detail.
It should be 21 performance-based and you can get the performance with 22 various combinations of prevention and mitigation.
It's not 23 up to you to specify those combinations.
24 MR. KING:
Maybe the only principle is you want j
25 both and let there be flexibility for how much.
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.DR.
WALLIS:
In order to achieve certain
()
'2 performance.
The only thing that matters is the 3
. performance.
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Or maybe just the drop of the 5
second bullet.
It seems to me that the third one subsumes 6
the second.
7 DR. BONACA:
Yes, there is already definition 8
there, yes.
9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay.
So you don't put this 10 additional constraint and have then problems with what is 11 mitigation in certain syst '-
Like it's not clear to me 12 what it is in high level wt v.
13 DR. BONACA:
It's just a question of the frame of 14 Iefer>ance.
Traditionally, prevention was meant to prevent 15 d core damage. Later on, prevention in severe accident --
i 16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes, but that was really a 4
l'/
statement of defense-in-depth, wasn't it?
18 DR. BONACA:
What I'm saying is depending on what 19 your frame of reference is.
20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So if you had the third bullet, 21 I think you are subsuming the second.
22 MR. KING:
I'm not convinced, but we can talk l
23 about this as part of getting into this in more detail.
24 DR. FONTANA:
It doesn't mean you have to come up 25 with the answers.
I mean, identifying what the differences
()
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of opinions are and different possibilities is, I think, 2
useful.
3 MR. KING:
You can have defense-in-depth and it's 4
all oriented toward prevention.
5 DR. BONACA:
Again, with reference to the point I 6
was making before, this helping to transition to risk inform 7
Part 50, here is the first time you're trying to harmonize 8
goals which are really PRA-based to deterministically based 9
commitments, and I want to see how you're going to do that.
10 That's going to be pretty tricky.
Il DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Well, in the attachment here, 12 there is a statement that really is a truism.
Under C, on 13 page two, implementation of regulhtory approach, you found 14 that?
V 15 MR. KING:
Yes.
16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Regulatory requirements shall 17 address uncertainties by application of sound engineering 18 principles, such as defense-in-depth, safety margins and the 19 use of probable cause of standards.
Isn't that a truism?
20 How else can you address uncertainties?
21 DR. WALLIS:
It's not clear to me that 22 defense-in-depth addresses uncertainties.
23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Of cource it does.
24 DR. WALLIS:
There is no proof that's the only way 25 to do it.
l S
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DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
No.
Defense-in-depth
()
'2 traditionally means redundancy,' diversity, and all that.
If 3
you want very l'ow probabilities, that's the only way to do 4
it.
Safety margins.
But I don't see how else you can 5
achieve very low frequencies.
6 DR. KRESS:
Achieve low frequencies at an 7
acceptable uncertainty.
8 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
9 DR. KRESS:
You don't complete the statement.
10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Thank you very much.
11 DR. POWERS:
It seems to me that when we speak of 12 defense-in-depth and in connection with uncertainties, we 13 need to recognize that there are several types of 14 uncertainties that we're thinking about when we speak of
()
15 defense-in-depth; that there are uncertainties that arise if 16 I do a calculation and I just don't know the numbers that I 17 put into the calculation very well, and those are relativalv i
18 easily quantified, especially when we talk about complex 19 engineering systems.
20 There is this uncertainty that our calculational 21 tool that we have chosen may well not capture those things 22 that can and do happen to a system.
23 And I think that historically, the idea of going 24 to a defense-in-depth was a lack of confidence in the 25 calculational tools as a vehicle for capturing all the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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events.that could happen to a facility.
()
2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
.I don't disagree with that, but 3
still the principle is the same.
I mean, I have'not 4
quantified that probability.
I know I may be wrong, but --
5 DR. POWERS:
The difficulty, I think, George, is 6
that when we just say the word uncertainties without putting 7
that codicil onto it, that often people think in terms of 8
the quantifiable uncertainties.
9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
So maybe we can use those words 10 to make it clearer.
11 DR. POWERS:
I could go on and say that my 12 personal view is that the quantifiable uncertainties are the 13 right ones to be concerned with when I look at tradeoffs 14 between redundancy and diversity in single systems.
But
()
15 when I look at the integral facility, be it a reactor or a 16 repository, it's this uncertainty dealing with things I 17 don't know that are appropriate to consider.
18 But I probably shouldn't do that when I look at 19 more microscopic things.
20 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But it comes down to the same 21 thing, that's my point.
In the first case, if I implement 22 redundancy and diversity, now I have a means of seeing the 23 tradeoffs, calculating the tradeoffs.
24 The other case, where I may be wrong and I have 25 suspicions that I may be wrong, I don't have that.
So the
{-)
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tools are the same.
(
2 MR. KING:
To me, the real quest. ion when you ' get 3
into this is the first bullet under issues here, we're 4
talking defense-in-depth.
Do you want to have a basic 5
principle on defense-in-depth?
Let's say, I want some level
~
6 of it regardless of what the uncertainties are.
7 DR..S EALE :
I think it's what Dana and I just 8
said, and it's not a principle -- it's not even a principle.
9 MR. KING:
It's just a means to address 10 uncertainties.
11 DR. WALLIS:
It's a philosophy, but it's 12 unmeasurable.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
No.
It's a way of handling 14 uncertainty.
Now, the next thing you discuss is what is
()
15 this uncertainty. Some of it is quantified, some of it is 16 not quantified.
17 DR. WALLIS:
Then you have to show me that with 18 this system, with these defense-in-depth philosophies, you 19 get less uncertainty or something, some measure, than with 20 this other system.
21 DR. KRESS:
Or you get an acceptable uncertainty.
22 DR. WALLIS:
There is nothing magical about the 23 word defense-in-depth.
24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Well, you don't know whether 25 it's acceptable.
-.,)
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DR. WALLIS:
It encures it's a better design.
2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
No.
So it's not a principle.
I 3
can agree that it's embedded in the regulations and so on, 4
but I don't think it's a principle.
It's a way of handling 5
uncertainty, especially when it is not quantified.
6 It is not given a special name as defense-in-depth 7
when the uncertainties are quantified because it's a 8
standard tool an engineer has to reduce those uncertainties.
9 But when the uncertainty is not quantified, it was given a 10 name and it was elevated so that -- to some level, so that 11 people would ce aware of it and say, hey, defense-in-depth.
12 The reason was that the uncertainty was not 13 quantified and the presumption was that by doing certain 14 things, you are reducing that uncertainty, which you still m\\
)
15 cannot quantify.
16 MR. KING:
I thought the recent paper that you and 17 Jack and some others authored said that it was not practical 13 to have defense-in-depth just as a way to deal with 19 uncertainties.
There ought to be some higher level 20 component of it as a principle.
21 DR. APOSTOLAKT.S :
And that's the result of the 22 fact that the paper has four authors.
23 DR. WALLIS:
Your high level policy statement is a 24 statement of ends, objectiven, not of how they're achieved.
25 MR. KING:
Well, this I put under a section called
)
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implementation.
2 DR. WALLIS:
This is much more detailed than you 3
need to get into in dealing with the highest level of 4
policy.
5 MR. KING:
Maybe it is.
Clearly, if defense-in-depth is not a high level policy, then you're 7
right. it wouldn't show up.
B DR. WALLIS:
Or it may drive you to 9
defense-in-depth.
10 MR. KING:
Right.
11 DR. SHACK:
But there are some of us who believe 12 it is at the level.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It's a high level requirement.
14 Don't call it principle.
It's a high level requirement, fmC) 15 high level something.
16 DR. SHACK:
Just so it's there, George.
17 DR. SEALE:
It's so high that you did it before 18 you called it that.
19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It's a principle until we 20 declare that it is not.
21 MR. KING:
Okay.
Last slide, what I call ocher Thines like how are you going to use the goals and 22
'asues.
23 objectives; why put this together unless we've got some 24 purpose as to where it's goina to be used, and that would 25 deel with things like is it plant-specific, generic, its ANN RILEY & ASSOCIhfES, LTD.
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relationship to the regulatory analysis guidelines or
_s 2
guidance for the regulatory analysis guidelines.
}
3 You get down to the next level, the quantitative 4
objectives, I think it's clear that reactors rersus 5
non-reactors, they're not going to be the same.
The 6
population at risk is going to be different.
You've got the 7
issue now, for example, of the reactor safety goals have a-8 ten-mile zone for considering -- in the calculation, 9
considering whether you meet them or not.
10 The reg analysis guidelines have a 50-mile.
11 Reconcile things like that.
Then at are we going to do in 12 terms of trying to assess how these things are achieved?
I 13 mean, clearly, the reg analysis guidelines is something you 14 use to see whether you apply new requirements or don't apply 3j 15 new requirements.
l l
16 But remember when the safety goals were first l
17 issued, the Commission came back to us and asked that we do l
l 18 a study on do the regulations -- are the adequate to ensure e
19 the safety goals are met, and we embarked on that at one 20 time and ultirc.ately decided, wei we'll do that as part of 21 looking at the IPEs, which we tried to make sort of a j
22 guesstimate as to how the IPEs racked up against the safety 23 goals.
24 DR. WALLIS:
What do you mean by measures of 25 achievemant?
Is this the payoff?
i
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MR. KING:
No.
This is do you want to go in and
(__-)
2 try to assess on a plant-by-plant or a population of plants, 3
do they meet --
4 DR. WALLIS:
Level of detail, 5
MR. KING:
Yes.
This would not be the high level, 6
but it's something --
7 DR. WALLIS:
I think you need to have a measure of 8
achievement.
When you have this new safety goal or policy 9
or propose it to replace the old, you have to have a measure I
10 of how it's better.
11 MR. KING:
Okay.
I think in presenting this to 12 the Commission, we have to lay out the response to that 13 question, what is this goiug to do.
14 DR. WALLIS:
When this happens,_look what we've
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15 done.
Look at what you've gained, society has gained 16 something f rom our act..-ities.
These are our measures of 17 achievement.
I'm not sure you have any idea yet, except in l
18 a very qualitative sense.
19 MR. KING:
Yes, very qualitative, public 20 confidence, that kinc'. of thing.
21 Okay.
That's it.
j 22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay.
Well, it seems to me 23 that we should spend a couple of minutes on what you guys 24 are going to do tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the presentation to j
25 the full committee.
But it's nice that we have this extra-79 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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132 1
time, because I really believe that requesting -- producing
)
2 sometning in less than a year that is realistic will be i
3 received by the Commission more favorably.
4 So if you want to do some-thinking about it, 5
you're not signing a contract or anything, but you've done 6
already a lot of thinking about these things.
Again, we can 7
promise a deliverable, say, in nine months, but the 8
interactions with this committee can be more frequent than 9
that.
If you want to lock up a couple of people in a room 10-for a month, that's fine.
Then they can come out and come 11 straight to this room.
12 Are there any other comments that the members want 13 to make at this point?
14 DR. WALLIS:
I'd like to say that generally, the 15 idea appeals to me, although I have pointed out some 16 limitations.
I'd go back to don't try and do everything, 17 but figure out what's most important and which will have the 18 most effect.
(
19 DR. AFCSTOLAKIS:
So that should be part of ycur 20 thinking this afternoon, I guess.
21 DR. WALLIS:
I think that's what you ought to tell 21 us tomorrow.
23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
Let's not repeat the 24 presentation.
How much time do we have tomorrow, Mike, for 25 this activity?
W g ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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MR. MARKLEY:
About an hour and a half.
2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I don't think we need a hour and 3
a half.
4 MR. MARKLEY:
It's 12:45 to 2:15 p.m.
5 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
12:45 to 2:15?
Anyway, I think 6
tomorrow you should jump into the new stuff, because the 7
whole committee is here, unless there is a legal reason --
8 DR. KRESS:
Yes.
There is no reason to repeat all 9
this stuff.
10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes, we don't have to repeat 11 this.
12 DR. SEALE:
But you would like to have a letter 13 from us then maybe to carry with you when you go see the 14 Commissioners toward the end of the month.
15 MR. KING:
Yes.
16 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes.
And it seems to me that 17 the contents of that letter depend crucially on what they 18 tell us tomorrow.
19 DR. SEALE:
Sure.
20 MR. KING:
To me, we'd like to have that letter, 21.
one, is this a good idea to do this and if so, does the 22 scope and depth look about right.
23 Da. SEALE:
So we'll have plenty of stuff to talk 24 about in an hour and a half.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Yes, but let's not start with l
l m
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this again.
2 DR. SEALE:
Oh, no.
No.
3 MR. KING:
Sure.
4 DR. APOSTOLAY.IS.
Okay.
So thank you very much, 5
gentlemen. We'll see you tcmorrow then.
5 6
MR. KING:
Okay.
7 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Now, I would remind to the 8
members that there is a party at 12:00 in the subcommittee 9
room in honor of Roxanne.
We're supposed to go downstairs 10 and get lunch and come back.
Then, of course, the full ACRS 11 will convene at 1:00.
Thank you.
12
[Whereupon, at 11:42 a.m.,
the meeting was 13 concluded.]
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings
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before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
NAME OF PROCEEDING:
MEETING:
RELIABILITY AND PROBABILISTIC RISK ASSESSMENT, PLANT OPERATIONS, A10 REGULATORY POLICIES AND PRACTICES CASE NUMBER:
PLACE OF PROCEEDING:
Rockville, MD
()
were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or nuder the direction of the court reporting company, and that the tranocript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
i i
Mark Mahoney Official Reporter Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
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