ML20207E090
| ML20207E090 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 08/11/1988 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-1689, NUDOCS 8808160454 | |
| Download: ML20207E090 (183) | |
Text
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l UNITED STATES l
O NUCLEAR REGULATORY COkDESSION ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS
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l In the Matter of:
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340th GENERAL MEETING
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s h Elemgvfirpm AGRS affice DATE:
August 11, 1988 LOCATION:
Washington, D.C.
PAGES :
1 through 152
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PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE
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2 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S 3
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4
5
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7 The contents of this stenographic transcript of the 8
proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory 9
Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS),.
10 as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions 11 recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
12 No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at 13 this meeting accepts any responsibility for errors or 14 inaccuracies of statement or data contained in this transcript.
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15 16 17 18 19 20 21 j
22 23 24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 2
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 3
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In the Matter of:
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4
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5 340th GENERAL HEETING
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6 j
- Thursday, 7
August 11, 1988 8
Room 1046 1717 H Street, N.W.
9 Washington, D.C.
20555 10 The above-entitled matter came on for hearing, 11 pursuant to notice, at 8:32 3.m.
12 BEFORE:
DR. WILLIAH KERR Chairman 13 Professor of Nuclear Engineering Director, Office of Energy Research 14 University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan 15 ACRS HEMBERS PRESENT:
16 DR. FORREST J.
REMICK 17 Vice-Chairman Associate Vice-President for Research 18 Professor of Nuclear Engineering The Pennsylvania State University 19 University Park, Pennsylvania 20 DR. HAROLD W.
LEWIS Professor of Physics 21 Department of Physics University of California 22 Santa Barbara, California 23 1
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25 HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION -- (202)628-4888
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MR. CARLYLE MICHELSON Retired Principal Nuclear Engineer 2
Tennessee Valley Authority Knoxville, Tennessee; and 3
Retired Director, Office for Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data 4
U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C.
5 DR. PAUL G.
SHEWMON 6
Professor, Metallurgical Engineering Department Ohio State University 7
Columbus, Ohio 8
DR. CHESTER P.
SIESS Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering 9
University of Illinois Urbana, Illinois 10 DR. DAVID A. WARD 11 Research Manager on Special Assignment E.I.
du Pont de Nemours & Company 12 Ssvannah River Laboratory Aiken, South Carolina g
MR. CHARLES J.
WYLIE 14 Retired Chief Engineer Electrical Division 15 Dul:e Power Company Charlotte, North Carolina 16 MR. JAMES CARROLL 17 Manager, Nuclear Operations Support i
Pacific Gas and Electric Company 18 San Francisco, California 19 ACRS COGNIZANT STAFF MEMBER:
20 Raymond Fraley, Executive Director 21 NRC STAFF PRESENTERS:
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PROCEEDItlGS 2
CHAIRMAN KERR:
This unruly group will come to 3
order.
4 This is the first day of the 340th meeting of the 5
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.
In today's meeting 6
the Committee will discuss some matters of common interest 7
between us and the Executive Director of Operations, 8
anticipated ACRS activities, safety implications of control 9
systems, systems interactions, and the item listed in TVA 10 nuclear activities on the agenda for today is apparently going 11 to have to be deferred because of the unavailability of NRC 12 staff.
At least that's what--
j 13 DR. SHEWMON:
Which item?
14 CHAIRMAN KERR:
The last item on today's agenda, the 15 TVA nuclear activities item.
16 DR. SHEWHON:
This out for the rest of the meeting?
17 CHAIRMAN KERR:
It will be deferred until the 18 September meeting according to my information which I received 19 about ten minutes ago.
20 MR. CARROLL:
You do recognize we owe a letter on 21 that for September 1st, and--
22 CHAIRMAN KERR:
I am not aware that we owe Mr. Zech 23 a letter by September 1, but in this particular case, it is 24 the availability of the staff that makes it necessary to i
25
- postpone, so--
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HR. CARROLL:
Write him a letter and tell him.
2 HR. WYLIE:
I looked at the transcript of the 3
meeting.
The subcommittee meeting said exactly what we 4
thought.
I would make a report on the reorganization of the 5
TVA and not, that we would not request TVA to come back to the 6
Full Committee, and that the staff would make their 7
presentation of the lessons learned, and somehow they 8
misunderstood that.
9 CHAIRMAN KERR:
Well, I don't know of anything else 10 we can do at this point other than postpone that part of the 11 meeting until the September meeting.
12 The meeting is being ccnducted in accordance with l
13 the provisions of the FACA, the government and the Sunshine 14 Act.
Mr. Fraley is the designated federal official for the 15 initial part (? the meeting.
We have received no written 16 statements or requests to make oral statements.
17 (A discussion of items of current interest was held 18 off the record.)
19 CHAIRMAN KERR:
Vic, we do want to congratulate you 20 on the recent award that you received, and I hope that's a 21 good way to start things, and then turn the meeting over to 22 you for your comment.
We have received the memorandum from 23 yo'1 to Ray Fraley.
I'm sorry--yes.
24 HR. STELLO:
Yes, and what I don't want to do is to 25 read it or go through the memorandum that I sent to you to try
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to deal with this issue.
2 The purpose of the meeting I think started out with 3
a memorandum that I got from Ray that indicated that there was 4
concern and what we would do is just get NUREG 1150, take what 5
we had, and that was it.
We were going to forget it forever, 6
and that was not what I intended to say, and I am here to 7
explain that this morning, but I did want to start at the 8
other end of the spectrum and that's we put an awful lot of 9
money, resources, time, review, and energy to generate a 10 document that I think is far better than WASH 1400 and does 11 give us some insights, and it prescribed a rather careful 12 scope in the way we would intend to use it when it comes out 13 in January, which is our best guess at the moment.
14 And I have Joe Murphy here who has a presentation, 15 and if you have time, I think it would be appropriate for you i
16 to understand the way in which the comments and the results of 17 the reviews both of the ACRS, Kastenberg, and others, who have i
18 commented on it, that suggested it needed to be revised.
19 If you have time, I would suggest that we try to do i
20 that to bring the Committee up to date on the things we are j
21 doing.
22 I would like at least to spend a minute and the use 23 of the document--I assume the ACRS does in fact have the SECY 24 document where--I know it was sent to the ACRS, where we 25 outline the kind of uses and how we expect--you specifically HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION -- (202)628-4888
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reviewed that.
2 CHAIRMAN KERR:
Can somebody remind me of the SECY 3
number?
4 HR. STELLO:
It is SECY 88147?
The integrated, 5
integration piping; you have reviewed it.
You have been j
6 through it, and that's how we described how Me wanted to 7
integrate these various documents, programs, and things that 8
we had going on, and as I recall, the ACRS letter with respect 9
to that particular document was generally favorable.
10 Now when we do get the document in January, we don't 11 want to be finished, and what I have tried to do in the paper 12 I sent down to you is describe every word that we can possibly 13 think of where we want to seek, review, comment, and what we 14 want to do this time in looking at 1150 and planning on what 15 to do for the future is to spend a lot more time at the 16 beginning of what ought we do, what areas need to be 17 emphasized, where are we in research, what can reasonably be 18 done so that the next time we unfold the document, we have 19 done a lot more thinking beforehand in contrest quite frankly 20 to the way we did it with 1150.
It just sort of grew and we 21 don't want to let that happen again.
22 We want to be very systematic about how we go about 23 trying to take that task on again, and plan to have everywhere 24 we can possibly think of going for review and comment, and I, W
25 my guess quite frankly is that that will take the better part HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION -- (202)628-4888
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of a year, including workshops and the rest of it, before we 2
can get that under our belt.
3 What I just don't see as reasonable is putting the 4
document off on the shelf some place which is the best 5
possible understanding we have of this technology, and let it 6
sit there while all that goes on.
We hope we can get that 7
done, take those comments and results of those reviews, and 8
redo the document.
We are probably talking another two or 9
three years, and in the meantime it just doesn't make sense to 10 to let sit, the best possible analysis and understanding that 11 we have in PRA space sit around.
It just doesn't seem the 12 right thing to me to do, and that's what I wanted to tell the 13 Committee.
That's the kind of idea I had in mind when I was 14 explaining this to the Commission and not just simply say 15 well, that's it, we are finished.
We are not finished.
We 16 know we are not finished, but rather try to describe a 17 reasonable approach on how to use the document.
18 Now what I, if the Committee would not have a 19 problem, Joe has a briefing which I think he can get through 20 in about a half hour, and I would like him to go through that 21 to give you the current status because a lot of the problems 22 that I believe caused the Committee to have some concern are 23 in fact the results of Committee review, various peer review 24 groups, that have looked at this who have already said these 1
25 are problems and we are in fact fixing them.
That's where it HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION -- (202)628-4888
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1 is going to take until January until we get the next draft 2
out, so if you have, with your permission--
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CHAIRMAN KERR:
We certainly have time to hear a 4
presentation.
It is not a problem.
MR. STELLO:
Okay
- Joe, 5
why don't you go through that and maybe we can talk about it a 6
bit?
7 DR. LEWIS:
At some point, or maybe Joe or, will 8
somebody explain or give some basis for the commant you made 9
earlier that this is now much better than WASH 1400?
I'm not 10 an unabashed admirer of WASH 1400 as you know, but that's a 11 fairly strong statement.
12 MR. STELLO:
Okay.
Joe, while you are going through 13 your briefing on the status, to the extent you can, identify 14 all of those areas for which there has been substantial 15 improvement over the weaknesses that Dr. Lewis and his group 16 pointed out in 1400 that are fixed.
17 DR. LEWIS:
The reason I raise it, obviously since 18 it is 15 years later almost, it is going to have improvements 19 because the data are better, but it would be nice to know why 20 you think as I assume you do that the methodology and 21 systematics are better.
22 HR. STELLO:
That's specifically what I had in mind 23 when I asked Joe to do this, and I think there are a number of 24 things that are in his briefing that will fit nicely to answer W
25 your question.
l HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION -- (202)628-4888
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1 DR. LEWIS:
I will hold my breath.
2 HR. STELLO:
Okay.
3 HR. HURPHY:
I'm sure you will ask questions if I 4
don't get there.
Please do.
5 DR. SHEWMON:
Don't be concerned!
6 HR. HURPHY:
Just to bring you up, to remind you 7
again of the objectives we had as we are doing the final 8
version of 1150, is to provide a current assessment of risk 9
for five specific plants, looking for a snapshot of the risk 10 as a function of time, at this time, for those plants, 11 reflects the plant design and operational characteristics, et 12 cetera, and this study will be done in reflecting the plant as 13 it exists and as our state of knowledge exist as of t! arch of 14 this year.
That, of course, is necessary to estimate--you 15 have got to be free to march on with the analysis.
it is 16 important in terms of phenomenological information because of 17 the degree that we are relying on expert judgment in certain 18 areas where we don't have a good code results that we can rely 19 on.
20 We are including the estimates of risk uncertainty 1
21 as we were before.
We hope we are going to do a better job in 22 displaying those results because as you well know, the display i
1 23 technique we had before just plain didn't work.
We will have 24 a display technique that identifies not only the upper and 25 lowers bounds of the distribution, we hope we can show the l
HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION -- (202)628-4888
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entire distribution and identify the mean and the median of 2
it.
The mode, of course, will be obvious.
3 We will try to identify the plant-specific risk 4
vulnerabilities in each of those five plants.
We hope to 5
summarize the perspectives explained with respect to the 6
issues, significant to severe accident frequencies, 7
consequences, and risks.
The uncertainties merit further 8
research.
We will make comparison with the safety goals. and 9
discuss the potential benefits of a severe accident management 10 program, and the benefits of other plant modifications.
We 11 also think the report will be useful to provide information 12 that can be used to develop methods for the prioritization and l
l 13 safety issues and for related research.
14 DR. LEWIS:
I kept my word for one minute, but on 15 there, there are about five uses of severe accidents there.
16 Are you using a definition that is, the definition that is l
17 floating around in terms of the severe accident program, or is 18 that just a throw-away word, severe?
Are you limiting your 19 spectrum of accidents?
20 MR. MURPHY:
I guess I don't quite understand where 21 you are coming from.
l 22 DR. LEWIS:
Severe accidents has, you know, had come 23 to mean something around NRC in terms of the, of I am not 24 quite sure what, but there is a severe accident program, and W
25 it, you know, people use it in different ways.
WASH 1400, for l
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