ML20212A960
| ML20212A960 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 07/22/1986 |
| From: | Asselstine J NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8608060073 | |
| Download: ML20212A960 (32) | |
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STATEMENT BY COMMISSIONER JAMES K. ASSELSTINE BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS July 22, 1986 Mr. Chairman, I take a somewhat different view of the four issues being considered by the Subcomittee than does the Comission majority.
Licensing Reform On the subject of licensing reform, although I support legislation to bring about the greater use of standardization in nuclear power plant design and to correct the quality assurance, construction and management problems which have occurred in recent years, I cannot support either the Commission's legislative proposal (H.R. 1447) or the proposal cubmitted by the Department of Energy (H.R. 2488) in their present form.
In my view, these proposals do not go far enough in requiring the development of complete standardized designs, and they contain seriously flawed provisions which would undermine current safety standards and unreasonably restrict the public's right to participate in licensing proceedings.
l The Commission's testimony cites as one of the primary shortcomings of the present licensing system a lack of predictability and stability.
I agree.
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However, I do not agree with all of the reasons given by the Commission for i
this lack of predictability and stability.
In my view, the failures of the past can be attributed to five principal factors.
First, the design of the i
8608060073 860722 PDR COMMS NRCC CORRESPONDENCE PDR
plants has been far from complete at the time that NRC authorized the start of construction. As a consequence, it has been difficult, if not impos-sible, for the NRC to determine whether the proposed plant meets all regulatory requirements. This means that difficult design questions are deferred to be resolved during the construction period, and there is, thus, the potential for hearings on unresolved plant design issues after the plant has been substantially completed.
Perhaps most important, the licensee must design the plant as it is being built, an approach that enormously complicates the construction process.
Second, both the NRC and the nuclear industry have made optimistic assump-tions about the adequacy of'the plant designs and the expected performara of the plants. Actual operating experience has demonstrated that many of these optimistic assumptions are unsupportable. This has led to changing requirements and the need for safety improvements in the plants. For example, assumptions that key safety components in the plant, such as the primary coolant piping system, the steam generators, and electrical cable, would retain their integrity for the full 40-year operating life of the plant have proven to be unfounded, and licensees are experiencing severe degradation of some of these components within the first ten years or less of plant operation.
Third, a number of difficult safety issues were deferred not only until the l
i construction period, but also beyond the start of plant operation because requiring a resolution of the issues would have delayed licensing. As a result, there is a backlog of generic and unresolved issues that must be
addressed to provide adequate assurance of safety for the remaining operat-ing lives of the existing plants.
Fourth, some utilities have failed to meet their licensing comitments and NRC regulations. This is particularly evident in the plants that have experienced construction quality assurance breakdowns in recent years.
Where the licensee cannot demonstrate that the plant has been built in conformity with its license and NRC regulations the result is a costly and time-consuming corrective program to verify the safety of the as-built plant.
Finally, the NRC has failed to pay sufficient attention to factors that can significantly influence whether the utility meets its license commitments and NRC regulations. Perhaps the most important of these factors is the experience and competence of the licensee's construction management team.
Despite what the industry characterizes as an overly detailed and pre-scriptive set of regulatory requirements, the NRC has not set standards for licensee management and has not insisted that the utility applicant have in place an experienced and competent management team before authorizing the start of plant construction. Nor has the NRC always been effective in l
identifying quality assurance breakdowns early in the construction process.
Although the two-step licensing process may have been a contributing factor in these past failures, the principal fault lies with the Commission's reactive approach to safety regulation. Unfortunately, neither H.R.1447 nor H.R. 2488 include provisions to address these weaknesses in the I
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Commission's approach to safety. My concerns about the Commission and 00E legislative proposals are described in greater detail below.
Under the Commission's 1983 legislative proposal, which I supported, the provision allowing for the issuance of a combined construction permit and operating license (CP/0L) required the application to contain " sufficient information to support the issuance of both a construction permit and an operating license" in accordance with NRC regulations. The Commission's current legislative proposal has weakened this to require submission merely of " sufficient information to support issuance of a combined construction
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permit and operating license." The Commission has not explained why a combined CP/0L should require less information than the separately issued CP and OL.
The difficulties presented by this lowered standard are aggravated by the Commission's decision to delete the requirement in our previous bill for a preoperational review of the adequacy of a plant's construction, its readiness for operation, and the sufficiency of the emergency planning measures. The Commission has also declined to commit itself to preoperational reviews of significant safety issues not previously consid-ered. The Commission argues that the inspections, tests, analyses, and acceptance criteria specified in the combined CP/0L will assure the proper construction of the plant and its readiness for operation.
This ignores our unfortunate experiences in recent years with the unforseen safety problems and with construction projects which have run into difficulties and have, in some cases, been cancelled.
The Comission would have done better to stick with its 1983 proposal which required it to make a formal finding that construction had been completed and that the plant would operate in conformity with the combined CP/0L, the Atomic Energy Act and the NRC's regulations.
It is worth noting that in 1983 the Commission recommended that it be required to conduct a supple-mental review, prior to the commencement of operation, of any issues that were not considered in prior reviews of the facility.
I see no basis to support the Comission's change in position on this important safety requirement. The DOE bill also suffers from this failure to require preoperational reviews of key safety issues by the NRC.
The Comission's 1985 bill would place a very high threshold on the ability of a member of the public to obtain a hearing after the issuance of the combined CP/0L.
In order to designate an issue for a hearing the Comis-sion would have to find that (a) the issue consists of a substantial dispute of fact, (b) resolution of the issue is necessary for the Comis-sion's decision, (c) the issue cannot be resolved with sufficient accuracy except at a hearing, and (d) either (i) the issue was not and could not have been raised and resolved in any prior proceeding for that facility, or (ii) that (1) there has been a nonconformance with the license, (2) such nonconformance has not been corrected, and (3) such nonconformance could materially and adversely affect the safe operation of the plant. The DOE bill imposes a similarly high threshold for public hearings and would expressly allow plant startup prior to the completion of hearings on significant safety issues. As a practical matter, this thicket of obsta-cles will make it impossible for people living close to a plant to obtain a g
hearing on the issues such as emergency planning, adequacy of plant con-struction and readiness for operation, which are of greatest concern to them.
I am opposed to these new obstacles to state and public participa-tion in our licensing proceedings.
I believe that the smooth operation of the licensing system does not require the public's hearing rights to be artificially restricted.
Indeed, I am persuaded that these efforts to limit public involvement will only stimulate opposition to future nuclear power plants.
In addition, I would point out that the combined CP/0L, early site review, and standardized design provisions of the bills contain a statutory limita-tion on backfitting.
Putting aside my reservations about the wisdom of the Commission's proposed backfitting standard (conditioning a backfit on a showing that it will substantially advance public health and safety by improving overall plant safety), I recommend that the Congress not enact these provisions. As the Commission itself noted when it submitted its 1983 proposal, this is a problem which can be better addressed in the i
Commission's regulations. The Commission has had relatively little experi-l ence with formal backfitting standards.
If this formulation turns out to be unworkable and detrimental to safety, the regulations could be modified relatively easily. A statute would be far more difficult to amend.
Indeed, the Commission's recent experience with its new backfit rule is already disclosing some serious difficulties with the rule.
For example, the backfit rule as presently formulated may make it impossible for the NRC to require improvements in the ability of U.S. plants to survive a loss of l
AC power for emergency systems (station blackout) despite the fact that the l
l
3 NRC staff and other countries view this as one of the most important unresolved safety issues. Similarly, the Comission may well be foreclosed by the backfit rule from bringing its radiological protection regulations into conformity with current technical knowledge and accepted international standards and from adopting any new requirements in the important areas of l
human performance. The DOE bill would freeze by statute these questionable provisions of the Comission's current backfit rule.
5 For the foregoing reasons, the Comission and DOE proposals should be-redrafted (1) to ensure that plants with combined CP/0L's meet the same 1
safety standards as plants licensed under the present regulatory scheme, and (2) to afford interested states and members of the public an opportu-nity for a hearing prior to plant operation on issues such as emergency planning,_ adequacy of plant construction, and readiness for operation.
In 4
addition, I believe that a licensing and standardization bill should' include other provisions not found in the Comission and DOE proposals to
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bring about the greater use of improved standardized designs and to address some of the construction and quality assurance problems which have been identified in recent years. To that end, I would recommend adding provi-sions to the bill to require that future nuclear power plant applications use essentially complete standardized plant designs which incorporate as key design elements greater simplicity, larger margins of safety, and other characteristics that promote more efficient construction, operation, maintenance and reliability.
Further, the bill should require that any future design or plant application satisfactorily resolve all existing safety questions, including the unresolved and generic issues prior to the i
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issuance of a design approval or authorization of construction.
I would also reconinend requiring that future plant applications use a centralized management approach for the construction project with specified check points to assure adequate quality as construction proceeds. Finally, I would require that the NRC develop standards for utility management and that the utility appliccet demonstrate that it has an experienced and competent management team in place before the NRC approves the start of construction.
Such provisions would do much, in my view, to correct the mistakes of the past.
Single Administrator, Safety Board, Inspector General The majority favors the establishment of a single administrator, but with no independent safety review group and with no Inspector General. That would be a very different decisionmaking process than we have today.
Decisions on major policy issues would be made in private without the benefit of the exchange of differing viewpoints and with reduced public involvement or observation. There would be no independent group to serve as a check on the industry's and the agency's safety performance, to review operating experience at the plants and to investigate accidents and serious l
operating events at our licensed facilities. There would be no independent l
source of advice to the Congress on the current state of nuclear safety and the adequacy of the federal regulatory program. And, unlike virtually every other single-administrator agency in the government, there would be no independent watchdog to police internal agency misconduct.
Finally, as I have discussed previously, the majority advocates streamlining the l
I
-g-licensing process for future nuclear powerplants by substituting a discretionary hearing for the present right to a hearing by interested members of the public prior to plant operation. This change would allow the Commission broad discretion to reject hearing requests prior to plant operation on such issues as emergency planning, quality assurance and readiness for operation. Given the Commission's past reluctance to grant discretionary hearings -- only ane has been granted and it ended in the Commission's rejection of all of the NRC technical staff's proposed safety improvements for the plant -- as a practical matter this probably means an erd to hearings on these issues of greatest interest to the public. The upshot of all this would be a much more closed system, with less debate and public ventilation of nuclear safety issues, with less technical oversight of the agency's and the industry's performance, and with substantially reduced public involvement.
Mr. Chairman, I believe that such a system is fundamentally at odds with the plan envisioned by the Congress in 1954, when it gave the responsibili-if ty for nuclear safety regulation to a Commission.
It is worth remembering j
that the 1954 Act struck an important bargain. The states were preempted from safety regulation of nuclear powerplants. But in return, there was to be an open federal regulatory process. The broad public policy issues l
associated with nuclear regulation were to be considered by a multi-member Commission, composed of individuals with different backgrounds, experience, training, and views on the issues. The views of the members of the Commis-sion were to be available not only within the collegial decisionmaking process but also to the Congress and to the public. The public and the
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states were to be involved extensively throughout the process, and they were to be given a right to a hearing on each valid safety issue and to have that issue resolved by a group of independent judges separate from the NRC technical staff.
If the Congress intends to restructure the NRC in a manner that will sharply reduce the benefits to the public and the states provided by the 1954 Act, as the majority now recommends, then perhaps it is also time to reconsider the other side of the balance that was struck in 1954. Specifically, it may be appropriate to restore to the states tne authority to set and enforce their own safety requirements for the facilities provided that those standards meet or exceed the mininum federal standards.
Mr. Chairman, the majority offers several arguments in support of the single administrator form, and I would like to address each one briefly.
First, the majority argues that a single administrator will result in more efficient management and decisionmaking than does the Commission form.
I do not believe this is necessarily the case.
In fact, a comparison of the l
performance of the NRC with the two other single-administrator agencies with nuclear responsibilities, DOE and EPA, would seem to indicate that the Comission is at least as efficient in management and decisionmaking. The Comission has been far ahead of EPA, for example, in promulgating its l
technical requirements for high-level radioactive waste disposal, low-level waste disposal and uranium mill tailings. Similarly, the Comission was able to carry out its responsibilities for the site selection guidelines i
1 for the high-level waste repository much faster than was D0E. On the basis I
of actual experience, I would argue that the Comissign form is not
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necessarily more inefficient than the single administrator. Nor do I see, in general, significant delays in Commission decisionmaking. Where delays occur, it is invariably because the issues are complex and the choices are far from clear. Such difficult decisions take time, whether they are being considered by a single administrator or a Commission.
Second, the majority contends that the Commission form is outdated, and is ill-suited to the oversight of 100 operating nuclear powerplants.
Implicit in this statement is the argument that the Commission no longer faces the types of broad public policy issues that benefit from full and open discus-sion by a multi-member group with differing viewpoints.
I do not believe this is the case.
In recent years, the Commission has considered or is in the process of considering a broad range of safety issues, including:
the adequacy of safety at the Indian Point plants; the Commission's severe accident policy; the Commission's requirements for backfitting new safety features on existing plants; I
the radioactive source term from a severe accident; i
safety goals for assuring the safety adequacy of current and j
future plants; i
the adequacy of emergency planning requirements; the Commission's confidence that permanent waste disposal facili-ties will be available when needed; the soundness of our enforcement policy; and reactor decommissioning.
Each of these is a major policy issue that is particularly well-suited to consideration by a multi-member Commission, and I expect that we will continue to be faced with such issues in the future.
Although I am sure that the NRC would benefit from greater management attention in the oversight of the 100 operating plants, I believe that this can be readily accomplished with the Commission form.
For example, there is nothing to prohibit the Chairman from taking a more active and direct role in assuring that the NRC staff carries out the regulatory policies established by the Commission.
I believe that Chairman Zech is taking a much more active management role of the staff as Chairman, and I strongly support that. So long as he does not attempt to alter Commission policy or make policy decisions on his own, there is nothing to prevent the Chairman from taking a more active role in the day-to-day management of the staff.
Indeed, such an approach provides for improved management oversight while at the same time retaining the benefits of Commission consideration of the broad public policy issues that routinely come before this agency.
I might
. i add that no additional legislation is needed for the Chairman to carry out this management role. Taking this approach, in my view, is preferable to replacing the Commission form with a single administrator.
The remaining two reasons given by the majority in support of the single administrator are more troubling to me. The majority argues that existence of differing Commission views on the issues can confuse the staff and the public, and the majority objects to being required to hold its deliberations in public, as required by the Government in the Sunshine Act.
I should note that the latter objection goes beyond previous Commission statements in favor of some limited authority to hold private discussions to exchange preliminary thoughts on issues before the Commission.
I am not impressed by either of these arguments.
I believe that the Congress and the public benefit from hearing different views and perspectives on the significant policy issues before the Commission. Rather than confusing the public and the staff, they assure that different viewpoints are heard and considered. As for the Sunshine Act, whatever the merits of some limited preliminary discussions in private, the actual debate on the principal safety issues facing the NRC should take place in public. Why should the states, that have been preempted from setting safety standards for nuclear reactors, also be preempted from the Federal deliberative process for setting safety standards or for assessing the public health and safety significance of operating events and accidents? To give just one example, in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, the public is most concerned with whether we can expect to see a core meltdown in the United States in the foreseeable future, what the chances are that such an accident could l
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. s lead to large offsite releases of radiation, whether the Commission views the present level of risk to be acceptable, and if not, what we are doing to reduce it. These are the kinds of issues that the Commission should address openly and in a public forum.
Mr. Chairman, I also do not believe that a single administrator form is in the industry's best interests. The industry continually argues for the need for improved regulatory stability and predictability, given the fact that ten years or more are needed to build the plants, and the plants are expected to operate for 30-40 years or more. With a Commission, major policy changes tend to occur gradually, since turnover among individual Commissioners is staggered. With a single administrator, large changes in policy and direction can occur quite rapidly, often with drastic consequences for the regulated industry.
I think the experiences of recent years with EPA and the Department of the Interior are good examples. One should consider whether this industry, with its particular need for predictability and stability, would be best served by a regulatory system that is subject to wide and rapid fluctuations.
On the subject of the Nuclear Safety Board, I believe that an independent i
safety board is needed to assure that we and the industry learn the crucial l
lessons of operating experience at the plants. Although improvements have been made in recent months in our ability to investigate serious operating events, our capability to seek out and correct the root causes of these l
events is still inadequate. Despite two investigations of the Davis-Besse event last year, including one involving some people from outside the NRC, I
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. i we still do not have a clear understanding of the root causes of that event, including particularly the contributions of management attitudes and practices by the licensee's senior management and the role of the NRC staff in not bringing about effective corrective action early on.
The same is true for the Rancho Seco event last year, which raises even more serious questions about the NRC's past performance in regulating the Babcock and Wilcox reactors.
It is simply not realistic to expect that the NRC will be able to evaluate in a critical and objective manner its own past performance. A Nuclear Safety Board would provide the necessary indepen-dence and objectivity. To avoid the proliferation of advisory groups, I would abolish the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.
In view of the decline in the Commission's licensing caseload anJ the increasing impor-tance of operating experience at the plants, I believe the Commission, the Congress and the public would be better served by adding a Nuclear Safety l
Board and by eliminating the ACRS.
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l Finally, Mr. Chairman, I believe that a statutory Inspector General to 1
police internal agency misconduct would be a benefit.
It would provide much-needed credibility to our internal process for identifying and dealing with employee misconduct, and might improve our somewhat strained relationship with the Department of Justice.
I also see no need for direct Commission control of the functions of such an internal investigative office.
Indeed, the Inspector General system seems to work quite well in the many agencies now subject to this system. Although I support a statutory Inspector General for the NRC, I believe that it, like the
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6 Nuclear Safety Board, becomes essential if the Congress decides to replace the Comission with a single administrator. Thank you.
STATEMENT BY COMMISSIONER JAMES K. ASSELSTINE BEFORE THE S'JBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERIOR AND INSULAR AFFAIRS July 22, 1986 Mr. Chairman, I take a somewhat different view of the four issues being considered by the Subcommittee than does the Commission majority.
Licensing Reform On the subject of licensing reform, although I support legislation to bring about the greater use of standardization in nuclear power plant design and to correct the quality assurance, construction and management problems which have occurred in recent yetes, I cannot support either the Commission's lericiat#ve proposal (H.R.1447) or the preposal submitted by the Department of Energy (H.R. 2488) in their present form.
In my view, these proposals do not go far enough in requiring the development of complete standardized designs, and they contain seriously flawed provisions l
which would undermine current safety standards and unreasonably restrict the public's right to participate in licensing proceedings, The Commission's testimony cites as one of the primary shortcomings of the j
present licensing system a lack of predictability and stability.
I agree.
However, I do not agree with all of the reasons given by the Commission for this lack of predictability and stability.
In my view, the failures of the past can be attributed to five principal factors.
First, the design of the 1
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plants has been far from complete at the time that NRC authorized the start of construction. As a consequence, it has been difficult, if not impos-sible, for the NRC to determine whether the proposed plant meets all regulatory requirements. This means that difficult design questions are deferred to be resolved during the construction period, and there is, thus, the potential for hearings on unresolved plant design issues after the plant has been substantially completed.
Perhaps most important, the licensee must design tY plant as it is being built, an approach that enormously complici..es the construction process.
Second, both the NRC and the nuclear industry have made optimistic assump-i tions about the adequacy of the plant designs and the expected performar a of the plants. Actual operating experience has demonstrated that many of these optimistic assumptions are unsupportable. This has led to changing requirements and the need for safety improvements in the plants.
For l
example, assumptions that key safety components in the plant, such as the primary coolant piping system, the steam generators, and electrical cable, would retain their integrity for the full 40-year operating life of the plant have proven to be unfounded, and licensees are experiencing severe degradation of some of these components within the first ten years or less l
of plant operation, l
l Third, a number of difficult safety issues were deferreo not only until the construction period, but also beyond the start of plant operation because requiring a resolution of the issues would have delayed licensing. As a result, there is a backlog of generic and unresolved issues that must be
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addressed to provide adequate assurance of safety for the remaining operat-ing lives of the existing plants.
Fourth, some utilities have failed to meet their licensing comitments and NRC regulations. This is particularly evident in the plants that have experienced construction quality assurance breakdowns in recent years.
Where the licensee cannot demonstrate that the plant has been built in conformity with its license and NRC regulations the result is a costly and time-consuming corrective program to verify the safety of the as-built plant.
Finally, the NRC has failed to pay sufficient attention to factors that can significantly influence whether the utility meets its license commitments and NRC regulations.
Perhaps the most important of these factors is the experience and competence of the licensee's construction management team.
Despite what the industry characterizes as an overly detailed and pre-j scriptive set of regulatory requirements, the NRC has not set standards for i
licensee management and has not insisted that the utility applicant have in place an experienced and competent management team before authorizing the start of plant construction. Nor has the NRC always been effective in l
identifying quality assurance breakdowns early in the construction process.
Although the two-step licensing process may have been a contributing factor in these past failures, the principal fault lies with the Commission's reactive approach to safety regulation. Unfortunately, neither H.R. 1447 l
nor H.R. 2488 include provisions to address these weaknesses in the l
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Commission's approach to safety. My concerns about the Commission and DOE legislative proposals are described in greater detail below.
Under the Commission's 1983 legislative proposal, which I supported, the provision allowing for the issuance of a combined construction permit and operating license (CP/0L) required the application to contain " sufficient information to support the issuance of both a construction permit and an operating license" in accordance with NRC regulations. The Commission's current legislative proposal has weakened this to require submission merely of " sufficient information to support issuance of a combined construction permit and operating license." The Commission has not explained why a combined CP/0L should require less information than the separately issued CP and OL.
The difficulties presented by this lowered standard are aggravated by the Commission's decision to delete the requirement in our previous bill for a preoperational review of the adequacy of a plant's construction, its readiness for operation, and the sufficiency of the emergency planning measures. The Commission has also declined to commit itself to preoperational reviews of significant safety issues not previously consid-ered. The Commission argues that the inspections, tests, analyses, and acceptance criteria specified in the combined CP/0L will assure the proper construction of the plant and its readiness for operation. This ignores our unfortunate experiences in recent years with the unforseen safety problems and with construction projects which have run into difficulties and have, in some cases, been cancelled.
r The Comission would have done better to stick with its 1983 proposal which required it to make a formal finding that construction had been completed and that the plant would operate in conformity with the combined CP/0L, the Atomic Energy Act and the NRC's regulations.
It is worth noting that in 1983 the Comission recommended that it be required to conduct a supple-mental review, prior to the commencement of operation, of any issues that were not considered in prior reviews of the facility.
I see no basis to support the Comission's change in position on this important safety requirement.
The DOE bill also suffers from this failure to require preoperational reviews of key safety issues by the NRC.
The Comission's 1985 bill would place a very high threshold on the ability of a member of the public to obtain a hearing after the issuance of the combined CP/0L.
In order to designate an issue for a hearing the Comis-sion would have to find that (a) the issue consists of a substantial dispute of fact, (b) resolution of the issue is necessary for the Comis-sion's decision, (c) the issue cannot be resolved with sufficient accuracy except at a hearing, and (d) either (i) the issue was not and could not have been raised and resolved in any prior proceeding for that facility, or (ii) that (1) there has been a nonconformance with the license, (2) such l
l nonconformance has not been corrected, and (3) such nonconformance could materially and adversely affect the safe operation of the plant. The DOE bill imposes a similarly high threshold for public hearings and would l
expressly allow plant startup prior to the completion of hearings on significant safety issues. As a practical matter, this thicket of obsta-cles will make it impossible for people living close to a plant to obtain a l
l
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. b hearing on the issues such as emergency planning, adequacy of plant con-struction and readiness for operation, which are of greatest concern to them.
I am opposed to these new obstacles to state and public participa-tion in our licensing proceedings.
I believe that the smooth operation of the licensing s>3 tem does not require the public's hearing rights to be artificially restricted.
Indeed, I am persuaded that these efforts to limit public involvement will only stimulate opposition to future nuclear power plants.
In addition, I would point out that the combined CP/0L, early site review, and standardized design provisions of the bills contain a statutory limita-tion on backfitting.
Putting aside my reservations about the wisdom of the Commission's proposed backfitting standard (conditioning a backfit on a-showing that it will substantially advance public health and safety by improving overall plant safety), I recommend that the Congress not enact these provisions. As the Commission itself noted when it submitted its 1983 proposal, this is a problem which can be better addressed in the Commissicn's regulations.
The Commission has had relatively little experi-ence with formal backfitting standards.
If this formulation turns out to be unworkable and detrimental to safety, the regulations could be modified relatively easily. A statute would be far more difficult to amend.
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Indeed, the Commission's recent experience with its new backfit rule is already disclosing some serious difficulties with the rule.
For example, the backfit rule as presently formulated may make it impossible for the NRC to require improvements in the ability of U.S. plants to survive a loss of AC power for emergency systems (station blackout) despite the fact that the
1 o o I
NRC staff and other countries view this as one of the most important unresolved safety issues. Similarly, the Commission may well be foreclosed by the backfit rule from bringing its radiological protection regulations into conformity with current technical knowledge and accepted international standards and from adopting any new requirements in the important areas of human performance. The DOE bill would freeze by statute these questionable provisions of the Comission's current backfit rule.
For the foregoing reasons, the Commission and DOE proposals should be redrafted (1) to ensure that plants with combined CP/0L's meet the same safety standards as plants licensed under the present regulatory scheme, and (2) to afford interested states and members of the public an opportu-nity for a hearing prior to plant operation on issues such as emergency planning, adequacy of plant construction, and readiness for operation.
In addition, I believe that a licensing and standardization bill should-include other provisions not found in the Commission and DOE proposals to bring about the greater use of improved standardized designs and to address some of the construction and quality assurance problems which have been identified in recent years. To that end, I would recommend adding provi-sions to the bill to require that future nuclear power plant applications use essentially complete standardized plant designs which incorporate as i
l key design elements greater simplicity, larger margins of safety, and other characteristics that promote more efficient construction, operation, maintenance and reliability. Further, the bill should require that any
[
future design or plant application satisfactorily resolve all existing safety questions, including the unresolved and generic issues prior to the l
\\
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. D issuance of a design approval or authorization of construction.
I would also recommend requiring that future plant applications use a centralized management approach for the construction project with specified check points to assure adequate quality as construction proceeds.
Finally, I would require that the NRC develop standards for utility management and that the utility applicant demonstrate that it has an experienced and competent management team in place before the NRC approves the start of construction.
Such provisions would do much, in my view, to correct the mistakes of the east.
Single Administrator, Safety Board, Inspector General The majority favors the establishment of a single administrator, but with no independent safety review group and with no Inspector General. That would be a very different decisionmaking process than we have today.
Decisions on major policy issues would be made in private without the benefit of the exchange of differing viewpoints and with reduced public involvement or observation. There would be no independent group to serve t
as a check on the industry's and the agency's safety performance, to review operating experience at the plants and to investigate accidents and serious operating events at our licensed facilities. There would be no independent source of advice to the Congress on the current state of nuclear safety and the adequacy of the federal regulatory program. And, unlike virtually every other single-administrator agency in the government, there would be no independent watchdog to police internal agency misconduct. Finally, as I have discussed previously, the majority advocates streamlining the
licensing process for future nuclear powerplants by substituting a discretionary hearing for the present right to a hearing by interested members of the public prior to plant operation. This change would allow the Commission broad discretion to reject hearing requests prior to plant operation on such issues as emergency planning, quality assurance and readiness for operation.
Given the Commission's past reluctance to grant discretionary hearings -- only one has been granted and it ended in the Commission's rejection of all of the NRC technical staff's proposed safety improvements for the plant -- as a practical matter this probably means an end to hearings on these issues of greatest interest to the public. The
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upshot of all this would be a much more closed system, with less debate and public ventilation of nuclear safety issues, with less technical oversight of the agency's and the industry's performance, and with substantially reduced public involvement.
Mr. Chairman, I believe that such a system is fundamentally at odds with the plan envisioned by the Congress in 1954, when it gave the responsibili-ty for nuclear safety regulation to a Commission.
It is worth remembering that the 1954 Act struck an important bargain. The states were preempted from safety regulation of nuclear powerplants. But in return, there was to be an open federal regulatory process. The broad public policy issues I
associated with nuclear regulation were to be considered by a multi-member Commission, composed of individuals with differen; backgrounds, experience, training, and views on the issues. The views of the members of the Commis-sion were to be available not only within the collegial decisionmaking process but also to the Congress and to the public. The public and the
states were to be involved extensively throughout the process, and they were to be given a right to a hearing on each valid safety issue and to have that issue resolved by a group of independent judges separate from the NRC technical staff.
If the Congress intends to restructure the NRC in a manner that will sharply reduce the benefits to the public and the states provided by the 1954 Act, as the majority now recomends, then perhaps it is also time to reconsider the other side of the balance that was struck in 1954. Specifically, it may be appropriate to restore to the states the authority to set and enforce their own safety requirements for the facilities provided that those standards meet or exceed the minimum federal standards.
Mr. Ch51rman, the majority offers several arguments in support of the single administrator form, and I would like to address each one briefly.
First, the majority argues that a single administrator will result in more efficient management and decisionmaking than does the Comission form.
I do r.ot believe this is necessarily the case.
In fact, a comparison of the performance of the NRC with the two other single-administrator agencies with nuclear responsibilities, DOE and EPA, would seem to indicate that the Cormission is at least as efficient in management and decisionmaking. The Comission has been far ahead of EPA, for example, in promulgating its i
technical requirements for high-level radioactive waste disposal, low-level waste disposal and uranium mill tailings.
Similarly, the Comission was able to carry out its responsibilities for the site selection guidelines for the high-level waste repository much faster than was DOE. On the basis of actual experience, I would argue that the Comission form is not l
necessarily more inefficient than the single administrator. Nor do I see, in general, significant delays in Commission decisionmaking. Where delays occur, it is invariably because the issues are complex and the choices are far from clear. Such difficult decisions take time, whether they are being considered by a single administrator or a Commission.
Second, the majority contends that the Commission form is outdated, and is ill-suited to the oversight of 100 operating nuclear powerplants.
Implicit in this statement is the argument that the Commission no longer faces the types of broad public policy issues that benefit from full and open discus-sion by a multi-member group with differing viewpoints.
I do not believe this is the case.
In recent years, the Commission has considered or is in the process of considering a broad range of safety issues, including:
the adequacy of safety at the Indian Point plants; the Commission's severe accident policy; I
l the Commission's requirements for backfitting new safety features on existing plants; the radioactive source term from a severe accident; i
safety goals for assuring the safety adequacy of current and future plants;
i 6 the adequacy of emergency planning requirements; the Commission's confidence that permanent waste disposal facili-ties will be available when needed; the soundness of our enforcement policy; and reactor decommissioning.
Each of these is a major policy issue that is particularly well-suited to consideration by a multi-member Commission, and I expect that we will cor.tinue to be faced with such issues in the future.
Although I am sure that the NRC would benefit from greater management attention in the oversight of the 100 operating plants, I believe that this can be readily accomplished with the Commission form.
For example, there is nothing to prohibit the Chairman from taking a more activ'e and direct role in assuring that the NRC staff carries out the regulatory policies established by the Commission.
I believe that Chairman Zech is taking a much more active management role of the staff as Chairman, and I strongly support that.
So long as he does not attempt to alter Commission policy or make policy decisions on his own, there is nothing to prevent the Chairman from taking a more active role in the day-to-day management of the staff.
Indeed, such an approach provides for improved management oversight while at the same time retaining the benefits of Commission consideration of the broad public policy issues that routinely come before this agency.
I might
. 6 add that no additional legislation is needed for the Chairman to carry out this management role. Taking this approach, in my view, is preferable to replacing the Commission form with a single administrator.
The remaining two reasons given by the majority in support of the single administratcr are more troubling to me. The majority argues that existence of differing Commission views on the issues can confuse the staff and the public, and the majority objects to being required to hold its deliberations in public, as equired by the Government in the Sunshine Act.
I should note that the latter objection goes beyond previous Comission statements in favor of some limited authority to hold private discussions to exchange preliminary thoughts on issues before the Commission.
I am not impressed by either of these arguments.
I believe that the Congress and the public benefit from hearing different views and perspectives on the i
significant policy issues before the Commission.
Rather than confusing the public and the staff, they assure that different viewpoints are heard and considered. As for the Sunshine Act, whatever the merits of some limited preliminary discussions in private, the actual debate on the principal safety issues facing the NRC should take place in public. Why should the l
states, that have been preempted from setting safety standards for nuclear reactors, also be preempted from the Federal deliberative process for setting safety standards or for assessing the public health and safety l
significance of operating events and accidents? To give just one example, in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, the public is most concerned with whether we can expect to see a core meltdown in the United States in the foreseeable future, what the chances are that such an accident could
lead to large offsite releases of radiation, whethe.' the Comission views the present level of risk to be acceptable, and if not, what we are doing to reduce it. These are the kinds of issues that the Commission should address openly and in a public forum.
Mr. Chairman, I also do not believe that a single administrator form is in the industry's best interests. The industry continually argues for the need for improved regulatory stability and predictability, given the fact that ten years or more are needed to build the plants, and the plants are expected to operate for 30-40 years or more. With a Commission, major
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policy changes tend to occur gradually, since turnover among individual Commissioners is staggered. With a single administrator, large changes in policy and direction can occur quite rapidly, often with drastic consequences for the regulated industry.
I think the experiences of recent years with EPA and the Department of the Interior are good examples. One should consider whether this industry, with its particular need for predictability and stability, would be best served by a regulatory system that is subject to wide and rapid fluctuations.
On the subject of the Nuclear Safety Board, I believe that an independent safety board is needed to assure that we and the industry learn the crucial l
lessons of operating experience at the plants. Although improvements have I.
been made in recent months in our ability to investigate serious operating events, our capability to seek out and correct the root causes of these events is still inadequate. Despite two investigations of the Davis-Besse j
l event last year, including one involving some people from outside the NRC, 1
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we still do not have a clear understanding of the root causes of that event, including particularly the contributions of management attitudes and practices by the licensee's senior management and the role of the NRC staff in not bringing about effective corrective action early on. The same is true for the Rancho Seco event last year, which raises even more serious questions about the NRC's past performance in regulating the Babcock and Wilcox reactors.
It is simply not realistic to expect that the NRC will be able to evaluate in a critical and objective manner its own past performance. A Nuclear Safety Board would provide the necessary indepen-dence and objectivity. To avoid the proliferation of advisory groups, I would abolish the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.
In view of the decline in the Commission's licensing caseload and the increasing impor-tance of operating experience at the plants, I believe the Commission, the Congress and the public would be better served by adding a Nuclear Safety Board and by eliminating the ACRS.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I believe that a statutory Inspector General to police internal agency misconduct would be a benefit.
It would provide much-needed credibility to our internal process for identifying and dealing with employee misconduct, and might improve our somewhat strained relationship with the Department of Justice.
I also see no need for direct Commission control of the functions of such an internal investigative office.
Indeed, the Inspector General system seems to work quite well in the many agencies now subject to this system. Although I support a statutory Inspector General for the NRC, I believe that it, like the
Nuclear Safety Board, becomes essential if the Congress decides to replace the Commission with a single administrator. Thank you.
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