ML20212E255
| ML20212E255 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 02/25/1987 |
| From: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 8703040303 | |
| Download: ML20212E255 (92) | |
Text
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~4 ORIGINAL UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
ariefing on national Academy of sciences Report:
" Revitalizing Nuclear Safety Research" (Public Meeting)
Location:
Washington, D.
C.
Date:
Wednesday, February 25, 1987 Pages:
1 - 88 Ann Riley & Associates Court Reporters 1625 i Street, N.W., Suite 921
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Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 000 Yojjj B7022s PT9.7 PDR
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D I S C L.A I MER 2
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4 5
6 This is an unofficial transcript of a meeting of the 7.
United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission held on a
2/25/87 In the Commission's office at 1717 H Street, 9
' N. tJ., Washington, D.C.
The meeting was open to public 10 attendance and observation.
This transcript has not been
'11 reviewed, corrected, or edited, and it may contain f'.
12 inaccuracies.
(
13 The transcript is intended solely for general 14 informational purposes.
As provided by 10 CFR 9.103, it is 15 not part of the formal or informal record of decision of the 16 matters discussed.
Expressions of opinion in this transcript 17 do not necessarily reflect final determination or beliefs.
No 18 pleading or other paper may be filed with the Commission in
't9 any proceeding as the result of or addressed to any statement 20 or argument contained herein, except as the Commission may 21 authorize.
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1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3
i 4
BRIEFING ON NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES REPORT:
5
" REVITALIZING NUCLEAR SAFETY RESEARCH" 6
^
7 PUBLIC MEETING 8
9 Nuclear Regulatory Commission 10 Room 1130 11 1717~H Street, Northwest.
12 Washington, D.C.
13 14 Wednesday, February 25, 1987 15 16 The Commission met in open session, pursuant to 17 notice, at 2:02 o' clock, p.m., the Honorable LANDO W.
- ZECH, 18 Chairman of the Commission, presiding.
19 COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
l 20 LANDO W.
- ZECH, Chairman of the Commission 21 THOMAS M. ROBERTS, Member of the Commission 22 JAMES K. ASSELSTINE, Member of the Commission 23 FREDERICK M. BERNTHAL, Member of the Commission 24 KENNETH M.
CARR, Member of the Commission l ',
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-1 STAFF ~AND PRESENTERS' SEATED AT THE COMMISSION TABLE:-
-2 3
S.
CHILK 4
.W.
PARLER 5
H. KENDRICK 6
A.'ROISMAN 7
R.
FROSCH
~8 T. GREENWOOD 9
J. AHEARNE
. 10 L. McCRAY.
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 l-20 21 22 23 24 25 l
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2 (2:02 p.m.]
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- CHAIRMAN ZECH
- . Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
4 This. afternoon, the Commission will be-briefed by
~5 members of the National Research Council's Committee on 6'
Nucl' ear Safety Research.
The-Committee on~ Nuclear Safety 7
Research was formed in response to a request from the NRC to 8
conduct an independent one-year. study on the future role of 9
the NRC's Regulatory Research Program.
10 The committee was asked to develop fundamental 11 principles of nuclear safety research, based upon'several
, questions concerning future needs, mechanisms for. meeting 13 those needs, who should fund the research, and the type of.
'14
-research that should be done.
These issues and others raised 15 by former Chairman Palladino were the initial focus of the 16 Committee.
17 It is my understanding that Dr. Frosch, Vice 18 President of General Motors Corporation and Chairman of the 19 Committee on Nuclear Safety Research will be the principal 20 speaker here today, presenting the Committee's findings and 21 recommendations.
22 He has his colleagues with him, and I will ask him 23 to introduce them, as the time is appropriate, if you would,
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24 sir.
l 25 Today's meeting is an information briefing, and no i
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oformal Commission action is required today.
I greatly 2
appreciate,-Dr. Frosch, you being here with your colleagues 3
and the effort you have put into-this very important and 4-valuable report.
Do any of my fellow Commissioners have' opening 5-
- j 6' '
comments before we proceed?
' '7 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
Maybe just a quick one, 8
Lando.
~
/
9 We received, I guess it was late yesterday, the 10 Staff's response to your report, and I was just thinking --
11 I've only had just a limited opportunity to skim through it, 12 but my thought was, it might be useful after this meeting to l'
13 give Dr. Frosch and his colleagues a copy of the Staff's 14 response and any comments that they'd like to provide us would 15 be greatly appreciated.
16 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
I think that's a very good l'7 suggestion.
And it's true that we just got it late yesterday.
[.
l 18 We had a busy day yesterday, as you may know.
l 19
[ Laughter.]
20 So none of us have had a chance to certainly go over l
21 it very thoroughly, and I think that would be an excellent <
22 suggestion.
23 I was going to mention, too, to the Staff, that we l
24 haven't had a chance to -- we had an earlier version of what 25 you're going to do, the Staff comment outline report.
f e s 5
1-Commissioner Bernthal responded-to-that, and so I might ask 2:
th'e Staff'right now-that later on, I think that we'll need 3
perhaps some mechanism to discuss with our-Staff the-action 4
the Commission wishes to take to make sure we follow through
-5
.on some'of these actions.
But perhaps we should go on.with-6 today's meeting before we get into that any more specifically.
7
'Are there any other comments?
8-(No response.~]
9-CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Dr. Frosch, would you proceed?
10 MR. FROSCH:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It's a 11-pleasure for us to appear and to tell you a litcle bit about 12 the report", which, of course, you've had an opportunity to 13 look at yourselves and to be prepared to answer some questions, 14 as may be appropriate.
15 I would suggest that I ask my colleagues to introduce 16 themselves briefly.
That may be the best way to begin.
17 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Thank you.
l
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18 MR. KENDRICK:
My name is Dr. Hugh Kendrick.
I am 19 the Deputy Chief Operating Officer of Science Applications 20 International Corporation.
I 21 MR. ROISMAN:
My name is Anthony Z. Roisman, and I'm l
l.
22 Executive Director of Trial Lawyers for Public Justice.
23 MR. GREENWOOD:
I'm Ted Greenwood, Associate 24-Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.
25 MR. AHEARNE:
John Ahearne, concerned citizen and
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Vice President of Resources for the Future.
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2
.MR. McCRAY:.
.I'm Larry McCray.
I'm on the~ staff of
-3 the-National ~. Academy of Sciences.-
~
-4 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Thank you very much.
5 MR. FROSCH:
Mr. Chairman, this is a group of 6
members'of the Committee.
There are a number of members of 7
the Committee who could not be here today, but we, I think, 8
-feel generally that we can fairly represent the body of the 9
Committee, and if it turns out that we have not done so, both 110 ~
you and we will no doubt hear from them.
11 (Laughter.)
12 An important member was unable to be here today.
That's Steve Blush, who was our Chief Staff Member from the 13 14 National Research Council.
He's engaged in some problems with 15 the DOE at Savannah River, of which you also may have heard.
16 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
You guys have all the fun.
17 MR. FROSCH:
Yes.
'18
[ Laughter.]
19 I thought I would say a few brief remarks, not in an 20 attempt to outline in depth the contents of the report, which 21 is fairly short and which is before you, but to try and 22 emphasize certain things which are in it, which were the 23 things that we felt were most important to comment on, and I 24 hope my colleagues will follow on with anything they think 25 I've omitted or emphasized incorrectly.
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?I think the tone of our conclusion is that:there are A
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2 matters in connection with the doing of research,.there-are 3
matters of style,. communications, and good practice in the
-4 commissioning and doing of research, which we think should be 5
emphasized more in the' conduct of the Commission's research 4
6 program than has been the case generally in the past.
7 It is certainly our conclusion that a continued 8
research program is of importance to continuing to ensure and 9
improve the safety of commercial nuclear reactors.
And I must 10 emphasize that, while the original request to us could have i
11 been interpreted as being broader than commercial power 12 reactors, we concluded that in the time and the nature of 13 effort we could expend, that we would restrict ourselves to 14 that set of questions.
15 Furthermore, we found ourselves forced to interpret 16 the term "research" rather broadly, so that when we are saying 17 "research," we do not mean solely what is usually referred to 18 as basic research or fundamental research.
We include that; 19 we include applied research, and we include development and 4
20 those~ aspects of the application of technical knowledge that 21 comes out of research and development.
So we mean that in a 4
22 rather broad sense and have so defined it explicitly in the 23 report.
24 It is our conclusion that research must be continued 25 for the reason I just gave, and that it is particularly
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.importantLfor the commission to.be able to-have access to and
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to use the talents of a rather broad research community, 3
whereas in the past it has perhaps leaned expressly only on a
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4-part of that community.
And I will come back to that-in'a 5
minute.
6 We paid some attention to the question of general 2
7 principles to' assist in deciding who'is to carry out the 8
research and who pays for the research.
We split those and,.
9 in fact, had some finer discrimination among who pays for it, 10 who does it, who sets the agenda for it, and that's described 11' in the report.
12 And I think the general principle upon which we 13 built our conclusions was that it is possible to decide in 14 particular cases who the principal beneficiary or beneficiaries 15 of the research may be.
In some cases, the beneficiaries are 16 private interests, the utilities or the. reactor owners or 17 developers themselves, in the sense that what is at stake is 18 their economic good or their ability to produce power and sell 19 it or, in fact, their ability to come before this Commission 20 and defend what they're doing or to protect their future.
-21 In other cases, what is principally or partly at 22 stake is the public good in the sense that the issue at
-23 question is the protection of the public, and it may be quite 24 unclear as to whether there is any economic or other value in 25 it for the utility, thought of for the moment as being separate
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11 from the public'.
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2 Land so building upon that principle, a set of more H
3 detailed principles are laid out in the report.
4 This has the consequence that_it is our view that' 5-the industry, the nuclear power industry, probably should have 6
the responsibility for more of the.research, both in terms off 7
paying for it and conducting it, than has been the case in the 8
past, because we see a number of. situations in which it is to 9-their benefit.
But it is also clear that this is not an
- l'0 easily separable set of cases, and many of the cases we 11 thought about were obviously mixed in which there is both 12 public and private good, so we could not make a-general rule 13 that says, "X percent should be one way and Y percent the 14 other way."
It really depends on the situation.
15 With regard to the question of the practices for
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16 conducting research, the overlying principle, the strong 17 principle from which the other things follow, is the principle 4
18 that it is sensible to use the best possible people and j
facilities available to do the research, wherever they may be 19 20 found.
21 It appears to have been the practice in the past to 22 lean most strongly on the National Laboratories for a variety 23 of reasons, but we certainly believe that that has been too restrictive a practice, not that we are certain what the 24 j - N.
25 distribution over the set of possible performers ought to be,
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but only-that we are certain that it has been a restrictive
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12 practice, and we would urge you to'try and find other a
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. performers who may also be competent, including in particular 4
the universities and private firms and private and public 5
-institutions in addition to the National Laboratories.
6 This has some bureaucratic difficulties from time to 7
time, but we think it is essential to. overcome them, so that
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8 the Commission can be certain it is having access to the best f
9 possible scientific and engineering community for its research.
10 A corollary of that is the requirement that the 11 procedures for obtaining research be such that you have some 12 independent and, we believe, external checks on the quality 13 and integrity of the research results, so that it be certain 14 that they are not accidentally or even purposely biased, and 15 that the quality of the work is of the highest and its 16 integrity is the highest.
17 And there are standard means for assuring this, 18 which are used in the research community generally.
The 19 include open public publication in technical journals, in 20 which technical work is reviewed and refereed.
This is 21 certainly appropriate for portions of the research.
It may 22 not be appropriate for others.
23 The use of peer review processes, both to some 24 degree in selecting the performers and to a greater degree in 25 examining the integrity of the results, and the use of outside
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' advice,Jnot either from the staff or the Commission _itself, f
2 but able to view the process with some external objectivity,
-3 in order to both comment on the results and the techniques and 4
-methodologies that have been used and on the question of 75 whether there are other performers who ought to be. involved.
6 This brings us to the question of how the agenda for 7
research is to be set, and this, it seems to us, must 8
importantly be done by a dialogue among those who will be the 9
eventual users of the research, which clearly includes the 10 Commission itself as a user who has to use the results in 11 order to do its regulatory task, but also the industry, which 12 will have to use it to build its further safety systems and-13 principles, and this, in itself, suggests that there should be 14 outside dialogue, dialogue with outsiders from the Commission 15 with regard to setting this agenda, and this again emphasizes 16 one of the possible uses of a suitable outside advisory group, 17 who can bring an external and, in some ways perhaps, more 18 objective perspective to the question of what it is that needs i
19 to be done.
20 All of this suggests to us -- and our dialogue with
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l 21 members of this Commission, with members of the Staff, with
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22 people from industry and other observers -- it suggests to us 23 that a far better internal system of communication with regard 24 to research, research needs, and research results needs to be 25 put into place by the Commission.
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fl 12-This.is~not to say that all of the research should 1
Jp-2 be directly and immediately responsive to what the users of
^3' research sayLthey need now.
That would simply make the 4
research too short-term in nature and make it impossible for 5
it to anticipate possible future'needs.
It is in the nature-6 of operations that one worries about now much more strongly:
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7 than then,-and it is one of the tasks of research to keep 8
reminding everyone about then and about things that we must
-9 learn in order to do things in the future, but a dialogue 10 between the users and the doers of research and those who 11 commission the research to-be done is very important.
12 The writing of memoranda and reports back and forth 13 is a way of noting formally what is to be done, but it is not 14 a good substitute for a dialogue, and it is our impression 15.
that there has been far too little direct and continuing 16 conversation over what's going to happen on the regulatory 17 side, wh'at might happen on the research and knowledge side, 18 and how the two really ought to influence each other.
19 So we would urge that as perhaps a stylistic matter 20 for the Staff and indeed for the commission.
21 This may be described as using the research problem 22 as a way of finding -- testing some procedures for getting 23 good communication internal to your system, which may have i
24 some general value as well.
25 It seems to us very important with regard to
3-13
=1 defending the research program, and when I say " defending," I 1
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mean the normal U.S. Government problem of defending it before 1
3 the office of Management and~ Budget and then defending it 4
before the Congress, so that the resources that are required 5
to be there to carry out the program really can be made 6
available, and.it seems important that the research program be 7
the Commission's program and it is our impression that in the 8
past, it must_have appearad to OMB and the Congress that it 9
was the program of a piece of the staff of the Commission and 10 several of us have had sufficient experience where we are 11 aware of the way in which that appears on Capitol Hill and the 12 White House.
13 We would urge in particular that the Chairman might 14 take the leadership of-the defense of the research program, as i
15 I presume, sir, you must, with regard to other parts of the 16 program, and that implies that, of course, you and the 17 Commissioners in general will have to take a closer role in 18 seeing what that program is and understanding it and being 19 prepared to carry it forward.
i 20 Finally, we have some comments or some questions l
21 with regard to the structure of the Commission and that was 22 really raised by these questions of communications, where it 23 was difficult for us to always understand how it was that the 24 Commission could function in a communicative way among the
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25 Cormissioners and with the staff, but that of course, touches
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1 uponLissues which are in the lap of the congress rather than
- .y l2 anything that can be done -very easily administratively.-
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We have a'section in which we discuss.a number of 4
particular research topics, some of which we list as having 5
had, we believe, inadequate attention in the past.
Some of 6
which we' list as having had attention but we urge continuing 1
7 attention.
8 The one that has struck me at any rate of.perhaps 9
the most salient interest is the matter of the question of 10 human performance questions.
These are matters of research' 11 and it appears clearly that difficulties have arisen nearly 12 always in the past because of inadequate human performance in 13 a situation in which the technology to provide the information 14 on what the problems might be and how to deal with them was 15 not well matched to the people and their capabilities and 16 training.
17 This is a subject which is in fact a technical 18 subject and has been studied extensively in areas like aircraft
.19 control and a good deal is known, but we think it important 20 that it be studied specifically within the context of nuclear l'
21 reactor control and safety, and there are a number of other 22 issues of materials, thermal hydraulics and so on, that are 23 listed in the report that we could address if you were i
1 24 specifically interested.
s-25 I think with that, I have covered the principal t
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1 things-that I believe were on~our minds.
I.would ask'if my 2
colleagues would like to add or correct someEof my comments.
3 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Please, does anybody;have anything 4
to add?
- 5 (No response.]
6
-MR. FROSCH:
If not, I think we are ready to answer 7'
questions.
8 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Fine.
Let me ask my colleagues.
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s 9
first for their questions but-I would make a quick comment.
10 To all of you, we thank you for what I think is a very valuable 11 report and I certainly an in general agreement with your 12 comments.
I think it was an NRC initiated event.
I think I can say that certainly most all the Commissioners felt there 13 l
14 was a need for someone to take a good hard look at our research 15 program.
16 As you know and when you reviewed it, I'm sure you 17 recognized that between 1981 and 1987, I think, our research 18 program in dollars has been reduced by 50 percent, which is 19 rather significant as far as I'm concerned.
As you probably 20 know, this past year, we were able to increase the research 21 budget more than any other area in a rather difficult financial 22 climate.
You probably know also that we were able to convince 23 OMB that it was a proper budget so that we were able to go to 24 Congress with the OMB approved budget across the board, 25 including research.
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- That was something that-has helped us so far in our 7
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excursions to the Hill.
I will ask for comments from my fellow-Commissioners 3
4 and have other comments in a few moments.
Commissioner 5
Roberts?
6 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
I just got the staff response 7
ten minutes ago.
I'm not prepared.
I'm sorry.
8 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Commissioner Asselstina?
9 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
Let me start this by lo
-saying that.I agree very much with your comments.
I thought 11 this was a'very informative and useful report, quite critical, 12
.and I think appropriately so.
I thought many if not most of 13 your suggestions were very, very helpful and right on the 14 mark.
I will leave aside the simple administrator question as 15 a separate matter.
16 Just to ask a couple of questions, if I could.
One 17 of your recommendations was that the industry should do more 18 of the research work.
How do you guard against the situation 19 that I think we saw particularly in early years of this 20 program against research work that was offered in support of' 21 industry positions or applications that really wasn't based 22 upon very realistic assumptions?
I had in mind some of the 23 early. work that was done by some of the reactor vendors that 24 failed to account for or recognize the kind of real world s
25 situations that you see in the plants, water chemistry
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problems, for example, where research work was done with pure
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i-2 water, and it just didn't have any relation to the kinds of 3
situations that actually would exist in the plants.
-4 If we should be willing or inclined to defer more to 5
the industry in terms of actually conducting the research work 6
as opposed to finding some mechanism for paying for the 7
upgraded portion of the work, how do you guard against those 8
kinds of things?
9 MR. FROSCH:
I would say the usual way in which one 10 guards against such a problem in a research program is by 11 having a balance of critical forces, that is to say one should 12 not be in the position of having to either accept or reject a 13 report or a set of results on the face of it but rather they 14 should have a system in which that report and that technology 15 has to stand up against criticism and critical discussion by 16 other people who know about the subject who come perhaps 17 equipped with other reasons for bias, other reasons for having 18 a particular view.
19 That's why a publication can be important, if it is 20 appropriate for technical publication.
The example'you gave l
21 sounds as if it would be appropriate for an engineering 22 publication.
That's one of the reasons we discussed an 23 outside advisory group which would assist in commenting on 24 that and in general, having a structure in which people not 25 only have to produce results but they have to defend them in s
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18 1-technical discussion.
That is the best assurance that the-M 2'
kind of problem you described doesn't happen.
3 MR. ROISMAN:
I think one of the keys to it is 4'
really in the phrase that you used, "to delegate."
I:think-it 5
is a true delegation, with the decision making made at the 6
Commission level, using the kind of broad solicitation of 7
. views.to set the agenda, define the particular research and 8
then you discover that say in one of the vendor companies, you-9 think the best research talent exists, and if you delegate and 10 exercise substantial control, if the research office has the 111
. capacity to truly oversee the research, not merely to review 12 the results, then you can have the capacity to do that.
13 In the alternative, of course, if you feel it is so i
14 sensitive or that there is such a potential for divergence on 15 virtually every point, but you don't feel the project should 16 be funded by the Government's funds, use some of the 17 commission's authority to receive the funding from the 18 particular beneficiaries in question and conduct the research 19 directly under the Commission's control.
20 Even now, the Office of Research does very little direct research.
Everything is delegated to somebody else.
21 22 It is just a question of whether to exercise loose control or 23 tight cont!!ol.
The example you gave sounds as though while it l
24 may have originated out of the industry, they came to the i N 25 commission and said we completed some research work and it t
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proves that such and such would be okay, that is the kind of
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2 research that we think is the least desirable and we would 3
- prefer.to see agenda setting up front and the Commission 4
letting the. user community know, here are the places where we 5
really need research.- It doesn't rule out them doing some 6
that you didn't list, but it makes clear that what you did 7
list and gave priority to, you are laying down the agenda.
8 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Let me piggyback the thought 9
here.
I don't want to get into a broad discussion of the
- 10 philosophical merits or demerits of the user fee concept that
~
11 is being thrashed around a lot these days.
12 From the standpoint of reviewing research programs 13 and our program and the integrity of that program, do you have 14 any concern in that regard, that for example, if we discovered 15 that water chemistry was a problem, and using our powers, as 16 you say, we decide that we shall spend $25 million on water 17 chemistry research and forthwith tax the industry, so to 18 speak, to pay for that research, leaving aside the 19 institutional questions and whether we really have that power, 20 are there any concerns that raises in your mind as to the 21 beneficiaries, the ultimate beneficiaries of that kind of 22 arrangement or are you not troubled at all by that sort of 23 scenario?
24 MR. ROISMAN:
I think in terms of the ultimate 25 beneficiaries, the assumption is that you pick that because
6
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-1 you think it is an important question to have answered for the m.
-2 functions that the Commission is carrying'out.
In that case, 3
the beneficiaries are all of us.
Essentially, the all of us 4
who-will benefit the most is~ going to be those who have the 5
greatest potential benefit from the nuclear power use and the 6
greatest risk from its use, and that means if it is a vendor 7
who you are taxing, the vendor will tack it on to the price of 8
the product, the product will-and up costing more to the 9
utility, the utility will charge more to its customers.
10 It will be a more select group of users who are 11 ultimately, going to pay for that, then if you took it out of 12 Federal tax dollars or someone who is not a beneficiary in 13 that literal sense that is involved.
14 I think you are really choosing in a sense between 15 those two options.
You are either going to fund it out of the.
16 general fund or you are going to fund it in some way or 17 another out of a fund that goes more directly to electric 18 users and probably nuclear power electric users.
19 MR. FROSCH:
But in fact, that could be a mixed case 20 in the sense that the Commission might have on its mind some 21 questions of radiation safety that come with pollutants in the 22 water chemistry and from that point of view, regard it as a 23 public safat'y kind of issue, but it could also be mixed with 24 the question of the corrosion of piping, which might be an N
25 economic issue and one could very well decide this was a cost
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shared kind of item and negotiate'it as one.in which part of p.
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-it is paid from public funds directly and partLof it is paid
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-3 by the utility, but from the point of view of the integrity of 4
the research, fit is my experience that is less connected with 5
the question of who paid for it and.who commissioned it"then 6
-it is with the question of whether the process and the 7
methodology was one which was open, criticized and critical.
8 That is, the fact that someone was the beneficiary 9
and did the research is something that raises a legitimate lo question in your mind, but one can be comforted against that 11 question if there are other parties who don't share that 12 potential conflict of interest, who are competent and who have 13 been critically involved in what were the assumptions about 14 the quality of the water and the water chemistry and so on.
15 You get that kind of dialogue.
16 I have to comment that I have seen at least as many 17 problems with conflict of interest that did not involve money l
but did involve prior expressed opinion or. prior views or a 18 l
19 commitment to the theory of the universe as I have with 20 problems that came because somebody was directly defending the 21 pocketbook.
It comes'in both flavors.
You can be damaged by 22 both kinds.
Having the possibilities on the table and having 23 cri'tical technical review by competent people seems to be a 24 tremendous help in getting it all straight.
25 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
You are not concerned about w-*-er---*ed-y p w wwdww-w+wr-ev-w e-y wvy my,w w wwv vy r p uym. w g ypyqm weep.--&mv.--w,r-u--en.w-v,ww,--w-we----me m,.-----we.emw_
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.the scenario of empire building _within the Federal agency that (N.
L 2
-decrees that the research shall be done, that'it is important?
3 I guess ultimately Congress, to the extent that it can in such 4
circumstances,.is the peer reviewer.
5 MR. FROSCH:
Ted, you-might want to comment.- We 15 were certainly concerned with that as a possibility.
7 MR. GREENWOOD:
I would raise two. matters of 8
concern.
I do have some concerns.
I thinP tre all do to some 9-extent. I would flag two kinds of concerns.
One is that as a 10 general matter, one could argue, I think, to great 11 effectiveness that the cost of regulating an industry should 12 be internalized within the cost of doing business of that 13 industry, and a user fee is one way of doing that.
14 It does raise a variety of questions not the least 15 of which is that when you have an industry like the nuclear 16 power industry which is, in fact, only a segment of a larger 17 industry, which is the electric utility generating industry, 18 there is the question of equity and how you treat different 19 components of that industry which compete among themselves, so 20 that while one might argue that that should be done uniformly 21 across the entire electric power industry, it becomes a little 22 more troublesome if you say, well, I will only do it in some 23 sector of that industry because then you are forcing that 24 sector to internalize costs which perhaps are not being
(
25 internalized by a different sector.
< ~ '
)
23 1
-The way'we divide up the governmental oversight of
-(mn 2
the electric power industry makes that somewhat troublesome.
3 So that is one concern which perhaps would be handleable but 4
would need to'be~ addressed.
5 The second is the one I think you were raising about 15 -
putting the authority or the power in a government agency 7/
. simply to command that people do what the agency wants and 8
then force someone else to pay for it in a way which would 9
seem, perhaps, and would perhaps even avoid any kind of 10
. oversight or responsibility.
That is risk, no question.
11 One would have to, I think, build safeguards into 12 the process, and-among the kinds of safeguards that we have 13 thought about and written about here would be adviaory.
14 committees in which you would bring members of the regulated 15 industry into the decision-making, if not de jure, at least de 16 facto, although it could be done in both ways or some mix of 17 the two, so that the decision-making authority as to what gets 18 done and how much it should cost and what is, in fact, cost
-19 effective and what is not at least gets in part aired among 20 the entire community, and perhaps the responsibility for 21 decision making even gets shared to some extent.
22 MR. ROISMAN:
I wanted to say just one thing on the 23 empire building.
The power is already here.
In fact, I am 24 sure you must hear this from the utilities all the time.
When s
25 the Commission sneezes, the industry gets pneumonia.
I mean
. ~. -
1; 24 1
.all you'aiready have-to do.iis to say that until we know the W
~
answers to the following four questions, nothing gets licensed, 4
2 3.
and that is as'much as an empire as you could ever build by
'4 imposing a tax.
5 That_ power is there now, and sometimes you do 6
. exercise it.
Post-TMI is a classic example.
You basically 7
said we are putting a stop to everything right now.
We have 8
got a whole bunch of things we need answers to.-
And to the 9
extent the industry wanted to hasten that decision, they did 10 the research and they came to you, and if you didn't like what 11 you saw, then they had to wait longer.
I am sure that when 12 they were doing that, they were in here asking the Staff and
{
the Commissioners as they could to give them guidance and 13 14 saying what do you want, how do we answer these questions for 15 you, we are ready to get back into the licensing business.
16 So the empire is built, you are that empire, and we 17 are just talking about another mechanism by which you can j
18 exercise that power if you choose to do so.
19 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Okay.
My colleagues have j
'20 been very indulgent.
21 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
I guess my next question 22 had to do with peer review.
'I thought your comments in the j
23 peer review area, both today and also in the report, were 24 right on the mark.
They seem to be very consistent to the 4
N.
25 comments that we heard from the American Physical Society a
i
\\
25 1
couple of years ago on'the source term work.
/~%
'O
-2' My question-is are there.any particular obstacles 3
.that you see in this field or this area or impediments to a 4-much more expanded use of. peer review that would provide some 5
independent assessment of the integrity and the effectiveness 6
of the research work and the reliability of the.research 7
results?
I would say as a backdrop to that that when many of 8
us picked up on the APS concerns a couple of years ago, we did 9-hear some response from the Staff about, well, but this area 10 is somehow different and it is more difficult to get the kind 11 of peer review in this area than is achievable, perhaps, in 12 other areas.
13 It is more difficult to obtain some independent 14 validation of these very sophisticated and complex computer 15 codes, for example, or some of these other research results.
16 I vould be interested in your reactions.
Is this an area that i
17 is jnst much more difficult to do peer review in or is it that i
18 we just haven't tried enough?
19 MR. FROSCH:
Let me begin by commenting that peer f
20 review is a slightly ambiguous term that is used for two 21 different things.
One is for peer reviewing of proposals 22 before they are carried out, and the other is for the peer 23 review of the results of the processes by which the research 24 was done.
I think we are emphasizing the latter rather more
(_
.25 than the former.
We are not nearly so concerned about how are
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26 1
.the performers chosen, except.we would like'it more broad, as m
2-we are about the question of how is the work reviewed 3
afterwardsr how do you. know it is good work?
4 It is a very complicated subject, but most of the n
5 subjects that have public peer review are very complicated-6 subjects, and there are other areas in which there are 7
extraordinarily complex _ computer codes, which are the essence 8
of'the work, and nonetheless people find ways of validating or I
9.
invalidating them and of peer reviewing them.
10-For example, it is not the case that-the only.way to 11 review the validity of a computer code is to review it line by 12 line.
That, in fact, may be the worst and most cumbersome way 13 to do it.
It may be much more sensible for somebody to pose 14 some questions which exercise the code but the answers to i
i-15' which are known as a way of validating it.
16 It may be that the peer reviewer can't read the 17 paper and say, hey, that is really all right.
What the peer l
18 reviewer does is read it and say, you know, it is very 19 difficult to know if this is'all right, but in order to check i
l 20 it, I propose that somebody do the following thing, and then 21 it will be up to the Staff or the commission to decide whether 22 their concern over the integrity of the result is sufficiently 23 great that they want to go to that trouble and expense to do 24 it.
t 25 There are lots of ways to arrange the thing.
The i
= -
27 s.
1 key point is that there be critique from people who are not so A
directly' involved but who are competent in the field in 2
'3
- question.or in related fields, and that you then have an 4
opportunity to decide whether you want to do something'about 5
that critique in order to assure yourselves of the integrity.
C John, did you want to comment?
7 MR. AHEARME:
Jim, a couple of comments.
There are 8
problems doing peer review in any complex field, and let me 9
just mention a couple of them and then you can assess whether 4
10 or not that means it is particularly difficult here.
One is a
- 11 good peer-review takes time.
When the research is finished, 12 the product is completed, to do a peer review of it does add a-f^'
13 time element to it.
14 Now, whether or not that should be reviewed as an 15 overwhelming obstacle is your own judgment.
My conclusion is 16 it isn't because usually a complex piece of work has taken 17 time to do anyway, but that is one objection that is frequently j
18 raised.
i 19 A second is that whereas some articles, things that i
20 are typically submitted to journals, for example, many times 21 are peer reviewed sort of out of professional courtesy and 22 there is a board that goes through this, some of the types of 23 research that the NRC does are sufficiently complex that you i
24 may have to pay the peer reviewers.
We mention that in the
?
(_.
25 report.
That is something that one would have to face 1
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28 1
directly.
q!
A third'is.the question of objectivity.
Many places 3
. peer review is done anonymously,-and one of the reasons for 4-that is to guarantee that.the critical ~ comments that come 5-through the peer review when returned to the producer of the 6-research don't lead to personal animosity and antagonism being 7
generated.
'8 As we all know, in the arena that the NRC operates, 9
personal animosity is not foreign, and in fact at times it is 10.
quite frequent.
That is anathema to good, competent peer 11 review. The hallmark of it is its objectivity.
An objective 12 review comes up with here is what the reviewer has concluded 13 about that piece of research.
14 Now, if the reviewer says this is lousy work, one 15 shouldn't turn around and dump on the reviewer.
Maintaining 16 that objectivity is very important.
Once you go into a 17 process of committing to peer review, it will be rapidly seen 18 by the community of people who are able to do review as to 19 whether you are committed to the process because it has a 20-value or committed to it because it is a process.
21 MR. FROSCH:
I would like to add the comment that 22 sometimes one can do something about the time problem.
If 23 there is a standing body of consultants or advisers, one can i
l 24 involve prospective peer reviewers earlier in the process than l 's. '
25 at the very and, so that they are external to it but commenting
.e.
J'-
29 1.
on it from the beginning, and either they or others become the 4
h' U
2.
final' peer reviewers.
3 In that way you can have a body of people, somet'ines 4
a body of people who initially don't agree, don't agree.either 3.
5 with the performer or with each other about what is to be 6
done, and go through the whole process with that critique so 7
that when they come out and comment on it, you can be 8
reasonably sure that no mistake will be left unpointed out, no 9
missing piece will not have somebody who doesn't have an 10 interest in saying that if I had done it, I would have done it 11 differently, and here is.why, and so on.
12 13utt can be heated, but it is not necessarily 13-personal.
14 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
Are there particular 15 agencies or areas of activity that you can point to as having 16 particularly useful or good ideas or approaches on peer review 17 that might serve as some models for us?
18 MR. GREENWOOD:
I would raise one.
I'm not sure it 19 is.the best, but it comes to mind immediately, and that is the 20 advisory committee procedures used by the Environmental 21 Frotection Agency.
At least for many of their programs, 22 technical reports are automatically reviewed by in that case a 4
23 standing board of reviewers, and in fact in many instances, that standing board of reviewers has legal status, so that the 24
!k.
25 toport cannot actually be carried forward and used in a 1
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2-blessed by the advisory committee.
i 3
' Now,fone need not necessarilj go.that 'far, but I l
4 think'that at-the EPA it has worked unevenly over the_ years, I 5
would say, depending on many things, including the' people 6
Linvolved and how the agency has regarded it, whether as a help-7 or as a hindrance, and that is dependent on a lot of things.
8 But I think at some times it has worked rather well and might 9
be a model'for you to some degree.
10 MR. AHEARNE:
There is also the point we aro talking i
11 about research, so to some extent you want to look to j
~
12 organizations that are familiar with doing peer review of E
13 research.
If you restrict to the Federal Government, you a>
14 probably are talking to a large extent about somethingslike 15 the National Science Foundation, perhaps the National I
16 Institutes of Health.
Any of the professional societies, and 17 I am sure why the APS mentioned it to you, are quite familiar 18 with this, and they have standing committees within their j
19 organizations whose role is to try to make sure the peer i
j 20 review processes are implemented in various organizations in i~
- 21 their reviews.
The APS goes through that whenever it develops i
22 a study.
j 23 MR. FROSCH. On the side of NASA as it is engaged in 24 scientific research, for a long time it had both what I will l,
I (.-
25 call an internally-commissioned set of outside advisory i.
).
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l committees _and the relationship with the National Research-
.,3-1 l 2
Council, some standing boards, which play two kinds of 3-roles:'one,.a role of helping the, agency set the agenda for 4
their research and, in fact, to recommend to them the structure 5
of whole scientific programs, including a proposed set of ^
6
' priorities for them, and indeed that has been useful in 7
setting the scientific program and also~,.by the way,'in 8
defending it; and also'the same body has frequently been 9
constituted or constituted pieces of it as a review body for 10 both the nature of what is to be flown for scientific
~
11 experiments and sometimes as a way of peer reviewing the 12 results.
13 For the major, shall we say, solar system scientific 14 probes, it has become not a formal process but in practice a 15 practice of trying to publish all of the papers on the results 16 of a particular expedition as a body in a su'itable journal j
17 which then has a whole peer review process that goes on.
So 18 you not only see the initial articles; over the ensuing months 19 or years you will see critical comment, other articles l
20 commenting, letters commenting. When you come out of it, you 21 may have a somewhat confused picture of exactly what is right 22 and what isn't, but that is a true reflection of what the body l
1 2
23 of experts thinks. Sometimes they will converge on a particular 24 conclusion.
(
25 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I would just comment that it l
l
. _. _ _. _ _ _, _ _ _. _ _. ~. _ - -.
32 3
1 seems to me there are two types of peer review here.
One is a
~
,.m.
-2 programmatic peer review that, because of the nature of the 3
governmental process, doesn't always land itself to anonymity, 4
it seems to me, where you have the standing committees and s
5 whatnot; but then there is the sort of microscopic research 6
result review that usually is done anonymously, and that is
. here you stake-your professional reputation.
There are guys 7
w 8
out there that are going to review your work number by number.
9 That is a little different thing.
10
'MR. FROSCH:
There is another mechanism which is far 11 from anonymous, which is not usually thought of as peer review 1
12 but it certainly is, and that is the convening of a meeting or 13 a symposium, a scientific or an engineering meeting in which 14 there is a topic and research is presented both by insiders 15-and outsiders, and there is plenty of open discussion in the 16 meeting and' frequently in the corridors over what the meaning 17 of things is, and sometimes a publication can result.
This is 18 a form of public peer review of a particular ta'chnical area.
19 Whether that fits with some of the technical program 20 areas you are concerned with, I am not quite clear, but I l
21 should think many of them it would bs-quite appropriate i
22-for, and many of the technicaD societies not only are equipped 23 to do that, that is really one of their rationales for the 24 existence of some of the technical societies, both publication
(
25 and to errange for this kind'of open discussion of technical l
~
33 1-results.
I 2
COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
Another one of your
~
3
- recommendations that I thought particularly interesting and' 4
helpful was-the recommendation to perhaps put the available 5
researchers more on a competitive basis, to minimize or reduce 6
to some extent the traditional reliance on the national 7
laboratories and to look at other research organizations or 8
institutions that might fill our needs, like universities.
9
-There was some discussion in the report about the 11 0 contracting difficulties of this agency in trying to do that.'
11 I guess what I am wondering again is are there particular 12 problems in this area that make the contracting so difficult
.13 or are they our own self-imposed difficulties given your 14 experience with other agencies in other areas of activity.
[
15-MR. FROSCH:
Let me start for the group by saying 16 that it was, so to speak, news to us that this was a problem, 17 in the sense that several of us had had experience with a 18 number of other agencias where it is simply not known to be a 19 problem.
As expressed to us, it seemed to us to be the 20 result of a convenient bureaucratic procedure rather than the 21 result of an attempt to really have as much open competition 22 as possible.
23 We recognize that there is a certain simplicity to 24 the procedure that has been used, but we are also at least N
25 generally acquainted with the body of Federal procurement M
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34 1
regulations, and some of us think we know agencies where it is 2
quite common to use.the~whole set of tools provided by the 3
Congrees and the regulations in order to do a broad, 4
competitive thing.
5 It makes for some complications in the procurement 6
process because then as soon as you open it up, there is a 7
concern with questions of equity and questions of competition 8
and questions of integrity'and questions of making sure that l
-9 the process brings out the best people for the best work.
But 10 since we see that as the essence of getting the job done 11 properly, we recommend that the effort is worth it and we 12
- think it can be done.
13 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
I remember several years 14 ago when I worked on the Hill that Senator Hart raised the 15 same concern, as I recall, about the heavy reliance on the 16 labs.
And then, as I recall, the justification was really 17 somewhat different.
The justification that was offered by the 18 agency at the time was well, so much of our research effort 19 focuses upon these large test facilities and our dependence on 20 the labs is really tied to that.
They're the only people that 21 can provide these large test facilities.
Universities just 22 aren't equipped to do that.
23 I would think that'at this time -- in fact, I think 24 as our staff has pointed out in their comments -- since our x
25 reliance on that kind of approach to research, the large test
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facilities and experimenta1' facilities, is declining, thatLwe 2
ought.to be'in a position at least to look for a greater 3
degree of competition and capability on the part of a large 4
number of research organizations.
5 MR. FROSCH:
Even where it is the case that a very 6
large facility that has to be managed centrally is involved, 7
it is not thereby the case that that is the only research 8
institution.
Two examples.
The large high energy physics 9
accelerators are open facilities.
They're managed by a staff 10 and by a particular organization but there's open competition 11 for use.
12 The NASA wind tunnel, starting in the days of the 13 NACA, have always been managed as national facilities, and in 14 fact they may be rented for commercial purposes at their 15 operating rate because they are unique national facilities and 16 everybody concluded that the country would not have access to 17 them unless they were somehow centrally operated.
But then 18 they're not necessarily always operated for public benefit and 19 government benefit and so they're used the other way.
One can 20 certainly do that.
21 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
To what extent, then, is 22 the problem perhaps a certain coziness or convenience in the 23 established relationships between the research staff and the 24 labs a way of doing business?
25 MR. FROSCH:
I guess we're not sure.
We think
36 l
1 that's a piece of it.
There were some assertions made that i
s 2
there are some internal interpretations of procurement 3
regulation that lead to that,.and whether that's convenience 4
or fact or,what I don't know.
We couldn't quite be sure.
5 None of this is intended to be a critical remark at 6
'all about the national laboratories.
It really is a remark i
7 that says there are other excellent potential performers of 8
research and it would be useful to broaden the Commission's i
9 view of what's available.
And we did not spend any particular-10 time trying to figure out what the motivation problem was; we 11 really just noted that that seemed to be a problem and it's 12 one which we believe the Commission can overcome rather.
13 straightforward 1y and we recommend that you find some ways to s
14 do so.
15 I think we comment in the report that it may be 16 useful -- if it seems difficult and there's no prior 17 experience, it might be useful to have some conversations with 18 the procurement and technical officers of some of the other 19 agencies that seem to do it differently and find out whether 20 their legislation is different -- we think that's not the case 21
-- or whether their internally set rules are different -- that 22 may be the case -- or whether it's just that the practices are 23 different, which is the most likely.
24 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
This question of large 25 facilities, by the way, is a very important one because I s
~..
J.'
37 1
think that's a red herring, probably always was.
In any case 2-today, the mode is that large facilities when federally funded 3
in almost all other fields whether they're building a national 4
lab,lLn some ' cases at universities by DOE, more and more those 5
become user facilities.
When they get too big for one group's 6
riches, so to speak, then they become user facilities, and any 7
-university research group can submit a proposal to do research 8
on that facility.
That's just a standard way of operation.
9 MR. FROSCH:
That fact is not-so broadly known in 10 the university community as it should be, we discovered.
11 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I'm sure that's right.
At 12 least not in this field.
13 MR. FROSCH:
There are certainly fields in which the 14 national laboratories are quite open.
The laboratories that I 15 run at General Motors are members of consortia in which a 15 number of academic and industrial' laboratories work with~one 17 or more national laboratories on problems of mutual interest,
'18 and in fact do it involving large facilities -- this is in the 19 combustion area -- large computational facilities with a very l
20 free exchange of intellectual property and no exchange of i
21 funds.
People do their own pieces of the work and exchange 22 what they do and essentially barter time back and forth on 23 their principal facilities.
24 Where there is an interest in doing this, there 25 always seems to be a fairly straightforward way among the
,= :
~ t 38 1
research people to find out how to do it.
. ~
2 MR.'KENDRICK:- Mr. Chairman, may I comment?
3 CHAIRMAN-ZECH:
Certainly.
4 MR. KENDRICK:
As one of your contractors ~and i
5 therefore a very interested party.
6
[ Laughter.]
7 -
I don't think it's a case of the agency not 8
understanding the procedures because as I mentioned, we are a 9
contractor and we find in other parts of your agency that they
- 10 understand how to procure competitively quite well.
And 11 sometimes we win those competitions and sometimes we lose 12 them.
13 We find ourselves puzzled because we don't, in fact, 14 have any direct contracts with this particular part of the 15 agency and we are frankly confused.
Partly because, you know, 16 time is not the. argument here.
Research usually takes a 17 longer time.
18 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
That's right.
19 MR. KENDRICK:
And there's plenty of time for i
1
~We, in fact, are a sort of second tier contractor 20 competition.
21 to you in the research area; we are contracted through the 22 labs.
2'3 The environment in contracting, I might add, has 24 changed very significantly over the last two or three years as 25 a result of congressional actions.
There is now widespread
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' uniformity -- uniformity.isn't the right word -- widespread m
2 practice throughout the government'of competition in 3
. contracting; that's been fairly effectively implemented, I 4
would say.
5 And even though where we are a second tier contractor 6
to you, it will often be through compe.tition conducted by the 7
' national labs.
So we're a contractor to your labs, to the labs 8
that we use, often competitively.
9 And our concern, therefore, is one of efficiency.
10 It's not efficient for the Commission and it's not efficient 11 actually.for the national labs either to conduct business this 12 way.
And we're quite sure that there are other and more 13 efficient ways that can be found.
1 14 MR. AHEARNE:
If I could just follow Hugh's point.
I 15 We make the point in here that there has, in some cases, been 16 a tendency to really end up using the national lab as a 17 contracting office.
18 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
I suspect we do a lot of 19 that.
20 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
That's right.
21 MR. AHEARNE:
And that really is not -- as Hugh 22 mentioned, it's not efficient.
It also is deleterious to the 23 national lab because you really force them to be in the mode 24 of doing something which isn't quite right for them to be
\\.a 25 doing either.
l I
.=.
40:
1 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:.' Good point.
2 Your report was fairly critical of the deterioration 3
in the quality'of our research staff, particularly in the 4
- management of it; the loss of people with extensive research 5
experience.
You've made some suggestions on how to go about i
6 addressing that, and you.seem to lay a great deal of the blame 7
.for that in the decision to combine. standards development and 8
research and the ascendancy of the standards people and the 9
descendancy of the research group,.I think if I'm fairly 10 characterizing the comments in the report.
11 I guess, one, I'd like to hear a little bit more 12 about some ways that we might pursue or measures we might 13 pursue to bring qualified and experienced research people into 14 the organization; and second, I'd like to hear a bit more on 15 the question of combining standards and research.
That is one i
16 area where I think our staff is not in agreement on the 17 concern or the recommendation in the report, and indeed, the 18 staff has recently proposed and the commission has recently 19 approved moving some more somewhat non-research-type work into
'20 that office; namely, giving that office the responsibility for 21 resolving generic safety issues for power plants.
22 And I guess what I'm wondering is, is that moving in 23 the right direction or the wrong direction, and since this 24 seems to be an area of contention or disagreement with the 25 staff, I'd like to hear a bit more of your concern about this l
_ _ ~ _ _. - -,
41 1
parti ~cular area if I could.
2 ER. FROS CH: - I guess the concern is that as a matter 3
of experience over at least the last 30-odd years and for 4
reasons that I think we understand, it is important that the 5
people who are involved directly in setting the agendas, in 6
purchasing the research, in dealing with research people, in 7-helping to critique the results and most importantly, taking
.8 the results and trying to make clear.how they're useful in the 9
other work of the Commission, need to have a tremendous depth 10 of technical-knowledge and need to have been personally 11 involved in research or in the technical side of the operations 12 and development of systems in order to understand what it is 13 they're doing in connection with research.
14 It certainly is the experience with some government 15 agencies up and down over the years that when the staff 16 responsible for research ceased to be people who had a direct 17 connection with the research community, the program came 18 apart and then had to be rebuilt by finding some people to l
19 come in from the research communit'y.
20 In part, this is almost a social question of 21 establishment of a community feeling between those who are 22 responsible for the research in the agency and those with whom 23 they deal in providing research outside the agency.
But there 24 is a question of technical competence and capability and 1
N.
25 understanding of what it is that goes on in the research
42 1
process'that's important.
2 I'm not sure'the issue is organizationally what 3
pieces are put together so.much as it is what effect the
-4 organizational structure has on the' kinds of people who are 5
appointed in it and what tasks they're asked to do..For 6
example, if counsel will allow me, if you were to make the 7
research office a part o'f the legal office and leave it in 8
charge of the General Counsel's staff and have the research 9
people to be generally lawyers, I rather expect you would not 10 have a very broad research program.
11 On the other hand, if you reversed it and said we're 12 going to get our -- our legal staff is going to be part of the 13 research office, I'm not sure how well the Commission would do 14 in getting first class legal staff that was really connected 15 with the life of the legal community to come and be inside 16 it.
It's both a social and a knowledge question and there is 17
'a professional group here that has to.be somewhat in charge of 18 the work that they do.
19 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I should warn you, you're 20 addressing the only lawyer on the Commission here.
21 (Laughter.]
22 MR. GREENWOOD:
If I could just add to that, you 23 know, in every government agency, and maybe not only government l
24 agencies, that do research there's always a tension between the 25 need to have the research be responsive to the needs of the m-
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1 agency, and one of the standard' ways to do'that is to put them s.
-2 close together so.they can talk to each other, they can 3
understand each other better.
But that's always in tension 4
with the kinds.of things that Bob Frosch was mentioning which-5 tend to pull you in the other direction;-namely, to have some 6.
separation between the two in order to have quality of 7
personnel to recognize that there really is a uniqueness, a 8
real difference between the technical aspects of a research 9
program and other things, and also in order to maintain 10 independence and legitimacy for the products of the research 11 program.
12 Most regulatory agencies in the United States 13.
Government struggle with that problem and none of them I think 14 solve,it well, even though organizational 1y they differ very 15 greatly from one to the other.-
But I think it's true that the 16 NRC is now almost the only one in the federal government --
17 correct me if I'm wrong -- that has this kind of very close 18 relationship between the research and one aspect of their user 19 community; namely, that they're really in the same office.
20 And I guess it was our conclusion that that is not a 21 good -- although there may be no perfect solution to this I
l 22 problem, that is not a good solution to it.
And we would l
23 recommend to you that you do it differently.
t 24 If I may go on for one moment and comment on the K
25 generic safety issue question that you raised, you will notice l
l
J.
44
-1 on page 53 of our report a recommendation which has not.yet m
2-been flagged here in our oral-discussion, to create a new
^
3
. mechanism within the commission to produce interoffice reports 4
dealing with interoffice documents that summarize what is 5
-known and what research is still:needed, and that reach 6
conclusions about regulatory issues.
1 7
That was our proposed way to deal with the issue 8
that you raised.
That is the way that many other regulatory 9
agencies.do deal with it in other places, it's sometimes 10 called criteria-documents, that essentially try to do that 11 sort of thing.
Where you have people from the research 12 office, people from the regulatory office, people from other j
13' offices around the agency that should play in that game q.
14 jointly produce such a document.
That's a way of getting the 15 different parts of the organization knitted together over a 16 particular issue without having to knit them together 17 permanently on everything.
And that was what we thought up to 18 deal with that, but it is obviously an important problem.
19 MR. AHEARNE:
As far as -- part of your question was 20 a comment I think on some recent actions.
We really couldn't 21 address those.
f 22 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
Okay.
Fair enough.
23 MR. AHEARNE:
They obviously weren't something that 24 we addressed, so it would just be inappropriate to fold that x_.
25 in.
l
~ ::
45 l'
-I1would draw your attention to the recommendation of 4
2 the' separation follows a recommendation of bringing in'high 3
caliber people with active research experience.
The point
'4 that Bob.Frosch stressed, the necessity of having people 5
really understand research, and some way of reflection of the 6
same type of attitude.
7 ~
A gentleman that these people spent time with used 8
to keep telling me at various times that you've got to.get 9
people who understand those things, people who really 10 understand what research is.
And finally I'd point out that-11 whereas in number one we said NRC should bring in; in number 12 two, we said just "should consider".
So that was not as strong; it was just looking, reflecting on the current 13
\\
14 problems, it seemed'to us that that was also one of the 15 problems.
16 MR. ROISMAN:
I want to add one thing on that, maybe 17 from a non-scientific perspective.
But it does seem to me 18 that inherently if in the same office you have people who have 19 to apply research to set standards and resolve generic safety 20 issues, and people who have to do the research to do that but 21 who also have a much larger research agenda that goes beyond 22 that, the natural tendency is going to be for the immediate 1
23 squeaking wheel to get all of the oil, and for the extent to 24 which the basic research we talk about here is done at all it
(_
25 will be tremendously downgraded.
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And while there's always pressure on every research
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a,'
2 program to make every dollar of research produce a bang for 3
the: buck, at least if the research office stands alone, it can 4
be. led by a person who is 100 percent committed to what he 5
perceives or she perceives to be that.right balance.
But if 6-that leader is also carrying the water for the standards 7
division and the generic issues division, then tnat'is watered 8
down both in the-message delivered and probably in the choice 9
of the messenger.
10 And I think that that's really the heart of what our 11 concern is.
Yes, we know that the research people will be 12 beaten down at some point on some of their efforts, that's the 13 give and take of your job of making those decisions.
But when 14.
you make them carry on their back-two other people who are not 15 of the same persuasion, all you do is make their job 16 tremendously more difficult, and that seems to us to be 17 downgrading research which is not what we're recommending.
18 COMMISSIONER CARR:
Well, you have already mentioned 19 that we don't do research, that we* farm out the research for 20 somebody else to do.
Good surgeons don't necessarily make 21 good hospital administrators.
22 How important is it to have somebody who can actually 23 do research in this operation as opposed to somebody who has i
24 knowledge of it and can manage it?
(_'
25 MR. FROSCH:
Well, I think what you need is someone l
t
.47 1
at least'who has done research because I don't know any other 2
way to get the knowledge.-
I think there.is lots of experience 3
in the subject that suggests that.
4 The hospital administrator is_not administering
~
5 surgery.
He's administering the building and the staff that 6
surrounds the surgery.
He is not normally the one who chooses 7
surgeons, who judges surgeons or decides on which surgery is 8
needed or not needed.
That ends up being the surgeon.
I 9
think that is where that analogy falls down.
- 10 There is another aspect of'it which is the ability 11 to recognize the key issues, because that is going to be one 12 of the responsibilities of the Office of Research, to choose 13 among issues and proposals and know what is good.
Pasteur had 14 a strong comment on that, and what he said was chance favors 15 the prepared mind, by which he meant if you don't understand 16 what it is about, you won't recognize it when you see it.
You 17 must have the background capability and knowledge to do that.
18 I think we acknowledged.that you are in a somewhat 19 difficult position or have been, because one of the essences 20 of getting the best peo'ple interested in being in the Agency 21 and working on this is that they recognize that there is a 22 good and interesting research program for them to work on, and 23 maybe some of that recognition has been lost.
24 What both NSF and the Office of Naval Research have
\\c 25 done at times when they have had similar problems is for a
4 d-48-1-
period or in some jobs, to have people come in for limited 2
periods of time.
That is, if they could find people who 3
really wanted to come and be career people to do'this,'well 4
and good, but if they wanted particular specialists for a 5
period and could find nobody who wanted to make a career of.
6 being a Government agency scientist, so to speak, they would 7
make arrangements whereby somebody could come for a limited 8
period.
In some cases, even as short as a year but I think no 9
one recommends that, but certainly two and three year periods 10 which can be arranged as leaves of absence from all sorts of 11 places.
People might rotata from Government laboratories or 12 university laboratories.
13 That is a way in which one can have access to the 14 community one wants, in addition to finding people who want to 15 make -- first class people who want to make a career of it.
16 That may be worth considering, if there are some difficulties 17 in getting people from the right part of the research community 18 to spend some time at this and of the research problem.
l 19 MR. GREENWOOD:
One of the thrusts of your analogy 1
~
20 clearly was to suggest that not all researchers make good 21 research administrators, which is clearly true.
Some do.
You 22 don't need all of them.
That's absolutely true.
You don't 23 reach in the bag and pick out an excellent research person and think you are necessarily getting a good administrator.
You 24
\\~
25 are looking for two talents.
49 1
CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Mr. Asselstine?
,. m 2
COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
I have a couple more'but I 3
.have taken up a fair amount of. time.
I.will turn to Fred and 4
-Ken and if we have a chance, I will come back.
'5 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I am pleased to hear you 6
speak of rotators.
One of the questions I was about to raise 7
and raised in fact in-the comments that I circulated to the 8
Commission in response to the staff's comments, which the 9
Chairman referred to earlier,' was that very issue.-
10 As wa know and I suspect you know, we continue to 11 have budgetary constraints as everybody does these days.
It 12 seems to me that one of the ways that we can quickly bring in 13 expertise in the areas where we need help, once we decide what
('
14 those areas are, is to do just that.
It is a well established 15 practice not only on occasion to bring these people into the
'16 NSF and DOE, they have permanent slots for people like that, 17 where they rotate these people in and out, as you know.
I was 18 very pleased to hear your comments on that.
19-MR. FROSCH:
Let me add, please don't be spooked by 20 the shadow of conflict of interest in the sense that the fact 21 that someone may have been doing contract research for the 22 Agency should not disqualify them from cutting those ties 23 temporarily and coming in and being on behalf of the Agency.
24 There is a long history of how to deal with that k*
25 bureaucratically and legally and equitably and what the s
if 50 1
protections-are and so on.
I know that is sometimes raised as-2-
a difficulty.
'3 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:. In fact,--that is no' problem.
4 I~have a personal friend who came in as an NSF contractor and 5
administered a program at NSF for two years and went back 6
home.
It happens all the time.
7 MR. FROSCH:
After all, we solved the problem for 8-the Director of NSF, even for Commissioners, I believe it can 9
be solved.
10 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I do want to get back for a 11 moment to this issue of peer review, because I am at a little 12 bit of a loss as to exactly how we proceed to implement the 13 requisite pear review not programmatic reviews, not in the-14 sense of setting up topical advisory panels, which I fully 15 agree with and heartily endorse, and I think that is the area 16 in which we are about to do what you suggest, but also setting l
l 17 up a larger broad based programmatic review panel similar to
(
18 HEPAP in'high energy physics or the Fusion Advisory Panel and 19 other similar groups throughout the Government.
~20 I think both of those recommendations are 21 recommendations ~the Commission should adopt.
i.
22 Then you get down to this issue of how you assure 23 integrity over the long run and research project by research 24 project, person by person, if you will.
One of the things h.
25 that.I have urged and thought about, I haven't seen very much m
~
f 51 1
comment on that in your report, is one of the ways'the 2
-Commission, it seems to me, could try and address-that problem 3
is to endorse strongly the-establishment.of professional' 4
journals and set up requirements in effect, that people who do 5
research for us must publish in those professional journals.
6 That also is a very common practice in other agenc.ies that 7
support research.
8 The support of professional journals can take two 9
forms. -You either can do it directly, I guess, which may not 11 0.
be the best way, or indirectly, where you pay page charges for 11 publication out of the research contract money, another common 4 '
12 practice.
13 Did you give that very much thought?.
I'm concerned 14 that.we try and establish a tradition here, that our individual 15 research workers and contractors are required to publish and l
16 that. those publications are in good journals, are subjected to 17 peer review.
I am not convinced that we have that situation 18 right now.
19 Any comments?
20 MR. AHEARNE:
We thought a little bit about that, 21 Fred, in that sense.
First, there are some professional 22 journals in which some of your researchers do publish.
23 Second, the concept of having peer review of research work is 24 really as you know, not new, to anybody doing research.
What (L
25 in fact to somebody doing research is novel is having the
I 52 1
research project not peer reviewed.
,-~
2 I don't think it really would be that large a 3
problem. 'It:would be a large problem if you'were going to try 4
to establish some formal, single mechanism, starting at the
-5 top of the Commission, but to establish the principle that 6
peer review must be done-on the work, and that is a commitment 7
of the Director of Research for that research, and therefore 8
it is carried out to thc program managers and therefore 9
carried out to the researchers.
'10
-I don't foresee that being that substantial a 11 problem.
In some cases, because of the magnitude of'the 12 effort, it means it is more than just page charges.
Your-13 research program manager will have to put aside "x" dollars to 14 actually have that reviewed.
That really is an implementation g
15 down at the program level.
16 We didn't really see you carrying it out as that 17 major problem, it was getting the concept accepted that was a i
18 major problem.
19 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I guess my question is can 20 you best do that by the publication mechanism, page charges, 21 demands of publications, supporting the journals in which they 22 should publish.
23 MR. AHEARNE: In some cases, you can, but there t
24 is not a widespread interest in every piece of research that kc 25 you do.
Inherently, for a journal to publish it, as you know,
53 1
it has to meet a couple of standards, not just quality of the 2
work.
It also has to be of sufficient-broad interest to at 3
least the community that gets that journal to have it included.
4~
What you should be concerned about'is the quality of 5
.your work.
If you have established your research agenda 6
correctly,.the interest is there for.a selected subset.
7 MR. FROSCH:
Let me suggest a number of mechanisms, 8
certainly-publication is a piece of it, and surely page 9~
charges cannot be the major burden on the research program, 10 although it can be a bureaucr'atic one of some magnitude.
11 One could, for example, build up a body of 12 consultants under retainer or essentially consultants who were 13 certified and agreed consultants at so much a day when they 14 work, who can be used as a body of reviewers.
You may have to 15 have them come here to do it or you may have to agree on how 16 many days work they get assigned for a publication of a given 17 kind or whatever, but you could then have essentially a panel 18 which would be a review panel and you can know what their 19 relationships are to the various pieces of work, routinely 20 send pieces of work that are not appropriate for publication 1
21 because they are not a broad enough interest to several 22-reviewers with a specified time for a report.
That certainly 23 is a mechanism that we suggeste.d.
24 You can do that directly.
You could probably i
..~
(_/
25 arrange with any one of several of the professional engineering i
- l.,_., _,
~
,g 54 1
and scientific societies that they would do that or they would 4
2
- certainly be willing to provide a roster of appropriate
-3
-people.
You could find a way to.do that.
4 The National Research Council is a mechanism which-5 has been used by some agencies for that purpose as'well.
6 There.are a number of ways to do it.
In fact, I know of 7
circumstances in which parts of the Defense Department have in 8
fact employed an industrial contractor who was an appropriate 9
consulting firm for the purpose of providing the service of 10 providing peer reviewers, when they had the problem of wanting 11
~ that sort of double arm's length, in fact, in which the agency 12 didn't want to take the responsibility for deciding who the
(
13 peer reviewers were, they wanted it to be somebody else who
\\
14 did that and then they kind of make a double jump.
15 I'm sure we could probably invent half a dozen 16 more.
I think it is a matter of finding some mechanisms that 17 are appropriate to the way the Commission would like to 18 operate.
The key point is finding people who are competent 19 outside and capable of being critical.
20 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I think I am getting the 21 picture here.
What you are saying in effect, and the reason 22 it is a little foreign to my experience is that I'm not so 23 used to dealing with research that has, let's say, a narrow 24 engineering mission, for example, and we often do that kind of
(-
25 work.
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-)GR. FROSCH:
One other point.
There may even be 2
cases where what is being done is regarded by the utility or 3
the developer-concerned-that is proprietary.
You have to face 4
that, in which case you can drrange for third party reviewers
-5 who are bound as consultants to observe the proprietary 6
nature.
7 MR. GREENWOOD:
One source of-individuals'to do this 8
kind of peer review is the researchers themselves, who can 9
review each other's work in related areas,-particularly if it lo is done. anonymously as John was suggesting before.
11 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
In fact, what you are 12 suggesting I recognize now is really the first step of what 13 you would do in requesting peer review before publication in a 14 journal.
You just aren't going to publish it in this case, 15 you will simply have this stable of reviewers, you send it out 16 anonymously and get reviews back.
17 MR. FROSCH:
Most of the journals that review, 18 societies that review have at any given time what they call a 19 panel of reviewers.
You will be called and asked, will you 20 serve this year, and you are obligated to do a certain amount 21 of work.
22 COMMISEIONER BERNTHAL:
I understand what you mean 23 now.
I 24 One other question.
I was interested in your
\\
25 comment that was related to advisory groups, both issue i
l
56
' advisory groups and the broad direct,ional advisory panels.
2-You did comment.on the ACRS and recommended that the.ACRS role 3
specifically not. include that' kind of.very broad advice on~the 4
research program and its-direction.
5 Would you care to elaborate just a little bit?
I 6
agree with you but-on the face of it, one might very easily 7
ask why in the world shouldn't the ACRS perform this function.
8 MR. FROSCH:
I think essentially for the same reason 9
Tony outlined before.
They are constituted for a different 10 purpose and they are a body of people who are competent 11 technically and otherwisa but were chosen for a different 12 purpose.
It was difficult for us to see how one would add 13 this as an essentially collateral purpose and have it come out 14 right, that it made more sense to us to say, well, we will 15 have another group for this purpose, then to try to pack it in 16 under a different mission, one which is more likely to consume 17 their immediate attention.
18 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Would you recommend that the 19
-- I am speaking now of the broad based advisory panel, the 20 HEPAP analog, if you will, in your judgment, should that group 21 essentially be independent of the NRC?
In other words, should 22 the NRC be a participant in its deliberations but the group 23 itself be composed of members of the professional community 24 chosen by the professional community that might review programs
(_
25 and budgets in a timely fashion and make recommendations?
nn.,
- a. _. _ -, - - - -. - - - - -,., - -, - - -,
57 1
I ask that question for.a very-good reason.
I ' ve -.
2 seen it work both ways.
The Fusion Advisory Panel, and I 3
don't know how many DOE people are here,.but I think it is 4
pretty well understood that it remains somewhat a' creature of 5
DOE. 'That'has its down sides and I suppose its up sides.
At 6
least in the case of the Nuclear Physics Advisory Panel, I 7
know that to be an independent panel.
I assume HEPAP is as 8
well, although I'm not so sure about that one.
9 MR. FROSCH:
HEPAP is.
10 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
There are two different ways 11 you can do it and we could do d.t..~Would you have a 12 recommendation there?
y 13 MR. FROSCH:
The agencies I have been associated
\\
14 with have had both and have used them for slightly different 15 purposes.
That is where it is a question of straight technical 16 review,. technical comment, technical programs, then outside of l
17 the agency has frequently been the simplest way to do it.
It j
18 carries with it perhaps a stronger guarantee of independence 19 because it is two steps at arm's length.
20 The purpose of the internal advisory bodies with 21 whom I've worked and on which I have served, has generally 22 been to give a much more intimate and intertwined with the 23 business of the agency kind of advice to the agency, budgetary 24 advice, technical advice connected with the imminent decision,
!i K r) 25 things that really came under the umbrella of the agency and
s -
y
- ?
58 1-were not of the nature where anybody was' comfortable handing
(?>
?
2 them out completely or accepting them completely.
t 3'
To some degree, the National Research1C,ouncil has 4
been-a little bit ambiguous.
It is clearly indepen ent of the 5
agency, but it has a government-associat,ed role by its 6
charter.
And so.sometimes it's been regarded as "of the j
s 7
family" but external to it.
8 But usually if what's in question is, " Gee, do you 9
like what we'.re contemplating in our budget, before it becomes.
10 a legal budget," then you want -.you must have that as an 11 internal -- outsiders, but internal to the agency, because 12 you're dealing with matters that are not public.
But if you 13 want is, "What do you think our program for research-in i
14 something or other ought to be the year after next," that has 15 some virtues to being totally outside'the. agency, and most li6 agencies have used it that way.
i 17 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Would you.want to venture a 18 guess as to which form might be most important and useful for l
19 us, given our situation?
20 MR. FROSCH:
I think for your immediate purposes, 21 which have to do with the critique of research in a technical 22 sense and so on, the peer review kind of thing, you want an 23 outside group.
24 MR. GREENWOOD:
I thought the Commissioner was y-25 asking -- I'm sorry -- I thought you were asking not for the r
d-59 1
peer review purpose,'but for'the programmatic.
2' COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
No, I'm sorry.
The 3
. programmatic.
4 MR. FROSCH:
Well,.I think -- no, I think even for 5
-the general programnctic one, where it's a question of what 6
should your technical program look like, that I would tend to 7
put outside'.
8' But if you then-come to the question, "Well, we've 9
got this; programmatic thing, and we're constructing this 10 budget, would somebody please help us critique whether this 11 budget really meets that program sensibly," then you may find 12 it much more comfortable to have your in-house, attached, f
13 external --
(
14 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
For short turnaround.
But I 15 do know that, at least in one advisory panel, a group of 16 scholars in the field would sit down and look at the broad 17 budget, total amount of money, and say, "This is where we 18 think the priorities should be."
It carries great weight on 19 the' Hill.
And in any case, I agree with the recommendation.
20 One last question.
I'm very concerned, and I think 21 the Commission is very concerned, and we have been for some 22 time now -- it's not clear that we know what to do about it --
23 and the point is, we don't know how to sell our package on the 24 Hill very well.
It seems to me that we have to figure out a L
25 way to make this research business understandable to the i
4
'.1 s-
-r 60 1
congress and to the public,-I suppose.-
2 Did you have any sense form looking at the way our
+
3~
programs are structured and labeled and generally organized --
41 and what I'm. talking about in many respects here is the kind 5
of packaging for public consumption and for maximum support 6
and understanding on the Hill -- did you have any thoughts on 7
how we might improve that?
8 And I'll be quite specific and reveal at least one 9
. prejudice that I have, and that is that a category called 10 thermohydraulics probably represents an easy target to cut 11 when we go to Capitol Hill, but I'd like to hear.your thoughts 12 on it.
13 MR. FROSCH:
I guess the principal feeling we had.
14 was that it was hard to recognize the programmatic logic.
We 15 couldn't see what the philosophical thrust was, and we coaldn't 16 see what the pattern was by which elements-were chosen.
It 17 wasn't that the elements were necessarily wrong, but you 18 couldn't see from what we had what the relationship was, why
-19 certain other-things we could think about, like human factors, 20 weren't there at all, why certain things that had been worked 21 on for many years were still dominating the program so much.
22 It was a problem in seeing what the pattern was.
23 And from my own experience, that makes it nearly impossible to 24 defend against any skeptic, because you can't say -- you don't A;..
25-have the material with which to say why you made the choices
r 61 1
you did, why you're spending a-lot of money here and not a
- ~ ~,
2
' lot of money there.
You're-defending each one on its own
\\
3
. merits, but ycu'can't make comparisons, and that makes it very 4
difficult, at least for the purpose of defense and, I think, 5
for'the purpose of constructing the program.
You have to have 6
some top-down structure, however you arrive at it.
You don't 7
always arrive at-it from the top down, but at some point you 8
have to see how things how relate -- not everything; there ars 9
always-some outliers and some things that don't fit -- but you 10 have to have some sense of structure.
11 MR. ROISMAN:
I think, speaking for'myself and not
- 12 for the committee, that there is a public perception that the 7 research program may have an agenda that is not such a popular
- 14 one, that it may have much more of an agenda releasing and 15 relaxing safety standards than finding out how safe nuclear 16 plants should be.
[
17 And I think some of that stems from ignorance, from L
18 the lack of involvement of the public and of other entities l
other than, if you will, the establishment in the whole 19 20 procesa.
And when you look at the question of advisory 21 panels, I think that you shot.1d consider inviting the people 22 who might normally be perceived as either your critics or the 23 industry's critics into that, and I think of the, at least for 24 the moment, critics that you had here yesterday.
[
s..
25
[ Laughter.]
'62 1
I can't imagine that there wasn't a Governor who was 2-sitting here, who wouldn't, if he understood the value of 3
research.in answering such questions as how big your evacuation 4
zone needs to be, wouldn't become an al'ly of yours, at least 5
for the purpose of making sure that you had the facts necessary 6
to make the decisions.
l I
7 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I agree.
8 MR. ROISMAN:
And this is one place where the 9
Commission doesn't have to stand in an adversarial pose, even 10 if may or may not have to on others.
There is really broad 11 agreement that'we want to know the answers.to the questions, 12 and we want those answers to be competently developed, a'nd we
(
13 want the program to have the resources to do it.
14 And if you've got an opportunity to build a 15 consensus, don't miss it.
They won't come along very often in 16 this business.
And I think there is that opportunity there, 17 and that might help tremendously, if you went to the Hill with 18 some friends on your side who the Hill would say, " Gee, if 19 those people think this is a good idea, maybe we ought to give 20 it a look that goes beyond the question of how much is it 21 going to cost and where are the taxes going to come from, 22 which is obviously what you don't want to have to fight on 23 with something of this importance.
24 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Let me -- you may want to
\\s-25 respond to this as well -- let me run an idea by you.
Just as
63:
~I think thermohydraulics is an easy' target for cutting, it 1
2 always seemed to me.-- you mentioned one; emergency planning 3
-- that going to the Hill and saying, "Our experts say we need 4
$20 million to study emergency planning, and we will have 5
answer, we hope, lay 1990; we're going to try to.
We need $10 6
million'to study direct heating of containment, and we intend 7
to have an answer by X date" -- a list of specific 8
mission-oriented topics with a price tag and a time table, 9
where you go to the Hill and ask for the money, and you might, 10 indeed, build the kind of consensus on many of those that you
- 11 speak of -- is that the right way to go?
Or maybe you've got 12 a better idea.
f 13 MR. AHEARNE:
Well, Fred, I guess I'll answer that 14 part.
I think that you've got that at the end, and as Bob 15 pointed out, it's a problem of the beginning.
It's not so 16 much a problem of packaging; it's a problem of providing a 17 structure in which the research program fits, and then you can 18 package it.
And what was really missing was that structura to 19 start with.
And in the absence of that, it's very difficult 20 to package.
21 Now let me just make two other comments.
- First, 22 I'm not disagreeing with Tony's point about that particular 23 issue, but as we both know, the people who have been cutting 24 the budget in OMn and. on the Hill, haven't been cutting it 25 because they think the NRC program is too much aimed at s
d
.i 64 1-relaxing requirements.
The issue'really has been, there is-2
' not a structure where you.can say, "This is what our research
-3
' program is for."
4 And then to your specific point about defending the 5
specific elements, that could well be the right way.
But you 6
need the structure first.
7
- COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I agree.
8 MR. GREENWOOD:
To put it sort of bluntly, if the 9
Commission itself doesn't really understand it, it can't
'10 really expect others to, and I guess our sense in looking at 11 what was given to us in writing and orally was that we weren't 12 sure -- we were not convinced that the Commission, at least in 13 the past, really understood it.
14 One sort of different sort of thing is that --
15 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I'm glad you said in the 16 past.
17
[ Laughter.]
18 MR. GEEENWOOD:
Only Commissioner Carr is off the 19 hook on that.
20
[ Laughter.)
21 COMMISSIONER CARR:
That doesn't give me a warm l
22 feeling.
23
[ Laughter.]
l l
24 MR. GREENWOOD:
One of the other thingc I think vc 25 felt was that there is such a feeling around, which I think we yw-
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shared, that issues don't come to closure'or don't seem to
.~y 2
'come to closure..
3 One of the ways to convince people that the research' 4
program is useful-is to bring a subject to closure and sort of 5
tell'the story.
You know, we were able to bring"this to 6
closure, to reach a conclusion, because, if it's true, of the 7
research that went into it, the work that got done.
We did-8 this, and we concluded that.
9 It rarely seems to happen.. At least, it doesn't get
- 10 packaged up and' publicized that way, if it happens.
11 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I agree.
12 MR. AHEARNE:
In effect, we were given a document by 13 the Staff in response to one of our meetings with the Staff.
(
14 That issues was discussed, and the Staff said, "No, that's not 15 idun case.
We'll come back."
And it was not a very convincing 16 response at all.
17 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Well, I won't prolong my leg 18 of this.
I'll give my colleagues some time here.
19 I just want to say that I think you've done an 20 absolutely first-rate job of analysis here, more than I think 21 we had reason to expect.
I think, at least in my judgment, 22 you are right on mark in many, many respects, and I would hope 23 that a large number of the recommendations that the panel has 24
=cd cra adopted by the Commission and implemented just as
\\_
25 quickly as possible.
l
66 1
I think the broad experience that your panel' 7
2 represents clearly comes.through here.
Its fascinating-3 reading and-a first-rate job,.and I.want to thank you for the 4
work you all put in.
t 5
CHAIRMAN'ZECH:
Commissioner carr?
.6 COMMISSIONER CARR:
I would agree with you that if 7
we had a hard, tight program, we could-defend it.
8 I've got one question.
On page 54 where you're i.
9 talking about coordination with the Commissioners, "The 10 structure of the Commission and the somewhat self-imposed 11 constraints under which the Commission operates seems to make 12 ~
it-impossible for it to carry out intense, interactive, 13 critical, and self-critical communication with Staff, advisory 14 groups, other research sponsors and among the Commissioners f
15 themselves that is required in order to formulate, execute, 16 and use the results of a first-class research program," or any
'I 17 other program, I might add.
18 (Laughter.]
19 Is that your statement, Tony?
Did you author that?
20 MR. ROISMAN:
No, I didn't author it, but I
/
21 understand why we wrote it.
i 22 (Laughter.]
23 MR. FROSCH:
That, I believe, is fairly close to 2d 00 c verd: I wrct&.
\\.
25 (Laughter.]
67 1.
COMMISSIONER CARR:
I_would like to know what you
,m 2
can do with those "self-imposed" words -- what'can I do to
- 3_
unimpose those, so that we can get our work done a little 4
better here?
5
)Dt. FROSCH:
Well, our feeling is that it seems to 6
be ?. mixture of problems.
We were given to understand that it
-7 is essentially impossible for more than two of you to have a 8
casual conversation.
9 COMMISSIONER CARR:
I yield to the General Counsel.
10 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
That is absolutely correct.
11 MR. FROSCH:
And the comment was that at least'a-
' 12 couple of us who are not lawyers were skeptical that that, in 13 fact,'can. conceivably, even in the bizarrest stretches of our 14 imaginations, be the meaning of the law and the regulation.
15 That's where the "self-imposed" came in.
16 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
It was not the meaning.
17 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
That's our interpretation.
18 MR. FROSCH:
So we were at least hedging as to 29 whether that's absolutely what the law says and absolutely how 20 it must be done or whether that is an interpretation which may 21 or may not be agreed with by other lawyers around town.
22 I speak not to that.
Tony can speak better to that.' '
23 But the meaning of the point is that we do not 24 underst&nd huw una can operate in understanding a researcn
(--
25 program and dealing with it or anything else, in my view, if 1
,-n,-
68 1
it is impossible to have a casual conversation without giving' 2
' notice and so on.-
That just'doesn't seem reasonable to me, 3
that somebody can't have an idea and go to s'everalaof'his 4
colle' agues and say, "I had an idea.
What do you think?"
That 5
you have to go through an entire bureaucratic apparatus in l
6 order to-have an idea and discuss it.
I mean, that's really 7,
my personal reaction, that I have never heard of any 8
. organization that has succeeded in operating under that kind 9
of rule.
10 And, in fact, it's difficult for us to even 11 understand how you could have the intensity of conversation 12 with our own Staff people.
/
13 COMMISSIONER CARR:
I agree.
\\'
14 MR. FROSCH:
That is necessary to arrive at this 15,
understanding of the research program, this interaction with 16 it, this argument about, you know, is thermohydraulics hot 17 stuff or not.
For example, how do you go about having that if 18 you have to do it all by a set of one-on-ones and then somehow 19 come into another thing?
20 COMMISSIONER CARR:
Well, I worry about if we can --
21 MR. FROSCH:
It just seems very strange.
Now as to 22 the strictly legal question of whatever the Court said or not 23 said and what has the Congress said or not said, we, you know, 24 we really stand mute if not moot on that, because, you know, s..
25 we didn't totally have the expertise.
+
69 1
COMMISSIONER CARR:
Well, I worry that we get the-O 2
Staff on that side of'the table and our commissioners here,
'3
- and we'can't really have a good argument about what it is J
4 we're:doing without holding it in the public and making us 5
look like we don't know what we're doing at all.
6 But if I tried to change that, I might meet Tony 7
across the table somewhere, I imagine.
8 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
We did try. I mean, you know 9
we tried.
10 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Yes.
11 COMMISSIONER CA7R:
Well, I don't know that we 12 lost.
We quit.
~
13 (Laughter.)
14 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
No.
If we want to spend all year on 15 the subject, in my view, it would be very interesting and 16 exciting, and we wouldn't get anything done, and reactor i.
17 safety would be neglected, in my view, and frankly, as the 18 Chairman, I'm not going to do that.
I have other more 19 important things to do.
{
20 We operate with great difficulty, but we operate, 21 and we do move along in a ponderous sort of way.
The American 22 people, in my view, are not being well served by the way we i
l-23 have interpreted the Sunshine Act, but in order to move ahead
(
24 in that area, we've found great resistance to the point where
(
25 it's almost so debilitating that we'll not be able to do our
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70 1
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2
_Now that's kind of how I see it, and we've expressed t
3 that view to Congress.
At least I have.- But it's'a very 4'
difficult. situation and one that we face every day.
It is not.
5 a good way to serve the public, in my view, but that's what 6
Lwe're doing,-and we're doing the very best we can.
-7 So that's a whole new issue, and I think we might~
8 leave that for some other discussion.
9 COMMISSIONER CARR:
-I quit.
10
[ Laughter.)
. 11
. CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Mr. Carr, do you have anything else 12 to say?
13 COMMISSIONER CARR:
I just finished.
14
[ Laughter.]
15 MR. FROSCH:
I hope, Mr. Chairman, you recognize 16 t2utt in part it was some of us who have not' been faced with 17 this problem before who suddenly stumbled on it for the first 18 time and were somewhat taken aback.
19 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Well, I hope you can see the 20 frustration of a few of us.
It's with great difficulty, but 21 we are doing the best we can.
22 MR. AHEARNE:
To be fair, Lando, I did not dissuade 23 them from that viewpoint.
24
[ Laughter.)
v 25 MR. ROISMAN:
I just want to be clear on what my own i
e r--
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ii 71 1
1-views are on that,-so'that'my1 silence is.not misinterpreted.
2 (Laughter.]
3=
I come to it'from a-different perspective, actually.
-4
- I think that it is the existence of the closed meeting, which-5
. inevitably excites and titillates the interest, I suspect that you all would conduct substantially more business with less 6
i.
7-aggravation if all your meetings, every single meeting._and.
-8
^ every conversation was open, because nobody would come anymore.'
9
[ Laughter.]
H1'O You make sure that everybody knows which-are the key l
11 ones, are the ones you put in secret.
The hunt for the 12 documents that'can leak out and sue you over closing the damn 13 meetings, and it's the inability.to separate the wheat from j.
3.
14 the chaff that is so difficult from the outside perspective.
15 So, I mean, I'm a pro-Sunshine person.
I was not a i
16 great fan of the conversion of " meeting" into -- what do you 17 all call it? -
" gatherings."
18 (Laughter.]
19 But I do think on the positive side that there are a R20 lot of places where the commission has seemed to me to have 21 been unduly constraining itself, and that's, I think, where i
22 the phrase "self-imposed" came from.
The ex part communication 4
23 limitation, I think, is probably one of the most restrictive 1
l 24 for this Commission as opposed to other federal agency. I mean, k.s 25 you're not the only agency that faces this question.
You're
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' not the only agency that. hac. adjudications and so forth.
And
...,y 2
you often cut yourself off, as you remember the frustration by-
- I
- one of your predecessors,Lwas to have himself appointed to be a
. 4 Hearing Board member, so that he could find out what's going 5
on.
6 Jt just know in my heart there's a better solution
]
7.
than one of you, much less all of you, going through the, agony 8
. of sitting on a Licensing Board, although maybe once you did, 9
you'd come back with a renewed commitment to your job, after
- 10 you saw what those guys are going through.
11 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
That's right.
12 But I do think that there is a lot of room for
(
~ 13 creative problem-solving without necessarily tossing these
\\
11 4 laws that.I am at least personally very supportive of by 15 tossing those laws out.
They are not designed to keep you 16 from doing your job.
e 17 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Well, they're restricting us from j
l
[
18
. doing it as well as we would like to, I can assure you that.
l 19 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I think one or two of you l
l 20 know my views very well on this subject.
The only comment I 21 would make is that those of you who love Commissions and s
(
22 believe that the Commission concept is a good one, I can t
t 23 assure you that it will disappear and it will disappear l
24 because of the -- I believe the word is " zany" way that we are
(,
25 required to conduct the public's business.
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CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Well, Commissioner Bernthal, I'm
.n 2
sure, would tall you'himself.that although he wasn't a great 3
proponent.of this new administrator, as he got more frustrated 4
with the way we operate, I think he has decided that a single 5
administrator, perhaps primarily because of the restrictive 6
way we interpret the Sunshine Act, the single administrator is 7
the way to go.
Isn't that right, Fred?
8 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Yes, I have.
9 (Laughter.]
10 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Is there anything else?
Well, let 11 me_just make a couple of -- yes, go ahead.
12 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
I had one other area or 13 issue if we could go back to it just for a minute.
14
~ The comment about the need to restructure the 15 program in a way that is understandable, rational, coherent, 16.
cohesive, as a way of being able to explain and justify this 17 program, it strikes me that that may be the single most 18 important problem that we have to deal with, and it's one that I
19 I fear in many parts of the agency is not fully understood.
l 20 And we have tried everything in the approach of trying to 21 package the program or sell it or put this kind of a spin or 22 that kind of a spin on it.
And with not much success, and I 23 think because of the very problem that you have identified, 24 the lack of structure to the program.
25 In fact, I recall that our Staff put together some
F 74
~1 30 pages on.research.results over the past few years that m-9 -
2 tried to go to great lengths to talk'about how much money we'd 3
actually saved.for the industry through our research program 4
'in a way to try and make this program somewhat more palatable 5
to its skeptics or critics on the Hill.
6 I guess what I'm wondering is if that is the biggest 7
problem we'have, and my own suspicion is it probably is.
What
~
8 I'd use are insights you might have on how we as the Commission 9
can get involved enough in this program, understand it enough, 10 to bring about the kinds of changes that are necessary, to get 11 that kind of cohesive and coherent structure at the front end 12 of the process, when so typically what we see is the product at 13 the tail end of the process, at the end of the budgst year.
14 We've tried long range research plans) we've tried a 15 number of things, and I think without very much success.
And 16 if there's a place where we desperately need help, I think 17 it's in this area.
And whatever thoughts you have would be 18 welcome and appreciated.
19 MR. FROSCH:
I would say that first I think the 20 Commission has to make it clear to its Staff that that is what 21 it wants, and it will have to involve itself with the ongoing 22 process of development enough so that it can keep saying 23 whether it thinks it sees a pattern that makes sense to it, or 24 whether we're getting another list again, you know.
And I've 25 been in the position where I've gone through this with research I
' ~
c.
75 il groups that didn't at first get the idea, but after you say for 2
the fifteenth time, "You gave me another list again, and I want-
~
=3 to know why what's on that list is on that list," then you can begin to operate.
4 5
~ You may have to be involved enough to make some 6
philosophical comments about it, that you want a research 7
program which' answers this class of questions and not that 8
class of questions; that you are most concerned about certain 9
classes of potential events, and not so much about others.
n 10 That kind of guidance may be very important, and you may have 11 difficulty in agreeing on what those are.
But perhaps if the 12 fundamentals are fundamental enough, you can indeed agree on 13 what's involved and help to give the Staff some help.
14 You obviously cannot and should not write the 1
15 program, but if you can't understand it in such a way that you i
16 can go away and defend it, and agree on what it is to be 17 defended, then it probably doesn't have enough structure, and 18 it has to appear in a form where you understand where it came j
19 from.
20 MR. GREENWOOD:
One very practical thing we suggest
{
21 in the report, which I'd like to underline because I do think 22 it's really quite important, and that is to have on the staff i
23 of the Chairman and perhaps each of your personal staffs, l'
is some'ocy wno nas tne tecnnical capability and who is given by c
1
( %..
25 each of you the job of doing this, of tracking what's going l
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1 on, of,ta. king with the people,-going to the right meetings,
/ ~.,
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. reading the right reports, keeping you informed and, you know, 2-3 being there, able to answer your questions or, if they can't 4
do it that moment, you know, in thr,ee days can come back with 5
the answer for you.
6 MR.-AHEARNE:
I will point out we recommended to the 7
Chairman --
8 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
And I did that when I first came 9
on.
You may not know that, but I came on in July, before you 10 recommended such a move, and I brought Dr. John Larkin with 11 me, and he's in that job now.
You say full time.
He does two l
12 jchs full time.
He does research and he does waste for me, so 2
13
-- but he does both full time.
14 MR. FROSCH:
Some of us are familiar with that 15 concept.
16 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
I get the sense, though --
17 I think that was a good move on your part, Lando, but I get l-l 18 the sense that at'least from the NRC Staff's perspective the i
j 19 approach is more -- much as it is in trying to sell the 20 program outside the agency.
The approach is, well, we simply I
21 have to educate the Commissioners on what we're doing here, 22 rather than explaining the rationale.
We've had these little 23 sessions where they come in and they talk about, well, here's l'
a parkluular area of researen unat we're coing and we just s.
25 want to tell you what we've accomplished and what we are going t
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77 1
,to be doing over.the next few years.
And I'm afraid that 2
-unless the Commission gets into the kind of involvement in 3
detail that you all were talking about, in actually probing-4 what is the rationale for doing this, why aren't you doing 5-more'in other areas -- human factors, some of the ones that 6
you have identified -- how do you make those kinds of 7
decisions, and are we confident that that process really makes 8
sense, that it is a logical, well thought out, well reasoned 9
and really tied to the pressing problems that are facing this 10 agency, that it's going to be more of a packaging and 11 presentation kind of-question on the part of the Staff, rather 12 than fixing the fundamental structure.
13 MR. AHEARNE:
I will point to Recommendation 3, in 14 which we say the NRC should develop a cogent research 15 philosophy that can be used to direct and assess the 16 effectiveness of the safety research program.
If the 17 Commission is unable to reach agreement on research agreement, 18 the chairman must develop one of his or her own.
19 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Well, we are doing that.
That's 20 part of what we are working on, and -- well, are there any 21 other questions?
22 MR. ROISMAN:
I just want to point out I think the 23 point that commissioner Asselstine made is this should not be 24 lost, because it appears here, but it happens all the time,
\\,.
25 and it's a pet peeve of mine, and that is that your staff
78 1
views you as the adversary..This is not a partnership between
'2 you and your staff.
They sell you their ideas.
They don't 3
share with you their thoughts.
And I know that my clients
'4 come to you and we sell you our ideas, that's what we're here 5
for. 'But there is a time when it's important, and never 6
important than on a question of research, for them to make you 7
a partner in that process and not the package for you, as 8
Commissioner Bernthal hopes maybe you will be able to do for.
9 Congress.
Not a package for you, but to let you know where 10 the warts are as well as where the beauty marks are, and to 11 get you involved in that process.
12 I don't know how you change that.
There isn't a
(
pill or something or something you can send out to Bethesda 13 14 that will permeate the air, but it really is a serious, 15 serious problem.
And this is just one example, and maybe the 16 most frustrating of them where that occurs.
17 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I don't think you are going
'o change that completely, because there's a necessary 18 t
19 component, in my judgment, of the political appointee process 20 that always places you in.an adversarial position with respect 21 to the Civil Service, and I think that is a good process, 22 because our job is to come in here and render judgments short 23 term and leave and go off and do something else.
And that 24 system in itself, I think, is a good one.
25 I agree with you that in the case of research, we
1,*
79
,,a-1 ought to be able to'get a lot closer to the ideal you suggest
.m.
2 because_there's no reason why that.should be particularly 3
adversarial._ But broadly speaking,~I think'there always will
-4 be that,adversarial relationship.
5 MR. FROSCH:
This is the reason why I started'by 6
saying it's partly a question of style and communications.
I-i -
7 have to say that it has been my experience, coming'in as a 8
senior appointee, that the civil Service staff was normally 9
desperately eager to get me onboard, to convince me.that their 10 pattern of things was right -- indeed, to sell me -- but that 11 they were always extremely responsive to the way in which I 12 wanted it packaged or how I wanted to put my own english on 13 the_ program, or my own change on the program.
14 In recognition of the fact that all senior appointees 15 are short-timers, in a sense, there is obviously a limitation 16 on what anyone who comes in to do that can do.
And my own 17 philosophy has been to generally not try to change everything, 18 b.ecause you can't possibly do that.
But the thing which has 19 seemed easiest to do was in fact to get the rationalization for 20 what people wara trying to sell me, at least in the sense of 21 saying, you know, a hard sell, if I don't understand why it is 22 you're selling me this, and you pretty rapidly get down to what 23 the philosophical and strategic questions really are, and then I
24 you can have the real argument.
k.. -
25 Somewhere in here we use the phrase for thau in this l
80
.1 and other contexts of adversarial partners.
We really were m
2 talking about industry and government.
These are people who
.3
. argue with each other in order to obtain the same end, and it 4
is possible to establish that kind of communication,.and get a 5
good program.
6 MR.~AHEARNE:
I just disagree with you.
I've been 7
on both sides.
I've been a political appointee in both 8'
Republican and' Democratic Administrations, and I've been a 9
Senior Civil Servant, and that just isn't the case.
I have 10
~ seen many people come in with that attitude, that is, that we 11 are here a short time, we are adversaries, and we are just 12 going to make our changes, and you do develop then 13 antagonisms.
It need not be that way.
Bob is absolutely
(
14
.right, the dedicated career people are really looking for 15 someone that they can work with, and that does not --
16 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Pell, let me just say this.
In the 17 months that I have been Chairman, I find the staff very 18 responsive and very willing to listen to my ideas of what I 19 want to do.
I have found working with the senior career l
20 people in our organization that they are responsive, and we 21 are doing a lot of things that you may not be aware of.
Of 22 course, the reorganization you have heard about, but I think 23 that's rather significant in many areas.
Some personnel moves I'
24 that I think will be healthy for this organization.
The Staff 25 has accepted that very well.
It hasn't been done before, s
1 al
- p l'.
ever, to'my. knowledge,_.this significant a change.
We're
'2 putting in a management planning-strategy that we are still' 3
' developing that the' Staff is involved in and helping me.
The 4-commission has approved it as we have moved along.
We are 5
moving along in that regard now. -We have a solid structure 6
of management planning that will eventually result-in a 7-five-year plan.
This agency has navershad that before.
8 There's a lot of significant things that I have moved out in 9
that the Staff has been extremely supportive of.
10 I find, as Dr. Frosch says, and as you say, John, 11 that it' depends, I suppose, on the circumstances.
I don't 12 know how this agency -- how it's worked in the past, but I
_{
find the Staff very responsive to what I want to do, and 13 14 working with the commissioners on these things, so we do these 15 things by commission direction and policy.
I find the Staff 16 extremely willing to move and to change.
And I'm not trying 17 to do everything, either, but I think we are doing quite a bit 18 in some very significant areas.
19 So I have no qualms about working closely.
I.think l
20
_Vic Stallo has been extremely supportive, and so have all the 1
i 21 senior leadership of the Staff.
So I feel very comfortable, l
22 and I think it's an opportunity that I have as a chairman, the commissioners have with me, to perhaps move thin agency in a 23 i.
24 different direction.
I am trying to do that.
You know, I'm 25 trying to focus on safety, safwty, safety, that's the name of
.q p S2
'l the game, and I find the Staff very willing and supportive, m
2 excited aboutLthe organizational changes generally, and the 3
new planning initiative is being well supported.
So those 4
things, I think,.make me feel that we can indeed exert 5
leadership'from this Commission.
And then the Staff is 6
supporting us 100 percent.
It doesn't have to come all from 7
the Staff.to the Commission, and spoon-feed us at all in.my 8
judgment.
The Staff is looking for leadership, and I think,'I
- 4. -
9 hope, that they're getting it.
10 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Look, I don't think you 11
'should miscontrue my comments.
I do not agree that -- I i
j 12 guess, with you, John.
I think if one wants the best example 13 of what I'm talking about -- and I would call it a constructive 14 engagement' relationship -- what you do is go to those who were, 15 I guess, considered to have given the world'in many respects, 16 the administrative structures that have served so well, and i
17 that's the British.
And if you go to Britain and look at one 18 of the finest' Civil Service organizations in the world, the 19 innerplay between the ministers, if you will,.the political 20 appointees in the British system, and the Civil Service is well 21 known.
It is adversarial, it's a constructive kind of 22 adversarial relationship, but it has to be that way.
I think 23 it's very good.
And that doesn't mean you're at each other's n
l 24 throats.
I don't disagree with anything that's been said in i S_
25 that sense.
But I also don't -- I think it's simply 4
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' unrealistic to think that short term appointees whose job it s
.2 is to come in from the outside and take a fresh look and 3
recommend change and provide. leadership, as the Chairman says, 4
that that is ever going to be anything but somewhat 5
adversarial.
I stick to my guns on that.
6.
COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
The agency pays less for my 7-words of wisdom to be put on a transcript than anybody so --
8 (Laughter.]
9 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
-- I feel. compelled to tell 10 two stories --
11 (Laughter.]
12 COMMISSIONE2 ROBERTS:
And I hope your optimistic 13 viewpoint and positive attitude is borne out.
But I'll tell 14 you two stories.
15 I had been here about six' months and I was in this i
16 building on H Street, and I got on the elevator and was alone 17 with one of the senior staff, whom every one of you know -- at 18 least the NRC people -- and I'm a man of few words.
And this 19 fellow said to me, "Now Mr. Roberts, how are you enjoying 20 being at the NRC7" And I was quite noncommital and said 21 something like, "Well it's certainly different from the 22 private sector."
And he said, Yes, you fellows come and go, J
23 but the Staff stays forever."
24 Second story.
\\[
25 John Ahearne critiqued an emergency planning drill l
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1; and in his thoughtful, conscientious way, he wrote a memo that i f(3 2.
pointed out some of the shortcomings of the drill.
Well,.
3 several months later I went out to-watch one of these drills 4
and, you know, in the Response Center they have a status 5
board.
They have who's public affairs, who's. congressional' 6.
relations.
I mean everybody knows who holds the nominal. top 7
position, whether people are on leave or sick or whatever.
8 Well,.the status board was completely out of date, 9
.which is something John had pointed out in his meno.
And I 10 turned to the guy who at that time ran the Response Center, 11 and I said, " Gee, didn't'you read commissioner Ahearne's 12 memo?"
This guy looked me right in the eye and said, "Just
'13 because we read it, doesn't mean we pay any attention to it."
14 (Laughter.)
15 MR. AHEARNE:
There is a difference between 16 adversarial and incompetence.
17 (Laughter.)
.18 MR. FROSCH:
Mr. Roberts, I have had a Congressman 19 level a finger at me across the table and say, "Mr. Secretary, 20 you Secretaries come and go like Greyhound buses."
21 (Laughter.)
22 MR. FROSCH:
"How long have you been there?"
23 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Well, I submit that we are all 24 different, perhaps, but you don't get anywhere without trying, T.. ' '
(-
25 and that's what I'm going to try to do.
And I have a great i
?.
85 l: :%;
l-1
_ respect for the career public service people. ' Frankly,~I do.
l x
2 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
So'do I.
.3 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
I was one, kind of, in the military 4
for a good number of years, and I worked with political 5
appointees, too, and they were different.
I have met some 6
very fine ones and some who were different.
'7 (Laughter.]
8 MR. FROSCH:
Didn't come up-to your expectations.
9 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
But now it's my opportunity, and I 10 have every good reason to at least be optimistic and try, and 11 that's exactly what I'm trying to do.
I think this 12 organization can be extremely responsive, I know they are 13 professional, and they will respond.
And at least I'm going 14 to take that attitude and give it my best effort.
15 Well, let me just say to all of you, we thank you 16 for a very, very valuable report.
That was my first reaction 17 when I read it, as I told Dr. Frosch a month or so ago, and I 18 think that you have made a contribution to our research 19 program that will be very valuable, and I don't want to let it 20' die.
I feel that -- and the Staff report we did just get 21 yesterday.
We had an earlier preliminary report, but we've 22 got to read the one we got yesterday more carefully.
23 Just a couple quick comments, because we want to 24 wind up, I know.
, ~.
(_
25 The best research program that you emphasize, I'll
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1 support that 100 percent.
I think this is something.that t
2 perhaps we may not have done as well asive should have in the
-3.
past, but that's something that I t ink is a very valuable s
,1 4
recommendation. gWe should get the best there is.
5 The independent advisory groupe I think that your s
6 recommendation there also is important, and I want the Staff 7
to look into that, and I want to study it a little bit more 8
myself.
We may want.to' ask you to be our independent advisory 9
' group, but we'll think about that a little bit, with my fellow i
3 10 Commissioners.
11 (Laughter.')
12 MR. FROSCH:
Let the ecord show my eyebrows went s
\\
13 up.
(
14 (Laughter.]
15 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
You started this, in a sense, after i
16 we asked you to, I will admit.
But I think after we get into s
17 it for a while, we should get an independent look, and so we 18 will be looking at that a little bit more ourselves.
19 But I don't want to let your valuable report just r;
20 come and go, because I think you have made some very
/
21 constructive comments, and I don't agree with every one of 22 your recommendations, but I certainly agree with mcst of 23 them.
I agree with the thrust of what you've suquested, and I 24 think it's been extremely valuable and very helpful, and 1
(.'
25 want to not only thank you, but to ask you to at least consider
?
87 1'
l
.1 the fact that we may come back to you and have you take another 2
look, and see what you think about some of the thinga that we 3
may have done-here in the not too distant future.
l I
p And I want the Staff, as I have already discussed it 4
5 with them, anyway, to keep'a positive attitude about it'and we 6
will review their comments very carefully.
7 I would also like to ask my fellow Commissioners --
8 Commissioner Bernthal has already given us some of his 9
thoughts, as I mentioned earlier, but if there are any other 10 comments from my fellow Commissioners, I would be most grateful 11 to receive them, too, as we look to see what we can do to 12 improve our research program.
It is important.
The research 13 program is very important, always important to defend.
We 14 haven't talked about it very much, but I know many of you have 15 been involved in research programs -- I have in the past, too, 16 and some of the things we were talking about today, you know, 17 we've heard about a lot of these kinds of things before.
18 Research programs are always hard to defend.
But they are 19 important to defend if they are really useful to you.
Our 20 research program, as far as I'm concerned, is really vital to 21 our safety mission, and it's useful not only in applied 22 research, the way we use it, but it is also useful in the more 23 basic and fundamental amoroach to rasaarch that wa ahnnld hava 24 going on in a parallel effort all the time.
(_
25 So I just want to thank you very much for what you
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88 l
1 have done, and I appreciate a very fine effort.
We accept 2
here constructive criticism, and we will be looking very
)
3 carefully at all the suggestions you have given us.
i 4
Unless there are other comments --
5 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
Lando, jus'. one quick 6
comment.
7 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Yes.
8 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE:
I would just add to your 9
views and comments that I think this was a very helpful and 10
,very informative and enjoyable meeting.
11 I also think it shows that you can actually have a 12 full, free and very candid exchange and discussion even in 13 public.
14 (Laughter.)
15 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
All right, that's enough.
16 (Whereupeu. at 4:15 p.m.,
the meeting was adjourned.]
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 l
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25 I
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2 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE 3
4 This is to certify that the attached events of a 5
meeting of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission entitled:
6 7
TITIZ OF MEETING:
Briefing on National Academy of Sciences Report:
" Revitalizing Nuclear Safety Research" 8
PLACE OF MEETING:
Washington, D.C.
9 DATE OF MEETING:
Wednesday, February 25, 1987 10 e.-
11 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original 12 transcript thereof for the file of the Commission taken
{#
13 stenographically by me, thereafter reduced to typewriting by 14 me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and 15 that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the 16 foregoing events.
17 18 211W~ -
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Suzanne /. Youn 19 20 21 22 Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
23 24 1
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FROM:
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c a l Attached are copies of a Comission meeting transcript and related meeting 9) 2 !
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