ML20214Q478
| ML20214Q478 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Davis Besse  |
| Issue date: | 07/11/1986 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| References | |
| ACRS-2434, NUDOCS 8609240372 | |
| Download: ML20214Q478 (10) | |
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ACRS REGU E ORY PGLICIES AND PRACTICES
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SUBCOMMITTEE! MEETING MINUTES i,
JUNE 26, 1986
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WASH *NGTON, DC f
s PURPOSE: ThepurposeofthemeetingwastodiscusstheIncidentInves-tigation Team (ITT) Review and the; regulatory process with regard to the June 9, 1985 event at the Davis-Besse plant. The Report of the Indepen-dent Ad Hec Group for the Davis-BesSe Incident, NUREG-1201, published June 1986, was the basis for the meeting.
The meeting was a round-table discussion among the principal attendees, it began at 8:30am and adjourned at 2:00pm. Tha entire meeting was open to members of the public. Thercluere n9 written or oral statements from i
members of the public.
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g PRINCIPAL ATTENDEES:
The principi meeting attendees included:
H. Lewis, Chairman V. Stello, EDO F. Remick, Member J. Gleason, ASLBP s
C. Siess,f4 ember
- P. Morris, ASLBP l
l G. Reed, Member
- C. Fitti, ASLBP C. Wylie, Member
- J. Williams, Tole h Edison G. Quittschreiber, Staff T. Myer,' Toledo Edison
- Part Time l
s MEETING HIGHLIGHTS, AGREEMENTS, AND REQUESTS 1.
Executive Session Harold Lewis, Subcommittee Chairman, noted he was less ccacerned about the details of the June 9, 1985 Davis-Besse event than about the process of incident investigation.
He noted this was one of the first three events to have been investigated by an Incident Investigation Team and is the first to have been reviewed by an Ad Hoc Review Group.
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Reg. Policies & Practices Minutes June 26, 1986 Glenn Reed said he was generally concerned about the efficiency, repetition, and process of incident investigations.
He was con-cerned that everyone seems to be doing investigations and are wearing the workers and operators out with the large amount of redundant questioning. He expressed concern about the lack of work-place experience of investigators, lack of involvement of real experts, and real root causes not being ferretted out. He noted that operator errors are being blamed for incidents instead of design vulnerabilities. He saw this in the IIT for the Rancho Seco incident and finds the trend in investigations is not to look at design vulnerabilities.
He feels the industry is being operated i
from the top with little operatcr experience being factored back into the process.
q 2.
Presentation and Discussion with Victor Stello, Executive Direc?.or of Operations L
Victor Stello, EDO, said we need to be careful when we begin a new process such as the use of Incident Investigation Teams since it takes time to learn.
He believes it is important to take individu-al events and to learn from them, since things are sharpened'from lessons learned.
He noted that the first training session for IIT members will begin within the next couple of weeks.
He said we are aware of major problems of sensitivity of utility personnel with IITs.
He was not aware of a bad job done by any of the IITs to date.
He noted that e lot goes on before and after an IIT to draw l
it together. One major benefit is the understanding that comes back to the NRC from those on the IIT when they take those lessons learned and use them as part of their everyday job.
He doesn't think we are far off the mark with the IIT process.
He sees no fatal flaws'with regard to the process and thinks each will get better as time progresses.
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o Reg. Policies & Practices Minutes June 26, 1986 Dr. Lewis agreed that the IITs have done a reasonable job of bringing out the facts. Two defects he sees are:
(1) too many unrelated fixes, and (2) they treat root causes as acts of God.
In some cases there is no follow-up as to why the equipment failure occurred in the first place.
Mr. Stello agreed that the Davis-Besse incident corrective actions went far beyond the facts in the IIT, but the need was there.
Dr. Remick suggested that there needs to be a single document to tie everything concerning the Davis-Besse incident together.
Stello said he would consider issuing a document to close out all items.
Fred Hebdon, AE00, said there was a plan to issue a close out document for the Davis-Besse incident.
In response to questions from Dr. Siess concerning the threshold leve! for establishing an IIT, Mr. Stello said that whenever a significant event occurs the NRC Regional Office looks at how big the job is going to be to investigate, e.g., at Davis-Besse it was clear there were generic implications. Mr. Stello said to a large measure the management in the Region and Headquarters will "know it when they see it."
Stello felt that quarantining of equipment is not as helpful as previously thought since utilities will normally hold up restarts aryway, not the NRC.
Plants are routinely shut down to fix what needs to be fixed as a result of the investiga-tions.
In response to questions concerning utility involvement on IITs, Mr. Stello said on one IIT there was an INP0 representative. He fully agrces with recommendations to have a mix from outside; however, vendors are reluctant due to the potential for legal action. He said the E00 does and will continue to designate the
Reg. Policies & Practices Minutes June 26, 1986 IIT representatives, and would be delighted if INP0 would select a vendor or utility representatives for the IITs.
Dr. Lewis questioned whether it was desirable to have events trigger fixing everything that can be found in a plant. Mr. Stello said that NRR, the Regional Administrator, and I&E make decisions on the needed fixes.
Stello said they have to respond to what they see; however, with regard to the Davis-Besse incident, there were problems for many years, they went far beyond what the IIT showed.
In this case, Toledo Edison provided the course of action and suggested the fixes, and the NRC agreed.
3.
Presentation and Discussion with James Gleason, Chairman, Ad Hoc Review Group Mr.Gleason,CiiairmanoftheAdHocReviewGroup,saidthathe thought the need for the IITs had been decided by the Commission some time ago and that we should accept that position and get on to bigger and better things. He found a great deal of concern on the industry's part of not being involved with the function of the IIT.
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The Ad Hoc Group spent a lot of time in looking at the NRC Staff's involvement in the Davis-Besse incident. He said the IIT is looking at the NRC Staff's involvement. He noted that the issue of having people outside of the NRC looking at what went wrong is more difficult than what one might expect. He noted that in his view the Challenger accident investigation would have been more effi-cient if the NASA Staff had looked at the incident first', and then others had looked at those results in detail.
Mr. Stello noted that a NRC tracking system will be operating by June 30th to ensure that NRC does keep track of plant fixes on all plants.
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Reg. Policies & Practices Minutes June 26, 1986 Members of the Subcommittee suggested that due to the many ques-tions being asked by the NRC, utilities are led to believe that if they can just satisfy the NRC's questions, then the plant will be safe. Stello felt this feeling by the utilities is now changing.
He said he would encourage utilities to not blindly accept NRC requirements.
Mr. Gleason said plant operators feel NRC inspectors have a quota system. He felt the system is out of control, and that the regu-latory system is putting plants and jobs on the line for not following the multitude of NRC requirements. He felt that plant operators are loaded down with so many barriers and requirements that they can't concentrate on what needs to be done to operate the plants safely.
Mr. Gleason said he shudders at more regulation.
If plants are operating successfully they should be taken out of the regulatory phase.
4.
Presentation and Discussion with Admiral Joe Williams, Toledo Edison Company.
Admiral Williams said IITs are needed for credibility protection of utilities and protection of the NRC regional offices.
He felt it essential to quarantine equipment so the utilities are not blamed for changing it following an accident. With regard to the Davis-Besse incident, Admiral Williams said that when the IIT was fin-ished with its investigation, Toledo Edison had developed a plan of action. The IIT saw that plan of action and commented on it, although it did not approve it. To date, no procedures have come out of that plan of action which burden the operators.
He felt IITs should not be burdened with a broader based investigation and that the Davis-Besse IIT did not burden them, nor did the B&W Owners Group investigation, which was also conducted.
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Reg. Policies & Practices Minutes June 26, 1986 In response to questions from Dr. Siess, Admiral Williams said he would have done exactly what the IIT had done if he had the fore-sight to do it. He comented that regulations do not bother anyone that is doing things right but only those who are cutting corners.
He commented on the need to have someone on the utility staff that understands all the regulations in each specific area, and he has this on his Staff or available under contract.
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Dr. Lewis asked if there are any parts in the Davis-Besse plant that have not been inspected since the plant was built. Admiral Williams was not able to say "no" but that they are looking at drawings to ensure everything is on drawings. He added that everything on the drawings has been inspected and tested.
Admiral Williams said the IIT and NRC did not add anything to the cost of the Davis-Besse recovery that they would not have come up with themselves. Presently this cost is over 100 million dollars.
l Toledo Edison proposed the items to be done and the NRC agreed with these items. Without the accident they may not have done all of these things, but the June 9th event escalated their use of re-sources.
Admiral Williams said the NRC and INP0 can go a long way to en-lighten the utilities' management on things that should be done.
Admiral Williams said he is comfortable that the NRC has the talent for performing incident investigations. He felt that independent teams would not do a good job since they may not be around to answer for their mistakes. He suggested that investigations be kept with the NRC Staff. Dr. Lewis noted that if an Independent Safety Board were established it would be around to answer for its mistakes long after the investigations were completed.
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4 Reg. Policies & Practices Minutes June 26, 1986 Dr. Lewis noted that with some accidents, the NRC itself might be responsible. Admiral Williams said it is the function of the utilities to bring it to the proper authorities attention if this is the case and that the utilities "wouldn't lie down" if the NRC were at fault.
In response to a question from Mr. Reed concerning the use of non-NRC staff members, e.g., best man (Designated Representatives) to interface with the IIT, Admiral Williams said he would not want his people working for the IIT. He said a Designated Representa-tive working for the IIT would hamper the utility's investigation.
He wants his people working for him, not someone else.
In response to questions from Dr. Siess concerning the NRC Project Manager knowing everything about a plant that is going on in NRR, the regions, AE0D, etc., Stello said they are paying attention to elevating the competence of the project managers. Mr. Stello said the Project Manager of the Davis-Besse plant should have questioned the decision to valve out the startup pump.
Ted Myers, Head of Licensing for Toledo Edison, said the Project Manager at Davis-Besse is the focal point for the "get well plan."
5.
Final Executive Session Mr. Reed said he felt the three IITs done to date are "not bad" but he is concerned whether they will serve as a sound structure for all future accident investigations.
The Subcommittee discussed the need to respond to the three ques-tions posed to the Committee by Commissioner Asselstine and decided it was not ready to respond at this time.
Reg. Policies & Practices Minutes June 26, 1986 Dr. Lewis noted the Subcommittee heard that the IIT tries not to be judgmental, which may have something to do with having to go back to work at the NRC Staff. He noted that the NTSB goes further by laying out facts and a set of probable causes and recommendations.
The NTSB Report does not comment on other issues other than those directly related to the accident.
Dr. Remick said he had no criticism for the IITs performed to date.
He was concerned that for the long term, there may be things uncovered that should have been uncovered.
Dr. Lewis stated a concern for a need to close out issues, and the tendency to consid-er events as " God given."
Mr. Wylie felt that if the IIT involves outsiders, the question of independence still remains.
Dr. Lewis suggested that at this point the Subcommittee found nothing wrong with the IITs performed to date but also has not found enough reason for the ACRS to change its position with regard to the need for an Independent Safety Group.
Dr. Lewis expressed concern that utilities are required to fix everything that is found during the IIT, whether or not related to the incident.
Dr. Lewis said the thought that the IIT is good for educating.the NRC Staff is a new thought.
The Subcommittee members agreed to give a Subcommittee Report to the Full Committee at the July meeting. This oral report will suggest that there is no reason at this time for the ACRS to change its position on the need for an Independent Nuclear Safety Board but that it is not compelled to write another letter with regard to this matter.
o Reg. Policies & Practices Minutes June 26, 1986 NOTE:
Additional meeting details can be obtained from a transcript of this meeting available in the NRC Public Document Room, 1717 H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., or can be purchased from ACE-Federal Reporters, 444 North Capitol Street, Suite 402 Washington, D.C. 20001,(202)347-3700.
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Documents Provided to the ACRS for This Meeting f
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NUREG-1201, dated June 1986, Report of the Independent Ad Hoc Group for the Davis-Besse Incident.
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