ML20216J728
| ML20216J728 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 04/16/1998 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-3033, NUDOCS 9804210470 | |
| Download: ML20216J728 (204) | |
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'.n; -. OFFICIAL: TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS nJ- '
NUCLEAR REGULATORY. COMMISSION ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS p
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Title:
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DISCLAIMER UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS APRIL 16, 1998 The contents of this transcript of the proceeding l of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Advisory
() Committee on Reactor Safeguards, taken on April 16, 1998, as reported herein, is a record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
This transcript had not been reviewed, corrected and edited and it may contain inaccuracies.
1 1 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
() 2 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 3
4 ACRS SUBCOMMITTEE i l
5 RELIABILITY AND PROBABILISTIC RISK ASSESSMENT l 6
7 8 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 9 Two White Flint North, Room 2TB3 10 11545 Rockville Pike j 11 Rockville, MD 20852-2738 12 13 Thursday, April 16, 1998 14 15 The subcommittee met pursuant to notice at 8:30 16 a.m.
17 MEMBERS PRESENT:
18 GEORGE APOSTOLAKIS, Chairman, ACRS 19 MARIO H. FONTANA, Member, ACRS 20 THOMAS S. KRESS, Member, ACRS 21 ROBERT L. SEALE, Member, ACRS 22 GRAHAM WALLIS, Member, ACRS 23 RICHARD SHERRY, Senior Fellow, ACRS 24 25 O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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2 1 PROCEEDINGS
() 2
[8:30 a.m.]
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The meeting will now come 4 to order. This is a meeting of the ACRS Subcommittee on 5 Reliability and Probabilistic Risk Assessment. I am George 6 Apostolakis, Chairman of the Subcommittee.
7 The ACRS members in attendance are Mario Fontana, 8 Tom Kress, Bob Seale and Graham Wallis.
9 ACRS invited experts in attendance are Forest 10 Remick and David Okrent. ACRS senior fellow in attendance 11 is Richard Sherry.
12 The purpose of this meeting is to continue the 13 Subcommittee's review of matters related to elevation of 14 core damage frequency to a fundamental safety goal and
() 15 possible revision to the Commission's Safety Goal Policy 16 Statement.
17 The Subcommittee will gather information, analyze 18 relevant issues and facts and formulate proposed positions 19 and actions as appropriate, for deliberation by the full 20 Committee. l l
21 Michael T. Markley is the cognizant ACRS staff )
I 22 engineer for this meeting. j 23 The rules for participation in today's meeting 24 have been announced as part of the notice of this meeting 25 previously published in the Federal Register on March 27, 1
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3 1 1998.
O g j 2 A transcript of the meeting is being kept and will 3 be made available as stated in the Federal Register Notice.
l 4 It is requested that speakers first identify themselves and l 5 speak with sufficient clarity and volume so that they can be i 6 readily heard.
7 We have received no written comments or requests 8 for time to make oral statements from members of the public.
9 I am very pleased that we have two distinguished l 10 invited experts here today, Dr. David Okrent, who has spent 11 a lot of time on the ACRS, as we all know, and Dr. Remick, l 12 both on the ACRS and on the Commission, so we are very happy l 13 to have you her 14 Now we will proceed with the meeting and I call
() 15 upon Mr. Tom King, Gary Holahan and Mark Cunningham of 16 Research to begin.
17 MR. KING: What we'd like to do today is talk 18 about our plan and approach for studying the issues involved l 19 with updating the safety goal. If you recall, you have a 20 draft SECY paper that you received a couple of weeks ago.
21 That SECY paper is now in EDO's Office for signature. I
- 22 expect it to be signed hopefully this week, that goes to the l 23 Commission and basically proposes that we take some more 24 time to study the issues involved with updating the safety 25 goal, not jump into it. We suggest an additional year to O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 study them, and then we would come back to the Commission in
{
r- I (T j 2 March of 1999 with a recommendation.
! 3 We'd still like to get a letter from the full 1
\
j 4 Committee regarding that recommendation, particularly with
! I i 5 respect to does the SECY paper have the issues properly 6 identified and does the ACRS agree that it's proper to take I l
! 7 some more time to look at these and not jump into revising l
8 the safety goal policy.
9 I understand we are on the full Committee's agenda 10 for May to come and talk to you again on this subject, and 11 at that time, we would be requesting a letter, and hopefully j 12 at that time, the SECY paper will be up to the Commission.
13 If you recall, what the paper had in it were 12 l 14 issues identified that could be candidates for possible i /~T
- ( ,/ 15 revision in the safety goal policy. They were broken down 16 into three categories, those that change or expand the l 17 current policy,. those that clarify how we use the safety 18 goal in the regulatory process, and those that would make 19 the change consistent with current practice.
l 20 As we get into the presentation, we will come back l l
21 to those, but I thought at the beginning of the presentation
! 22 at least, we could talk more about the higher level issues 23 in terms of the purpose and scope and so forth of going in 24 and revising the safety goal policy.
1 25 In that paper, in addition to saying let's study l
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5 l
1 things some more, we did come up with some preliminary )
() 2 3
conclusions that we thought was worthwhile at least on three of those 12 issues, that we had a preliminary view that it j 4 would be worthwhile to update the safety goal policy.
5 Those were when the safety goal was issued, the 6 policy was issued back in 1986, it was really intended for 7 use in generic activities, whether that was rule making or i
8 generic letters or so forth. We have now taken the safety .
l 9 goal and deriveu some subsidiary objectives that we are 10 applying on a plant specific basis. We think it's 11 worthwhile to update the safety goal policy to acknowledge 12 that.
13 We have also developed a more comprehensive 14 discussion of uncertainties regarding what types of
(/ 15 uncertainties need to be considered and how to do that, 16 although the safety goal policy today talks about 17 uncertainties, it's a general discussion. We think it's 18 worthwhile to update that.
19 The safety goal policy in 1986 had in it what was 20 called a general plant performance guideline of 10 to the 21 minus 6 per reactor year for a large release of radioactive 1
22 material. That was provided for further staff study. The 23 staff did their further study. They went to the Commission 24 and said that goal was not practical because it was in 25 effect a much more restrictive goal than the quantitative ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l-6
! I health objectives that were in the policy. The Commission
() 2 agreed.
)
3 We are not applying that goal, and therefore, we I i
4 think it ought to be removed from the safety goal policy.
5 MR. OKRENT.: Early, I asked the question because 6 as I looked at that, it seemed to me you had two options.
7 The plant performance guideline is okay and maybe objectives 1
8 for the health safety goals were.a little too lax, and we j 9 could make them more stringent, especially since as
-10 originally formulated, one was really not a societal goal at 11 all.
I 12 How did you decide which way was the right way to l 13 go?
14 MR. KING: When we embarked on the study, we had 15 already had established a ground rule, that the quantitative 16 health objectives were the level of safety the Commission 17 was looking for. 1 1
18 MR. OKRENT: How was that decided? That was a 19 rather arbitrary choice of the numbers. Ask Forest Remick.
20 MR. REMICK: I'll address that later, how they 21 were arrived at and some of the history of it.
22 MR. KING: After the safety goal policy was 23 issued, there was a staff paper put together, after I'm sure 24 numerous discussions with ACRS back in 1989 that talked 25 about our views on how it ought to be implemented, the
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7 1 policy ought to be implemented.
m I 2
) In there, it was discussed that the QHO's were the 3 reference level of safety and that in going forward and 4 developing subsidiary objectives and looking at this plant 5 performance guideline, that we did not want to do anything 6 that would de facto establish a new level of safety. .
1 7 We kept that principle or that ground rule as we 8 went forward and did further study on the general plant 9 performance guideline, but you are right, technically, you 10 could go the other way. The way or the direction we felt we 11 had in endorsement from the Commission was the QHO's were 12 the reference and everything we did to develop subsidiary 13 things to the QHO's should not de facto supersede them in 14 terms of establishing a new level of safety.
() 15 MR. OKRENT: If I may have a minute. I can think 16 back to when Chernobyl occurred. It was widely stated, and 17 I won't try to say by whom, that a large release like that 18 was not in the cards for the U.S. reactors because they 19 were a different design. Different words were used, but 20 that was the sense.
21 If I do a little bit of overly simplistic 22 arithmetic, if I take your 10 the minus 5 per year as the 23 general plant performance guideline, and if I round it off l 24 to 100 reactors running, which I don't know if there are, l 25 this leads me to about 1 in 1,000 per year of a Chernobyl 1
~
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8 1 type release.
. (3 l
Q 2 Has somebody put out for public comment a question 3 to the public, is it thought that a release like Chernobyl I 4 should have a probability of 1 in 1,000 per year from the I i j 5 operating U.S. nuclear power plants or was it done in some t
l l 6 other way?
l 7 MR. KING: I don't know of any policy or i
! 8 discussion issued by the Commission for comment that states l
9 it the way you stated it.
l 10 MR. OKRENT: Do you think this is a non-trivial l
11 issue, one not worthy of public comment?
12 MR. KING: No, I wouldn't call it a non-trivial )
i 1 13 issue. I think as we have gone through and looked at this, l 14 every time we look at it, we uncover a new item for I
I l
O)
( 15 discussion. Maybe this is another one to add to the list. [
16 MR. OKRENT: I find it, I must say, a little 17 curious that it wasn't put out for public comment. It was a l 18 public comment issue way back, when the first proposed l
19 safety goal, which Forest Remick helped a lot in drafting, 20 were put out, and then there were some additional questions. f l 21 At that time, it was thought to be even then an 22 important thing for public comment, and I must confess, in 23 my remote status as Professor Emeritus Research Professor, I I
24 don't see everything coming across my desk like I used to 25 ten years ago, it was news to me, which brings up a second l l !
I f
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9 1 point.
2 Don't you notify the public when you make so major 3 a change as changing that particular general plant 4 I performance guideline, which for many years, I and I think a l
4 5 large part of the country thought was 10 to the minus 6. l 6 That's what was proposed in the original ACRS document back 7 around 1980, and which has been repeated in many other 8 things, l i
9 When you make this change, you do it on what I ;
j 10 will politely call a pragmatic basis and don't put it out t
i 11 for public comment, don't send it out to potentially i 12 interested parties, which I consider myself one of, I am not 13 a member of the public, who has a continuing interest in t
! 14 this.
() 15 I knew nothing about it and I don't know how many 16 people like this were in the same boat, and yet there it is.
17 MR. KING: Let me clarify one thing. The safety 18 goal policy still has the general plant performance !
l 19 guideline of 10 to the minus 6 in it. It's in it in a 20 fashion that says it's proposed for further study. The l 21 staff has done the further study and recommended to the 22 Commission that it is not practical to have such a guideline 23 and have that guideline be consistent with the quantitative 24 health objectives.
25 If we go back in and change the policy statement, l
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i 10 1 that's a public comment process. All of this will come out
() 2 for public comment.
3 We are at the point now where we are going back to 4 the Commission and possibly recommending we make that 5 change, but that change of the policy goes through the 6 normal public comment process.
l 7 MR. OKRENT: I'm aware of that. By the way, your 8 public comment process, in my opinion, is grossly deficient
- 9 in that I don't know who the public is that hears about it, 10 but here is not one member, here is not one member who sees 11 the reports that are the basis and so forth, so it seems to 12 me it's a selected few. l 13 Just one other point and I'll shut up for a 1 -
14 moment. I can still remember the rather lengthy debate on
(~'\ l l (,,) 15 the ACRS about really do the various safety goals have to be 16 all compatible with one another or can there be some safety 17 goals that don't automatically fit, as the staff has tried 1
to do with this performance guideline and health and safety 18 19 more general guidelines.
l i
l 20 I don't know of a law where if any ethical reason j l
21 or any other reason why these do have to match perfectly, i l
22 There can be other reasons. For example, if you got into a l 23 land contamination aspect of safety goals, it might not fit i 24 with some of these other things. That doesn't mean it would ,
l 25 not be a good thing necessarily.
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11 1 I for one find the logic that the staff pursues in 2 urging 10 to the minus 5, I'll use a kind word, subject to 3 reconsideration. I would have said " flawed," because they ll 4 were trying to argue way back then when I was still a member 5 that they couldn't define something that corresponded to a 6 large release and they were having trouble and so forth.
7 This seems to be a house of cards and if you take ;
8 away the first card that you have to have, some of the other 9 conclusions are not quite so hardy. Well, I think you know j 10 from where I'm coming and I'll stop now.
11 MR. REMICK: Just a quick response. Tom is right 12 that although the general plant performance guideline was in 13 there, it was specifically just for consideration, and later 14 on, I'll tell you just a little bit of the history of why it 15 was even in there, and I would also say that the majority of 16 ACRS and the Commission told the staff and ACRS in its 17 efforts, to try to develop some kind of a definition of a i
18 large release, that it was to be consistent with the 19 quantitative health objectives and not constitute a de novo 20 new safety goal.
21 The staff has been under these orders from the !
22 Commission and also the ACRS majority letters express that i
23 also.
24 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: On the same point, one of )
25 the issues we have here, David, in front of us is that issue l
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12 1 of. consistency. The reason why some people are arguing that
() 2 the core damage frequency, as the number is accepted now by 3 the staff, should be elevated to a fundamental level is 4 because it's inconsistent within the uncertainties of the 5 current state-of-the-art, that it's inconsistent with the 6 QHO's.
7 There is nothing wrong with being inconsistent, as l
8 long as you know you are inconsistent and you say so and you 9 provide reasons why you are inconsistent. That's the whole 10 point of elevating it. If it was consistent, then the issue 11 would go away. I think that would apply to other things-12 that you mentioned.
13 The issue of consistency is indeed important, but 1
( 14 it's not that we want to be consistent, it's if we decide
) 15 not to be consistent, I think we should state so explicitly 16 and make it part of the policy, that for some reason, we 1
l 17 want the frequency of this quantity to be less than such a l
l 18 number and we recognize that this number is more stringent, l 19 That's one of the issues in front of us today, I think.
20 MR. KING: I think that is exactly right in terms 21 of the QHO's are based upon health effects. When we looked 22 at the 10 to the minus 6 plant performance guideline, we l 23 looked at it from the standpoint of health effects, to keep 24 it consistent with the QHO's, but if you bring in land j 25 contamination, it's not health effects any more, it's i
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13 1 something else you're looking at, and you could have
( 2 different goals that have different objectiver and the l 3 numbers may not line up.
4 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think we will come back 5 to this point, Tom. I think the point has been made.
l 6 MR. KING: All right. What we want to focus on 7 today in the first part of the presentation is to talk about l 8 the overall approach. Mike had sent me seven questions from 9 you and the other Subcommittee members. I've got two of 10 those addressed specifically in some vu- graphs. I think 11 all the others will be hit as we go through this.
12 I did want to say one thing. We haven't done a 13 whole lot of work since the last presentation to the 14 Subcommittee. We are just getting into some of these h 15 issues. Everything you are going to hear today is 16 preliminary, it's subject to change, discussion.
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Tom, you have requested one 18 year to study these issues from the Commission. That has 19 not been approved, right?
l 20 MR. KING: No, the paper has not even gone to the '
21 Commission yet.
22 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay.
23 MR. KING: I would expect hopefully in the next 24 few days, it will be up there.
25 I expect this will be somewhat of an iterative O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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- 14 1 process as we study these issues. We may decide to drop
() 2 some, add some, modify them, whatever, This is just sort of 3 a snap shot of where we stand now. In fact, some of the l 4 things, I can't even say Gary bought into them or Mark l
5 bought into them, I put them down just to get some 6 discussion going. They are my own personal views. I'll 7 point those out when we get there.
8 The first thing I'd like to start with is why 9 bother updating the safety goal policy, what's the purpose 10 of revisior to the safety goal policy. I think it's 11 probably worth some discussion as to what are we trying to 12 accomplish.
j 13 l If you read the current purpose, and let me just i 14 read it from the policy itself, it says the objective of the
(' j 15 Commission's policy statement is to establish goals that 16 broadly define an acceptable level of radiological risk that 17 might be imposed on the public as a result of nuclear power l
l 18 plant operation. '
19 DR. WALLIS: Who decides what's acceptable, to go 20 back to the earlier question. I've heard a lot about NRC 21 philosophy in these meetings. NRC philosophy should 22 presumably be an expression of society's attitude to this 23 kind of risk. How do you determine if an agency's 24 philosophy is consistent with this broader attitude of
! 25 society? Is there an effort made to do that or does NRC
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15 i i philosophy have a life of its own that's determined
() 2 internally?
3 MR. KING: I ought to let Dr. Remick answer this, 4 but there was a lot of discussion -- the safety goal policy 5 was issued in 1986. The work on it started years before 6 that.
7 MR. REMICK: There were numerous workshops.
8 MR. KING: Workshops, yes.
9 MR. REMICK: We conducted four public information 1
10 meetings around the country at the time the drafts were put i 11 out, put in the public register, received about 300 written 12 comments.
I 13 DR. WALLIS: What time was this, what date?
14 MR. REMICK: That is in the 1982 time frame.
15 Excuse me, 1981/1982 time frame.
16 DR. WALLIS: It is a reflection of public attitude 17 at that time.
18 MR. OKRENT: If I may again interject. There is a 19 certain way of ascertaining what the NRC judges to be a 20 public comment, but in fact if you look at what were the 21 comments on their most recent thing, as I recall, about 80 22 to 90 percent were from the industry, a certain number from 23 others.
24 I mentioned I was not one of the members of the 25 public who was notified or sent any of the reports that were l
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16 1 relevant, yet I consider myself a vitally interested member l'h
() 2 of the public, since I drafted the first form of the safety 3 goals, but they did not choose to notify me or millions of 4 other people.
5 Who is the public that they are soliciting? I 6 think that's a relevant question when one uses the term 7 "public comment."
8 DR. KRESS: There is a very important question 9 here and that is do we or do we not accept the QHO's as a 10 statement of society's level of acceptance of nuclear in 11 this country. If we don't start from that concept, we have 12 an extremely difficult multi multi-year problem of trying to 13 establish what a new set of those are.
14 I think you guys are telling us that we start from l'h
, (,) 15 those as already accepted as the level. I don't know if we l 16 want to re-open that issue or not, but that's a very 17 different question.
18 MR. KING: You will see in a couple of slides that 19 is a ground rule. We are not questioning the one- tenth of 20 one percent judgment that was used to set the QHO's.
21 CRAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think there are several 22 issues on the table at the same time. I think David has 23 raised the issue of public comment, the process soliciting 24 public comments.
25 DR. KRESS: I think that's really a good issue.
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17 1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's one issue. I'm not
/~'N (j 2 even sure it's an issue for you. That's an agency-wide l 3 issue.
I 4 MR. KING: But it is an issue we ought to talk 5 about in the sense that after the policy was issued, which r
l 6 had been developed through numerous public input and l l
l l 7 comments, the implementation of that policy has all been i 8 done through activities that did not go out for public i l l l 9 comment, Commission direction and SRM staff papers, staff 10 studies, reg guides, well, the reg guides got public 11 comment, but a number of things we have done to implement 12 that policy did not get public comment.
13 One of the pro's of saying let's update the policy 14 statement is to take all that stuff that we are now doing in
) 15 practice and subject it to public comment, because that l 16 hasn't been done in a number of cases. That is a 17 consideration.
I 18 MR. OKRENT: But there is a problem that you have 19 departed from things that were either in the safety goal 20 policy or were strongly hinted as likely to be in the safety 21 goal policy, like 10 to the minus 6, which was talked about ;
22 for many years.
23 The staff has written what I will call internal 24 documents and chosen to go to 10 to the minus 5. I had no l
l 25 knowledge of this. I'm a ramber of the public. 1 l
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i 18 1 MR. KING: The only place you would have seen that
() 2 3
was if you had seen our reg guide as a draft, it was called DG-1061, which proposed this 10 to the minus 5, large early 4 ' release frequency. ,
5 MR. OKRENT: Was that a pre-decisional thing -- I
]
6 don't --
l 7 MR. KING: No, it was put out for public comment.
8 There was a workshop. j l
9 MR. OKRENT: But even then, again, what I said was 10 your public comment procedure needs to be thought about.
11 MR. SHERRY: If I'm not mistaken, all the notices 12 on a regulatory action or position is all put out on the Web 13 now. Maybe that needs to be more broadly disseminated. The 14 information is available.
() 15 MR. OKRENT: You should not assume that if 16 something is put on the Web, it is publicly available. I, l 17 for one, to this day, have trouble finding things for the 18 California Energy Commission when I have the exact address 19 using the Web. Please, don't tell me if it's on the Web, 20 it's publicly available. Most people I know don't have 21 computers and use the Web.
( 22 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think we are straight.
I i
23 We understand this point now. The other point was the i l
24 numbers themselves at the QHO level. I agree with Tom !
l 25 Kress, that if we open up that, then we are talking about l O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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19 1 another long period of time of discussing this. Plus, I
() 2 have not heard anybody complain about the QHO's themselves.
3 MR. OKRENT: I'll give you one complaint right 4 now, which is mentioned.
l 5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Now I have one.
6 MR. OKRENT: Which is mentioned, it's a long-7 standing complaint, which is mentioned in what the staff is 8 doing. They have correctly identified the fact that there l
9 is no societal criterion in the original things drafted by 10 Forest.
11 MR. REMICK: I'll differ with you when the time 12 comes.
13 MR. OKRENT: You may differ. What it is is 14 calculating the individual risk to the people living either
() 15 within 50 miles or 10 miles of the sita. They call that 16 societal. It is by no means societal.
17 If I understand what the staff said they are doing 18 in practice, they now integrate out the 50 and get the total 19 number of effects. Am I right?
20 MR. KING: That's right.
21 MR. OKRENT: That is a kind of societal effect but 22 it's not -- if there were nothing else done, I think the 23 safety goals should be corrected to say one, we have no 24 societal goal or two, we are modifying it in a certain way j l
25 so it is a societal goal. j l
t i
I
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I 2
20 1 MR. KING: It's not actually a goal. We do in
() 2 regulatory analysis look at the societal person rem out to 3 50 miles, but we use that in a cost benefit fashion.
4 MR. OKRENT: I understand, but it was intended to 5 --
6 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think what is really 7 missing, we have had this discussion before, is it societal 8 or not. Well, in a sense, it is, if you multiply the 9 population, but what's missing is the risk conversion that 10 .you are putting there, the number of people, raise it to 11 some power.
12 MR. OKRENT: But the goal doesn't say multiply it 13 by this number.
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The goal specifically uses 15 the word " societal."
I 16 MR. KING: The qualitative goal.
17 MR. OKRENT: It uses the word but it is not --
18 MR. REMICK: I can't resist at this point pointing 19 out that in the original safety goal as proposed, there was 20 also a cost benefit guideline algorithm of $1,000 per man 21 rem. That coupled with what is called societal, you can 22 accumulate a lot of dollars to reduce person rem. If it was 23 left in there, that was a way of limiting societal risk.
24 As George points out, if you take individual 25 risks, multiply it by the population, then if you have the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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f 1 l 1 l
21 l
l 1 cost benefit algorithm of how much money could be available
() 2 to lower the person rem. you had a societal limit.
i 3 DR. KRESS: Something as important as societal 4 risk ought not be hidden in a cost benefit. It ought to be 5 explicit and it ought to be stated, this is a societal risk 6 goal. If it's to be in that, it ought to be in a very 7 explicit well stated form, I think.
8 MR. HOLAHAN: I guess I can't resist George's 9 comment about not having heard negative comments about the 10 safety goal. A lot of us have reservaticns about lack of ]
11 treatment of land contamination and the treatment of average 12 individuals versus worse individuals.
13 I think there are lots of questions that could be 14 argued. I O
V 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Of course. Any time you 16 publish a document like that, you hear comments that it 17 could be done better and so on. What I meant was I haven't 18 heard any " violent disagreements," that we really have to 19 fix that document, otherwise, you know, all sorts of 20 terrible things will happen. That's the point, as opposed 21 say to LERF, the large early release frequency, which is a 22 serious issue now, it's 10 to the minus 5 or 10 to the minus 23 6. There's strong disagreement. We've had problems in the 24 past with core damage frequency and this and that. That's 25 what I meant.
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22 1 Of course, if you have a policy statement, there
() 2 will be conflicting agreements, disagreements.
3 MR. HOLAHAN: In that practical sense, I think we 4 have found that the existing safety goal could be used to 5 derive guidelines for doing things like license amendments.
6 That's what we have done. The existing safety goal was not 7 really an impediment to doing that, but you do have to make 8 a bunch of assumptions and decisions which are not always 9 entirely consistent with that safety goal.
10 MR. OKRENT: I think if you go back to the 11 history, and I'm guessing, Forest --
12 MR. MARKLEY: Dr. Okrent, we really need to try to 13 focus on speaking in the microphones here.
14 MR. OKRENT: That's been the case for 20 years.
() 15 Sorry. One of the then Commissioners was very concerned 16 with the societal goal. He said however small it is, you 17 could multiply it by 100 reactors running for so many years 18 and there the Nuclear Regulatory Commission --
l 19 MR. REMICK: 40,000 deaths.
20 MR. OKRENT: I think that scared the other 21 Commissioners into wording something that would not be so 22' interpreted, but it was a mistake in my opinion. If they 23 are going to have a societal goal, they should have 24 identified one and calculated it in some way.
25 MR. HOLAHAN: And to communicate it well to O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l i
23 1 society, I think you have to calculate other comparable
() 2 things, because I think it's very easy for people to over
)
3 react to societal goals.
l 4 MR. OKRENT: I don't disagree. By the way, I was l 5 a long supporter of land contamination, if you go back and 6 look in the ACRS letters.
l 7 DR. SEALE: I can attest to that, yes.
l 8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Well -- l I'
l 9 MR. OKRENT: Or the original proposal.
10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: We are discussing now or we 11 started some time ago discussing the purpose of the revision i
12 of the safety goal policy. '
13 MR. HOLAHAN: I think today's meeting is proving 14 that it would take at least a year to discuss all of these
( 15 issues.
16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You are absolutely right.
17 I don't want it to take several though. A year is okay.
18 You have more slides on this. At some point I would like to 19 have a summary of the issues that are on the table, at least 20 as options, so we will have them on the record.
21 MR. KING: Yes. I put this up to really stimulate l 22 discussion but also to say if we are going to go in and 23 revise the policy statement --
1 24 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You suspected you needed l 25 something to stimulate discussion?
l
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l l 1 24 1 (Laughter. ]
2 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Now you know better, Tom.
3 Go ahead. l I
4 MR. KING: If we are going to revise the safety I 5 goal policy statement, we ought to get something out of it.
6 If it's just a question of adding CDF, that could be done 7 fairly easily and just live with the rest of the words.
8 It seems to me if we are going to go in and revise 9 it, we ought to take a look and try to get out of it what we 10 really want to get out of it. I just put down three general 11 ideas that sounded useful to me if we are going to go in and 12 revise it.
13 One is we can now use it to define NRC's 14 philosophy for reactor safety, get into discussion of things
() 15 like how do the goals -- what's their purpose. They are 16 defined by the Commission to describe how safe is safe 17 enough. We also use the term " adequate protection." We 18 could discuss at least qualitatively that relationship. We 19 could discuss the regulatory analysis that's done that deals 20 with the area in between adequate protection and how safe is 21 safe enough. Maybe consider putting back in a cost benefit 1
22 type goal, and then to quantify what we meant by the desired '
23 level of safety, to put in some engineering values that can 24 actually be used in implementation, like CDF and LERF, and 25 to provide some direction to the staff and industry, what do l O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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i 25 I we do with this policy.
() 2 I think when the policy was issued in 1986, it 3 came out but it took three years to figure out what to do 4 with it. I think it would be nice if we are going to go in 5 and revise it, to build that right into the policy.
6 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Let's say you did all that, 7 would it change your day to day operations?
8 MR. KING: No. That's the question, is it worth
(
9 doing that.
10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Essentially then what you i 11 are saying is that we should revise the policy statement to 12 make it reflect what is current practice.
l l 13 MR. HOLAHAN. That went pass me a little bit too l 14 fast. It seems to me most of the things we are currently 15 doing I think wouldn't change, but you might add in your l
l 16 decision process something about plant contamination. You 17 might add some additional tests of societal issues, either 18 in individual amendments or in rule making activities or l
I 19 something, or in your cost benefit guidelines, there might 20 be some additional factors, and those are sort of every day 21 things that could be different.
22 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, sure. Essentially 23 though --
I' 24 MR. HOLAHAN- I think most of what we are i
25 currently doing, if anything, I would think we might find
[')
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26 1 some additional bases to test for our decision process. We 1
() 2 probably wouldn't change the ones that we are currently 3 using.
4 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I'm trying to do a cost 5 benefit analysis of the updated process itself, because I 6 don't think it's going to take a year. If you start talking 7 about adding additional metrics, if you start talking about 8 societal issues and other things, then I think it's going to 9 take much more t'.lan a year, just on probably a comment 10 period would take -- a year is just for you.
11 MR. KING: The year is for us to go back to the 12 Commission and say here is what we recommend doing, and then 13 it's at least two years beyond that.
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Beyond that. So the 15 question is is it really worth it to go through this when 16 the benefit will be -- I don't know.
17 MR. KING: Yes, I spoke a little too fast. Gary 18 is right, if we put in something on land contamination, for 19 example, yes, that could change the way we do business, but 20 in terms of implementing risk informed regulation, we can do 21 that without modifying the policy statement. We can 22 continue down that path right now.
23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: David?
24 MR. OKRENT: It seems to me that if there is a 25 re-thinking of the safety policy, it could change some of i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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27 1 the ways of doing business not only with regard to land
() 2 contamination, if that's included, but even this goal on 3 what's the large release frequency. .
l 4 If I take 10 to the minus 5 a year, which is 5 uncertain when people calculate it, I've read everything 6 about the uncertainties, which I already knew, and model and 7 everything unknown and what do you want and say this is our 8 hope and then you take the number of reactors.
9 That's being done without it being part of the 10 safety goals. I think the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 11 owes it to the country to say this is our working practice 12 and what it means is even if we are right at 10 to the minus 13 5, and we could be off by a factor of ten either way, it 14 suggestr that we could have a very large release, may not be
() 15 like Chernobyl in its nature but it could be like Chernobyl 16 in the kinds of things released and so forth, of 1 in 1,000 l
17 per year.
I 18 Now, that may be considered acceptable by society-19 but I would guess at best it's borderline by society, and 20 that they would much prefer a smaller number, but the NRC 21 hasn't gone to society that way, they have just done it.
22 DR. KRESS: That's not exactly right because the t 23 10 to the minus 5 was put in there to be compatible with the 24 QHO's, which were the societal expectation, so it's not 25 exactly right. If you accept the QHO's, you sort of have to O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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28 1 accept the 10 to the minus 5.
() 2 MR. OKRENT: I understand how they derived-it and 3 I remember all of the different machinations the staff was 4 going through trying to find their definition of 10 to the j 5 minus 6, but it didn't help to remind them that at l 6 -Chernobyl, there were no early fatalities that I'm aware of 7 except the fire fighters and yet it was a big release, one 8 that I don't think one wants at the rate of 1 in 1,000 per 9 year. j l 10 This country was saying loudly, the industry, the 11 NRC, everybody, we can't have that kind of release. We 12 can't have it. Not that we could have it with 1 in 1,000 13 per year.
j 14 DR. KRESS: You can't have it.
() 15 MR. OKRENT: There's a little bit of thinking, I 16 think, that is required in that area. Making it compatible 17 with I'll say again arbitrarily chosen 10 to 1 percent, 18 which were good, but I don't think have to be compatible l
'19 with the large release at all. That's to my mind a self 20 imposed requirement, and I'm just saying that if you !
21 separately went out to the public and said this is 1 in 22 1,000 for a Chernobyl type release per year -- well, you all 23 think about it, and I don't just mean publish it in the 24 Federal Register and get 80 comments from the industry and a 25 couple of guys living in Oshkosh. I don't think that's O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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29 1 finding what public opinion is.
() 2 DR. KRESS: I agree but as I said before, let's 3 say we did put 10 to the minus 6 as an early release, large 4 release goal in the policy statement, that means we are 5 rejecting the QHO's.
6 MR. OKRENT: I don't agree that you are rejecting 7 it. Do you know where that 10 to the minus 6 got its 8 origin, as best as I can remember, many, many years ago, I 9 ran a special session at the American Nuclear Society on how 10 safe is safe enough. I got people from various areas. The 11 only one that had the guts to stand up and say what he 12 thought was the acceptable release for a large accident was 13 Chauncy Starr, and he pulled out of the air one in a 14 million.
N '
15 DR. FONTANA: I have a question regarding the 16 original of the QHO's, it's historical. The 10 to 1 percent 17 is the risk f rom all other sources of --
18 MR. REMICK: Either accidents or fatal cancers.
19 DR. FONTANA: Yes. It seems like the question 20 ought to be what is it in comparison to other means of 21 generating electricity, including internalizing all the 22 externalities. Was that involved in the thinking here?
23 MR. REMICK: Yes, and it's in the qualitative 24 goals but a great debate was shouldn't the Commission, the 25 agency, undertake that comparison and it was strongly felt ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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30 1 that it was the wrong agency to do a comparison with coal,
() 2 3
which was the predominant one at that time to be considered, that it would never be believed. It would be self serving 4 and so forth.
5 There was always a desire that hopefully that I 6 would be done but not by the NRC.
7 DR. KRESS: You have two degrees of freedom l
8 because you chose the .1 percent and that was compared with l
9 total deaths, if you just choose the risk due to competing l 10 energy production, then the .1 percent is open to question.
11 You know, you have two degrees of freedom and you could just 12 float these either way you wanted to.
! 13 DR. FONTANA: It seems if society or whoever makes i
14 these decisions, if the choice is do I make electricity this 15 way or do I make it that way or do I use less of 16 electricity. We are getting off the beaten path.
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You are right. I don't 18 think there is a Federal agency that worries about these 19 things. Do we have an agency that worries about these i 20 relative -- I don't think EPA does this.
21- MR. REMICK: It should be EPA but God protect us 22 if they did.
23 [ Laughter.]
24 MR. REMICK: That's my own personal biased view.
25 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: An understatement, I hope.
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31 1 MR. REMICK: Let me jump ahead a minute and say
( 2 where did that one-tenth of one percent come from, and after 3 there were workshops to provide input on what shr d safety 4 goals be. Should they be qualitative, quantitative, 5 combination. There were a lot of numbers thrown around, 10 i 6 to the minus X, 10 to the minus Y and so forth.
7 There was a strong view held within the staff and 8 I mean senior staff that if you put anything out called a 9 safety goal, one, you are going to have litigation to shut 10 down all the plants, particularly as we originally proposed 11 it, and this came from senior staff, and also that Congress 12 will demand that you rescind it because it's their 13 prerogative to set public risk goals, not the NRC's.
14 When we had these numbers of 10 to the minus this O)
\m 15 and 10 to the minus that and so forth, trying to understand 16 what in the world do these mean, I sat in my apartment at 17 that rime out on Washington Circle one night and worried 18 about how do we communicate what we mean to the public, and 19 the public at that time was Congress, because this concerned 1 20 Congress will rescind it.
21 I sat there one night and I thought, well, what if 22 we could tell the public that their risk of being killed in 23 an accident or a fatal cancer would be no greater than one 24 percent of their total, and I concluded, well, I'm not sure 25 that would convince me.
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32 l 1 Then I thought about what if we could tell them it
() 2 would be 1/1000 of the total of their other risks, and I 3 thought, well, you might be able to convince people of that 4 and get away from 10 to the minus this and 10 to the minus 5 that.
l 6 I came back to the office the next morning with 7 that concept. I had no idea what it meant at that time. Is 8 it realistic, what does it boil down as individual risk. We 9 hadn't started to look at that yet, until we started to 10 acquire the information on cancers and accidental deaths and
! 11 things like that.
12 I thought it was a way of communicating with the l 13 public so they could put it in perspective with other risks, l 14 without getting into the details of coal burning plants and
() 15 so forth. That caught on. It was arbitrary. There is no 16 question about it was arbitrary.
l 17 DR. KRESS: It has to be arbitrary, I think. I 18 MR. REMICK: Let me say that although that concern 19 there was about Congress, I have never heard a peep that 20 there was a question about it.
21 DR. KRESS: I don't think there's a way to 22 technically go out and determine such a number. It almost 23 has to be arbitrary. It's a matter of public acceptance, 24 public opinion, expert opinion.
25 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think the word
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33 1 " arbitrary" is a bit wrong here.
() 2 DR. KRESS: Arbitrary from the standpoint --
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It's a policy issue, the 4 way society --
j 5 DR. KRESS: It's a judgment.
l 6 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, but I mean, it's not l 7 arbitrary. You could say it was inspired.
l 8 MR. REMICK: Inspired? Inspired is a good word.
l 9 I remember the presentation before the ACRS. I mentioned 10 kind of a seat of the pants type of thing and Howe Louis 11 just jumped all over me about it being a seat of the pants 12 decision.
13 DR. SEALE: Howe never did one of those himself, 14 did he.
l'
( 15 MR. HOLAHAN: I believe our founding fathers used 16 the phrase "self evident," when they didn't want to defend a 17 decision.
18 DR. KRESS: That's the origin.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: One tenth of one percent is 20 not self evident.
21 DR. FONTANA: Actually, the discussion is very 22 germane I think with the derivative of 10 to the minus 5 as 23 compared to 10 to the minus 6, because 10 to the minus 5 24 derives from QHO's, which don't bring in consideration of 25 other things like land contamination and things like that.
l
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I 34 1 The question is is 10 to the minus 6 really
[d\ 2 inconsistent or is 10 to the minus 6 there to cover other 3 things.
4 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I guess the staff's 5 position is that's why they need a year, right, to look into 6 these questions and debate them with us, among them. elves, 7 right?
l 8 It's good that we are raising a lot of these i
9 issues but I don't think we should spend all the time on !
10 one, so David, one last comment on this issue.
t 11 MR. OKRENT: By the way, I like the tenth of one l 12 percent personally because I thought people could understand 13 it.
14 MR. REMICK: That was the idea.
f~h
(,) 15 MR. OKRENT: They had a feeling for what your I
q 16 chance of dying from cancer was or from accidents, so I i
17 thought it was a stroke of genius. 1 18 Just one comment. With regard to occupational l 19 risk, the Supreme Court and Justice Stevens has said that if l I 20 a worker were exposed to a risk on the order of 10 to the 21 minus 3 per year or larger, that should be considered a l 22 considerable risk, and OSHA was sent back the first time in l
L 23 1970 on benzene to make a better case. i 24 Now, 10 to the minus 3 per year is not a hell of a !
25 lot smaller -- by the way, cancer, let's say, it's 0.2, so
[}-
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35 l 1 if you take 10 to the minus 3 of that, that's 0002. Ten to
() 2 3
the minus 3 for occupational risk is less than a factor of ten, less than a factor of ten of what the NRC is saying is 1
4 acceptable for an involuntary risk from nuclear power l l
5 plants.
6 I just want to note it isn't such a small number,
)
7 although as I say, at the time, I liked it. I thought it I l
1 8 was understandable and so forth, but it isn't a small number
]
9 because it's less than -- you know, EPA looks for numbers, 10 10 to the minus 5, 10 to the minus 6 in Los Angeles, if you 11 are not below 10 to the minus 5 from smog, you better see 12 what you can do about it and so forth.
13 Just a small bit of information for your -- ,
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: There are too many numbers
) 15 there and I get confused.
16 MR. OKRENT: The benchmark that OSHA now uses is 17 10 to the minus 3.
18 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Individual.
t 19 MR. OKRENT: Individual occupational, and if this 20 is exceeded, they say we have a case.
21 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I should compare that now l 22 to what?
23 MR. OKRENT: 10 to the minus -- one-tenth of one 24 percent of the chance of dying of cancer, which is .2 25 roughly, you know, for peoI le in the country, .2 die of O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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36 1 cancer.
2 MR. REMICK: Over a life time, not per year.
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Life time is 70 years?
4 MR. OKRENT: Yes.
5- CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You divide .2 by seven.
6 Now the numbers are above that? 1 1
7 MR. OKRENT: No, they are not that bad. Well, 8 maybe that helps. i l
9 MR. HOLAHAN: It's not one order of magnitude. l l
10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Shall we continue now? You 11 are on the third vu-graph?
12 MR. HOLAHAN: I actually want to back track just l 13 on one issue for a moment, and that is Dr. Okrent's feeling i
14 about large early release is in fact not so different from I 15 the staff, and I think the committee's feeling about core 16 damage frequency, which is in addition to the QHO's and all 17 those calculations, there is some other level of safety 18 which we felt we wanted to draw that line in the sand alsu.
19 because we didn't like the implications of the health 20 effects measurement on the number of core damage events that 21 would' occur.
22 We said that number, which would be 10 to the 23 minus 2 or 10 to the minus 3, would be socially 24 unacceptable. A reactor melt every year or every ten years 25~ is not what society expects, so we picked another number.
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1 37 1 We picked 10 to the minus 4.
()
v 2 Dr. Okrent's suggestion is you could use the same 3 logic for saying we don't want to have large early releases 4 and just as we have said the 10 to the minus 4 is recognized 5 as having another role, it's not a health effect, it is a j 6 different social standard. We are an agency that protects 7 health effects, but we also provide another level of safety 8 performance that society wants. We have drawn that single 9 other measure at core damage.
10 Dr. Okrent is suggesting you could do it again, l i
11 you know, with large early release, and that you don't have )
12 to be consistent. !
l 13 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's correct. !
14 MR. HOLAHAN: It's just another option.
( 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: One of the things I don't 16 think we have really done yet is to look at the impact that 17 the more stringent core damage frequency goal would have on 18 the larger release frequency goal. In other words, if you 19 say your core damage frequency now is 10 to the minus 4 or 20 less, what is your LERF? Your goal may be 10 to the minus 21 5, but in essence, you have lowered it also, right? You 22 have to have core damage. l l
23 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes, of course; yes.
24 DR. KRESS: LERF encompasses core damage.
25 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: On the QHO's, 10 to the l
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I l
38 1 minus 5 roughly and 10 to the minus 3 or thereabouts for
( 2 core damage frequency.
3 DR. KRESS: You are assuming there's a containment :
4 failure probability.
I 5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes.
l DR. KRESS:
6 .8 for BWR's.
7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: If I take a lower goal and 8 I lower it even further, that affects everything else.
l 9 MR. CUNNINGHAM: You see differences between PWR's l
10 and BWR's in this respect. What drives the LERF in PWR's 11 tend to be steam generator tube ruptures or interfacing l 12 systems LOCA, which contribute essentially nothing to the i
13 core damage frequency. It's other accidents that contribute {
l l 14 to the core damage frequency, so you could lower the l /"%
l( ,)
l 15 frequency of small LOCA's that lead to core melt and still l 16 not change your LERF a bit.
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But not all of LERF comes 18 from those accidents.
i 19 MR. CUNNINGHAM: Certainly in BWR's it's much more 20 related. PWR's, it's less related.
21 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I don't doubt that, but the 22 point is just because a few accident sequences really go all 23 the way to LERF and the core damage frequency is not 24 sensitive to those, that doesn't mean you should lower the 25 core damage frequency, I mean the actual LERF.
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! 39
! I l 1 To what degree, you are right, it depends on the
() 2 type of the reactor and so on.
3 MR. REMICK: I can't help but interject in the l
l 4 discussions about ground contamination, core damage l
5 frequencies for this type or that type. Remember the safety 6 goals are a policy statement. They are not a requirement.
7 I would say if it was my ox being gored, I would remind you )
8 of the backfit rule and cost benefit analysis and so forth.
9 '
I don't think you should mix up, we are talking about a 10 policy statement and thinking of it in requirement terms.
11 MR. KING: The considerations in the policy 12 statement have been used to define criteria for backfit for 13 processing license amendments and so forth.
14 MR. REMICK: Yes, with a lot of encouragement from I 15 the ACRS and the Commission to use the safety goals in some 16 constructive manner.
17 MR. OKRENT: I don't see myself that a goal on 18 large release or land contamination is a backfit question.
19 I think we have a --
20 MR. REMICK: I think it is.
21 MR. OKRENT: -- flat difference of opinion. There 22 are many countries in Europe that have goals on land 23 contamination and I think if we had one such event in this 24 country, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a lot of 25 other people working for them would have one hell of a job O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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40 1 explaining why they accepted much larger chances of such
,~
( 2 things occurring. l 3 To me, it is not a backfit consideration. It's 1 4 part of I think what the public wants of nuclear power.
5 MR. REMICK: Dave, I was responding to the staff 6 saying it might change the way they do business on a day to 7 day basis, and I think they are thinking that it is a 8 requirement when they say that, unless they get other 9 direction, and I just remind them that just because it's in 10 the policy statement, it doesn't mean it's a requirement 11 that you can impose on anybody.
i 12 MR. KING: Let me move on. Just the bottom line i
13 on this slide was if you are going to modify the policy i 14 statement, we ought to get something out of it. Otherwise, )
g-] !
(_j 15 why bother. '
16 If we modify the policy statement, what should the !
17 scope of that modification be. Some of these things are !
18 related to the previous slide. Basically, what I've tried 19 to show on this slide are the things defining the 12 issues 20 that we are looking at now, they really encompass trying to t
21 clarify the purpose and scope of the safety goals. They 22 encompass trying to discuss the relationship among the 23 safety goals and the various other pieces of our safety 24 philosophy. I've just listed some of the key ones there.
25 Update them to reflect what we are actually doing
~'
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41 1 in practice and --
n
() 2 DR. WALLIS: I've been listening to that statement 3 several times. Usually you change something in order to fix 4 something that's wrong with current practice. Your argument 5 always seems to be it has to be consistent with current 6 practice, and that sort of assumes that current practice is 7 right.
8 MR. KING: I think in this case we've taken the 9 safety goal policy and we have developed some guidelines as 10 to how to use it in our regulatory arena, and it's a matter 11 now of having the policy catch up with how we are actually 12 using things that have been derived from that policy. .
13 DR. WALLIS: You believe that what has evolved as 14 current practice is better than what would have happened if f'
( 15 you had enforced some old policy?
16 MR. KING: I wouldn't use the word "better." I'd 17 say we have extended the uses --
18 DR. WALLIS: And you want to reflect this in the 19 statement of what you do?
20 MR. KING: Yes.
21 DR. WALLIS: That means there's nothing wrong with 22 current practice that needs to be fixed?
23 MR. KING: No, this doesn't imply that.
24 DR. WALLIS: The biggest incentive for changing l
25 policy would be that you have found something wrong with O' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l
42 l
f 1 current practice or unacceptable that could be improved. No
! /~
2 (N) one has pointed out anything like that, so I assume current 3 practice is fine and dandy.
4 MR. KING: Well, I think the last bullet addresses 5 areas not now covered by the policy and gets to that issue.
6 Are there things in current practice that are not done that 7 maybe should be done, like land contamination, in which case 8 you would start with a policy and then see what flows from 9 there in terms of actual implementation.
10 I view those items, those last three items on this 11 page as falling into that category.
12 DR. WALLIS: One philosophy is not to do anything 1
l 13 until someone is not content with current practice. The 14 motivation comes from discontent with current practice. I
- (~ J i
(_ 15 haven't seen this, so I'm very puzzled about why you want to j l
16 change anything.
! 17 MR. KING: That's clearly one option. Maybe we 18 just live with what we have and through the implementation i 19 of new requirements, new practices, extend the use of the 20 goals in whatever fashion it makes sense.
l 21 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Already we have had the i i
l l
22 complaint that 10 to the minus 5 LERF goal used in I 23 Regulatory Guide 1.174, at least one member of the public i
24 does not find acceptable. There are some things in current l 25 practice perhaps that need -- I don't think, Graham, that we h
A/
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43 1 will do this using current practice as a boundary or I
[J) k-2 condition. I 3 DR. WALLIS: Where does the motivation come from? i 4 It must be somebody pushing and saying if we could only 5 change the goals, life would be better. What is the 6 incentive?
7 MR. HOLAHAN: I think the incentive is -- when we i 8 say current practice, I think what we are talking about is 9 the guidance documents that we have recently developed, and l i
10 life would be better if there were a simpler and more 11 complete compatibility between what we have decided is the 12 right thing to do and what our ten year old policy statement 13 says.
14 DR. WALLIS: So it's house cleaning, life would be 15 simpler and easier.
l 16 MR. KING: It's a consistency. It's coherence, a !
17 more firm foundation for what we are doing. I 18 DR. WALLIS: That doesn't signify any change in 19 the philosophy of a goal, of policy, it's just housekeeping, 20 cleaning up, making it easier to administer.
21 MR. KING: Easier to understand.
22 DR. SEALE: That's the lower limit on the band we 23 are talking about. An example is the recent acceptance of 24 the idea that, what is it, minimal is larger than negligible l 25 but much less than significant.
1
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44 1 DR. WALLIS: That's the kind of nonsense that
'( ) 2 needs to be cleaned up.
3 DR. SEALE: The point is talking about zero is a 4 bit of sophistry, I guess, at the level of uncertainty that 5 we have when we evaluate some of these things.
6 MR. OKRENT: One more philosophic comment.
7 Talking about the core melt frequency, I think back around 8 1981, I was a piranha when I suggesten in the paper that 9 there were a lot of plans in the U.S. whose core melt 10 frequency was much larger than 10 to the minus 4, and they 11 really needed to be fixed up. Nobody believed me or very 12 few did.
13 Now I'm reading that not too many may be meeting 14 10 to the minus 4 on what's being handed out, this is a 15 problem. That is what the thing is allowed for, the things 16 you can't allow for to be handled.
l 17 There is a firm practice to allow less than 10 to l 18 the minus 4, larger than 10 to the minus 4, and this is just 19 a fact of life, and there's no desire to have future plants 20 safer because this may only be one future plant, although 21 back in the 1970's and the 1980's, there was an overwhelming 22 opinion that future plants should be safer than those we now !
23 have. It was overwhelming, the Commissioners, the staff, 24 the ACRS --
I 25 MR. HOLAHAN: And there still is. There still is O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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45 1 and that expectation has been implemented for many years. !
[dD
' 2 MR. OKRENT: What I tend to see with this increase 3 in the LERF and with this trend towards living comfortably 4 with core melt frequencies larger than 10 to the minus 4, 5 however poorly you can judge them, that the Nuclear 6 Regulatory Commission, without putting it on the front page t
7 of The New York Times, is reducing its sights on what !
{
8 constitutes adequate safety. It still has the regulations 9 but when it can quantify it and then go ahead and say this 10 is okay, they have reduced their sights sort of to live with 11 what they have rather than thinking hard, not too expensive, 12 I won't say cost beneficial, ways in fact of raising the j 13 level of safety.
14 I find this a little bit distressing. That's a f 15 mild word. I wonder if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 16 would be willing to write a white paper, publish it 17 everywhere, saying our sights have been lowered as to how 18 safe is safe enough.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's for ACRS to --
l 20 DR. KRESS: That raises a problem I've had for 21 quite a while, and that is I think the terms of reference l
22 for the safety goal that says these are NRC's philosophy on 23 how safe is safe enough, it is just a wrong statement.
l 24 I think NRC's philosophy and statement on how safe 25 is safe enough is whatever the level is that's called
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46 1 adequate protection. What the goals are, they are how safe
() 2 3
we would'like the things to be or something else. I think 4 we are calling it the wrong thing. It's not how safe is l
4 safe. I 5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think that supports a l 6 vision of the goal. This idea of generic goals, I never i
j 7 really understood, but they apply to the industry as a 8 whole. It's like a statement, I don't know, on the average, 9 you know.
10 The IP's are telling you, I think.it's 9 or 15 PWR 11 units that are above the goal, but it's okay because the j 12 industry _as a whole meets the goal. That is something that
-13 if there is a revision that should be cleared up. That l 14 argues for the three regions that is one of the questions 15 and that is consistent I think with what David is saying, in 16 other words,-if you are in a certain region, then you look ,
! 17 for cost effective ways to bring those numbers down. I t 18 don't think the goal says anything like that. l 19 That in my mind argues for revising it and making 20 it specific so it will be a clear statement, what the i
21 Commission expects from the licensees.
22 MR. KING: That is one of the three that we had a l 23 preliminary recommendation on, th-L vught to be cleared up.
24 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: This idea of applying to l
l 25 the industry as a whole, I really don't understand that.
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47 1 DR. KRESS: That was the Commission's way to get
() 2 out of all these lawsuits, I think.
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Do you take all the plants' 4 core damage frequencies and divide by 100? I don't know.
5 MR. REMICK: It wasn't for the whole ensemble, it 6 was for ensemble of similar plants. Basically, PWR's, BWR's 7 and so forth. l 8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, but still it's for the 9 ensemble, which at the time --
l 10 MR. REMICK: It was not to be a requirement, it 11 was the answer to the question how safe is safe enough from 12 a philosophical standpoint of what we think is adequate. I 13 don't want to mix it up with that of protection. I'll l 14 address that later.
p)
(, 15 MR. KING: Maybe now is the time you want to talk 16 about the three regions. I 17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's fine. That's a 1
18 subject that is going to take a while to discuss. Shall we l 19 take a break first or do you want to continue? The break is l
20 scheduled for 10:00. l 21 MR. HOLAHAN: Before we take a break, I'd like to 22 say that I'm not comfortable with all of Dr. Okrent's l
23 suggestions about the staff maybe having taken its eye off 24 safety of the reactors over the last few years. I don't ,
I l 25 think of our activities as lowering our sights. I think if !
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48 '
1 anything, we have a much better perception of what risks
() 2 3
really are and even if there was only one individual who had a realistic assessment of risks in the 1980's, I think i
4 regardless of what our sights were in the 1980's, it seems i 5 to me the risks were what they were. t 6 I think what we have now is a much more realistic 7 understanding of reactor risks and in fact the risks now are !
l 8 lower than they have ever been, and we are only now 9 beginning to focus on all the right issues.
10 My perception of the direction the staff is 11 heading in is not that we are lowering our standards but 12 that we are focusing on the right issues, and I don't expect 13 the future to be one in which risks increase because of 14 lowered standards. I really expect risks to be reduced
)
() 15 because we are focusing on the right issues.
16 If there's been a problem in this history of 17 reactor regulation, it hasn't been that our standard was in 18 the wrong place, it's been that our understanding of reactor 19 safety was focusing on the wrong things.
20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: One of the issues that we 21 will discuss I believe today is the quality of the PRA that l 22 goes into all these things, which is another way of stating !
23 what you just said. There have been significant advances in 24 the last 10 to 15 years in PRA. We have now a much better 25 understanding of accident frequencies and so on.
[~'
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l 49 l
1 Yes, you could argue that the fact that these
[J 2 3
PWR's have a core damage frequency that's above the goal is perhaps a more realistic assessment of these, and the staff 4 really has not expressed a final opinion on whether these 5 numbers are okay, right, as far as I understand it.
6 They are there, but things may happen any day.
7 MR. HOLAHAN: That's the nature of probabilities.
8 MR. OKRENT: I'm not in any way critical of the i 9 staff. I think they are very competent and they are really 10 working for the protection of the public.
j 11 These are rather higher level, if you will, 12 arguments, I think. I just want you to know that's the 13 case.
14 MR. KING: Let me suggest we just finish up with 15 this slide and take a break and then we'll come back and i 16 1
talk about the three regions. This is the second half of l 17 the scope slide.
18 This seemed to me to be just as important to l 19 understand what we are not considering for update as well as 20 what we are considering. The one before this was what we l i
l 21 are considering. As we mentioned earlier, we are not going !
22 back and questioning the qualitative goals that are on the 23 books or the use of the .1 percent to define no significant l \
24 additional risk.
25 CRAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I am not following you.
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50 ;
l 1 Use of the .1 percent?
( 2 MR. KING: The QHO's are a quantitative statement 3 of the risk to the individual, and they use the one-tenth of 4 one percent.
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Right.
6 MR. KING: We are not questioning that number. We 7 are not going back and --
8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay, that's what you are 9 saying.
10 MR. KING: We are not proposing to go and 11 establish goals, different goals for future plants. That 12 question had been raised previously to the Commission. The 13 staff had proposed they be different and the Commission said 14 no.
() 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The expectation is --
16 MR. REMICK: Future plants would be safer but it's 17 one public, so the goals should apply to existing or future 18 plants.
19 MR. KING: Having just completed the PRA review on 20 what we think is, you know, for as much as we know, the last 21 advanced design that's been put before us, I think that 22 expectation has been met in every case. We are not 23 proposing to expand the policy to non-reactor activities.
l l 24 It's written now to focus on reactor accidents. We would 25 continue that focus.
[/
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51 l
l 1 MR. OKRENT: May I comment? There was a time, and l
gw) q 2 I think you can find more than one Commission document, j 3 which says we expect future plants to be more safer. I 4 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes.
l 5 MR. KING: Yes, absolutely. It's not in the 6 policy. I 7 MR. OKRENT: It's not in the policy. I don't know 8 what that means. It's not in the safety goal policy but it j 9 was in more than one Commission statement, including Joe 10 Paladino.
11 MR. REMICK: The Commission has definitely said 12 the expectations are, they specifically said that does not 1
13 mean the safety goals themselves have to specify that. l 14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I don't think there should 15 be different goals. As Forest said, it's one public.
l l
16 Anything else? l l 17 MR. SHERRY: Just one comment. Although it's 18 true, I think, that the indication is that there are a 19 number of plants that are probably above 10 to the minus 4 i 20 on core damage frequency, I think it's also true that almost l
- 21 all those plants probably meet the quantitative health I 22 objectives and are below the safety goals. I want to make 23 that clear.
24 DR. KRESS: Of course, if Dana Powers were here, 1 25 he'd disagree with you. l l
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I 52 1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Some of us have different
() 2 views, yes. I think the quality of the assessment is 3 something that is very important and we should discuss it, 4 not only in the context of how good the PRA is, but also how 5 good the existing records are. I shall never talk about how 6 good PRA is again without a context.
7 We will be back at 10:15. Thank you very much.
8 (Recess.]
l 9 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: We are back on the record.
10 MR. KING: If you want to talk three regions --
11 this is the very last slide in your package, this one. It
! 12 might be useful if you want to talk the three regions' l 13 comment now, particularly to follow up on Dr. Okrent's 14 comment about lowering sights, I think it really depends on l
) 15 how you view the safety goals and how you view adequate l
16 protection and how they relate to each other. i l
17 This is a figure from the Regulatory Review Group j 18 report that was issued four or five years ago. It's really 19 just to illustrate how the staff has been viewing the safety 20 . goals and the concept of adequate protection and cost 21 benefit and implementing it into practice.
22 As the Commission said, the safety goals really 23 define how safe is safe enough, which is viewed not as the 24 minimum requirement but where you stop regulating, and 25 that's the top line on the chart.
l l
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53 1 Adequate protection is sort of the bottom fuzzy,
(~.. 2 you know, dotted line on the bottom, and it's not 3 quantified. It's really a legal concept that is discussed 4 in licensing, and it's meant if a plant meets the 5 regulations, adequate protection is met.
6 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Does this imply that if you 7 meet the adequate protection requirements, then you are 8 necessarily below the goals? That would seem to be the 9 message. We know that's not true.
10 MR. HOLAHAN: I think what we have said is that 11 there's a presumption, the lawyers tell us you should say 12 there is a presumption that adequate protection means you 13 meet the Agency's safety goals. It doesn't mean it's not 14 possible to find out through research or experience or
/
(3_,/ 15 something that's not true, but until you learn otherwise, 16 that's considered a reasonable presumption. If you find 17 something else, you ought to deal with it and make it come j 18 back into that balance.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: We have learned otherwise 20 with the IPE's.
21 MR. HOLAHAN: One of the advantages of using a 22 figure from someone else's report is you don't actually have 23 to endorse it and think that it's correct.
24 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Right. No , but I mean 25 conceptually, I'm trying to understand what all this means.
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54 1 The relationship between adequate protection and safety
() 3 2 goals right now is not understood, is it?
MR. KING: Yes, I think it is. I mean adequate 4 protection is really the minimum safety. If you don't meet 5 that, you have to do something without regard to cost. You 6 have to do something to get up to that level of safety.
7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That was adequate 8 protection?
9 MR. KING: That's adequate protection. Safety 10 goals is where you stop regulating. You are safe enough 11 that there's no more need to add more requirements onto a 12 plant, and in between, what is added in between is done a 13 cost beneficial basis.
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You are now assuming that
() 15 adequate protection is what the figure tells us it is. We 16 have nine units that meet adequate protection requirements 17 because they are allowed to operate, and yet the IP's show 18 that their core damage frequencies are higher than what is 19 the accepted goal. You might say these are the QHO's, the 20 goals --
21 DR. KRESS: This is safety now, not risk. You 22 have to turn it upside down for your view. This says 23 adequate protection is the risk level that's greater than 24 the safety goal. I think that's basically true.
25 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: So what is an unit of O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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55 1 safety?
() 2 DR. KRESS: One over risk. One minus risk.
3 DR. WALLIS: That's an interesting question. It's 4 a graph with no units and no data points.
l 5 MR. KING: It's a concept.
6 DR. KRESS: You can put numbers on those. You can !
7 take the highest risk plant that's licensed and operating, 8 and that gives you a lower bound on this number down here, 9 and we know what the safety goals are. If this were on the 10 right value of LERF for an ordinate, then you could put a 11 value on it.
12 DR. WALLIS: You can actue.lly show the specific 13 regulations have improved safety some quantitative way, so 14 you can put data points on this graph?
() 15 DR. KRESS: The graph is sort of --
16 MR. KING: There have been a number of regulations 17 that have been put in place based upon cost benefit ,
i 18 considerations. They have a substantial improvement in 19 safety. Station blackout rule is an example.
20 MR. HOLAHAN: At any given time, you could draw 21 the curve for past history as your current perception of 22 what those things accomplished. The day after tomorrow, you 23 might change those perceptions somewhat.
24 DR. WALLIS: You have an implicit policy that 25 safety must always increase, looking at this curve? Any new O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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56 1 rule will improve --
() 2 MR. KING: If it's a backfit, yes, safety must 3 increase, if you are imposing new requirements, but we can 4 also do burden reduction, which says there really wasn't any 5 safety benefit --
6 DR. WALLIS: What would happen to this curve if 7 you were to change this number from 10 to the minus 6 to 10 8 to the minus 5, nothing, would it go up or down?
9 MR. KING: The safety goal?
10 DR. WALLIS: Yes, while we are on this, looking at 11 the world. If it doesn't make any difference, let's not do 12 anything. If there is --
13 MR. KING: If we were to be more stringent, that 14 line would go up.
() 15 DR. WALLIS: Would it make some difference to the 16 trend on this curve in the future, if the purpose of making 17 policy is to inference something called safety and see what 18 the effect would be on a curve like this, presumably or is 19 it just public relations?
20 MR. HOLAHAN: One of the difficulties with 21 cartoons is if you try to --
22 DR. WALLIS: Well, since you have put it up, we 23 can talk about it.
24 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Even though it's not your 25 own.
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57 1 DR. WALLIS: I think it's good to have a picture.
(p)
' 2 If we change the QHO's --
3 MR. HOLAHAN: The piece of the picture I'd like to 4 talk about is remember, if the straight line called 5 horizontal line called safety goals really means QHO's, and 6 in fact, you have other measures, like a core damage limit 7 and an LERF limit, presumably what that would do is it would 8 push down, it would make some margin between where the l
9 cumulative regulations led you and how close it would allow 10 you to get to the QHO's, which is actually drawn as a very 11 small size on this.
1 12 DR. WALLIS: Safety goals here is QHO's, if safety 13 goals were LERF, then it might change? l 14 MR. HOLAHAN: It might not allow you to approach ;
) 15 the QHO's so closely.
16 DR. WALLIS: It would be very useful to have 17 QHO's, LERF and CDF's shown on this figure somehow in some 18 way, if you are going to use this as a way of thinking about 19 what you are doing, which may be useful. i 20 You are proposing to change the ceiling on this 21 picture? !
i l
22 MR. KING: No, we are not proposing to change the i 23 QHO's, other than we are reconsidering the societal -- how 24 do you calculate a societal impact, but the one- tenth of I'
25 one percent concept, we are not proposing to change.
I)
\w /
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1
58 1 DR. KRESS: If you put a LERF value up there, you
[)
N_/
2 would probably choose a value a little higher like a factor ;
3 of two, then that line that's called a safety goal, if I'm 4 assuming the QHO on early fatalities is that line, which it 5 probably is --
6 DR. WALLIS: I think your argument is the LERF is 1' 7 off scale upward and therefore it ought to be put on the 8 graph by having a better definition of it. Isn't that the 9 argument?
10 MR. HOLAHAN: Let me try it this way. Let us for 11 sake of argument presume that the safety goal, QHO's 12 correspond to 10 to the minus 5 LERF. We would put a 10 to 13 the minus 5 on that horizontal line. I would say if I were 14 to draw a 10 to the minus 6 LERF line, it would intersect O
(_j 15 the cumulative risk line somewhere out in the later stages.
16 DR. FONTANA: Am I looking at this curve and it 17 says the more regulations I get, the safer I'm going to get? .
l 18 Is that what that's trying to say?
19 DR. KRESS: Howe Louis called that the shan't 20 declare approach.
21 DR. FONTANA: I know, but the problem is you have 22 the line drawn safety goals and it seems like the more 23 regulations you get, the closer you are getting to the 24 safety goal.
25 DR. WALLIS: You mean you have been so far from
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i 59 1 your safety goal all this time?
l 2 DR. FONTANA: If you were so good before, then why 3 have all these regulations? Leave them like it was, you are 4 so much better in the safety and the regulations are making 5 it worse. l 6 DR. KRESS: You have to have a value impact when 7 you are in between.
8 DR, FONTANA: I'm saying I think it's a mistake to 9 show this curve because I'm deliberately drawing wrong i
10 conclusions from it. 1 1
11 DR. KRESS: That's a good curve, I think, if you 12 study it and look it, it's very --
13 DR. WALLIS: I think you have to show curves like 14 this, otherwise, you get involved in verbal arguments which 15 are very hard to resolve, because you don't know what they l l
16 mean.
~
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Is it really true that all 18 the plants meet the safety goal? The IPEEE studies, have 19 they gone all the way to --
20 MR. HOLAHAN: I think what we have said is we l 21 don't have enough information in terms of doing level three 22 type calculations for all the plants and all the sites, and 1 l
23 the completeness issue of shutdown and fires and all those 24 sorts of things, to make a definitive judgment that all the 25 plants meet the safety goals.
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60 l
1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But there is a suspicion.
{
2 MR. HOLAHAN There's a strong suspicion that they 3 probably do.
l l
4 DR. KRESS: A good many of them.
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: A good many of them.
l 6 DR. KRESS: Dana Powers would disagree completely.
7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I disagree, too. After the 8 recent discovery with the fire contributor there --
9 DR. KRESS: If we define this adequate protection 1
10 fuzzy line as a plant that is licensable because it meets 11 all the regulations, let's call that the definition, I can 12 design a plant that meets all the regulations that will have 13 a risk value that is greater than the safety. I'll 14 guarantee you that. l 15 Adequate protection ought to be considered a line 16 that's underneath this one, that ought to be a presumption, 17 just like they said, even though a lot of the plants are 18 probably above a prior safety level than the safety goals.
19 Your presumption is that adequate protection ought 20 to be a level of safety that is less than the safety goal.
21 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Ought to be but it's not 22 necessarily so.
23 DR. KRESS: It ought to be like it's showing up 24 there. It's not necessarily so for -- yes, it's necessarily l 25 so, but it doesn't mean a given plant that meets adequate
['
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j 1
l 61 1 protection is not better than the safety goals. It doesn't
() 2 mean that at all. There is a whole spectrum of risks to j 3 plants out there, t
4 It's the one that's at the bottom of that spectrum 5 that defines adequate protection.
6 MR. SHERRY: One difficulty with looking at a 7 graph like this is trying to interpret what that curve means j 8 or what adequate protection is. Is it just meeting the -
l 9 regulations or just meeting the regulations plus the i '
l 10 improvements, the way the utility operates a plant which are 11 above the minimum regulations.
12 DR. KRESS: You have to define what you mean by l 13 regulations.
l I
! 14 MR. KING: I think the way it's been defined --
15 the regulations have evolved over time; 20 years ago, we j 16 didn't have a station black out rule and some other rules.
17 Those rules that have been put in place over the past 10 or J.
18 15 years have been put in place based upon cost benefit i 19 considerations. They don't count when you are talking 20 adequate protection.
21 In other words, if a plant did not meet the 22 station black out rule, for example, it could still be 23 declared as meeting the adequate protection standard, 24 because the adequate protection standard is based on things 25 that have to be met without regard to cost.
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62 1 All we are trying to do is illustrate here the A
6
%J 1
2 three regions in your comment, you know region one is really l
\
l 3 adequate protection and things below that where you don't '
4 have to consider cost to bring them up to this line. Region 5 two is where we use the regulatory analysis guidelines and 6 cost benefit to improve safety and that improvement has two l
7 tests. One, the improvement has to be a substantial 8 improvement, which we define as at least delta CDF of 10 to I 9 the minus 5, and it has to be cost beneficial, and then 10 where do you stop regulating, how safe is safe enough, which 11 the Commission has used the safety goals to define. That's i 12 the purpose of this slide.
13 Some people say the safety goals, have looked at 14 the safety goals as the minimum, that if a plant doesn't 1 (' ' 15
( meet the safety goals, you have to do something to get them l
l 16 to meet the safety goals, but that's not the way they are 1
17 implemented in practice.
- 18 DR. WALLIS
- Those are actually operating reactors 19 on there?
l 20 DR. KRESS: That's because we call it how safe is 21 safe enough. !
1 22 DR. WALLI: The dotted regions are operating '
l 23 reactors? What is the dotted region?
l l 24 MR. KING: The dotted region is if individual 25 plants met adequate protection and did nothing else, there h N-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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63 l
1 would be a spread on their safety.
() 2 3
DR. WALLIS: I understand the dots must have something to do with existing plants.
4 MR. KING: Yes.
5 DR. WALLIS: Adequate protection, there is a 6 dynamic variable. It depends on what society thinks.
7 Adequate protection should be a running thing on this graph, 8- a variable, and safety goals apparently are a variable with 9 time, too.
l 10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: If society's opinion is 11 changed with time, yes. ,
12 DR. WALLIS: If you would show that adequate I
i 13 protection has been going up or coming down or something and j 14 safety goals, that would give some reason for changing
) 15 something.
I 16 MR. HOLAHAN: I think one thing that would help 1
17 this graph is we drew no safety goal before about 1986,-to d 18 show in fact there was no such thing, and in part what that 19 shows is what the role of the goal is, to say in fact early j 20 on, you were goal less, and at least now you have something i
21 to compare to.
22 DR. WALLIS: The purpose of the goal is to drive l
23
~
regulations towards that goal, is that it? That's what this I 24 graph implies.
25 DR. FONTANA: Does this graph imply that the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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t 64 1 plants do not meet -- plants do not meet the safety goal and 1 (J) 2 the regulations are making them better and better? I don't 3 think that's correct.
4 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: No. I think next time you 5 should have a graph that's in terms of risk. This is really 6 confusing now. 1 7 DR. WALLIS: I think it's a very revealing graph 8 because if you can't describe it in some way that makes l
{
9 sense, then maybe a tremendous amount of confusion exists.
10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: In terms of risk, it would I 11 make much more sense because then you would put numbers on l 12 the vertical axis, you would be talking in more specific 13 terms.
1 14 MR. KING: If this was risk, it would be lower 1 i
l (/~T,) 15 risk, higher risk.
l .
! 16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's right.
l 17 DR. :!ONTANA: Your safety goal line implies that 18 these plants were not meeting the safety goals until you did 19 these things, and that depends on what you consider that l 20 goes into the uafety goal evaluation. In other words, if 1
21 you are considering the things that you know, then I think 22 it's incorrect.
l l 23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: There is a region where you 24 absolutely have to do something, you are not allowed to 25 operate. If you want to talk in terms of risk, then there t
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65 1 is a higher level there somewhere, there's a line that if 1
(
(
2 you exceed that, it's completely unacceptable, to the point 3 where we will shut you down.
4 MR. KING: Yes, and that's down here.
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's down there. There's l
6 a region on the other side, so that if you are below it, 7 then things are fine, we don't look at you any more. In l 8 between --
l 9 DR. KRESS: You are talking about practice, not 1
10 regulation. There is no regulation that says what you just 11 said. >
l, 12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: No, practice. '
l 13 DR. KRESS: In practice, it's true. There's no ,
1 l l 14 regulation at all that specifies what you just said.
() 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: No, I agree. That's a 16 question, should the revised policy statement say things 17 like that.
18 DR. KRESS: Yes, that's a very good question. !
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's the issue on the 20 table.
21 DR. WALLIS: You have to put the reality of plants 22 on this picture and it seems to me none of these dots have l 23 anything to do with plants. They are just someone throwing 24 dots on a piece of paper, scattering them. The plants must i
25 be up somewhere near the safety goals. l l
i
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66 1 MR. KING:. Plants in theory follow this line as
() 2 time goes on.
3 DR. WALLIS: Do they? That would be very 4 important to show, that you have passed a regulation, it has 5 changed the safety of plants or something, so the effect of l 6 regulation has been useful.
7 DR. KRESS: You would have basically 100 sets of l 8 points at each year that would be moving upward, that would 1
9 be scattered all over this chart. Some of them would be l
10 above the safety goal and I guarantee you some would be 11 below. It would be a moving set.
12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Would you place Appendix R 13 there somewhere and then could you make the curve go up?
! 14 Time-wise, 1979, Brown's Ferry was before that.
l "*g l ((,,/ 15 MR. KING: Brown's Ferry was 1975. Appendix R is 16 1981.
l 17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: In 1981, I see there that 18 the curve is really going up, but that's a result of TMI.
19 MR. HOLAHAN: No, that's a result of someone just 20 --
21 DR. KRESS: Yes, somebody just drew that chart, i
22 It's not data.
23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Would you say, that's a j 24 good question here, would you say that Appendix R j 25 contributed to this rise in the curve? l l
i l4
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67 l l
l !
1 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes, absolutely, I would. There !
l \ 2 have been some studies, you know, within your capability of V
3 analyzing these things, that at least suggests that fire 4 risks were reduced by about an order of magnitude when the l 5 whole collection of post-Brown's Ferry fire protection
! 6 activities were put in place.
! 7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: What was the fire risk of 8 Quad Cities at that time, that was 10 to the minus I?
l 9 MR. HOLAHAN: No. What I suspect is that Brown's 10 Ferry wasn't achieving the same level of improvement through 11 Appendix R that other plants were, but left them closer to 12 where they were.
13 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You mean Quad Cities. You
- 14 said Brown's Ferry.
! [~'i
' (_) 15 MR. HOLAHAN: Sorry.
l' l
16 DR. WALLIS: There was no regulation about people
! 17 with candles?
l 18 MR. HOLAHAN: There was no regulation about --
19 well, there was a general zinc criteria three, with a 20 general requirement about control of combustible materials 21 and the use to the extent practical or some words like that 22 about non-flammable materials, but not to the same extent as 23 afterwards.
24 DR. WALLIS: This figure, I think, would be very 25 useful if after a year of study by you, you come back with a
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68 -
{
1 series of figures like this, which have real variables, real l
I 2 numbers, real plants, and give a real measure of what's been l 3 going on in terms of quantitative safety over the years and 4 how this is related to any change which might be made in any 5 safety goals for the future. That would be very useful.
l 6 DR. KRESS: Yes, but the trouble is that data l
7 doesn't really exist. You don't have risk analyses as a j
\
8 function of time for every plant that you need to do that. I j 9 MR. HOLAHAN: We could draw a better conceptual 10 drawing.
l 11 DR. WALLIS: Not just conceptual because l 12 conceptual becomes fantasy unless you put some real data on 13 it.
j 14 MR. CUNNINGHAM: As you may recall in the IPE 15 insights report, we did have an analysis of where we could i 16 get the information, what quantitatively, at least how core 17 damage frequency changed because of the station black out 18 rule, and there was information on 20 or so plants or 19 something like that, where you had a before and after case, l 20 at least in core damage frequency.
21 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Another important factor 22 here is that the ability of PRA to quantify risk has been 23 changed with time itself. I would also suggest that in the 24 future, a figure like that, you make the safety goal line a 25 bunch of dots, such as you have the adequate protection, to D
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69 1 send a message that this is not just a bright line there.
(g) 2 Let me stop this discussion and ask Tom, why did 3 you put that up there? Are you arguing for three regions?
4 MR. KING: No, I'm trying -- I think there's been 5 misconception by some people that the safety goals are the )
6 minimum standard that has to be met, and I was trying to use 7 this figure to illustrate that's not the case, it's the 8 other way around, that in practice, there really are three 9 regions. You mentioned three regions in your set of 10 questions. I was trying to illustrate where the safety l 11 goals fit in that three region concept.
! 12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: If we want to make the l
l 13 policy statement reflect what we are doing, we should 14 include three regions, although you are not prepared to say
() 15 that.
l 16 MR. KING: No, I think if we are going to do it, 17 we should include discussion at least qualitatively of the 18 concept of adequate protection, the concept of cost benefit i 19 regulatory analysis and how the safety goals are used, the 20 how safe is safe enough. I 1
! 21 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The adequate protection, I 22 could say maybe a core damage frequency of 10 to the minus 3 23 or 3/10 to the minus 3 is hitting now on adequate 24 protection, but if you are above that, something has to 25 happen, which I think is true.
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i 70 1 MR. KING: The committee recommended at one time 2 that we go try and quantitatively define adequate 3 protection.
l 4 DR. KRESS: But not in terms of CDF.
5 MR. KING: No, they didn't say that, t
l 6 DR. KRESS: I think I would have a problem with I l' 7 that. I would have no problem with defining adequate j 8 protection in terms of LERF.
9 MR. HOLAHAN: I think there's a real potential 10 problem with connecting adequate protection, which I think 11 is a legal term and doesn't really correspond to any
- j. 12 technical merit, and try to put it on a safety chart. I ;
13 think there has to be at least one step removed to say the 14 effect of our current regulations is to put a dot at this i 15 particular place, but adequate protection in my mind isn't a 16 safety measure.
17 DR. KRESS: I would have to agree with you on 18 that.
19 DR. FONTANA: Let me go back to this figure again.
20 Does that tell me that a plant that is on your wavy line i 1
21 does not meet the safety goals? I 22 MR. KING: Yes, if a plant fell on the wavy line, I 23 it would not meet the safety goals.
24 DR. FONTANA: I think there are a lot of plants 25 that are already above the safety goal.
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l l
71 1 MR. KING: I think that 's true. That's a problem
() 2 with this illustration.
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Again, I think there is an 4 issue of clarification of what the safety goals mean. You 5 said, Tom, I'm putting this up there to explain what the !
6 safety goals mean, the concept of a safety goal.
7 I'll take that one step further. Wouldn't it be a 8 much clearer statement if you said in the policy statement, 9 look, there are three regions, they are not defined in a 10 crisp way, the boundaries, but there are three regions. If 11 you are below the 10 to the minus 4 say in terms of core i
12 damage frequency and you satisfy other things because it's 13 never the numbers, we have agreed to that, it's never the 14 numbers, then it's the interpretation you just gave, that's 15 it. Everything is fine and cozy. l 16 If you are above another level plus other things, 17 that would take immediate action. If you are in between, 18 then we look at cost benefit evaluations and so on, and that 19 in my opinion would go along way towards explaining what the 20 goal is. It would let those nine units off the hook now 21 because they cannot be stigmatized as violating the safety 22 goals because they are in the region where we are arguing, 23 you know, about ways of bringing it down, but they are not 24 really in an intolerable region, which right now, if I read
! 25 the safety goals and I have a hostile attitude, I could say
[~2
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i
72 1 these plants are unsafe.
{
s (w,) 2 The statement itself doesn't explicitly state 3 that, you know.
4 DR. KRESS: The reason you say that is because of 5 the statement that the safety goals are the philosophy and l<
6 expression of ERC's opinion of how safe is safe enough, )
which means the contrary has to be true if they don't meet 7
l 8 the safety goals, they are unsafe. '
i 9 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Exactly, j 10 DR. KRESS: That's why I have a problem with l 11 calling them how safe is safe enough. You ought to call 12 them somethi.ng else, j 13 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, but it seems to me, I 14 Tom, that you can call them something else, again, if I want
(_j' 15 to be negative and read it, I can say, no matter what you 16 call it, r.nese plants hre violating it, but if you say on 17 the same page, where you have a figure that says, look, this 18 is really what's happening here, in this region in between 19 where a cost benefit evaluation plus other considerations 20 come into the picture --
21 DR. KRESS: Once again --
22 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Then there is no room for 23 misinterpretation.
24 DR. KRESS: Well, once again, I have a little 25 problem with putting that kind of detail into a policy (n)
\/
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73 1 statement, on CDF's, if we made CDF a fundamental goal,
[)
s_-
2 because you really are confusing the issue. Just put the l 3 one number in there and say words, say in practice, if you 4 don't meet this, you can put the words you said, but I have 5 problems putting -- you know, this kind of detail belongs in 6 DG-1061. It is a very useful exercise there. That's where J 7 it belongs, in the implementation of this. You don't want l I
8 to put those in the safety goals. )
i 9 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I don't see it as a detail. 1 1
10 I think you can phrase it in a way that does not allow l
11 misinterpretations. In other words, you don't say, 12 intolerant is 10 to the minus 3.
13 DR. KRESS: I don't mind phrasing it. I don't l
14 want to put numbers on the other --
l /~
' (h) 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The issue of numbers is I
16 something that we need to discuss anyway because we have a 17 proposal by some members of the staff that the fundamental 18 goal should be preventing core damage, not the frequency 19 itself. That's something definitely that we have to 20 discuss.
21 As a matter of policy, it seems to me stating what 22 you are actually doing is healthy. What we are actually 23 doing is we are really operating on three regions. ,
I l
24 Something that is completely intolerable, something that is i l 25 so small that we don't care about it, and in between --
i
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74 1 DR. KRESS: I'm objecting to having bright lines ey
( j 2 defined as regions.
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You know my feelings about 4 bright lines.
5 DR. KRESS: When you put say 10 to the minus 3 and 6 10 to the minus 4, you are putting bright lines on those 7 regions.
8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The same thing, if you 9 don't have three regions and you just say the core damage
- 10 frequency, you know, the number is 10 to the minus 4, you l 11 are doing the same thing.
l l 12 DR. KRESS: Somewhere you have to put a bright 13 line, and I say one bright line is better than two bright l
l 14 lines.
15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I don't want bright lines 16 at all. That's something that we have to reconsider.
17 DR. KRESS: Then you might say this line is a goal 18 and the further away you are from this goal, the more 19 attention we give. You don't have to put numbers on it. '
l 20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think we can find the 21 right words and the right figures. Look at the dots for the 22 adequate protection. I think that's a clear message there.
j 23 You can have the same thing on the safety goals.
24 DR. WALLIS: I think it's as fuzzy as it can be, l 25 not a clear message at all, f)
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75 1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It is extremely clear. It
()
)
2 is extremely misleading to put a bright line there. That's 3 my position. It may be easier --
/
DR. FONTANA: The thing is schizophrenic. You 5 have adequate protection which isn't anywhere near as good 6 as what you say for safety goals --
7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: In terms of bright lines, 8 the fuzziness of these points reflects what is going on.
9 That's my point. If you put one line there, you are really 10 misrepresenting --
11 DR. KRESS: Do you notice how bright that safety 12 goal line is?
13 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: And I don't like it.
14 DR. KRESS: I know, that's where you and I
) 15 disagreeing. It ought to be bright.
16 MR. KING: To me the goal ought to be the line.
17 The plants themselves are all over the map, l 18 DR. KRESS: Yes, I think this is the right way to l
19 do it.
1 20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Why then is one bright line l 21 better than two? I don't understand.
22 DR. KRESS: Because it's hard enough to find one l 23 bright line, much less two.
l 24 MR. HOLAHAN: I think one of the confusion factors 25 on this is that the spread among the dots called adequate ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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76 l 1 protection, which I-would say just level of safety in the
() 2- current regulations, is not so narrow, and in fact, it runs 3 .all.the way off the chart in both directions in my view.
l 4 DR. KRESS: I think that's exactly right. The 5 dots really don't mean anything.
6 MR. HOLAHAN: -That's part of -- to borrow the 7 ACRS term ~-- part of the incoherence in the regulations, l 8 some things that are allowed which we ought not and some 9 things that are required which are meaningless. Part of 1 i
10 drawing any of these lines is to try to figure out whether 11 your dots are close to where you want them to be.
12 DR. WALLIS: I think adequate protection is 13 something in the mind of the public and really you want to 14 put a scatter plot of what different people in some 15 statistical way think is adequate protection for different 16 kinds of industries, like chemical and nuclear and so on, 17 and you put a societal overlay on top of this picture. I 18 think it would be very useful to have that, because 19 eventually your are answerable to those people.
20 MR '. HOLAHAN: I think that would be an interesting 21 concept. I would give it a different name than adequate 22 protection, since that name comes with a lot of baggage.
23 DR. WALLIS: The only definition of adequate is 24 probably in the minds of society. j l-l 25 MR. HOLAHAN: I don't think our lawyers would
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77 l
1 agree with that.
() 2 DR. KRESS: We are stuck with a lot of baggage.
! 3 DR. WALLIS: That's legal -- t i
l l
l 4 MR. HOLAHAN: That's why I suggest that a 5 different concept be plotted.
- j. 6 DR. KRESS: I would have to agree.
7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: David?
l 8 MR. OKRENT: I must confess that having it plotted l
9 against safety leaves me not knowing what the real situation 10 on risk is, but if I were to think that the risk level was 11 relatively high compared to the safety goals, and since 12 adequate protection is what's in the law, that the l 13 Commission will provide adequate protection and the 14 Commission has used that meaning in the requirements in the
() 15 various major rules and regulations, and defines adequate 16 protection.
17 I think one needs to really understand just where l
18 all of the plants stand and if some are truly troublesome 19 with regard to the risk that they appear to present to the
( 20 .public to the best of your knowledge, there are two things
! 21 you need to do. One is to understand as best you can why 22- and the second is to decide why they should be allowed to 23 operate.
24 DR. KRESS: I think that was partly the purpose of 25 the IPE and IPEEE.
i l
)
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I l
)
78 )
1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It seems to me this is a
( 2 key issue here. The purpose of the Commission issuing the l 3 policy statement is to tell the American public this is our 4 philosophy of regulations, this is how we think it ought to 5 be done and we are doing it, right?
6 If I am now a member of the public who is not that i 7 involved in nuclear matters and I pick up the policy 8 statement, I ought to be able to understand what the NRC is l l
9 doing. I ought to be able to answer questions like why are 10 these plants allowed to operate when in fact I heard a study l
11 called IPE shows they are above the curve.
12 It seems to me we are much more pragmatic and we 13 are sending a better message to the public if we say that 14 there are roughly three regions where our attitude changes e-( ,S) 15 depending on where we are. I don't have to tell the public 16 that the region one from region two is separated by a bright 17 line at this number. I don't think I have to say that.
18 Maybe Gary is right. Maybe the policy statement shouldn't 19 have any numbers or should have a global number at a very 20 high level. Maybe the numbers themselves will be defined at 21 lower level documents, regulatory guides and other things.
22 I think I ought to tell the public that I have 23 these three regions. One where things are completely 24 unacceptable. One where everything is fine and in between, 25 and I allow them to operate, to answer David, because they
^
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r 79 1 are in that region, it's not unacceptable, and now I have to
() 2 3
look at other factors as well. How expensive is it, for example, to make modifications to bring the contributors 4 down so that the core damage frequency or whatever else is !
5 below moves into the acceptable region.
6 I have to find better words, not " acceptable," I 7 mean something else. I think the word " acceptable" -- I 8 like the word " intolerable" for the bad region. We need I
9 another word for the good region and in between. I don't 10 know. Acceptable and unacceptable are not the right words l I
11 to use in this context because acceptable risk can be 12 misconstrued.
13 It seems to me sending that message, Tom, would be 14 important. j 15 DR. KRESS: I think you are saying exactly what I 16 said when you put it in those words. )
i 17 CRAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I don't want lines, either '
~18 none or two.
19 DR. KRESS: I think we already have a line in l
l 20 there. We already have one line. The question has come up 21 whether we want to change that or subvert it with other 22 things, which is still on the table. The other question we 23 have raised is should the CDF be elevated to a fundamental j 24 goal. If it's going to be fundamental, then I think you are 25 stuck with having to give a line to it also. That's my
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l
80 1 point. Then you are going to have two lines. You are going i rm !
( ) 2 to have a QHO line and you are going to have a CDF line.
1 3 I don't want any more lines than that unless it's 4 a land contamination line, which I would support, then you 5 are going to have three lines. I think you are stuck with 6 having three lines, which is three numbers, three values, 7 that you have to put in there.
8 I don't want any more than that. 1 like your 9 phrasing of the regions and how one deals with these lines 10 in terms of different regions. I'm not sure I want to put 11 lines on them. j 12 l CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: We are getting into too l 1
13 much detail in my opinion. We cannot resolve that right i 14 now. At least the idea of the three regions --
l (O,) 15 DR. KRESS: I think the idea is fine.
16 MR. KING: I pick up the policy statement today 17 and read it, you don't get this concept out of it.
18 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: No , you don't. That's 19 true.
20 MR. KING: What you are talking about is this 21 line, whether it's bright or fuzzy, but in my view, you can 22 read the policy statement different ways as to what that 23 line means. Does it mean minimum acceptable or does it mean i 24 how safe is safe enough.
25 The Commission came out on an SRM several years l) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 l
81 1 later and said no, it's how safe is safe enough, but that's !
O 2 not in the policy statement.
! (_j 3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think a three region j
4 statement will go a long way towards making all these l 5 concepts clear.
6 MR. KING: That's really the question, is it worth 7 doing that.
8 MR. HOLAMAN: I think one of the things that makes l l
9 this very difficult is dots drawn at the bottom called j 10 adequate protection that are in fact what I would call the
]
11 theoretical limit of the level of safety required in the j 12 regulations. It's an imaginary plant, how bad could things !
l '13 really be if there were such a thing. I'm not sure that's a 14 very meaningful concept, because what we know is even though l() 15 that might be the theoretical -- why talk about the l 16 theoretical limit when in fact we have 100 examples.
, 17 We know much better where the plants are in terms l
l 18 of risk than where they might have been if there were only 19 managed to the regulations, and there is no such thing.
20 What I would be inclined to do is for each year 21 that you wanted to plot, there ought to be a 100 data points 22 with bands on them to say these are where the plants really 23 are. What I would say is to the best of my perception now, 24 all 100 mean values would be safer than the safety goal, but 25 the error bands are fairly large on those, and some of the l
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I
l 82 1 error bands in fact would come down below the safety goals,
'O
( j 2 but presumably the error bands don't go below this 3 theoretical limit.
4 I think of where we are going on regulation is to 5 understand risk better, which is to make those error bands 6 smaller, and where regulations are not contributing to 7 safety, if you let them go away, they have no effect, and 8 where there are plants that might be below a safety goal or 9 you don't really know because of the uncertainties, you 10 should do something either to reduce the uncertainties or 11 move the mean values and largely focus on those issues.
12 DR. KRESS: That gets you out of the adequate 13 protection bind.
14 MR. HOLAHAN- The adequate protection thing to me O
( ,/ 15 is so theoretical, I'd rather deal with the plants.
16 DR. KRESS: I think what you are saying is 17 absolutely the right way to go, if you could get all that 18 data together. I'm not sure you can get that much data.
19 MR. HOLAHAN: I could plot the IPE results.
20 DR. KRESS: I think Dana Powers would disagree 21 with you that those are the right numbers to put on there 22 and that they would all be above the safety goals on this 23 plot.
24 MR. HOLAHAN- I would put the plots and I'd allow 25 him to put the error bands, so I think that would satisfy ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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83 l 1 both. !
/x
( ) 2 DR. WALLIS: This is what you are going to come 3 back with after you have done the study you propose to do?
4 MR. HOLAHAN: That's what we are talking about.
5 DR. WALLIS: That's what I would like to see, what 6 you see as sort of coming out of this, another look at this !
7 whole question which will then clear the air and everybody 8 will know better what's going on. 1 1
9 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You can't have points as a )
l 10 function of time. There is absolutely no way. We only have
)
11 one shot at it, the IPE's, and it took a number of years. {
12 DR. WALLIS: This is an useful goal, just because i
13 you can't do it, doesn't mean to say you should not try. l l 14 DR. KRESS: In principle, it's the right way.
) 15 MR. HOLAHAN: You can invent some surrogate for 16 it. You can take ten plants and you can -- ,
1 17 DR. KRESS: Reg 1150.
18 MR. HOLAHAN- Yes, j 19 Dk. FONTANA: It seems that the policy statement l
l 20 ought to be general. The problem that we are in is we are i
21 transitioning from a deterministic, legalistic definition 22 as to what adequate protection is to one that is more risk 23 informed. Could the policy statement in general terms say 24 we are defining on a risk basis, we are determining what's 25 safe enough or what's an adequate goal or whatever, without f)/
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l 84 1 getting into the detail of where the lines are, where the
() 2 numbers are and so on, but we are in transition.
j 3 MR. HOLAHAN: There is a point in my mind in which 4 you could make the safety goal such a great explanation of 5 what safety ought to be, that it ought to be a regulation, 6 and it's not just some policy statement.
7 At some point, you will have to say that -- you l
8 ought to draw a line at some point and say the safety goal l 9 doesn't need to_be the regulations, it just needs to be a 10 philosophical document.
l 11 DR. FONTANA: It needs to be consistent.
1 12 MR. HOLAHAN: And then you want to conform your 13 regulations, you know, where you can to that philosophy.
- 14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS
- Is it like the way you run
() 15 a state, the safety goal is the constitution, and then you 16 have the laws, and the laws are easier to change than the 17- constitution? Is that how we should view this?
18 MR. HOLAHAN: Could be. That's not a bad 19 analysis.
l l 20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It should be really broad 21 enough so that they will have long term life, long life, and l
22 flexible enough to accommodate the changing views of society 23 that guide individual laws.
24 In that sense, maybe the question of having I
25 numbers at all in the statement is up in the air. 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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85 1 MR. REMICK: George, that is the concept and there
() 2 was a lot of discussion whether safety goals should just be 3 qualitative or they should be quantitative or they should be ,
I 4 both. What you are pointing out, that's the concept, it's 5 an overall umbrella public risk goal from which hopefully 6 then you would establish your various -- whether you are 7 going to call them standards, objectives, criteria or laws, 4 l
1 8 as you are saying, and hopefully consistent with that. l 9 That's the concept, an umbrella.
l 10 I wish we had one internationally that we could 11 agree on or I wish we had one nationally for all industrial 12 activities in this country which we consider there is some 13 public benefit, and from that then, all agencies would 14 derive their various standard objectives, but we aren't
) 15 there. I wish we were. If I was emperor, we'd be there.
16 DR. KRESS: The problem, George, for such a 17 document to be useful and to develop these lower tier laws, 18 practice and so forth that are consistent with it, you have 19 to have a number in it, I think. I think you do.
20 Otherwise, you can do anything you want to.
21 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You can't be more vague 22 than the pursuit of happiness.
23 [ Laughter.]
24 DR. SEALE: If I may make a comment. The safety 25 goal is the kind of thing if Emperor Remick did his thing --
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86 1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The founding father.
() 2 DR. SEALE: It is the kind of thing that would s
3 apply to nuclear power plants and chemical plants and oil 4 refineries and liquid propane shipments and all of these 5 other things. :
I 6 The level of adequate protection is a practical 7 goal or a working number which allows you to move below that 8 safety goal depending upon the nature of the compensatory 9 measures that are available to you because of that l 10 particular technology, and in the case of nuclear power l 11 plants, it's defense in depth, all the things that means, l l 12 training, emergency preparedness and the rest of it.
13 If you start trying to put this umbrella 14 statement, non-quantitative umbrella statement in there, it I [~T i (,) 15 seems to me that you have to be very careful in enunciating 16 the fact that these other issues have impact and in fact 17 tell you how far below the safety goal line you can intrude 18 and still maintain adequate protection.
19 It's all those other things that let you go below t
l l 20 the safety goal, presumably, at least in a rational way. l 21 MR. OKRENT: Would that all be on some ad hoc 22 basis?
23 DR. SEALE: Well, I guess it started off that way, 24 you know.
25 MR. OKRENT: I'm asking you.
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l 87 l
1 DR. SEALE: Well, I think that's part of the l
) 2 question we have to ask ourselves here, it's the quality 4
3 control, if you will, that we have to impose on ourselves as 4 we talk about this re-working of this statement.
5 MR. SHERRY: Where do the objectives or goals that l 6 are I think in the strategic plan fit in? No deaths to the 7 public or whatever they are. They seem to be another set of 8 high level goals 9 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: One of my questions, I'm l 10 glad to you raised it, what's the difference between a 11 policy statement and a strategic plan? The policy statement l 12 goes through the formal process of public comment and 13 everything. Why can't we take the strategic plan of the 14 Commission, adopt it, and then make it a policy statement,
( 15 go through the process? Is there any reason why not?
16 MR. HOLAHAN: Well, as a practical matter, I think j l
17 the Commission owes the Congress a strategic plan each year, 18 and I'm not sure it would work in terms of timing.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You're right, yes. It 20 would not be that different from year to year, I hope.
21 DR. SEALE: There's a vetting for a policy 22 statement that a strategic plan does not undergo.
23 MR. HOLAHAN: Neither one of them is law, neither 24 one of them is regulation. They are both expressions of 25 what the Commission is trying to accomplish. It seems to me O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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88 1 they serve the same role, except that the strategic plan
() 2 usually has a shorter time frame, and presumably the safety 3 goal is a broader time frame.
4 MR. KING: If you turn to the back page of the l
5 strategic plan, it has an item called the NRC's safety 6 philosophy. It talks about defense in depth, safety culture l 7 and so forth. As Gary suggested, at one time, maybe this 8 would be a good place to put in this policy kind of stuff.
9 It wouldn't change from year to year, but it's always there 10 for a reference.
j 11 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, that's my point. Take l 12 the strategic plan and say, you know, what are the essential l l
13 elements that will not be time dependent or too strongly l 14 time dependent.
l gw) q, 15 For example, let's take the accident, the core 16 damage frequency, as I recall, the plan says the Commission 17 doesn't want any accidents, period. l l
18 MR. HOLAHAN: That's right.
1 19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's part of our goal. l 20 We don't want any of those. How do you make that l 21 operational? You have risk estimates, in this case, core i
22 damage frequency estimates. You have management attention.
23 You have safety margins. You have all sorts of things.
24 MR. HOLAHAN- We have inspection programs, 25 hopefully to focus on the right issues.
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89 1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Right, you state all these
() 2 things, and then you say now because the risk metrics 3 represent a large group of contributors and so on, they have 4 a special role to play, so we start out by looking at those 5 and then we bring in the other elements, and then you say in 6 terms of these risk metrics, there will be three regions, 7 and if this risk metric is in the intolerable region, I 8 don't care what the other elements are, you are shut down.
9 If you are in between, then I bring the others in, so I 10 still achieve the goal of the Commission of no accidents 11 because my risk number is not the only one, and if it's 1
12 below something else, then I don't have to bring those other I 13 elements in.
14 I think that would be a much more convincing case.
( 15 MR. OKRENT: Except you don't achieve the goal of 16 no accidents, you have no guarantee.
17 DR. FONTANA: It's like a zero defense program, 18 like a zero defect manufacturing program. You are always 19 trying to improve and trying to improve until, in those 20 things, competitive pressures get so much that it's not 21 worth trying to improve it any more, because you go out of 22 business.
23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's my point, the whole 24 point here. No accidents does not mean that the frequency 25 of the accidents is zero. There is a huge difference there.
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f 90 1 DR. WALLIS: Now, wait a minute. This is a very
() 2 simple test of English.
3 { Laughter.]
4 DR. WALLIS: No means none. No means nothing, 5 zero. No.
6 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But the probability of the 7 event does not have to be zero. There's a big difference 8 between the two.
9 MR. OKRENT: It's a goal, he's saying.
10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: If I knew that the nuclear 11 industry would be around only for the next month, I would 12 tolerate 10 to the minus 2 core damage frequency for some 13 plants.
14 DR. WALLIS: But you know making a statement about j f 15 no accidents really is logically indefensible.
16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That has been part of the 17 problems with this industry. We have tried to communicate 18 in precise language to the average public. How many 19 airlines are telling the public that the frequency of death 20 is this and that? They are saying no, it's safe.
21 DR. WALLIS: You are saying it's safe enough.
22 MR. OKRENT: You can also get the statistics on 23 the deaths per passenger mile. They are readily available.
24 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's a big difference.
25 That 's true . I think you can have a goal of no accidents.
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1 91 )
1 That's what we want to do. Then you say in the discussion
/~T i
) 2 let's recognize the uncertainties here, what does that mean 3 in terms of all the things we are doing.
4 We are doing risk calculations but we are also 5 doing other things. How do we put all this together to make 6 sure that our goal will be achieved? In my mind, that would 7 be a much more honest --
l 8 DR. WALLIS: No accidents is not an useful measure 9 for any purpose whatsoever.
l 10 DR. KRESS: Unless you define it in terms of level 11 of confidence and probability. J 12 DR. WALLIS: Right. i 13 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: When I write a policy I
14 statement, I'm not writing a technical paper for my peers.
t
( ,/ 15 That's our problem. That has been our problem all along.
16 DR. WALLIS: It's unenforceable, there's no way 17 you could take a no accident statement and write any kind of 18 regulation at all around that statement, based on that l
19 statement. l 1
20 MR. HOLAHAN It sets a partial bound on it.
1 21 MR. KING: The thing you could do is go with the 22 qualitative goal that's in there right now.
23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The Commission says so in 24 the strategic plan. I 25 DR. WALLIS: It doesn't mean to say it's right.
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92 1 They may say something which is meaningless.
() 2 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I don't want to have any 3 accidents. That's my goal.
! 4 DR. KRESS: Getting away from the no accidents' 5 stuff, if you guys put in --
6 MR. HOLAHAN: By the way, when I drive my car, my l
7 goal is to have no accidents also.
8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Sure, even though you know 9 there is a probability.
10 DR. KRESS: If you guys were to put into a policy l
l 11 statement -- let's just deal with LERF, you had a safety 12 goal LERF and you had another LERP level that you defined as l
13 George's other region, where below which would be 14 intolerable, like these things here, would that give you all C\
- (_) 15 sorts of legal problems because that number then would 16 become the ad hoc value of adequate protection?
17 MR. KING: It depends on how you state it.
l 18 DR. KRESS: Below that, it's intolerable. We are l 19 going to shut you down if you are below that.
l l 20 MR. HOLAHAN: I think in effect what you would 21 have then is two adequate protection standards, one, the 22 regulations themselves, the presumptive one. Then you would 23 have a PRA standard also. You'd have to define the 24 relationship among those, and maybe it's simple addition. l 25 You have to do both this and this.
l
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93 1 DR. KRESS: An end statement.
t
() 2 MR. HOLAHAN: An end statement, in which case 3 adequate protection would be you meet the regulations and 4 your risk estimate is below a certain number.
I 5 MR. KING: Then you are setting yourself up to 6 defend your risk statements in a court of law.
7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think, Tom, it would be 8 easier to make it clear, and that's perhaps one of the 9 failings of the existing statement, that risk metrics are 10 only part of the decision making process. I have all the l
11 other things that Gary keeps reminding us of, inspections --
12 some of them are part of the metrics, some are not.
l l 13 MR. HOLAHAN: Defense in depth is not in the l 14 safety goal, only to the extent that LERF is --
) 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It's mentioned. What I'm 16 saying is we should make it clear that there is a risk l
l 17 metric here or metrics, also a lot of other things that are 18 not included in the risks, and that our policy statement j 19 uses all of them, not just risk. I think that would go a 20 long way towards explaining these things.
21 MR. OKRENT: Could I ask a slightly different 22 thing? I see before me January 30, 1988, pre-decisional l
23 draft SECY 98-015, final general regulatory guide, you plan 24 for risk informed regulation of power reactors.
25 MR. HOLAHAN: 1998.
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94 1 MR. OKRENT: Isn't that in whatever form it's
() 2 issued going to put numbers in a more important role, in a 3 decision making role for many important aspects of nuclear l
4 power safety?
l 5 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes.
6 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, but it's risk 7 informed, David.
l l 8 MR. OKRENT: What is risk informed?
9 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It's not risk based, j 10 MR. HOLARAN: He only said more important role, l
11 and I think that's exactly right.
1 i 12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I agree, it's more l
13 important. l 14 MR. OKRENT: Risk informed but if I'm an utility, l() 15 I look at this and I say where do my numbers fit with the 16 numbers here, and if I'm only one percent increase in this 17 or one percent increase in that, I don't even have to tell 18 them and so forth, using the baseline numbers that I've got, 19 however bad they are, you are moving -- you are agreeing to 20 move into a quantitative era and you seem reluctant to move 21 into a quantitative era on how safe is tolerable or is good 22 enough.
23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: No, I'm not reluctant. I 24 think there are two issues here. A policy statement, how 25 specific nhould a policy statement be, but we don't really I
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1 95 1 live with policy statements. We have all sorts of
[J) 2 regulatory guides under those. I have no objection to the 3 way the regulatory guides are now for risk informed 4 regulation, but if you want to add another region, in l 5 effect, you have three regions there, too. You have three 3 6 regions there. That's fine.
7 Should a policy statement start giving out numbers ,
I
)
l 8 that maybe five years from now we will have to modify again. l l 9 Maybe all we need is another goal at the QHO level and then '
10 state other things in a more qualitative way at that level, 11 in the statement, and make it clear that it's not just the 12 risk metrics that allow us to regulate nuclear plants, there 13 are other things as well. That's really a question here.
14 How specific should the policy statement be?
l/T
(,) 15 MR. OKRENT: Are they for goals, the policy 16 statement?
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Are they for goals?
18 MR. OKRENT: Goals.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: What do you mean? l 20 MR. OKRENT: We have safety goals that are not 21 go/no go, that was the original statement. Will they remain 22 ,
go/no go -- not go/no go?
l 23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's why I want three 1 24 regions. I don't know where I put the goals though. If I 25 state goals, if I put any numbers there, I don't think they
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l 1 should be go/no go. That creates more problems than it 2 solves.
3 DR. KRESS: Let's talk about your intolerable 1
4 region then.
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I wouldn't put a number l
6 there in the policy statement. I would put it at a lower l 7 level.
8 DR. KRESS: What good is it if you aren't going to i
l 9 put a number in?
l 10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It explains my philosophy 11 of regulating.
l 12 DR. KRESS: You are just going to let it float, 13 according to what? You are going to give guidance on how to
(
14 define it then?
! ) 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Look at what it does 16 though. j 1
17 DR. KRESS: Are you going to give guidance on how l 18 to define where the intolerable level is?
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I don't think the policy 20 statement should do that.
21 DR. KRESS: I don't see that it's worth very much 22 to you.
23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Let me tell you what it 24 does. If I have a safety goal, which is the way it is now 25 and we violate it, before I state --
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97 t
1 MR. HOLAHAN: You can't violate a goal.
()
/m 2 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You can be above the goal.
I 3 MR. HOLAHAN: You might not achieve your goal.
l 4 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: All right, you don't 5 violate it, you don't achieve it. If I have a discussion 6 before that, that there are three regions, then the meaning 7 of the goal is much clearer. If I want to really attack 8 this industry now, I would pick up the IPE results, take the 9 safety goal and say nine PWR's are unsafe, shut them down, 10 but we meant -- you don't mean anything, you are unsafe.
11 DR. KRESS: Only if you are focusing on CDF.
l 12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You can say that forever.
13 DR. WALLIS: CDF is not in the safety goals.
14 DR. KRESS: It's not in the safety goals. You
()
15 really can't do much.
16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You can, because you can l 17 make an argument that maybe the OHO's are not met either. l l 18 DR. WALLIS: These goals should be like the l 19 constitution, they should be deliberately vague and the 20 interpretation in terms of numbers should only follow as a 21 result of very detailed and careful analysis of things like 22 probability, which is explainable to technical experts.
23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's my point.
24 DR. WALLIS: But the goals should be deliberately 25 vague and kept that way. They should not appear on any kind
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98 1 of a picture like this, because they are not quantitative.
() 2 You can talk about adequate, inadequate, over protection and 3 so on in terms of a measure of protection, but aren't these 4 goals something much more general than that? They shouldn't 5 involve picking some number out of the air, like .1 percent 6 or 10 to the minus something. That remains to be done by 7 careful analysis, comparison with other industries and so 8 on. That's at a different level altogether from goals, then 9 you can talk about no accidents as a goal, because it's 10 different, qualitatively different from regulations.
I' 11 DR. FONTANA: Going to the highest level, the law 12 that set up the NRC says protect the health and safety of 13 the public. Does it include property also, the law that set 14 up the NRC? The environment, protection of the environment.
() 15 That's one level of generality and the next level 16 of generality is what we are talking about here, and it 17 appears that what we are talking about is we are going to 18 use a risk informed approach to make build a regulatory 19 structure or to implement a regulatory structure.
20 Then it seems what the numbers you are talking 21 about goes into what used to be DG-1061, so I seem to feel 22 the safety goals shouldn't have much in the way of numbers.
23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The policy statement.
24 DR. FONTANA: I'm sorry, I meant the statement.
25 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The agency will have ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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99 1 numbers somewhere else.
O V
2 DR. FONTANA: Where?
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Regulatory guide. 1.174 4 does that very well.
5 DR. KRESS: Is there going to be a regulation 6 somewhere on the books? 10 CFR something, that says you 7 will have a CDF that's less than this number?
8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: No, not in 10 CFR.
9 DR. KRESS: Why not? This is a question.
10 MR. KING: That becomes a risk based regulation.
11 DR. KRESS: Yes.
12 MR. KING: We are not going risk based.. We are 13 going risk informed.
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Risk informed.
( 15 DR. KRESS: If we tried to put a number in like 16 that, it would never pass the Commission anyway, j 17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I am not opposed to having 18 perhaps a high level number in the statement. I'm not 19 convinced that we should have all numbers, but as a general 20 rule, I don't think numbers belong in a policy statement.
21 Also, the policy statement should make it clear to everyone 22 what risk informed means, what goes into all these 23 decisions, and if you want to state the safety goal at the 24 QHO level, I don't know, maybe that's a good idea.
25 MR. OKRENT: Well, I must say, if you have a O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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100 1 policy statement that has no numbers in it, I would say you
() 2 might as well not issue it.
l 3 DR. SEALE: How do you enforce against the non-4 quantified?
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You are not enforcing it.
6 It's not a document to be enforced.
7 DR. FONTANA: It has to be in a 10 CFR. It has to
(
8 be a regulation that's in the 10 CFR 50.
l l 9 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I'm not saying you 10 shouldn't have any numbers, but I don't think this is the 11 place to actually define the boundaries between the three l
12 regions, for example. It's just not the place. If you want 13 to have another goal at some level, I think it's fine. I 14 haven't thought about it but I'm not against it, but what l( ) 15 I'm saying is this is a constitution, it should survive for 16 a long time, it should have sufficient flexibility so that l 17 the regulatory guides will adopt the state of knowledge at 18 the time.
19 If you want to have another goal, I don't know, t
I 20 why doesn't_the regional law say something else other than 21 adequate protection?
22 DR. KRESS: Would you support a statement in a 23 safety goal policy statement, that says in words, the NRC 24 considers some level, unspecified, of CDF intolerable and 25 we'll shut down plants that are below the level -- above a O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 101 1
i 1 level we consider intolerable?
l
() 2 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I don't know, Tom. You are 3 asking me now to write it in five minutes. What I'm saying 4 is in the three region idea, that's there.
l 5 DR. KRESS: It is there. Yes, it is. That's why 6 I'm asking you if you would support --
7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, I would.
8 DR. KRESS: -- a statement like that.
9 CHAIRMAI APOSTOLAKIS: I would support it but I 10 wouldn't put a number.
11 DR. KRESS: Without a number.
12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Without a number, that's 13 right. That's the whole ideas.
14 DR. KRESS: Then let the staff worry about how to
( ) 15 define that number in implementation.
16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Also, I would make sure 17 that people would understand it's not that number alone that 18 drives these decisions. ;
19 DR. KRESS: You would talk about other things? I 20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. I would put it in the 21 context of the totality of regulations, which is consistent 22 with the risk informed approach.
23 MR. HOLAHAN. I think there's also another concept 24 that we haven't talked about and that is it seems to me the l
25 tolerability of risk has to do with the time of exposure i
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1 102 1 also, so what you are willing to tolerate for a short period
() 2 of time you wouldn't tolerate for a long period of time.
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Exactly.
4 MR. HOLAHAN: Picking a core damage frequency or 5 large early release number, which is normally something you 6 calculate over an extended period of time might not be the i
! 7 right metric for doing that, or you might have to say you 8 know, 10 to the minus 3 would not be something we would 9 tolerate for a year, but 10 to the minus 3 might be 10 something you would tolerate for a week.
11 As a matter of fact, if you look carefully at our l 12 technical specifications, they might already do that.
l 13 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Gary, you are not going to 14 put all this detail in the policy statement.
15 MR. HOLAHAN: No, I agree.
l 16 Let me remind the committee that it was the 17 committee's suggestion that 10 to the minus 4 core damage 18 frequency go into the safety goal --
19 [ Laughter. ]
i 20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Let me remind you that the l
21 committee has a curve like this of its own. l 22 Taking in all this discussion, I think we are .
t 23 going to have a better policy statement because of all this.
24- MR. HOLAHAN: That was a good reply. I like that.
25 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I'm learning from you, O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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103 1 Gary. Have we exhausted this? I think the issue that came 4
( .' 2 up this last hour is what exactly cs a policy statement, l
3 what would it include. l 4 DR. WALLIS: I have a good idea of what the issues 5 are. Your purpose, first line in your presentation, was to 6 discuss plan and approach. I think we have talked in great 7 generalities. We haven't talked much about plan and l l
8 approach. Maybe we won't. l 9 MR. KING: As much as we can, we are going to talk 10 about it today.
11 DR. WALLIS: I don't have at all a good picture of 12 where you want to be a year from now, how you intend to get I
13 there, what needs to be done, how we will know you have got j 14 there, how society, whatever.
( 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS:
,_j Are you done with your 16 presentation?
17 MR. HOLAHAN. We have more to go.
18 MR. KING: When we put the figure up, we were 19 about ready to go to slide nine.
20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLNKIS: Let's look at the schedule 21 here. At 12:00, we will hear from Biff Bradley of NEI. We 22 will go until 12:30 and then break for lunch.
l 23 What I would like to do before we adjourn is go 24 around the table and also ask the public to get input on the 25 letter that the ACRS will write in May. If you can give it ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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i 104 1 to me in bullets, that would be good. Before we do that, I
( 2 think the invited experts -- do you need separate time, 3 David, or are you making your points as we go along?
4 MR. OKRENT: I want to make one more point now.
i l 5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Do you want half an hour l 6 later?
i
( 7 MR. OKRENT: Just so people will think about it.
l 8 Does anybody here know who Daniel Ford was?
9 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes.
10 MR. OKRENT: I think if Daniel Ford were to come 11 back and review what has happened within the Nuclear
! 12 Regulatory Commission and the ACRS in the last 10 to 11 13 years, he would find that the regulations, the requirements 14 for safety have been relaxed and why, because the nuclear
() 15 reactors needed it. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but that's my 16 understanding of what I've heard here as to what the 17 situation is.
18 I think, if I'm correct, and if Daniel Ford or 19 David Okrent could write such an article and justify it, it 20 would be devastating to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
21 I just want to leave that thought to you.
22 MR. KING: I guess I disagree with that. Do you 23 have an example of where we have relaxed things?
24 MR. OKRENT: Well, I hear reactors being allowed 25 to run with estimated core damage frequencies, larger than O ANN 'ILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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105 1 10 to the minus 3 or on the order of 10 to the minus 3. You
() 2 have changed this LERF thing. You seem to be quite willing 3 to have reactors on the border of this 10 to the minus 3, 4 are there cost beneficial things that will improve it.
5 I never did like the way that cost beneficial 6 thing was written because in fact it came into play not 7 above what was thought to be a tolerable or acceptable level 8 of safety but below it. I think that's exactly the way it's 9 being applied.
10 This is my distorted old fashioned view of what 11 has occurred. Maybe I'm all wrong.
12 MR. HOLAHAN: Let me not try to convince you of 13 anything, just add to the fact base, that the three examples 14 I know where plants did analyses to indicate they were in
( 15 the region of 10 to the minus 3, being Surry, Palo Verde and 16 Quad Cities, all part of the IPE or IPEEE programs. Every 17 one of those cases got immediate utility and NRC action, 18 every one of those cases had some sort of remedial action I
19 put in place immediately. j 20 The Quad Cities' plant, which I think is probably l 21 the worse example, has in fact been shut down for quite a !
l 22 while. They took immediate compensatory measures. The NRC 23 had an inspection team out there the next week and two 24 additional times. The plant has been shut down and will be 25 re-started when we can agree they meet the requirements in l l
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l 106 1 such a way that level of risk will have been eliminated.
(, ~) 2 We don't have a goal that says if you are at 10 to 3 the minus 4, we are tolerant of it, or if you are 10 to the 4 minus 3, we are a little less tolerant, because our 5 regulations aren't written around those numbers.
6 MR. OKRENT: But if I can talk about Quad Cities 7 for one minute, it's a BRW. My recollection from ten years 8 ago is with a core melt frequency of 10 to the minus 3, the 9 LERF is far bigger than 10 to the minus 5.
10 MR. HOLARAN: Indeed. Yes, I think so.
11 MR. OKRENT: I think that's a problem.
12 DR. FONTANA: I think what we see here is that a 13 plant isn't any less safe than it was before, it's just that 14 the tools have gotten better for identifying problems.
(3
'x ,)
s 15 MR. OFRENT: But the Commission, and I'll come 16 back to 1987, when we had NUREG 1150 and everything was 17 glowing and all the reactors looked good and people thought 18 we didn't even have to study the rest of the reactors, the 19 severe accident situation was in hand, and there was only 20 with some persuasion that the Commission said we better do 21 individual things and the industry wasn't keen on doing 22 anything very elaborate, as you know. Those plants weren't 23 very good then. They have been running since then.
24 The fact that we have had plants with bad LERF's 25 or however you want to put it over this period of time
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107 1 doesn't excuse in my mind the continuation of that or trying
()
, ~ .
2 to change either the safety goals or the implementing 3 regulatory guide so you can live with it. That's all I'm j 4 saying, that Dan Ford would enjoy himself.
5 MR. HOLAHAN: I guess I can go back to what I said 6 earlier. My perception is not that we are moving the target 7 to be consistent with the way the reactors are designed.
i 8 What we are doing is we are establishing a process in which '
9 people can focus on the things that really matter.
10 I'm afraid that a lot of us back in the 1970's 11 spend a lot of our time and energy on things that weren't 12 productive. The fact that we are now using real risk 13 metrics and addressing core damage and severe accidents and 14 large early release, I think it's an enormous step in the 15 right direction.
16 MR. OKRENT: I agree.
17 MR. HOLAHAN: Somewhere along the way, yes, some 18 of the things that we put in place I think have not served 19 the public well and can be eliminated, and perhaps there is 20 more tolerance of a 10 to the minus 5 than we would have 21 talked about in the 1970's, but I think that was out cf our l
22 as much ignorance as to the real risks of those power plants 23 as an expression of a real safety standard.
24 I accept your criticism that you think we are too !
25 tolerant perhaps of the 10 to the minus 4's and 3's and 5's, !
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108 1 but I don't think we are very tolerant of 10 to the minus
(( ) 2 3's.
3 MR. OKRENT: If the Commission in fact did what I 4 would consider a realistic evaluation of the cost of land 5 contamination, looking at what it cost in Europe after l 6 Chernobyl, they would make the number smaller, not bigger, 7 on a cost benefit basis. It's a huge expense.
8 DR. WALLIS: There's nothing in a 50 mile radius 9 that tells you anything about much of that.
10 MR. OKRENT: I just have problems that I've had 11 the opportunity for the first time in seven years to express 12 -- ten years.
I 13 CRAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Let's go back to the 14 schedule now. I really'want to make sure that I get the
() 15 input I need. David, do you think you are going to need 16 separate time later or are you just expressing your views as 17 we go?
18 MR. OKRENT: I'll just summarize briefly.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay. I believe Forest has 20 prepared something, so maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes. We 21 should be able to finish -- is 3:00, 3:30 the right time?
22 MR. OKRENT: I need to leave no later than 3:10 or 23 so, but I'd like to hear Forest.
24 CRAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Forest, we will probably i
[ 25 start with him at 1:30. Actually, when we come back at
[
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109 1 12:30, maybe we will give the floor to Dr. Remick, not a
() 2 3
bright line, around 2:00.
PRA.
Of course, the uncertainty is not I
l 4 DR. WALLIS: Do you have a goal?
l 5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: No, I don't have a goal.
6 DR. WALLIS: 2:00.
! 7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I have a goal, actually.
1 8 Around 2:00, we will start expressing judgments and opinions
! 9 in summary form. Yes, we will make it. By 3:00, a little 10 after 3:00, we will be done. The intolerable level is 3:30.
11 We cannot go beyond 3:30. A lot of you will disappear.
12 We are going to take a break. You have five 13 minutes if you want or you can quit right now. It's up to 1
14 you, Tom. '
15 MR. KING: Some of the stuff that's in here, we 16 have already talked about.
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You are going to have 18 another chance when I go around. I'm going literally 19 around.
20 MR. KING: Okay.
21 CRAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You will summarize, you 22 know, two or three points you want to make. Of course, we 23 have this. Gary will have his three points. Among the 24 three of you, you have nine points. Unless you really have 25 something very important that you feel you want to tell the l
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110 1 committee right now.
( 2 MR. KING: No, I think the rest of this is pretty 3 self explanatory.
4 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: And we have heard you 5 before.
6 MR. KING: It's preliminary. We could quit now 7 and bring back any other points as part of the round table 8 discussion.
9 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's the goal. If each 10 member and guest and staff prepare a list of two or three 11 major points when we go around the table, you know, if you 12 start giving me 10 to 15, we will never get through. Then 13 we will have a good idea of where we ought to be going.
14 MR. KING: The only thing I would suggest is that C
15 we clarify the question, what question are you trying to 16 answer. Should there be a change in the safety goal, should 17 the staff be working on it, should it do it immediately, i
18 should we take a year to collect background information and 19 have workshops and find ways of involving people and do 20 something later. Should we do it never.
21 I think it's not what number should be in there 22 but what is the general direction.
23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: The next level question is 24 what is the nature of such a statement, what are we trying 25 to achieve with this, right? Okay. A few minutes before
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111 1 12:00, we will be back.
(g 3 2 (Recess.]
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: We will hear from Mr.
4' 'Bradley of NEI who will tell us what his organization's 5 views are on these issues. Biff?
i l 6 MR. BRADLEY: Thank you, George. My remarks will
! 7 be relatively brief and probably will come as no surprise to !
8 you. j j 9 As you know, we wrote a letter last year to the i
i l 10 Chairman regarding the potential elevation of CDF to a i l 11 fundamental goal. I guess there are a couple of things I i 12 would like to say.
13 One is I think the staff has done a very good job 14 of identifying the potential pitfalls as well as possible l
15 reasons why you might want to elevate or change the goal, 16 and I've looked through their materials, and I would like to 17 say they have done a good job and that generally we would
~
l-18 concur with 'the staff's. assessment that at a minimum, this 19 whole process should be deferred for some time, and probably 20 beyond that, that we believe the goal in its existing form i
l 21 has served well, and if there is no compelling reason to 22 change the goal -- as a matter of fact, I think there are 23 some compelling reasons we really shouldn't be out trying to 24 change the way the safety goal is structured at this time.
25 Let me give a couple of those. We spent the i
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112 1 better part of the last two years developing guidance,
() 2 3
regulatory guidance, on how to apply quantitative' risk insights into the regulatory process. That's been a very 4 difficult effort. I know having sat in a lot of these 5 meetings and again, I think tha staff in that regard, too, 6 has done a good job of tackling that difficult issue.
7 We finally are near achieving a point where we are 8 going to have a motherhood regulatory guidance document in 9 1174 that I think provides the correct treatment of CDF in 10' the regulatory arena.
11 There has been a lot of discussion of goal versus 12 regulation and the fact that setting a goal doesn't really 13 drive you to meeting in itself whatever the number that goal i
14 entails, and probably in a regulation space, that's going to
() 15 be difficult to do as well because we already have a body of 16 regulations for adequate protection, and it would be very 17 difficult to layer another goal on top of that in a 18 regulatory space.
19 I think the position that has been staked out in 20 1174 is the proper way to do that. A lot of utilities have 21 been waiting for the issuance of this guidance and the best 22 way to move us toward that goal is to allow us an incentive 23 to apply our PSA's and to achieve regulatory improvements 24 and to expand our knowledge of risk insights.
- 25 1174 should take us in that direction. The O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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113 1 industry probably has about a quarter of a billion invested
() 2 3
in PSA right now, and as you all know, some plants have invested a lot more than others. I 4 I think within that expectation there is going to 5 be some result. For instance, some plants probably have 6 over $15 million invested in their PSA's and those are 7 typically the plants that are out leading the industry and 1 -
8 trying to apply these insights and regulatory improvement 9 space.
1 10 Getting 1174 issued and getting applications '
11 approved, the pilot applications, will move a lot of plants 12 in the direction of considering expanding their PSA's, 13 improving their PSA's, addressing the quality of their l l
14 PSA's.
() 15 If we start monkeying around at this point with a n 16 safety goal, I think that's going to be a new disincentive 17 for plants that are considering regulatory improvements and 1 18 improvements to their PSA that would likely coincide with 19 that. I think that's a concern.
20 There's been a lot of uncertainty on the part of 21 the industry about are these regulatory improvements going 22 to be successful. There are some difficult issues such as l
23 PSA quality that have to be addressed.
24 I think having another level of uncertainty i
25 hanging over our heads over where the safety goal may go and j 1
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114 l l
1 how that could impact what's already gone into 1174 could f
() 2 3
ultimately be a disincentive for the whole industry becoming 1
l more risk informed. i 1
4 I think a second compelling reason we shouldn't be 5 adjusting the safety goal at this time is that I think this j l
6 morning's discussion illustrates all too well how difficult 1 7 these issues are, and how easily it would be possible to 8 suck up a lot of NRC staff resources trying to address all I
9 the issues potentially involved with adjusting the goal. l l
10 We are already at a point with just a handful of 11 pilot applications and trying to actually use risk informed 12 regulation where NRC is telling us that their resources are 13 saturated. ISI is a very good example of that.
14 I'm concerned this will become another impediment f'N
() 15 to NRC having sufficient resources to move forward and 16 really enable widespread risk informed regulatory 17 improvements.
18 I know I've hammered this particular issue to 19 death, but ISI is an area where we can save a significant 20 portion of the worker radiation exposures that are occurring 21 right now, and if we are going to spend another couple of 22 years arguing about what the safety goals should be, there's 23 people out there getting exposures right now that could be 24 obviated if we could move forward and implement that and get 25 the NRC resources applied there versus some of these other s ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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115 1 areas.
( 2. I think there are some compelling reasons we 3 should really hold off on adjusting the safety goal. I 4 think the intent of elevating CDF has been achieved and 5 properly achieved through the way 1174 has been put G together, 7 The analogy of the constitution was interesting.
8 We are just in the process of changing the laws to try to 9 move us forward and to become risk informed and now before 10 we can really get that on the final and on the table, we are 11 talking about amending the constitution. I can only tell 12 you that's going to increase the level of uncertainty in the 13 industry.
14 Interestingly enough, I don't think there's a lot 15 of recognition in the industry of this effort. It may be 16 that there are other things going on such as the instability 17 with 5059 that has really taken a lot of the attention of 18 the industry, but there is not a lot of overall recognition 19 there is even an effort underway right now to modify the 20 safety goal.
21 I think if that did come to pass or if there was
(
22 some clear movement of the NRC in that direction, it will 23 only serve to slow us down. I really think risk informed is i 24 a market driven kind of thing and the best way to get risk 25 informed is to provide the incentive and give us the
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116 1 incentive to improve our PSA's and make those insights that
() 2 we continue to learn as we evolve through this.
3 I hope there are no more Quad Cities out there or l
4 analogous situations, but if there are, I think the best way 5 to find them is to give the industry that incentive to keep 6 moving their PSA's forward.
7 I guess that's pretty much all I have to say.
8 Again, I think the staff has gone a good job of laying it i
9 out and I don't really disagree with any of the conclusions 10 the staff has drawn with regard to the potential 11 ramifications of this.
- 12 I'd just say we have a lot on our plate right now, 13 both the industry and NRC are practically saturated trying 14 to deal with a lot of issues, and this is just one more 15 potential detractor in my mind from really being able to 16 move forward.
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Biff, I get the impression 18 from your remarks that by re-visiting the policy statement, 19 somehow the regulatory guides that are now in the works, the 20 risk informed guides, will be in jeopardy. I'm not sure 21 that's what you wanted to say.
22 We are not talking about changing those in any 23 way. In fact, that has been bothering Dr. Wallis there, 24 that we seem to be adjusting the constitution to the laws.
25 MR. BRADLEY: Let me speak to that. I'm not O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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117
! 1 suggesting that you are going to not issue the reg guide
- ()
2' . final or that the reg guide is going to be immediately 3 changed, but this reg guide is for voluntary application.
4 There is no regulation on the books now that says you will 5 move your CDF to 10 to the minus 4 as we talked about today, 6 but there is the opportunity in accordance with the PSA 7 policy statement to take advantage of PSA insights. That's t
8 what 1174 provides, 9 I have the opportunity to get a lot of feedback at 10 all levels from the industry, and I have a pretty good sense 11 of where the areas of concern and uncertainty are and why --
12 you know, Gary asks me all the time, why aren't more 13 applications coming in, where is all that burden, why aren't 14 you guys taking advantage of this.
( 15 The reason is there is still a tremendous amount 16 of uncertainty in the industry with regard to is this really 17 going to happen, are we really going to see real changes 18 made to the way the plants are operated based on risk 19 insights.
20 Whether 1174 -- 1174 could get issued tomorrow and 21 it may be one plant picks it up and uses it. There may be 22 100 plants that pick it up and use it. I think a big factor 23 in that is going to be -- a potential factor in that would 24 be the idea that, well, a safety goal is now in a state of 25 flux. These things require big up front investments.
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E 118 1 If you are going to go in with an application,
() 2 ISI, for instance, you have to spend substantial resources )
3 up front to move that forward.
4 There are enough elements of uncertainty hanging l
l 5 over whether that result is going to come to pass now or 6 not. When we broached these issues at the executive levels 7 with NEI, we get a lot of feedback of show me a result, then l 8 we will show you the money. In that regard, 1174, whether
! 9 it's used in a widespread fashion or just picked up by a j 10 handful of plants, that's the kind of thing I'm talking 11 about.
12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: What you are saying then is !
l 13 that by opening up the issue of the policy statement again, 14 we are contributing to the uncertainty in some way. l l l l (,T/ 15 MR. BRADLEY: Yes. I 16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: By the way, do we have any 1
17 indication as to whether the Commission plans to act on 1174 I l
18 soon?
l 19 MR. BRADLEY: I can only tell you what I know, '
20 which is two Commissioners have voted in favor of 1174 and 21 the standard review plan. There may be some editorial l
l 22 changes, but no major issues. We are waiting for the other l
l 23 two Commissioners to vote, have not heard of any difficult 24 technical issues that have been raised.
l 25 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: On there any deadlines on l
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119 l
1 these things?
r 2 MR. BRADLEY: I don't believe the staff puts any 3 deadlines on them.
4 (Laughter . ]
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I did not say that the 6 staff does it, but maybe the Commission internally has some l
l 7 sort of deadline or a Commissioner can take as much time as 8 --
l 9 MR. BRADLEY: They occasionally establish some 10 goals, but they never have requirements, l
11 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: They are operating on a l 12 three region plan. The recent decisions they issued on some 13 key policy issues I think really -- if there were to be i 14 objections, it would be in those.
l (%
y) 15 MR. BRADLEY: Yes, I think if you ask what has
\
16 the Commission been doing for the last three months, I think 17 there are two substantive things that have gone on, that j l '
18 play into the approval of the reg guide. One is the 19 Commission basically approved all the staff recommendations 20 on the policy issues in SECY 97-287, and also the Commission 21 decision on the treatment of allowing changes under 5059, 22 which I think reflected an endorsement of the general 23 approach in the reg guides.
24 There's a reference to using that same sort of 25 thinking. I think the Commission desired to deal with those l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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120 1 two issues before the reg guides. I suspect them soon.
2 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, David.
3 MR. OKRENT: I guess if I were in charge of 4 nuclear operations at any utility, I'd want to have a
! 5 state-of-the-art PSA independent of whether the Nuclear 1
6 Regulatory Commission required it. Why should that not be l 7 the case with various utilities?
8 MR. BRADLEY: I'm not sure I can answer that.
9 That's a good question. I can only tell you that right now, l 10 a large number of utilities do have what I would consider to 11 be close to a state-of-the-art PSA. That's certainly not 12 all. There's a wide spectrum of variability between plants 13 that have basically shelved their IPE to plants that have 14 full blown -- are out there trying to quantify shutdown risk
'( ) 15 and address level three issues.
16 There is a spectrum and I think in a perfect 17 world, you should have those insights. On the other hand, I ;
18 think these are issues, as we have talked today, adequate 19 protection, meeting the regulations. The feeling is if you 20 comply with the regulations, that provides the adequate l
21 assurance of safety.
! 22 There is a spectrum out there in the industry now, 23 and again, I guess to come back to the point I made earlier, I 24 I think the best way to close that gap and to get everybody 25 up to a higher level of knowledge isn't necessarily to try O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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121 1 to adjust the safety goal, but it's to get 1174 issued and (f 2 it will give us a stable period to get some risk informed 3 regulatory improvements and show that incentive is out l 4 there, and I think a lot of plants will move forward. ,
5 That's certainly a reasonable question to ask.
6 MR. OKRENT: You didn't hear me propose let's rush 7 out and change the safety goal. I think it needs a lot of 8 thought.
9 MR. BRADLEY: Right.
10 MR. OKRENT: But it should encompass more than one l
I 11 topic. Nevertheless, it seems to me operators of the plant 12 both because it's their duty to try to protect the public 13 health and safety and a good PSA helps that, and 14 furthermore, it' helps educate, if they disseminate it, the I 15 people who work there, so they are better informed, again 16 helping the public health and safety, as well as making 17 everything more efficient.
18 I guess I would say I think it would be a false 19 economy not to have something, but when I say state-of-20 the-art, I don't mean last dot and so forth. I've never l
21 been a big enthusiastic about spending too much on the level 22 three, because I think you learn the most from the level one 23 and two, and then you want an idea on level three. I'll i
24 leave it at that.
25 MR. BRADLEY: I think that's a good comment.
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122 1 Personally, as the PSA guy at NEI, I would love to see the
() 2 whole industry move in that direction. That's what I am 3 trying to do. It's just a matter of trying to effect that 4 in the best way possible.
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I'd like to ask a question 6 that's a little bit off the subject here, but I keep hearing 7 it a lot and you also mentioned it. We had a meeting 2
8 earlier this week and again, this came up.
9 The industry complains a lot about regulatory 10 uncertainty. What can the NRC do to remove some of that 11 uncertainty? Where does the uncertainty come from?
12 MR. BRADLEY: Evolution of interpretations. I can 13 give you two excellent examples, Appendix R and 5059 are two 14 examples of regulations. Appendix R has been on the books
(~
( 15 for 17 years, 5059 for over 30 years. Appendix R has been 16 in a continuous state of evolution in terms of what do you 17 have to do to comply with it. That continues today. You 18 guys have probably had discussions on multiple hot shorts 19 and some of those issues.
20 5059 I think is another good example. What we 21 need is long term stability, and I know there are issues 22 that drive the staff to have to reconsider some of these 23 things and it's not as simple as just saying let's put it in
! 24 place and leave it for 30 years, but there is certainly an i
25 impression in the industry that regulations and how they are
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123 1 interpreted aren't that stable in some cases.
2 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But this instability 3 appears to have objective causes.
4 MR. BRADLEY: -In some cases, yes.
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Maybe the state of 6 knowledge has evolved and maybe other things happened. Any 7- questions?
l 8 MR. BRADLEY: I guess the last thing I'd like t f
9 say, I didn't really hit at the points we made in our i l
10' letter, and the points I mentioned today I think are sort of 11 beyond what we said in the letter, but we certainly still 12 stand by the concerns we had originally articulated with 13 regard to going from a QHO, which is consistent with NRC's
-14 mandate to a CDF based safety goal and also going to a plant l
Q} 15 specific safety goal. We think those are potentially 16 fraught with problems in terms of public relations or other l
17 aspects.
18 It does really reflect a different goal because i 19 while not everyone has performed a level three, I think 20 generally there's consensus that there is quite a bit of 21 margin as we have talked between the CDF, 10 to the minus 4, 22 and meeting the QHO's.
23 One way to interpret this is you are going to 24 remove that margin and that's a different goal. We are 25 fundamentally changing what the goal is. Given that we may I
O U
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124 1 have internal events fairly well understood, although you
() 2 could argue even that, you know, some of the modeling 3 uncertainties, but we still don't really have a handle on 4 shutdown risk and even external events aren't as well 5 quantified.
6 If we at this point articulate 10 to the minus 4 7 as the goal, it is conceivable that numbers of plants won't 8 meet that. What does that mean, given that we are meeting 9 the regulations and we do have adequate protection. I think 10 that's a dilemma and a potential concern.
11 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Let me ask you this. First 12 of all, it seems that you don't object to having LERF and ;
J 13 CDF in the regulatory guides.
14 MR. BRADLEY: No.
(' ,/ 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: To help you make decisions. )
16 You just don't want to see them up in the QHO statement or 17 at the same level. Wouldn't it bother you though if in the 18 regulatory guides, the numbers that are used for LERF and 19 CDF are more stringent than what one would derive by working 20 backwards from the QHO's and the debate and public scrutiny 21 of these more stringent numbers is simply not there. I 22 don't know. For regulatory guides, you still have the same 23 public scrutiny.
24 Shouldn't that be discussed somewhere in that 25 context?
l l
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125 1 MR. BRADLEY: Personally, I'm just looking at this f
() 2 pragmatically, given that 1174 is for voluntary regulatory
, 3 improvements and CDF and LERF tend to be what we have 4 quantified today and what we know better from a pragmatic 5 sense, I think that's what you need to use.
6 If we wrote the reg guides basing it on QHO's and 7 then we get into level three space, we are not going to have 8 something we can use today. It becomes another thing five 9 years from now we may be able to use.
10 Given that it is again, for voluntary application.
11 I think if this was a case where there was a mandate, if 12 there was a new regulation that said everyone will go to 10 13 to the minus 4, that would be a different issue.
14 We recognize I think in regulatory improvement O
(_f 15 space, and I don't get a lot of -- the industry is not 16 telling me there is a concern with that. I think there's a 17 recognition that's the right metric to be using in that 18 context.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Even though the numbers we 20 are using in the guides are stringent, the industry doesn't 21 have a problem?
22 MR. BRADLEY: No, because I think we recognize 23 those are the numbers we know better and have a better 24 understanding of. The other project we have at NEI on the i 25 pilots with the three plants and the Bob Kristy thing is ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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126 l d
1 looking maybe more at that longer effort of going out and '
() 2 really going all the way to level three and seeing how you 3 meet the QHO's and how your resources are allocated 4 according to your risks.
5 We recognize that as more of a longer term. All I 6 can tell you is there is a tremendous interest in the 7 industry in being able to use -- clearly we have to make l 8 some improvements, address quality, try to close that 9 spectrum of variability to some degree, but there is a l 10 tremendous interest in being able to use those insights, use 11- what we have now, which primarily are level one and level 12 two insights, internal events, and to a smaller degree, i 13 external events.
14 We believe there's regulatory improvements that 15 can be made, and obviously the staff does, too, in having 16 written the reg guides on the topical applications. We are 17 trying to make some near term -- the whole business focus of 18 the industry is changing. We are getting de-regulated and 19 there's more of a bottom line kind of focus, so it's easier 20 for us to move forward with some shorter term kind of 21 objective.
l 22 MR. OKRENT: Could I understand something, if l
23 using level one, which I can understand, you are not really l l
24 then using the QHO's in your judgment, unless you have some I l
25 reasonable basis for confidence in your level one analysis, f i
i
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i 127 )
i 1 and I don't just mean in the end number, but in the j
() 2 individual scenarios where it's quite possible__that there's 3 a significant oversight or error or something, how do you q l
l 4 gain confidence that whatever you would decide using level 5 one is an acceptable change or so forth is an okay thing to .
l 6 do?
7 MR. BRADLEY: I think that's really the issue of 8 PSA quality, which the staff has addressed in 1174 and which 9 the industry is also addressing. There are a number of ways 10 to do that. Absolutely, that has to be done. There are 11 ways to do that now. We have peer review processes. We i
12 have developed an industry where you have a certification !
13 process and we had an industry- wide workshop on that a 14 couple of weeks ago, in which Gary and Tom participated.
15 There is an effort underway to actually develop 16 standards under ASME. That's a longer term effort.
17 For the industry, I think we believe we have 18 developed some processes, such as PSA certification, which 19 was developed by the BWR Owners Group and it's basically 20 looking at 209 technical subelements of the PSA through a 21 peer review team approach. There are a number of ways, 22 there are cost comparisons that have been used by the some
, 23 of the owners groups. I can't say everyone is doing it 24 exactly the same way, although one of the things NEI is 25 trying to do is to drive the industry in the direction of O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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128 1 proactively addressing PSA quality up front, and that's why 2 we had the certification workshop.
3 MR. OKRENT: Two questions. First, the peer 4 reviewers, do a significant fraction of them come from 5 outside the industry, people who have no ties directly to 6 the industry or is it done really based on --
7 MR. BRADLEY: No. The peer reviewers are within 8 the industry.
9 MR. OKRENT: That affords a small kind of problem, 10 you know what I mean.
11 MR. BRADLEY: This process, and it's hard to just 12 sit here and talk about it, it's quite a rigorous process 13 and despite the fact that these may be industry people, 14 there are no holes barred in this process.
(O,j 15 MR. OKRENT: I know a lot of very good people in 16 the industry who I absolute respect and so forth, but I'm 4 l
17 just saying nevertheless, the absence of this --
18 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: When you say outside the 19 industry, David, what do you mean?
20 MR. OKRENT: You can find people in universities 21 or consulting companies or in other countries or whatever.
22 They don't do it all but who are active participants and 23 have freedom to ask questions and to insist they get an l 24 answer. ;
i l 25 The other question, which is a harder one, and to i l
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129 1 which I don't have an answer, although level one may be less uncertain than level two, it's not free of uncertainties.
( 2 3 These could affect the absolute value of what you call your j 4 CDF. I don't know how you would deal with that.
5 MR. BRADLEY: If you had the opportunity, I think j 6 that issue has received a tremendous amount of discussion l
l 7 within this group over the last year. Again, I think the l
8 reg guide reflects ways that you can address uncertainty.
- 9 One of the things the reg guide does is within a certain i
i 10 band of delta CDF, you are allowed to make the changes l
11 without regard to the baseline CDF and trying to at least 12 minimize the treatment of uncertainties by looking at delta 13 --
l 14 MR OKRENT: Small enough, you say don't worry l
() 15 about the uncertainties.
l 16 MR .. BRADLEY: Right, but clearly, it's an issue 1
17 specific item and if there's an application where certain 18 types of uncertainties, you know, such as modeling 19 uncertainties have to be addressed, then that has to be done 20 more rigorously. It's all application dependent. The way 21 1174 is laid out and also within the certification process 22 to some degree, we address how are uncertainties handled.
23 A lot of the modeling uncertainties or maybe l 24 uncertainties are one thing, variabilities is another. At 25 least trying to model things the same way from plant to ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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i 130
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1 plant, you know, that's something that the certification i j
[\_ 2 process can get at.
l 3 There are some areas of controversy, you know, J l
4 where you have different expert opinions in areas such as I l
5 HRA or common cause, where it is difficult, and there l
6 probably always will be some spectrum of judgment as to how 7 the right way to do that is, but it's pretty much I 8 application drive.
9 How you are applying the PSA determines to what
)
10 degree and how you are going to have to address uncertainty, !
11 but that's certainly an element of what we do when we apply 12 --
l 13 MR. OKRENT: I still remember this letter that Tom 14 Murley wrote to some utility in New York State, wondering
()
'(m 15 how it was their IPE came in with 10 to the minus 6, but 16 they were really going to be shut down for all the problems 17 they were having in operations. He never got an answer that 18 was satisfactory. I've never seen one.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: There isn't an answer to 20 this day. That's true. We are getting now off the main 21 subject. We are running out of time. Any other questions 22 for Biff?
23 (No response.]
24 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Thank yoa very much for 25 coming here and giving us your views.
/)
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l 131 1 We will meet again at 1:30 and we will hear from
() 2 Dr. Remick at that time.
3 [Whereupon, at 12:38 p.m., the meeting recessed, 4 to reconvene at 1:30 p.m., this same day.]
5 6
! 7 I
8 9
10 l 11 l 12 13 14 15 ,
? l I 16 17 l
l 18 19 l
20 1 l 21 1
22 23 l 24 25
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132 1 AFTERNOON SESS ION
[)l 2 (1:30 p.m.]
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: On the record. We are 4 going to have Dr. Remick make his presentation and then we 5 will go around the table to see what kind of advice you 6 gentlemen can give me in putting together the letter.
l l
7 Forest?
l 8 MR. REMICK: I'd like to have maybe ten minutes or 9 so to kind of try to put the safety goal and its development l i 10 in perspective. It might be helpful.
11 First, I'd say I think the NRC's regulationu which 12 really started with the AEC in general have served the U.S.
l 13 public generally well from the standpoint of producing l 14 nuclear power plants and other nuclear related activities
(
l f%
( 15 that protect the public in general to a very good extent, l
l 16 but I'm sure you are also aware that those regulations, the 17 various standards, rad protection and dose standards, things 18 like that, are really a hodge- podge of things that were l 19 developed on a case by case basis as the need arose, using 20 best engineering and scientific judgment. j 21 There are a lot of inconsistencies that exist, by i
22 that, they were developed at different times by different j 23 people for different purposes. ;
i 24 As I indicated, I thought in recent years if I l l
25 were emperor or from an ideal situation standpoint, the way I l
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i 1 133 1- you would start out is hopefully have, as I say, an
() 2 international public risk goal established or at least a 3 national one, and from that you would derive these various 4 things in a consistent manner.
4 5 Of course, we haven't done that in the United- j 6 States, so we are looking back on things that have been done 7 in the past. l 8 After the accident at TMI in 1979, the public 9 became very, very concerned about these plants which 10 previous to that, there was not a lot of concern, certainly 11 some concern, but in asking the question, how safe are these 12 plants. .
I l
13 , The agency then reacted, over reacted in my view, I l I 14 with an orgy of new requirements. This committee 15 contributed its own to them and so forth. Many of those 16 things were not well thought out. Some improved safety.
17 Some didn't and many complicated the operation of-the l 18 existing plants.
l 19 This led at the time to the Commission, in an i
20 effort to get a hold of the process again, because they 21 deemed it was out of control, led to the Regulatory Reform 22 Taskforce being established. I served in kind of a senior i
23 oversight effort on that activity. The idea was to try to 1
-24 put some teeth and some meat into a backfit rule in CFR 25 -50.109, which had been in existence for many years, but I O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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134 1 know in conversations, some staff didn't know it existed and
() 2 many people overlooked it.
3 After this tremendous number of new requirements i 4 and so forth, industry was coming to ask how safe is safe i
enough from the standpoint of the regulatory perspective.
5 6 How far are we going to go in regulating these plants.
7 In 1980, some of those things plus some of the ;
8 comments that were made in some of the investigatory 9 committees after TMI and so forth, stressing that they 10 should pay more attention to risk insights, which are just i
11 beginning then to be realized and so forth, and also to put '
12 in perspective safety cost tradeoffs and this type of 13 things, so in 1980, the Commission decided they were going 14 to develop or attempt to develop a set of safety goals to
() 15 answer this question of how far do we go and how safe is
, 16 safe enough from that regulatory perspective.
l 17 Unfortunately, in hindsight, although I realize at 18 the time the pressure was for nuclear power plants, I always 19 felt it was unfortunate that it wacn't done for all NRC l
l 20 regulated activities. It's the same U.S. public we are 1
21 talking about, whether we are te.1 king about the use of 22 radioactive materials in industry or university research or 23 non-power reactors. We are talking about safety to the same 24 public. Sometimes it's the identical public.
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l 135 l )
1 power plants. That was the initial effort. It was only for l
7- 2 t nuclear power plants. The purpose was to answer the 3 question, how safe is safe enough, how far do we go in l 4 setting regulations.
5 The courts had decided absolute safety or zero l 6 risk is not required. That had been decided by the courts.
l 7 The Commission was faced with the fact that the law says 8 undue risk to the public or adequate protection of the 9 public.
10 The Commission at that time decided they would not 11 give the development to the regulatory staff. They gave the 12 responsibility for developing the safety goals to a small 13 office which reported to the five Commissioners at that 14 time. It was called the Office of Policy Evaluation. I had
, (D) t 15 been secundered from the university under the 16 Intergovernmental Personnel Mobility Act, that we still 17 employ at the university, to come and head up that office 18 during this time period.
19 There were two expressive charges, develop a set 20 of safety goals for the Commission's consideration. The 21 other was develop a draft of the waste confidence decision, 22 which had been mandated by the courts. That office also got 23 involved in many, many other things, the TMI re-start 24 effort, the Dieblo Canyon mirror image problem, some San 25 Onfre security issues and a number of things, things that l
l
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l
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136 1 were in litigation and because of separation of powers and
() 2 so forth, the Commission could not speak to its own staff, 3 regulatory staff involved, so they had this small office 4 which would handle those things for them.
l 5 As I indicated earlier, the way that was started I
6 out was to hold some workshops and try to get a feeling.
l l 7 It's what I later proposed is called enhanced participatory 8 rule making, which was for the de- commissioning of plants.
l 9 It started out having workshops, getting ideas of l
10 people. If we talk about safety goals, what do we mean.
l 11 Several of those were held.
12 In February 1982, NUREG 0880 was published, which 13 was entitled safety goals for nuclear power plants, a {
14 discussion paper. It contained two qualitative safety goals 15 and two what we called quantitative design objectives 16 initially and became quantitative health objectives later l 17 on.
18 There was a lot of opposition. There was 19 certainly some concurrence, but there was a lot of l 20 opposition. I mentioned among senior staff saying, gosh, if 21 we had published something like this, there would be 22 litigation to shut down all the plants because they won't 23 meet the safety goals.
24 The AIF, which was the predecessor of what's the l 25 Nuclear Energy Institute at the time felt the proposed
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1 137 1 quantitative health objectives were a factor of ten too
() 2 stringent. The Director of the Office of Research at that 3 time came to me a number of times saying those are too 4 restrictive, plants won't meet it and so forth, but the two .
5 quantitative health objectives which became known later as 6 quantitative health objectives were in there, and by the
! 7 way, the one on societal risks at that time was proposed as i 8 50 miles, initially proposed.
I 9 Also in there was a core damage frequency. At l
10 that time, I think initially we called it core melt i 11 i frequency. We hadn't refined our language and so forth. '
)
12 I must admit that I raised several questions and I i
13 we met with the. regulatory staff on do we really need a core 14 damage frequency in here. We have the quantitative health
() 15 objectives. This would be kind of a high level type of 16 thing, philosophical type of approach, and we really don't ]
17 need it.
]
18 We are talking about risk to the public health and 19 safety. We really don't need a core damage frequency. The 20 staff was very pointed in their arguments. They felt if we 21 didn't have something like that, if you just took the 22 quantitative health objectives, somebody could say we have 1
23 the perfect containment and we don't need anything on 1
24 prevention. l l 25 It came through to me so we said, well, we will i
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138 1 put in this 10 to the minus 4 to anchor prevention, to 2 require something in the prevention area.
( That was in the 3 early draft.
4 ACRS argued very, very strongly that was not 5 enough, that there should be a conditional containment 6 failure probability also. The regulatory staff argued that 7 we had no way of defining that at this time. ACRS was not 8 able to convincingly show them a way of doing that.
9 I also felt that once again, the quantitative 10 health objectives, you are starting to over restrict the 1 11 problem. You are constraining it too much. We did not 12 propose conditional containment failure probability. We did 13 have in there a cost benefit guideline algorithm of $1,000 l
14 per man rem, like was in Appendix I, and we debated what the
) 15 value should.be, but stuck with the $1,000 per person rem.
16 As I said earlier, if you take that with the 17 second quantitative health objectives for the cancer I l
18 fatalities and so forth, it was a way of limiting risk. It 19 wasn't a number on societal risk, but it was a mechanism for 20 limiting that risk. l 21 Of course, once you have an individual risk of 22 cancer fatalities and so forth, you have also placed a limit 23 on what could be within the area near a nuclear power plant, 24 which at that time was proposed at 50 miles.
25 That was published for comment. By the way, one
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I i 139 1 of the Commissioners, who was very much opposed to the 2
([ concept of safety goals, put out a press release at that 3 time indicating that if that was put into effect, as many as l l
4 40,000 people would die in the United States. l l
5 It was a hotly debated and contested type of l 6 thing. We held, as I mentioned, four public meetings around 7 the country with very good attendance, and we were accused l
8 of killing babies and all kinds of things by proposing l 9 anything like that, and received about 300 written comments, 10 as I recall, from the notice that was in the Federal i 11 Register.
12 Then as a result, in May 1983, NUREG 0880 Rev. 1 13 called safety goals for nuclear power plant operation was 14 published, in which there was the proposed policy statement
'() 15 which was put out by the Commission because of the 16 uncertainty and so forth on a two year trial basis.
17 The regulatory staff had been tasked with coming 18 up with an implementation plan. I can tell you, ACRS spent 19 many, many hours in meetings reviewing whr.t the staff was 20 proposing and criticizing and so forth on a proposed 21 implementation plan.
22 Well, after that went out, the controversy over 23 core damage frequency and whether it should be a conditional l 24 containment failure probability continued. Also, about that 25 time, regulatory staff began to propose, well, 10 to the i
t
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140 1 1 minus 4, if it is not sufficient, it should be 10 to the
()
l 2 minus 5 because at that time the utility requirements 3 document was in there in which utilities were telling the 4 vendors, we want' plants in which a core damage frequency of 5 10 to the minus 5 or lower, meeting what the Commission was 6 saying our expectation is you will do better than this, but 7 from a regulatory standpoint, this is what we consider safe 8 enough. l l
9 In the interim, I had returned to the university.
10 I remember very well getting a call one day from the l
l 11 executive assistant of the Chairman's Office at that time, l 12 saying this controversy between core damage frequency and l 13 conditional containment failure probability was still l
l 14 ongoing and they were thinking about this general
() 15 performance guideline of 10 to the minus 6 for a large 16 release, and what did I think about it.
17 I remember very well, just off the top of my head i 18 thinking, well, we were talking about a core damage 19 frequency of 10 to the minus 4. Core damage does not mean i 20 core in the floor necessarily. We had batted around the 21 thought of maybe a conditional probability of core in the 22 floor once you had damage maybe of 10 to the minus 1.
l 23 It had been batted around by some that a ,
(
24 conditional containment failure probability of 10 to the 25 minus 1 was a number that might be possible. I said, well, O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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141 1 that's consistent, 10 to the minus 4 and 10 to the minus 1
() 2 times 10 to the minus 1 is 10 to the minus 6, that's 3 consistent, and perhaps that's a way to get out of this 4 controversy where ACRS was insisting you have a conditional l
5 containment failure probability and the staff saying we 6 don't know how to do it.
7 Then the Commission in 1986 issued a policy
! 8 statement on safety goals for the operation of nuclear power 9 plants,.and it was then re-published in November to correct 10 a couple of errors if I recall were in it.
11 It contained the two qualitative goals, the two l
l 12 quantitative health objectives, except the distance for the 13 second one had been changed from 50 down to 10. I believe 14 there were arguments, and I did not enter into those 15 arguments, but from what I've heard, the thought of going i
i 16 out to 50 miles, people close to the plant could have a much 17 larger dose, so we'd bring it in and we could better contain 18 the extremes. l l
19 There was no core damage frequency any longer in l
! 20 it. There was no additional containment failure l
- 21 probability. The Commission had taken out the no cost l
22 benefit guideline.
23 The idea of that was also that if you did not meet 24 one of the quantitative health objectives, this would come l 25 into play then, but the Commission took that out and I must O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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142 1 admit, I'm not exactly sure because I never had a discussion
() 2 with them on just why that was, but they did propose this 3 general performance guideline of 10 to the minus 6 for a 4 large release.
5 You must remember, it was put in there for the 6 staff to consider. That's all it was, to consider it for 7 inclusion.
8 This committee and the staff spent a lot of time 9 trying to come up with some kind of a definition of large 10 release, because the directions were you should not develop 11 de novo new safety goals based on this 10 to the minus 6.
12 Everything they could do, it ended up being about a factor 13 more restrictive than the quantitative health objectives.
14 In the meantime, I had become a Commissioner.
15 Shortly after becoming a Commissioner, there was -- I forget 16 exactly what paper, but we were gearing up for the review of !
17 the evolutionary plants.
18 I wrote a vote sheet on that particular SECY in l 19 which I reminded the Commission of the origin of the safety 20 goals, and it was the answer to the question how safe is 21 safe enough from the standpoint of how far do we go on the 22 regulations that was for existing and for new plants, and 23 suggested that for the review of the evolutionary plants, 24 perhaps the Commission should give the staff permission to 25 use two subsidiary goals, core damage frequency of 10 to the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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L
143 1 minus 4 and a conditional containment failure probability of
() 2 10 to the minus 1 or its deterministic equivalent. The 3 suggestion of deterministic equivalent came basically from l
l 4 the staff. They didn't want to be tied just to a '
5 probabilistic number.
l 6 The Commission agreed with my vote sheet and that i 7 SRN that you have referred to is very, very close as I i
8 recall to the vote sheet I wrote at that particular time.
9 The staff and the ACRS, however, continued to try 10 to work on that general performance guideline of 10 to the 11 minus 6, and at some time when I was a Commissioner, finally 12 in somewhat a frustration, I wrote a letter to the EDO with 13 copies to the other Commissioners, once again reminding them 14 that you were given this task for consideration. You spent i k 15 a lot of time. ACRS has spent a lot of time. You haven't 16 been successful. Perhaps it's time to declare a victory and 17 ask the Commission to relieve you of that responsibility.
18 The staff jumped on it. Very shortly thereafter, 19 they sent up a SECY, suggesting they no longer have to work 20 on that and the Commission approved that they no longer 21 should work on that objective.
22 It's no longer really in effect. It never was in 23 effect. It was in there for consideration. Although the 24 words are still there, it's no longer being considered, to 25 the best of my knowledge.
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l 144 1 Now, that's kind of the background. I mention i
2 them for a couple of reasons, because it's surprising, and 3 somehow over the years, I've been continuously involved in !
l 4 this in one way or another, either through IAEA or others, l
5 but many people think the core damage frequency is in the 6 safety goal, and it's not.
7 Many people think the general performance l
8 guideline is in the safety goals, and it's not. Never was, 9 was there for consideration.
10 Many think the cost benefit guideline, the $1,000
]
11 per person rem is in there. It's not. Many people, and I l 12 can see it this morning, forget this is a policy statement.
13 It's not a regulation. It's a policy statement.
14 When I saw some of the things you were
) 15 considering, in fact, from time to time, I do get on the Web 16 and see what you guys are up to and read some of your l 17 letters. When I saw about a year or so ago that you were 18 suggesting that maybe the core damage frequency should be 19 elevated in the safety goals, my initial reaction was yes, 20 that's a good idea, and maybe it was partially because we 21 originally proposed it in there, although I had raised 22 questions about whether it was needed.
23 The more I think about it now and I guess I've 24 kind of congealed my opinion on this in the last couple of 25 says, what I might say to you, I agree with what the staff
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l' 145 1 is saying.
() 2 It's really not needed. The staff has utilized it 3 in a number of areas, regulatory analysis guidelines. In a l 4 number of areas, they are using it. Remember, the l '
5 Commission, as I remember the words, were use it for the 6 review of the evolutionary plants. The staff is using it l
l 7 for other things, with Commission concurrence.
)
8 Also, when I saw the letter of yours a year or so I 9 ago, I believe you were saying that perhaps the safety goals )
10 should be used to define what we mean by adequate l 11 protection. My initial reaction was that's a good idea, and l l 12 I guess once again, that's probably because I'd like to see
( 13 the safety goals used frequently.
l 14 I must admit it, further thought on that, I don't
( 15 agree with that at all. The Commission has this i
16 responsibility, statutory responsibility, that we say l 17 adequate protection of public health and safety. The 18 Commission has to be able to defend that they were 19 adequately protecting the public health and safety.
20 The only thing they have and that they can hang 21 their hat on and justify is saying if you meet our 22 regulations, there's a presumption that you are meeting l
l 23 adequate protection. When I say regulations, and it came 24 out earlier I think from Gary, you must remember, it's more 25 than just the design parts of the regulations. There is the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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146 1 inspection activities and so forth, carrying out those
(( ) 2 regulations that are intended by that.
l 3 If you meet the regulations, there's a presumption 4 of adequate protection. That doesn't mean -- I know it's l
5 possible to meet the regulations and perhaps not really be 6 safely protecting the public, and the other way around.
7 Also, not maybe meeting the regulations in all 8 aspects because the regulations are varied, and still be 9 providing adequate protection, but I really think and I 10 guess at one time perhaps I questioned the legal approach to i 11 this, but I do feel now that the agency has to have 12 something like that to say this is what we mean by adequate l 13 protection, these are the regulations we have imposed.
14 We still have that question of regulations keep 15 getting added upon. Very few taken away, added on. There 16 is this legitimate question of how far do we go. You don't 17 like the words how safe is safe enough. That's okay, come 18 up with some other words. That was the intent, how safe is 19 safe enough from the standpoint of how far do we go in the 20 regulations of protecting the public.
21 You have talked about such things including 22 shutdown, core damage frequencies, a number of things that 23 you talked about. From my perspective, I say no. Once 24 again, I see this as a philosophical umbrella, the 25 constitution, George, I thought was a very good analogy.
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147 1 I don't think you should clutter it up with what
()
(
2 regulatory -- what I call clap trap. There is another place 3 for those things. You have mentioned regulatory guides and 4 so forth that's more appropriate.
5 I chaired four international meetings for IAEA a l
6 couple of years ago in which regulators from other 7 countries, 22 other countries, volunteered to come in and 8 compare notes and talk about regulatory safety goals. I l 9 chaired all those.
i I
10 It was a very interesting process. In those four 11 separate meetings, by the way, IAEA then published a 12 document called Tec Doc 831, policy for setting and 13 assessing regulatory safety goals, and we found that at that
! 14 time there's no current generally accepted definition of j
' (T I
! (_) 15 what we even mean by safety goals. We found that some of 1 16 the member states of IAEA used such terms as goals, l 17 objectives, requirements, targets or aims to be synonymous. l 18 Some people said we have safety goals, and they 19 are talking about their equivalent of Part 50, requirements, 20 they say those are safety goals.
! 21 That's not what we were talking about. We 22 hammered out a definition of what we thought was a 23 reasonable definition of safety goals that might be helpful 24 to you, and that was that safety goals expressed the desired
- 25 levels of safety being aimed for. They are the high level
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1 148 1 expressions in philosophical and practical terms of the 2 aspirational level of safety being striven for, although
[V) 3 ultimately achievable in the design, construction, 4 commissioning, operation and regulation of nuclear 5 facilities.
6 We also had in that document a number of what we i l 7 called lessons learned from those discussions, and those I i
l 8 think are worthy of looking at also. It also pointed out i
! I 9 that these type of aspirational type of goals are easier to l 10 develop, and believe me, they are not easy, but they are l
11 easier to develop than implementing them.
l 12 What you need is to use these aspirational or 1 -
l 13 philosophical goals to establish the various objectives and 14 standards and so forth that you then implement and hopefully
() 15 you can better measure and so forth, but hopefully 16 consistent with this overall aspiration. l 17 I share those background thoughts with you and a 18 couple of my views on some of the questions that are before l
19 you.
20 I see these as what George calls the constitution.
21 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Regarding CDF, you don't
! 22 -see any problem in having a set of QHO's in the 23 constitution, but the particular law uses a CDF that's more 24 stringent, l
25 MR. REMICK: More stringent. No, I would hope 4
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149 1 they'd be consistent.
() 2 3
CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It is more stringent based on the current state-of-the-art, if we tolerate a higher 4 level than 10 to the minus 4.
5 MR. REMICK: There's no question about it. We 6 debated this, best available technology type of thing. The 7 Commission is to provide adequate protection and they define 8 what adequate protection is and how far they should go. I 9 really think there's a need for consistency and this 10 committee in years past has stressed the need for coherence 11 and consistency and has tried very hard to arrive at that.
12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: If then we can convince i l
13 ourselves that the 10 to the minus 4 level for core damage l I
14 frequency is inconsistent with the QHO's, based on what we l
() 15 know now, that would not be a problem?
16 MR. REMICK: Not if it's consistent, in my mind.
17 How far would you relax that from 10 to the minus 4, I'd ,
l 18 have a problem, I guess.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Does the argument -- one of 20 the arguments for the elevation is that it is more l
21 stringent, the CDF code is more stringent, therefore, it 22 creates new policy, so why don't we put it in the policy l
23 statement. That's the argument. If it were consistent, I l
24 don't think people would have a problem.
25 MR. REMICK: I don't think there's a need for
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150 1
1 doing it. I agree with the staff that they don't see a need j
() 2 for it, it wouldn't change what they are doing. They are 3 already using the 10 to the minus 4 as kind of a guideline
)
4 on how they evaluate things. It's not a requirement, j l
5 I honestly don't think there is a need for having l 6 it in there. I do believe in defense in depth, that there 7 has to be defense in depth, and there will be defense in 8 depth, as pointed out by the staff. The evolutionary 4
9 designs, and I think the advanced AP-600, are accomplishing 10 what the Commission ultimately had in mind, and that is we 11 will say from the standpoint of protecting the public, this 12 is it, but we expect you are going to go beyond that, and 13 you are going to go beyond it to protect your own economic l 14 interests and so forth. That certainly has been done. I i
f~)/
(_, 15 can't imagine it would ever be turned around.
16 In fact, when I served on this committee and we l
17 had the HTGR, no matter how low those numbers were, I could l 18 not imagine an HTGR, a modular HTGR, being built in this 19 country without a containment vessel, although you could 20 justify it perhaps, but I just don't see this agency ever 11 agreeing to anything other than defense in depth.
22 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Rick, did you want to say 23 something?
j 24 MR. SHERRY: Yes. I guess I had two questions for 25 Dr. Remick. One is his thoughts on the application of the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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151 l
1 safety goal or subsidiary objectives on a plant specific t
[%./ ) 2 basis versus to a group of plants, and the second item was 3 with regard to if you are considering application of the 4 safety goals on a plant specific basis, should we take into l 5 consideration differences in the sites in terms of 6 population density, i.e., the societal risk question.
! 7 MR. REMICK: A plant specific, I have no 1
8 objection. In fact, I've gone on record saying that if I l 9 was responsible for a nuclear power plant in this country, I 10 would want a good level three PSA, and I'd like to know how 11 my plant stacked up with these quantitative health 1
12 objectives. I'd just want to know, just like I'd like to 13 know what is the real reliability of my safety equipment and l l
14 so forth.
) 15 Remember, it's not a requirement, but that's 16 something I would want. If you are going to use it on an 17 individual plant basis, not as a requirement, but as seeing 18 how a particular plant does or does not meet the safety 19 goal, yes, I'm in favor of that, so we know. If it doesn't, 20 I would hope the industry would make modifications. I think 21 they would do it just like following the IPE's and so forth, 22 they did a lot of things. They did the IPE's and so forth 23 to correct where they found things that were troubling.
24 Use in that sense, I don't see anything wrong with j 25 it, unless you do it in a regulatory sense of a requirement
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152 i 1 and so forth. Just knowing where we stand and so forth, the
() 2 only requirement we have for PRA is for the new designs.
3 I'm not saying we necessarily should have the requirements,
! )
l 4 but I keep saying if I was in charge of a nuclear power j I
5 plant and had responsibility in this country, I would want i 1
6 to know how my plant stacks up. No question about it.
7 The other part of your question was?
l i
8 MR. SHERRY: In application on a plant specific l l
9 basis, should differences in site characteristics, 10 specifically population density, be considered in some form 11 or other?
12 MR. REMICK: I can't imagine that whether it's in 13 our regulations, in a policy statement or not, that there I 14 would ever be a nuclear power plant in the United States in
' ("N
( ,) 15 the foreseeable future put in a high population area like 16 Zion and so forth, so I don't see the need. As I said, I 17 have to agree with you somewhat, and by the way, we tried to 18 find some realistic, what you might call societal goal, and 19 the best we could come up with was the one we had, but with 20 the realization that you have a limit on the individual, you 21 basically limit the dose to the people near the reactor and 22 if you put in the cost benefit algorithm, you even have a l l
23 way or a mechanism for bringing it down.
24 You could accumulate a lot of millions of dollars l
25 if you get into hundreds of thousands of people within that
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153 1 ten mile radius.
() 2 3
Other than that, of course, these things have been debated in the past, this question of putting a restriction l 4 on large populations. I just can't imagine in the United i
i 5 States that this committee or the Commission would ever 6 approve or anybody would propose a location in a truly high 7 population area like several of the plants, perhaps Indian 8 Point and Zion and so forth.
l 9 Of course, you know a number that were proposed 10 never got built for various reasons.
11 MR. OKRENT: What was the number of the IAEA
! 12 document you mentioned?
l 13 MR. REMICK: It's IAEA Tec Doc 831.
l 14 MR. OKRENT: Thank you. I have a few points.
() 15 First, if we are going to be historical, it may be worth
! 16 noting that it was the ACRS in 1979 that proposed to the 17 Commission that they needed safety goals and Ahern asked the 18 ACRS if they would take a shot at developing them, which 19 they came up with in 1980, and I think that was in a sense a 20 foundation for what you have developed as changes. I 21 I don't understand one thing with regard to the 22 existing safety goals. The one on cancer, it's my 23 understanding it's an individual risk, not a societal risk.
l 24 Am I wrong?
I 25 MR. REMICK: It is an individual risk. j O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l 154 i
1 MR. OKRENT: It's called a societal goal. I think
~)
(V I that's a misnomer, clearly a misnomer, because it's 3 individual risk. If you want a societal goal, you integrate 4 over some --
I l 5 MR. REMICK: Ten or 50 miles.
6 MR. OKRENT: Ten or 50 miles, but that's not what l 7 is in the safety policy and it should be either corrected or i
8 we should say that's what we are doing and we are not doing l 9 the other, in my opinion.
10 MR. REMICK: Well, wait, when you say it's not in l 11 the safety goal, then that quantitative htoich objective is 12 in there, and --
l 13 MR. OKRENT: But it's an individual risk and it's l l 14 not a societal risk. That's all I'm saying. l
(.
t
( 15 MR. REMICK: Some people's definition is it's not 16 a societal risk. Some people say it is a societal risk.
17 MR. OKRENT: -- the safety policy, and it should 18 be either corrected or we should say that's what we're doing 19 and we're not doing the other, in my opinion.
20 -MR. REMICK: Well, wait, when you say it's not in 21 the safety goal, that quantitative health objective is in 22 there and --
23 DR. OKEP/": But it's not a societal risk. That's 24 all I'm saying.
l 25 MR. REMICK: By some people's definition, it is l
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155 1 not a societal risk. Some people say it does have limited 2 societal risk.
3 DR. OKRENT: Well, I'll stand, but there can be 4 differing interpretations, but I think they're weak.
5 Let's see. I'll repeat some opinions that I gave l 6 this morning. In my opinion, there is a major anission in l
l 7 not having land contamination in a revision of the safety 8 policy statement which I think should be undertaken in a l
9 measured way, not to be done in a year, and there should be 10 the proper definition of a societal goal which is what, in i
11 fact, the staff is calculating..
12 I think it's a mistake -- it was a big mistake to 13 drop the LER -- the LERF. I don't think that the various 14 individual aspects of safety policy goals have to be 15 " consistent" because you could well have something on land 16 contamination which posed no acute risk, no risk of early 17 death, and yet have severe land contamination, and I think 18 that shouldn't occur except at a terribly low frequency, and 19 there are many countries in Europe who think that is the 20 most important part of a safety goal. So there's a 21 difference of an opinion.
22 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Can I ask, the question of l
l 23 consistency I think does not arise when you consider the 24 various dimensions of risk -- in other words, land i
j 25 contamination versus individual risk. The question of l
f)
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156 1
1 consistency arises when you have lower level goals, so the l
() 2 core damage frequency, for example, is a lower level thing 3 that leads to --
, 4 DR. OKRENT: But let me get back to this question l
5 of consistency. The LERF has been stated at some times to 6 be inconsistent with the health effects thing. CHAIRMAN 7 APOSTOLAKIS: Right.
8 DR. OKRENT: But, in my opinion, it is not 9 unrelated to this land contamination thing.
10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Oh , okay.
11 DR. OKRENT: You can't divorce it from the land 12 contamination thing. It was the way of getting at the land 1
j l
13 contamination thing without, in fact, having to cull it out, I 14 because that's really, in a sense, if you go back and think 15 about it, what is the real issue, because if you have 16 evacuation and so forth, you may get away from many bad 17 effects, but you're not going to get away from the land 18 contamination.
19 Now, what we heard was that the committee -- there 20 was a time, one or two years -- Dave Ward, I think, was 21 chairman -- he was pushing to try to have the safety -- have 22 some kind of coherency, things that flow logically from one 23 to -- however, there were many more years that the ACRS was 24 asking for this LERF or a containment, a minimum containment 25 of one in ten. I mean, a goal was one in 100 in the Il ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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r 157 1 original 1980 document, but we said, you can't achieve that (O) 2 now, that's okay for future, but for the current ones, try 3 to get to one in ten, and it really --
4 MR. REMICK: Which document are you referring to?
l 5 DR. OKRENT: The ACRS report, seven --
6 MR. REMICK: 739, which was the ever informal ACRS
! 7 document. It was something done by an ACRS member and a --
l 8 DR. OKRENT: No , no.
l 9 MR. REMICK: -- fellow, and I was advised at the 10 time very clearly it was not an ACRS-endorsed document to 11 publish as a NUREG. It was considered seriously in the 12 workshops and by the office in developing the safety goals.
l 13 DR. OKRENT: The committee, as a committee, said 14 yes, we will forward this to the Commission. So I don't k )g 15 know how you decide what is an ACRS document or not. All 16 the members of the committees -- there were no abstentions 17 -- voted to forward it, and that was -- and it was the 18 subject of discussion --
19 MR. REMICK: But not as an ACRS recommendation. )
20 DR. OKRENT: Well, but the ACRS did specifically 21 make recommendations for one chance in ten.
22 MR. REMICK: Sure.
23 DR. OKRENT: And there was a -- so it was for a l
24 long period of time, in fact, unsuccessful, and they did not 25 agree with the staff's effort to try to argue, we don't know l
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1 158 1 how to define this large release without killing somebody or
~D 2 too many people or whatever it was, and arguing that they l [O 3 just couldn't find c suitable definition; whereas the point 4 of this large release, as I just said, was it handled a l
5 couple of things. One is it provided some goal on what's I 6 the chance of a Chernobyl, but also what's the chance of a 7 huge contamination event which is a really -- okay. I'm 8 inclined to think that I wouldn't put a core damage 9 frequency in without some condition on containment t
10 performance. People have said -- I think the two go l
1 11 together.
)
i 12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Even though we may have a l 13 LERF?
14 DR. OKRENT: If you have a LERF, then you've got
() 15 something on --
16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: LERF and CDF.
17 DR. OKRENT: -- containment performance, yes.
18 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes, okay.
19 DR. OKRENT: Indeed. Indeed.
20 Now, there has been some concern about sucking up 21 the staff resources if you work on the safety goal policy.
22 Well, in the first place, I don't think it can be -- it can 23 or should be done in a year. I think it's important enough, 24 partly because of the omissions like contamination and 25 because of inconsistencies and so forth, that it warrants I
l
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159 1 priority and that the Commission should be told they ought
() 2 to make -- be recommended by the committee that they should 3 make sufficient resources available to have some kind of 4 discussion paper in whatever is judged to be a reasonable 5 time by the Commission with the staff saying they're talking 6 to each other. But to put it aside I think is -- because 7 you're too busy, that is, to my mind, unforgivable.
8 One other thing, and I guess that's it. I think 9 somewhere, we should come back to the statement that future 10 reactors should be safer. I don't care if there's only one 11 that you're approving now, it's a matter of philosophy, and 12 if you're going to say ten to the minus four or five times 13 ten to the minus four, we might even buy eight times ten to 14 the minus four on some operating reactors, and that this is
(-~ \
( ,/ 15 also good enough for future reactors, in my opinion, if the 16 public knew that, they would shoot the NRC down. It's not l 17 known abroad, you know, what is going on in here. So at 18 least, I think the least one should do is have a goal that 19 future reactors are safer.
20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Is that the quick reaction, I 21 because Tom Kress is leaving in 15 minutes and I would like 22 to hear from him.
23 Go ahead.
24 MR. REMICK: Just two very quick.
l l 25 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay.
I
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160 1 MR. REMICK: I think it's wrong to equate LERF r~T
( ) 2 with general performance criteria. I see LERF as a subset, 3 large early release. General performance guideline was not 4 just early. So you can't quite equate the two. I don't l 5 know what the relationship is.
6 Also, the Commission has very clearly stated --
7 and if I recall, it's in the severe accident policy 8 statement -- the expectation is that future reactors will be 9 safer and I don't think it needs to be stated again. It 10 doesn't hurt to restate it again, but it has already been 11 stated very clearly.
12 CRAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Let's go to Tom and I'm 13 sure we'll come back to this.
i 14 DR. KRESS: George, I'll leave this written set of 15 comments with you. I did want to say before I go through 16 them that I put them together before I heard Dave Okrent's 17 or Forest Remick's talk, so there may be some consistencies 18 and there may be some inconsistencies.
19 I think I agree that the Commission policy 20 statement should be a high level document, and that it l
21 should express the overall safety philosophy and policy and l 22 regulatory approach of the NRC, and if it does not contain !
23 some quantitative values, like the quantitative QHOs, then I 24 think it will not be very useful at all. But on the other l l
! 25 hand, if it contains too many quantitative values at the l
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161 1 lower level, then you're going to be overly constraining and 2 not letting it be flexible enough to adapt to the changing 3 situations. Now, that's vain, but that's the way I feel 4 about it.
5 Now, I want to flesh that out just a little bit.
6 Such a policy statement I think is needed. I don't think
[ 7 the one we have now is -- sufficiently expresses NRC's f 8 current safety policy. I don't think there is any urgency.
9 I don't think there's any real urgent need. ,
10 So I think the staff should take their time, they l 11 should do it right, and I certainly agree with Dr. Okrent 12 that they shouldn't put it aside. They should work on it at 13 a measured steady rate, and, you know, if this takes years, l
14 that's okay. The statement should clarify, in my opinion, 15 that LERF should be in there, and it can be clarified that 16 it is a surrogate for one of the quantitative QHOs, and it 17 can be used as a surrogate, and it's a surrogate on early 18 deaths, and that this surrogate will also generally 19 encompass latent fatalities, generally.
{
20 Therefore, I-feel like the quantitative statement 21 on LERF would not be overly constraining and should be 22 acceptable in such a statement. In fact, it does expresa a 23 philosophy on safety.
24 The question I have is, is ten to the minus five 25 per year the right value for it. If you use ten to the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I 162 1 minus-five, we will be consistent with the current QHOs, the 2 current quantitative QHOs. I think that's an open question 3 as to whether we still need to be consistent and whether we 4 ought to question the value of the QHOs. I really feel 5 personally that ten to the minus six per year on LERF is a l 6 better expression of what I think would be society's current 7 views on what is an acceptable level for nuclear power.
8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: LERF or --
1 j 9 DR. KRESS: LERF.
l 10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: LERF.
l 11 DR. KRESS: Ten to the minus six per year on LERF.
12 If we came up with something like that, however, it would 13 constitute a rejection of the current quantitative health 4
14 objective. I would support doing this, at least looking at 15 not being consistent with the current QHO, but I wouldn't do i
16 it without giving it a lot of thought, a lot of debate, 17 equivalent to what was given the original one.
18 The question brought forth by ACRS as to whether 19 or not a CDF should also be elevated to the level of a 20 fundamental goal, I supported that from the start and I 21 still support it, and the reason is I think it is a 22 fundamental expression by NRC as to how much importance they l 1
l 23 intend to place on prevention versus mitigation. l 24 I certainly agree that it could not be in there 25 unless we also.say something about the conditional ANN RILEY'& ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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163 i
! 1 containment performance. You have to have the two of them l
l [-,)h 2 together, and one without the other one is not appropriate.
3 I want them to both to be -- if you're going to put one of l 4 them in, you have to put the other one.
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But Tom, you said that you 6 would like to see the CDF up there because it's a clear 7 statement on the part of the Commission that we're placing 8 emphasis on prevention, i l l 9 DR. KRESS: Yes, sir. l 10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Wouldn't they achieve the 11 same goal by just saying something about core damage without i 12 specifying the numerical value for the frequency?
13 DR. KRESS: I --
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Or you would leave that f) 15 open at this time? l 16 DR. KRESS: I'll leave that open, but I --
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay.
18 DR. KRESS: I want to put on the record I'm in 19 favor of putting in a value. Now, I'm not saying I like ten 20 to the minus four. I think a va]ue cught to be in there, it 1
21 ought to be debated as to what it is. And it ought to be in '
22 there in the context of what the LERF is that you put in 23 there. The two have to go together.
24 On adding an additional societal risk goal, I 25 support this. I think NRC's philosophy is to limit societal ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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164 1 risk. I personally don't think it ought to be on land j
() 2 3
contamination. I would be more in favor of putting it on the total deaths, which I view as a value that is more 4 robust than land contamination and would encompass land 5 contamination to some extent, not, you know, not per sites
'6 if they have very low population. It might ought to be you 7 could have one on land contamination and on total deaths. I 8 personally think it's more important to have one on total 9- deaths at the moment.
]
10 I support the concept put forward by the staff on 11 placing a cap on short-term risk. I don't know what that 12 cap ought to be. I think it ought to be looked at and l
13 debated and studied, and --
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: In the policy statement?
15 DR. KRESS: In the policy statement, yes. I think 16 the policy statement should discuss the overall safety 17 philosophy if you're going to have one which would include 18 the defense in-depth, a better definition of defense l 19 in-depth and how it fits in with the concept of CDF and LERF
- 20 and in the concept of the state of the art of PRA.
l l 21 I think there should be a better discussion on l
l 22 --if you're going to put in things like CDF and LERF, a
- 23 better discussion on supporting the use of a mean or a i
24 median in view of the uncertainties. I'm not saying it 25 shouldn't be the mean or the median. In fact, I think it O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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165 1 ought to be. I think it ought to be the median instead of r
I i 2 the mean. But I think better discussion supporting that 3 ought to be in the statement itself.
4 I don't think at the moment there should be any
( 5 distinction between current reactors and future reactors. I 6 think that's taken care of in the safety goal policy i
! 7 statement, and if you did go to this ten to the minus six 8 and reject the QH0s, I think that goes a long way to taking 9 care of that problem.
10 With respect to your three regions concept for CDF 11 and LERF, if they're in there, I say it's a good idea 12 despite of some of my -- some of my thoughts about it, and I 13 think it ought to be at least included in the policy 14 statement as a philosophy, and I think I would even support
( 15
( j putting actual numbers on the --
16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's why we're going to i l
17 study it.
18 DR. KRESS: When I come back to you later with a 19 revision of this, I may change my mind again. But I think 20 at the moment that I would do it, and I think it would go a 21 long way towards clarifying the difference between adequate 22 protection and the safety goal, and I do think adequate 23 protection is a legal concept that is -- we're stuck with 24 it, but I personally think it's a copout. I think it's a 25 circular thing, it says adequate protection is whatever we I) 5%/
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166
-1 have in the regulations, and I think to leave it -- I think
() 2 you're stuck with that, but to leave it and not have a 3 separate safety goal that discusses the safety outside that 4 context would be a mistake. So I think we're stuck with 5 adequate protection. It ought not to be a part of the 6 safety goal policy statement; it ought to be something else.
7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Now, before I lose you --
8 are you done? I'm sorry.
9 DR. KRESS: I have one more comment.
10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay.
11 DR. KRESS: I also think the policy statement's 12 emphasis on the supplies on the average should be done away i
13 with. I think we should have a concept of no specific plant {
14 will pose an undue level of risk. I think that ought to be 15 NRC's policy, and that ought to be part of the policy 16 statement. -
17 So those are my major points before I turn into a 18 pumpkin here and leave.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: So before you go, it seems 20 to me that we are talking about a lot of philosophies here 21 also. The philosophy now that will guide me in putting l 22 together a draft letter the way I see it is the following:
23 We believe this is an important issue that needs 24 to be investigated. It should not be put on the back j
25 burner. We hear from David that we don't have to put the
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167 1 one-year limit on how long we're going to study it. The i 2 staff has volunteered one year.
('~T) We can choose to be silent 3 on that. But that's something that has to start immediate 4 with some periodic updates and so on.
5 Then what I propose to do is in the discussion, to 6 simply raise issues to be investigated without taking sides.
7 DR. KRESS: Okay. I think that would be --
8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It's not clear to me how 9 many numbers one should put in the policy statement -- the 10 issue of new reactors versus existing reactors and whether a 11 statement of expectation is good enough or you need 12 something else. In other words --
13 DR. KRESS: As long as you identify the --
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: What?
/G
() 15 DR. KRESS: As long as you identify the issues, 16 then we'll have --
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. That's what I --
18 DR. KRESS: T-- plenty of opportunity to discuss j 19 it.
l 20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Exactly. That's what I'm j 21 talking about. Identify the issues, give arguments, perhaps 1
22 both sides if appropriate or necessary, and leave it at '
23 that, because I don't see how else we can -- j 24 DR. KRESS: Well, we're not going to agree on any 25 of my proposals -- l 1
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168 l 1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yeah. Yeah.
() 2 3
DR. KRESS:
letter is a good one.
-- and I think your approach in the 4 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But you realize, though, 5 that by writing such a letter, we are going a little bit 6 against our earlier recommendation.
7 DR. KRESS: Well, -- l l I l
8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Which, however, it was an 9 individual recommendation; now we're talking a much bigger l
10 effort.
! 11 DR. KRESS: We've broadened the whole thing.
12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. So we can't be wrong.
13 DR. KRESS: Right.
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay.
) 15 DR. SEALE: As a matter of fact, that's one of the 16 comments I make in my notes. l l 17 DR. KRESS: And I don't mind being inconsistent.
i 18 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yeah. Consistency is a j I
19 sign of mediocre minds.
l l 20 DR. SEALE: That's right.
l . 21 DR. KRESS: So with that, I want to say I i
! 22 thoroughly enjoyed having Forest and Dave here and really I
l 23 express my appreciation for hearing their valuable views, i 24 and it really was well worth it. I l
25 MR. REMICK: Thank you, Tom. The entire O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1
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169 1 1
1 discussion today has been heard many, many, many times over n)
(V 2 the years.
3 DR. SEALE: But eloquence is --
4 MR. REMICK: Oh, I forgot to say, I wanted to 5 compliment you on your digs here really, and I wanted to say 6 that I'm reminded that that post was intentionally put into l
7 the Commission to remind everybody of the pillar of strength 8 and wisdom that --
l 9 (Laughter.]
10 MR. REMICK: And I forgot to say that.
11 DR. SEALE: Well, actually, it's so the chairman 12 can have a place to put his back to the wall when it comes 13 to that. l 14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Or protection from the
/ 15 bullets.
16 Yes. Thank you very much. l 17 You can join us at the table. I'm sorry, I should 18 have done that earlier.
19 Why don't we -- Graham, would you like to say a l 20 few words now? Okay.
21 DR. WALLIS: Well, I'm glad we're looking at some 22 big-picture issues. I think this is the sort of thing ACRS ,
1 23 should be doing; it's where we can have an influence, rather l 24 than getting lost in some of the details of page so and so 25 of some set of regulations.
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170 1 Forest told us that twelve years ago, there was a
( 2 document prepared to try to replace a hodge-podge of 3 regulations. I think twelve years ago is a long time.
4 There's been some hodge-podge added since then.
5 (Laughter.)
6 DR. WALLIS: It would be very useful to have a 7 review again of where we are, whether the goals need a 8 redefinition and reaffirmation. I think they should be 9 based on descriptions and analysis which are quantitative 10 and numerical as much as possible, that figures far better 11 but something like the one presented by Tom King would be I 12 very appropriate, maybe lots of them, which clarify in some 13 numerical way where we've been and where we are and where we 14 might go and what might be the effect of picking this number 15 or that number and so on. I feel we need this, because too 16 much of this is done -- too much of this decisionmaking 17 seems to be done by picking a number out of the air or the l 18 seat of the pants, whatever you want to say.
I 19 I felt that I don't have a good picture of what 20 the situation is, what the problem is, what the issues are.
l 21 So if nothing else comes out of it, a review right now would 22 help to let us know where we stand, and then we can figure 23 out what the appropriate action, if any, should be. I don't l 24 have a good picture of where we stand.
25 l'm a bit troubled by hearing both industry and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I 171 1 the staff saying that'what we have to do now is so 2 complicated to administer that we can't change anything and 3 we can't afford the time to look at the big picture. I 4 think if you don't get the big picture right, the danger is 5 .you spend an awful lot of time doing rather inefficient work 6 on the details. So I would like to get this big picture 7 right.
- 8 And if we are going to pick a number ten to the 9 minus five, ten to the minus six, any of these numbers that 10 have been thrown around here, I would like to know very 11 clearly why we do it, why this particular number rather than l 12 some other number.
l 13 Everything seems to be thrown around. You're .
t 14 going to pick this number, pick that number as if it's a 15 lottery. There has to be a much more logical process for 16 these decisions.
17 Finally, I read in the document here that there's 18 a proposal to hire a subcontractor for $200,000 a year or 19 something, and the idea that one can somehow hire a 20 subcontractor to tell NRC what its fundamental purpose is
! 21 seemed to me preposterous. j 22 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's not what they meant,
! 23 I'm sure.
24 MR. KING: That's not what we meant.
25 (Laughter.)
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172 4 1 MR. KING: If we need to do calculations, we may 2
(A) want to get somebody --
3 DR. WALLIS: If you don't know how to figure out 4 what your purpose is and you have to ask a subcontractor, 5 then you're in real trouble.
6 MR. KING: No, no.
7 DR. OKRENT: I'll subcontract to them.
8 (Laughter.]
9 DR. SEALE: You just thought you had trouble.
10 DR. OKRENT: Could I note one thing? This is a 1 i
l 11 point of fact. That number, ten to the minus four per year, I l 12 that was in the original ACRS report sent by the committee, 13 and it was chosen not because I thought or the committee 14 thought all the reactors met it at that time -- in fact, we m
k ,) 15 made it clear that there was a larger number that might need 1
16 to be used -- but we thought it was something obtainable and l
17 we were not looking for a goal that would never be reached 18 with improvement.
19 Now, it seems, over time, it may not have been as l 20 attainable as I first guessed, but anyway --
l 21 DR. WALLIS: Yeah. Well, I think we also need to
- 22 not spend all the time on what's attainable and what's 23 administrable, but spend time on what's desirable. How do 24 you justify what's desirable.
25 DR. OKRENT: Well, I agree, and it was thought b
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I 173 1 that that was the largest number that one wanted to go with 2 as a goal. One could have gone with a bigger -- a smaller 3 goal then, but then people will throw up their hands, we 4 don't know how to do that with these designs, see, and you 5 would be defeating, you know, the --
l 6 DR. WALLIS: It might be telling you something 7 very important. If you don't know how to meet a goal which 1
8 is desirable, that tells you something you have to do.
9 DR. OKRENT: Well, anyway, I just wanted to say i 10 that.
11 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think it's a combination, j 12 really. It's a combination of what your technology is, what i 13 your analytical capabilities are, plus what your --
! 14- DR. OKRENT: What your uncertainties are.
15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Mario, would you --
16 DR. FONTANA: Yes, I have some comments. Some are i
17 repetitive. It seems like the first thing that needs to be l
18 done is to define what it is that you're going to accomplish 19 by re-writing the safety goal and nail that down, and some t
l 20 of the pros and cons have been discussed here.
l 21 One of your questions was should the CDF be 22 elevated as a fundamental safety goal. I have mixed 23 feelings about that. Probably more important, one reason 24 for putting it in there is to quantify defense in-depth, to 25 show that you have defense at different levels. Possibly O
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174 l
1 it's better to make-some statement about defense in-depth
() 2 that's more than motherhood.
3 And I don't -- I kind of have problems with 4 putting the CDF up as a primary safety goal because I think 5 it's handled so well in what used to Draft Guide 1061 if you l 6 follow those, what the approach is there. What is in the l
l 7 safety goals I think ought to be based, as Graham said, 8 ought to be based on quantifiable background. In other l 9 words, it doesn't have to be so much numbers themselves, but 10 they sure have to be supportable.
11 Should the policy statement be consistent with l l 12 current practice? I would say generally yes, and where it 13 is not -- in other words, if there's a good reason for it 14 not to be consistent, for example, a ten to the minus six
) 15 overall goal as compared to what's derivable from the QHOs, l
16 then it ought to be explained why it isn't, or some 17 statement ought to be in there saying that there's an 18 inconsistency here, but it's to cover other things.
1 i 19 How do we make sure people treat numerical value l
l 20 as goals and expectations rather than strict criteria -- I i 21 think you ought to just flat-out say so in the safety goal 22 statement.
- 23. You need additional metrics, such as land 24 contamination. I feel pretty strongly that land 25 contamination ought to be handled in one way or another.
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175 1 In determining the -- in making decisions of which
() 2 electrically producing technology is going to be followed, 3 society or whoever makes these decisions in the name of 4 society, needs to consider the entire total cost, including 5 the internalization of the externalities. In other words, 6 for a coal-fired plant, it's almost deterministic; you just 7 know what the health effects are as time goes on. But a 8 nuclear plant is more probabilistic. There's big effects 9 but the probability is small. There have to be ways of 10 pulling this together.
11 Should the revised policy statement make a 12 distinction between current reactors and advance designs? I i l 13 say no. I think they're the same people and there should 14 not be a distinction.
) 15 Should the risk be -- I think that the policy --
16 that the safety goal should not be average. I think it 17 ought to be plant specific because an average, like Henry l 18 Ford said -- he had a friend who drowned in a river that was )
19 two feet deep on the average, so you ought to --
l 20 (Laughter.)
l 21 DR. FONTANA: I mean, you have to have a -- any 22 plant that's we sbove the safety goals ought to be not 23 allowed --
24 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: So this is one of the 25 reasons for revising this thing. We move this general --
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176 1 DR. FONTANA: I think we need to go back to item
() 2 number one -- we can go back to item one, which is why do I 3 want to rewrite it to start with. I think this is one of 4 the things you want to --
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Will you give me this piece I 6 of paper you're reading from?
7 DR. FONTANA: Well, you won't be able to read my 8 writing, but yes, I'll write something up on that.
9 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay.
i 10 DR. FONTANA: That's all I had.
11 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Thank you. I l
)
12 DR. SEALE: I will say I'm in sympathy with most l 13 of the remarks that have been made, and rather than 14 reiterating those, I would like to make a few other O 15 comments.
16 I think I'm going to talk more about immediate 17 concerns. When we started on this, the concern was a 18 question of whether or not CDF and LERF needed to be l
19 elevated, and this grew out of, in my mind, the strong i
20 support for the use of risk-based information such as the 21 IPE and IPEEE insights on the one hand, and the strong )
22 protest by the industry that level 2 and level 3 PRFs would l
23 be beyond their available resources on the other.
24 Under these conditions, it seemed that the level 1 25 plus some level 2 goodies product needed to have status to
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177 1 allow their employment to make risk-informed decisions. It
() 2 seemed like we -- if the QHOs were the basis and you didn't 3 get QHO data out of the risk assessment, there seemed to be 4 a gap there.
5 I guess I thought that the staff would be more 6 rigid; that is, unable to resort to level 3 -- to level 1 7 plus information for their risk-informed evaluation of 8 utility proposals. Apparently I was wrong. That's probably 9 the third time.
10 The staff seems to be willing to use level 1 plus 11 some level 2 PRA results even though a plant-specific nexus 12 to the QHOs is not required. That being the case, there 13 seems to be no immediate need to elevate the CDF and the 14 LERF. Now, that's my reading of what I have heard.
) 15 I'm impressed also by the demands on the staff 16 resources that seem to exist in order to deal with industry 17 submittals on the pilots, maintenance rule improvements, and 18 things like that, and, quite frankly, I think the industry l l
19 needs to see risk-informed decisions turn into something i 20 they can use if the overall approach is going to succeed.
21 This is clearly a ballet in which you have two dancers.
22 Besides that, I think we would learn a lot going 23 through the pilots and these other things about exactly what 24 are some of the important issues.
25 Now, finally, I think a long-term look at all of O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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178 1 the issues, including land contamination, is needed, so I
() 2 don't think the fundamental issues should be put on the 3 shelf. I would remind my colleagues that there were some 4 comments that Dr. Powers sent in regarding his thoughts on 5- these issues. I have to say I think his thoughts were 6 perhaps a little closer to mine than the other comments 7 because I think he was looking at the issue in terms of the 8 immediate action agenda rather than what would constitute an 9 appropriate look at safety goals for the long run. So I 10 would be sure to integrate his comments in here as well.
11 But here you are.
12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Thank you.
13 David and Forest, you have already expressed your l
l 14 views, but I have one question. This idea of a three-region 1
() 15 statement, do you have any thoughts? Should it be there or l
16 should we stick to the present goal? David?
i 17 DR. OKRENT: Well, I must confess, I don't have a 18 good enough grasp on how the three-region idea is to be 19 used, if it's to be used, to offer you an opinion now. I 20 can try to get a better grasp and e-mail you an opinion if 21 you want, but I don't have any now.
22 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: NUREG 0739 proposes three 23 regions, gives an upper limit, as I recall, and a goal that 24 defines three regions, on everything. You're doing it for l 25 societal risk, for individual risk, for -- I don't know i
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r 179 1 whether you had core damage -- yeah, yeah, core damage
() 2 3-frequency. There is always an upper limit and a goal. ;
DR. OKRENT: Well, --
4 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Anyway, I got your opinion 5 --
6 DR. OKRENT: No, you're talking about the -- about 7 within the ACRS report?
8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Plus the letter from the 9 ACRS dated 1980.
10 DR. OKRENT: Well, I can remember people --
11 shortly afterwards, I gave a talk at the Royal Society, and 12 they all, with good reason, smiled when I discussed the 13 rather small differences between these three boundaries with l l
14 some cases in view of the uncertainties.
15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay.
16 DR. OKRENT: That remains a problem.
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: So this is a practical --
i 18 DR. OKRENT: And what does it mean and so forth.
19 So for that and other reasons, I'm reluctant to give you a
]
20 direct answer now, I'm sorry.
21 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay.
22 Forest?
23 MR. REMICK: George, a description of what I think 24 you mean, yes; to define three regions, no.
i 25 But I thought you fellows did a discredit to the l l
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180 1 staff on the diagram that they put up. What they were
() 2 trying to show you -- there has been a lot of discussion 3 --what's the relationship between adequate protection l
l 4 regulations and the safety goals, and I thought that was an l 5 effective way of showing it, that you have the regulations 6 which you must meet at any cost, then you have the safety 7 goals, and if you want to go above the regulations, you have 8 to do the regulatory analysis, the cost-benefit analysis and 9 so forth, cost beneficial, you can justify it. I thought 10 conceptually, worrying about dots and lines and so forth --I 11 thought they were conveying something -- there has been a l 1
I 12 lot of discussion over the years on what's the' relationship 13 between the two, and if you can put what they were trying to 14 convey and I think what you were saying into words -- there
( 15 are regulations you must meet at any cost, and this is in 16 the backfit rule and so forth -- and if you don't comply, 17 you have to do it at any cost, and if the agency wants to go 18 beyond that to meet some goal, then you have to do a 19 regulatory analysis and so forth.
20 If you can put that into words, I think that would 21 be very helpful, because they are -- it's a thought process 22 that has developed over the years. I thought it was 23 adequately shown there.
24 But I don't know if I would talk about three 25 regions, and God forbid, I would not put limits on those and O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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181 l 1 so forth. But if you're trying to get people to understand l
f~)
t j, 2 the regulatory process and the relationship between these 1
3 and put it in words, I think that would be a contribution. '
l l 4 But I wouldn't define tolerable, intolerable, that type of i
)
5 thing, which, by the way, I assume you've read the 6 tolerability risk documents by the health and safety 7 executive in the U.K. and so forth, and they have done that 8 very eloquently, but I don't think it's needed here. But if 1
9 you put it in words as a communication medium, then I think 10 it would be fine. )
l l 11 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Well, that's my point. I 12 really think the value of that is that it's great
)
l 13 communication -- I i
14 MR. REMICK: Yes.
! /
! (_, 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: -- to tell people what l
16 we're really intending to do, and I myself would not put l 17 bright lines there, anyway.
l 18 DR. OKRENT: As I think back to 1980, we didn't 19 want to have a bright line.
20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But you did.
21 DR. OKRENT: Ten to the minus four was not 22 intended as a go/no-go. We wanted to indicate not only some 23 flexibility, but that we didn't think many of the current 24 reactors met, and maybe our way of doing it was skewed, but 25 there were these ideas.
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182 1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But your upper bound --
() 2 upper limit, what you call upper limit was three ten to the
-3 minus three, which is pretty high, actually. It's pretty 4 high.
5 Rick?
6 MR. SHERRY: Yes. Just two comments. One, it has 7 been mentioned several times of calculating these upper 8 level goals, and I don't think that that's really possible.
9 I think they are inherently a value judgment on the 10 acceptability of risk, and although you may do calculations 11 of risk from. competing sources of generating electricity and 12 say this is the risk from coal, from gas, from renewables,
'13 there's no inherent reason to believe that nuclear risk 14 would be judged by society to be set based on those
() 15 calculations. The society may judge that they are less 16 willing to accept nuclear risk than risk from coal.
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay.
18 MR. SHERRY: The second comment is with regard to 19 elevation of the CDF, and I think there's possibly one other 20 consideration for preventing core damage accidents in that I 21 think a core damage accident affects the credibility of the 22 regulatory process and the regulatory. For example, after 23 TMI, the public trust in the regulatory process greatly 24 decreased. !
25 DR. OKRENT: And the nuclear reactors. i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I 183 l 1 MR. SHERRY: And the nuclear reactors.
t t
t 2
[-)s CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay. Mark?
3 MR. CUNNINGHAM: You touched on, when you were 4 kind of leading into how you might write your letter, on the 5 issue that -- the key issue with me, I guess, is that a lot 3 of what we're talking about here is improving the l 7 communication of what we do to do bring in a lot of things l 8 that have -- some of which are in the public domain, some of 9 which were decisions made not in the public eye, if you 10 will, and the question really is, you know, is that improved 11 communications worth the amount of effort that's going to be 1 i
12 required to go into it. Again, I guess you kind of -- I 13 think I understand where you're going on that.
l 14 MR. HOLAHAN: I guess the first thing I would like
() 15 to say is that I think the subject is worth working on and I 16 think the idea that we ought to spend a year or more working !
l' 17 on this is just the practical reality. The idea that we 18 have another alternative, that in some way we could possibly I 19 do it faster and get people to agree and to be involved and I
20 participating in two months instead of 20 months I think is 1
i 21 just not realistic.
l l 22 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: What would the product be?
23 MR. HOLAHAN: Well, let me suggest that, in my l
l 24 mind, I would like to see two types of products. I would i
25 like to see a revision of the safety goal, and perhaps the i
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l 184 l 1 first revision I would like to see is the name changed, j
() 2 because I think the word goal in the safety goal leads in 3 part to the complication. It's a safety philosophy I 4 document, and whether --
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Risk-informed safety. How 6 about that? l i
j 7 JMR. HOLAHAN: Well, I think risk-informed is part !
8 of the philosophy, so the document itself is just a safety 9 philosophy.
10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But the emphasis should be 11 on -- in other words, we need this document because now we 12 can quantify part of the risk, is the way I see it.
13 Otherwise, we will need it.
14 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes. But we don't need to say all 15 of those things in the title.
16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: No, we don't need to say 17 all that, but the title should reflect that.
18 MR. HOLAHAN: Well, then you can just call it 19 Philosophy and have everything expressed in the document.
20 MR. REMICK: Unnamed document.
21 [ Laughter.)
22 MR. HOLAHAN: But what I would suggest is not 23 adding a lot of quantitative elements to the document, 24 keeping it philosophical and qualitative.
25 I guess I would bend on the point of the -- a O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l l 185
( 1 tenth of a percent in place of just a qualitative statement t .
I [^T l( j 2 of health objectives. But I think what I would like to see 3 is a document that is more complete, expressing the safety l 4 philosophy in terms of health objectives, protection of the 5 environment, defense in-depth philosophy, and have that, you l
6 know, the document -- this is the constitution that you work 7 on once. Then I think at'a lower level, there are guidance 8 documents -- for example, the 1174 that we've been working 9 on -- where you derive useable guidelines from the safety 10 goal, and I think a rework of the regulatory analysis 11 guidelines -- and I see no reason why you can't have a ten 12 to the minus four core damage frequency derived from a 13 defense in-depth philosophy. Not everything you derive from 14 this safety philosophy has to be derived from the health l r^
(,)g 15 objectives part.
16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yeah.
17 MR. HOLAHAN- It can be derived from other 18 portions. And I can imagine deriving a large early release 19 frequency goal either from the health objectives or from the 20 defense in-depth objective. After all, if you think of 21 release mitigation as one level of defense in-depth, then I 22 think emergency response and siting is another level of 23 defense in-depth. So if you want to separate those levels 24 of defense in-depth, you can define large early release.
l 25 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Is defense in-depth an
[~')
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186 1 objective or is it the means of achieving an objective?
() 2 Anyway, I understand what you're saying, but I 3 have a more --
'4 MR. HOLAHAN: It's a means, but that level of 1
5 means could be in your philosophy document.
6 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's correct. No, that's l
7 ' correct.
8 But I have another question, though. You 9 mentioned that this should be one document, one 10 constitution. That reminded me of what Dr. Remick said, 11 that in the early days, the document or the -- when the QHO 12 policy statement was put together, it addressed only i i
13 reactors. Well, if this is a very general safety philosophy !
( 14 document, should it apply to the whole of the agency or
! ) 15 should it be only for reactors? Because then if it's the 1
16 whole agency, then forget about numbers.
17 DR. OKRENT: Forget about the document.
18 [ Laughter.]
l l l 19 DR. OKRENT: No, I'm serious.
20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I understand what you're i 41 saying.
22 DR. OKRENT: It's big enough --
23 MR. HOLAHAN: I think that's very --
24 DR. OKRENT: -- just for reactors --
25 MR. HOLARAN: I think that's very difficult.
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187 1 DR. OKRENT: I would not consider --
I O) 2 MR. HOLAHAN: I think it would be very desirable, 3 but very -- it would make the process very much more 4 complicated.
5 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But a lot of the issues are 6 similar. I mean, this issue --
7 MR. HOLARAN: But a lot of the issues are 8 different. I think a lot of the issues are different. I 9 cannot imagine that making the situation easier; only more 10 difficult. And I would suggest one practical matter for l
11 dealing with the ten to the minus four or choosing between a 12 ten the minus five and ten to the minus six is not to put i 13 that in the philosophy document, because that would force 14 you to try to make all those derivative issues, make all O
( ,) 15 those decisions at the same time. It would seem to me it 16 would be hard enough to decide on the philosophy document, 17 but having done that, it would be easier to derive guidance 1
18 document -- guidance numbers from it. )
19 So yeah, you would have to go through this sort of 20 review and development and public participation process 21 twice, but I think it would be desirable to do that. Then I 22 would keep that second level of documents similar to the j i
23 regulatory analysis which went out for comment and had 24 Commission approval, but I think let's acknowledge that you i
25 can change those more often than you change your safety !
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188 1 philosophy.
() 2 DR. OKRENT: If I were the staff, that's exactly 3 what I would propose, but as a member of the public, I 4 vehemently object to it. I think you should say what you 5 mean, that's important, the safety philosophy document, and 6 not just have motherhood statements.
7 MR. HOLAHAN: Okay.
l 8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's it?
! 9 DR. WALLIS: You said you had two products at the j l 10 end of the year?. l i
11 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes. Well, well, at the end of the l 12 year -- I didn't want to promise all those documents at the
( 13 end of the year, but, I mean, a clearer concept of where to l
14 go with the documents being -- let's say a revised safety l
() 15 goal or how to get to a revised safety goal and revised
- 16 guidance documents. Those are the two --
17 DR. WALLIS: I hoped you would also give us a l 18 better picture of where we have been and where we are in 19 terms of how these criteria actually have influenced l 20 something.
21 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes.
l 22 DR. WALLIS: Better cartoons, at least l
23 MR. HOLAHAN: Yeah. Better cartoons.
l 24 DR. WALLIS: More information.
25 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes. Yeah.
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f 189 L
1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Anymore? Anything else?
t L) 2 MR. HOLAHAN: No.
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Tom?
l 4 MR. KING: I think in a year, my view is what l
l 5 we're shooting for is a recommendation to the Commission, l
l 6 and that's not going to be a draft revision to the policy, 7 to my mind; it's going to be a recommendation on each of the 8 issues we looked at, and if we recommend to go forward and 9 revise the policy, sort of scope out the extent or the 10 nature of that revision, and then actually do the revision l 11 subsequent to the Commission saying, yeah, I agree, go do 12 that.
l 13 I think it's important to point out that we don't l 14 need any of this to do our job. We can implement (O ,f 15 risk-informed regulation, we can put new rules in place, do l 16 a lot of other things, without revising the policy 17 statement; therefore, why are we doing it?
18 I think putting together in one place what our 19 safety philosophy is is a good idea. I think that could l
l 20 certainly assist in communication, assist in understanding 21 not only the public, but across the agency as to how we do 22 business.
23 From that standpoint, I would support some sort of l
1 24 revision, because in reading the policy statement, there are 25 places where it's not all that clear in terms of what the i
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190 i
1 intent is.
( 2 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Don't go. One last 3 question. l l
4 MR. KING: Just as a practical point, in framing i
5 your letter, if our SECY paper does get signed on and you l 6 have that in your hand, it would be useful to use if you 7 could build upon that in making your recommendations. Don't 8 just put a complete list of issues, but maybe, say, 9 supplement the ones that are in the SECY paper so there's 10 not some confusion there.
11 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAFIS: Right. We're going to 12 discuss now the presentation at the full committee meeting.
13 MR. KING: Yes, and I would like to do that, too.
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: But before our invited
() 15 guests leave, I would like to ask them one other question. ;
16 Do you think Part 50 should be risk-informed?
17 Shall we undertake an effort to -- )
18 DR. OKRENT: Remind me, what does Part 50 cover?
l 19 MR. HOLAHAN: Reactor regulation. I 20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Reactor regulation.
21 MR. HOLAHAN: Everything about reactors except 22 siting.
23 DR. OKRENT: Everything about --
24 MR. HOLAHAN: Except siting. Well, almost f
l 25 everything except -- operator licensing --
()
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191 1 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It's very inconsistent '
() 2 right now because of the way it evolved. Would it be 3 worthwhile to --
l l 4 DR. OKRENT: Well, I guess what I would do is say 5 --
l 6 ' CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's a major effort, by l
7 the way, but we have the resources.
8 DR. OKRENT: Take a preliminary look to see what 9 is involved, and where there are sore thumbs sticking out or 10 something, if there are any, and so forth, for the siting.
11 MR. HOLAHAN: Exactly. Exactly, i 12 CRAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Forest?
l 13 MR. HOLAHAN: Both directions -- too much and too 14 little.
15 MR. REMICK: Excuse me. With this opportunity to i
16 say something, I would like to say I'm told that under l 17 consideration is another 120 million cut in the agency's 18 budget. I would say the safety goals are -- the policy 19 statement is somewhat outdated, could be improved and so 20 forth. But if I was IMPER, again, I would have those 21 fellows working on some other things right now, and some of 22 them would be the pilots you're talking about, because I I
23 think in those pilots, you're getting some examples of the 24 things in Part 50 that really should be changed and put on a l
25 risk basis.
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L i 1
L 192 1 I would like to see the staff be able to put more i
() 2 resources into observing that process and reaping the 3 benefits from that process and making some changes' in Part 4 50 as a start on seeing where else in Part 50 could provide 5 -- the answer to your question is yes, I would like to see I 6 Part 50 sometime revised so it has greater use of risk l 7 insights, and I personally believe the pilots are a way to l
1 8 go , and that's where I would be putting those guidance 9 resources if I had any control over it at the moment.
10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Thank you. j i
11 Okay. So the last item is how do we structure the 12 hour1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br /> and a half that we have on April 30th with the full 13 committee.
14 MR. HOLAHAN: Who have you invited?
()
I 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: What?
16 MR. HOLAHAN: Who are you inviting?
l 17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You.
18 MR. HOLAHAN: Industry? Your experts? The staff?
l l
l 19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I don't think we're l l
l 20 inviting the experts back. We're imposing too much on them.
21 MR. MARKLEY: My expectation of industry 22 participation would be just any comments they might have.
23 We don't need presenters because they have been here.
24 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: It's really the staff, I 25 think. So I guess one of the ways we can do it is to O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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193 j i
i 1 address some key questions that were discussed here and just '
'(
s
, \_-) 2 tell the full committee what transpired. I mean, I don't
! 3 know what else we can do.
4 MR. HOLAHAN: I'm not sure that it would be useful 5 to reproduce the whole philosophical discussion.
6 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: No, but I mean key !
7 elements. '
8 MR. HOLAHAN: I think we could identify just a 9 number of options. i 10 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes.
11 MR. HOLAHAN: One option is just, you know, do 12 nothing, focus on other things, and live with the guidance 13 as derived from a document that we all think could be 14 improved in one way or another. One option would be, here's im
( ,) 15 a list of things we could work on. Another option is ycu 16 could put high priority on getting that done before you go 17 much further in your, you know, developing implementation 18 documents.
19 I think if you just laid out those alternatives 20 and, you know, added or subtracted from the list of 21 questions on them, I think that's -- I mean, that's about 22 all anyone is asking the committee or the staff to do at 23 this stage.
24 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes. And when we talk 25 about, you know, if we are to do something for a year or so,
['}
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.lj 194 1 what are the issues that we discussed today? Well, I think
) 2 what we said was, first of all, we have to decide what 3 document we're producing. Is it a safety phile"ophy 4 document? Wlat kinds of questions is that -- what kinds of 5 issues is that document going to address, okay, at the end 6 of the year? Are we -- the issue of the three regions, pros 7 and cons; the issue of how many, numbers to put in there; the 8 land contamination.
9 I sense that everybody wants consistency, by the 10 way. When Okrent was saying I don't care about consistency 11 because this thing is influenced by land contamination, he j 12 was telling me that he was consistent with land 13 contamination objectives. So that's fine.
14 MR. HOLAHAN: I think we want all of our decisions 15 to be consistent with something, but that something doesn't 16 always have to be QHO.
17 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's correct.
18 MR. HOLAHAN: But it should be connected to 19 something.
20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's correct. That's 21 correct.
22' So these are the major issues, aren't they? Now, 23 I don't know about our ability to calculate core damage 24 frequency again. I mean, we have to live with what we have, 25 and maybe built into the numbers we're using is the fact O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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195 1 that we recognize that our methods are not perfect, right?
() 2. If my PRA was perfect, maybe I would tolerate a higher CDF 3 than ten to the minus four. I don't know. But now I have 4 all these uncertainties.
5 Now, the issue of uncertainty, of course, should 6 be discussed in that ultimate document, but I don't know 7 what else we can say right now.
8 I don't know that we left any of the questions 9 from the list'out, but --
10 DR. SEALE: Well, someone had raised the question 11 about defense in-depth.
12 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: No, no, that is there.
13 Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I'll come back to my earlier comment.
14 I really think the stage should be set by saying up front,
() 15 the reason why we're publishing this policy statement, we're 16 issuing this policy statement is because now we can quantify 17 part of the risk. In fact, if you think about it that way, 18 it may be easier to define the intolerable region than 19 anything else, because risk now is one of the methods. If 20 that method becomes toe bad, I don't care what the others 21 are, but if that method is too good, I don't know. Now I 22 have all sorts of questions about how good my calculations 23 are and so on.
24 If you think about it that way, you know, it 25 really puts things in perspective, and then you raise to the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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196 1 philosophical, the same level, defense in-depth and all the
(() 2 other things that Gary mentioned earlier. I'm surprised it l
3 took so long for me to realize it.
4 Is there anything else?
5 MR. KING: We may want to talk about priority of 6 the changes. You know, they're not all of equal importance.
7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Yes.
8 MR. KING: If we had to limit ourselves, which 9 ones are the ones we really want to make a change and which 10 ones are --
11 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Well, I heard some of our 12 invited experts say that some things are wrong, in fact, or 13 the statement -- although Forest did not uFe that word.
14 MR. REM.CK: I don't think I used it.
O 15 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS:
(_f So who was the -- one of 16 the invited experts used it. Well, obviously we have to 17 convince ourselves that he's right, and if he's right, then 18 that's obviously a high priority item. You don't want to 1
19 have a statement that has wrong things in it. I don't know l 20 whether the word wrong is the right word here, but, you I
21 know, that certainly gives you a clue as to what some of the 22 priorities ought to be.
23 I think with that, we will cover the hour and a l l
24 half and -- anything else, Mike?
1 25 MR. MARKLEY: I was just wondering. There were a l l
l l
i
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197 1 number of viewgraphs we didn't go through. Were there any O 2 of those points that you wanted to revisit here for the full 5
%j 3 committee?
4 MR. HOLAHAN: No. No, I think you can read them 5 there. They are really preliminary thoughts on how to 6 approach and make judgments on what to do with the various 7 issues.
8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: And it's clear that we have 9 differing views nnw . But maybe that's one of the reasons 10 why we have to study these things more carefully.
11 MR. KING: And the issue with NMSS. We brought it 12 up, but we didn't talk about it very much. They are 13 thinking about a safety goal policy -- in fact, one of the 14 NMSS gentlemen who's sitting back here is working on it --
() 15 and they do have some differences. I think there's overlap 16 between what we do and what they do, but it's not identical.
17 So I don't think one policy can fit all. I think a policy 18 for reactors is more straightforward than a policy for them, 19 and I -- ,
20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: That's called high-level 21 reviews.
22 mR. KING: Yeah. i 23 MR. REMICK: Although quantitative health 24 objectives I think apply. Core damage frequency doesn't 25 apply.
I l
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198 1 MR. KING: Yeah, but if you look at the QHOs, it
() 2 3
comes out. If you apply it to an exposure to an individual, it's a pretty small exposure, four millirem.
4 MR. REMICK: Medical is a big problem.
5 MR. KING: Yeah. And it's more than medical, I l
6 think. But clearly there's some overlap. We have to do 7 some coordination so that where there is overlap, we're 8 consistent. So that's an important issue.
9 MR. REMICK: Incidently, the office director of 10 NMSS at the time these safety goals were developed, very 11 shortly after, undertook to try to do that -- I'm sorry, I 12 forget his name now -- who was the office director at that 13 time, but eventually gave up on it, I guess. There is some 14 history of the office --
) 15 MR. MARKLEY: Is it Bill Burkes?
16 MR. REMICK: No. He was --
17 MR. MARKLEY: Bernero?
18 MR. REMICK: No. Before Bernero.
19 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I can't think of his name.
20 And also the issue of, let's see, land 21 contamination --
22 MR. KING: Societal.
23 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Societal.
24 MR. KING: Yeah.
25 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: And the issue of risk
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{
199 1 aversion, whether we want to have that. Boy, that can
() 2 3
consume the whole year.
MR. KING: Yeah. Well, my view, if they're here 1
4 in the discussion, is maybe we want to go back to the 5 Commission with some pros and cons and options for dealing i 6 with those, but not make a recommendation.
7 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: When?
8 MR. KING: A year from now.
9 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I think you should make a 10 recommendation whenever you feel like making one.
11 MR. KING: I think it will take us a year to even 12 come up with the right options and the prca and cons that go 13 with them.
14 DR. SEALE: Well, the bear is going to be land 15 contamination.
16 MR. KING: 1 think they will both be a bear. Just 17 the size of the bear is all you're talking about.
18 MR. HOLARAN: Just to complicate things, one of 19 the reasons that I would like to see things like large early 20 release frequency done at a different level of document is 21 I'm not sure that large early release frequency is the best 22 metric. I'm kind of partial to probability consequence 23 curves rather than picking values.
24 DR. SEALE: Fauller diagram.
25 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes, Farmer diagrams.
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1 200 1 DR. SEALE: Farmer diagrams. q
(. j 2 ,
MR. HOLAHAN: Yeah.
3 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: What do you mean 4 consequence? You mean the risk curves?
5 MR. HOLAHAN. Yes. CCDFs.
6 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: CDFs?
l 7 MR. HOLAHAN: No, no, no, no. CCDFs.
8 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: You know, fatalities versus 9 frequency.
10 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes.
11 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Okay.
12 MR. HOLAHAN: Yeah. Or iodine release versus 13 frequency or some other method.
14 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: I mean, a subsidiary --
15 MR. HOLAHAN: Yes. Yes.
16 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Well, that's an interesting 17 thought.
18 Well, is there anything else?
19 [No response.]
20 CHAIRMAN APOSTOLAKIS: Well, thank you very much.
21 Thank you very much, Forest, for coming. I appreciate it.
22 You gentlemen, Gary, Mark and Tom, thank you.
l 23 (Whereupon, at 3:10 p.m., the meeting was 24 concluded.] l 25 l t
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