ML20218A576
| ML20218A576 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 07/20/2020 |
| From: | Derek Widmayer Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| Widmayer, D, ACRS | |
| References | |
| Download: ML20218A576 (150) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards Future Plant Designs Subcommittee Docket Number: (n/a)
Location: teleconference Date: Monday, July 20, 2020 Work Order No.: NRC-0992 Pages 1-113 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 1
2 3
4 DISCLAIMER 5
6 7 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONS 8 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 9
10 11 The contents of this transcript of the 12 proceeding of the United States Nuclear Regulatory 13 Commission Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, 14 as reported herein, is a record of the discussions 15 recorded at the meeting.
16 17 This transcript has not been reviewed, 18 corrected, and edited, and it may contain 19 inaccuracies.
20 21 22 23 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 + + + + +
4 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 5 (ACRS) 6 + + + + +
7 FUTURE PLANT DESIGNS SUBCOMMITTEE 8 + + + + +
9 MONDAY 10 JULY 20, 2020 11 + + + + +
12 The Subcommittee met via Video 13 Teleconference, at 9:30 a.m. EDT, Dennis Bley, 14 Chairman, presiding.
15 COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
16 DENNIS BLEY, Chairman 17 RONALD G. BALLINGER, Member 18 CHARLES H. BROWN, JR., Member 19 VESNA B. DIMITRIJEVIC, Member 20 WALTER L. KIRCHNER, Member 21 JOSE MARCH-LEUBA, Member 22 DAVID A. PETTI, Member 23 JOY L. REMPE, Member 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 1 ACRS CONSULTANT:
4 DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL:
5 DEREK WIDMAYER 6 CHRISTOPHER BROWN 7
8 ALSO PRESENT:
9 RICHARD DENNING 10 ED LYMAN, Union of Concerned Scientists 11 SCOTT MOORE, NMSS 12 WILLIAM RECKLEY, NRR 13 JOHN SEGALA, NRR 14 MARTIN STUTZKE, NRR 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 9:35 a.m.
3 CHAIR BLEY: Good morning. The meeting 4 will now come to order. This is a meeting of the 5 Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, Subcommittee 6 on Future Plant Designs. I'm Dennis Bley, chairman of 7 the Subcommittee.
8 ACRS's members in attendance are Matt 9 Sunseri, Joy Rempe, Ron Ballinger, Charlie Brown, Walt 10 Kirchner, Dave Petti, Vesna Dimitrijevic and Jose 11 March-Leuba. Also in attendance is our consultant Mike 12 Corradini. Derek Widmayer, of the ACRS staff is the 13 Designated Federal Official for this meeting. And 14 Christopher Brown of the ACRS staff is the backup 15 designated federal official. This is a Skype meeting 16 and members are occasionally dropped off the web 17 connection or lose their sound, as just happened. If 18 that happens to me, Dr. Petti will seamlessly take 19 control of this meeting until I return.
20 The purpose of today's meeting is to 21 discuss the staff white paper entitled, Questions 22 Supporting ACRS and Public Interactions on Developing 23 a Risk-Informed, Technology-Inclusive Regulatory 24 Framework for Advanced Reactors. You may have noticed 25 that our meeting was announced as 10 CFR Part 53.
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4 1 That remains true. The rulemaking is required by the 2 Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, which 3 directs the NRC to complete a rulemaking to establish 4 a technology-inclusive regulatory framework for 5 optional use, commercial, advanced, nuclear reactor 6 applicants. Sorry, I lost my place.
7 This rulemaking is expected to create 10 8 CFR 53. In SECY 20-0032, the staff provided a 9 rulemaking plan to the commission that included a 10 request to eliminate the usual regulatory basis 11 document. In its stead they plan extensive public 12 outreach. The commission has not issued an SRM on the 13 rulemaking plan, so information about Commissioner 14 votes on the proposal are not yet public information.
15 This rulemaking is intimately related to 16 several technical issues that have come before our 17 committee in recent years, including NUREG-1860, which 18 was originally known as the Technology-Neutral 19 Framework. On that one, an Advanced Notice of 20 Proposed Rulemaking was developed back in 2006, but 21 was abandoned when the expected test application for 22 a pebble bed reactor design failed to materialize.
23 Also, the Next Generation Nuclear Plant White Papers, 24 the staff vision and strategy for review of non-LWR 25 applications, including implementation plans such as NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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5 1 Reg Guide 1.233, which endorses NEI 18-04. Functional 2 containment performance criteria, emergency 3 preparedness for SMRs and ONTs, population-related 4 considerations and advanced computer code evaluations.
5 We have written letter reports on all of 6 these precursor programs. The rulemaking will be the 7 culmination of all that previous work. It's come upon 8 us suddenly and I think many of us expected complete 9 trials of the OMP before there would be an actual 10 rulemaking. Back at our October 30, 2018, 11 subcommittee meeting, there was spirited discussion 12 about frequency consequence curves and their use, and 13 some indication that the use and final form might 14 evolve during trials. There were other areas of 15 discussion as well, and I expect those to continue 16 today.
17 One related issue for members, in several 18 of our reports we urged the staff to develop guidance 19 on mechanistic source terms. I am pleased to tell you 20 that the staff is providing the committee with two 21 documents. Derek will be delivering them to the 22 subcommittee members later this week, and we expect to 23 have a meeting to review them at some time in the 24 future. Today, the subcommittee will gather 25 information, analyze relevant issues and facts, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 1 formulate proposed positions and actions as 2 appropriate. This matter is scheduled to be presented 3 to the ACRS full committee at the October 2020 full 4 committee meeting.
5 The ACRS was established by statute and is 6 governed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, FACA.
7 NRC implements FACA in accordance with its regulations 8 found in Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations 9 Part VII. The committee can only speak through its 10 published letter reports. We hold meetings to gather 11 information and perform preparatory work that will 12 support our deliberations at full committee meetings.
13 The rules for participation in all ACRS meetings, 14 including today's, were announced in the federal 15 register on June 13, 2019.
16 The ACRS section of the US NRC public 17 website provides our charter, bylaws, agendas, letter 18 reports and full transcripts of all full and 19 subcommittee meetings, including the slides presented 20 there. The meeting notice and agenda for this meeting 21 were posted. As stated in the federal register notice 22 and the public meeting notice posted to the website, 23 members of the public who desire to provide written or 24 oral input to the subcommittee may do so, and should 25 contact the designated federal official five days NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 1 prior to the meeting as practicable.
2 Today's meeting is open to the public 3 attendance and we have received no written statements 4 or requests to make an oral argument. We have also 5 set aside ten minutes in the agenda for spontaneous 6 comments from members of the public attending or 7 listening to our meetings.
8 During the COVID pandemic today's meeting 9 is being held over Skype for ACRS and NRC staff 10 attendees. There is also a telephone bridge line 11 allowing public participation over the phone.
12 A transcript of today's meeting is being 13 kept, therefore, we request that meeting participants 14 on the bridge line identify themselves when they are 15 asked to speak, and to speak with sufficient clarity 16 and volume so that they can be readily heard. At this 17 time I ask attendees on Skype and on the bridge lines 18 to keep their devices on mute to minimize disruptions, 19 and unmute only when speaking.
20 We will now proceed with the meeting and 21 I call upon Joe Segala, Chief of the Advanced Reactor 22 Policy Branch of NRR, to make introductory remarks.
23 Joe.
24 MEMBER SEGALA: Thank you, and good 25 morning. I think a lot of my opening remarks you had NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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8 1 already gone over so I'll try to go quickly. We're 2 here today to brief the ACRS on our plans to develop 3 a new technology-inclusive, risk-informed performance-4 based regulation for advanced reactors, which we are 5 calling 10 CFR Part 53, and to obtain insights and 6 feedback from the ACRS subcommittee at the very early 7 stages of developing this new framework. Although we 8 are expecting to leverage our ongoing readiness 9 activities for this new rule, we are starting with a 10 clean slate in looking for new and innovative ways to 11 regulate advanced reactors.
12 As background, back in 2017, we developed 13 NRC's vision and strategy document and implementation 14 action plans or IAPs for enhancing our readiness to 15 effectively and efficiently review and regulate 16 advanced reactors. The IAPs include near-term, mid-17 term and long-term activities.
18 The near-term IAP activities are divided 19 into six strategies. Strategy one on training, two on 20 computer codes, three on developing guidance, four on 21 industry consensus codes and standards, five policy 22 issues, and six, communications. The ACRS recommended 23 at that time that NRC focus its near-term IAP 24 activities on strategies three and five, which we have 25 been doing. The mid and long-term IAPs included a new NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 1 activity to assess whether a new regulatory framework 2 should be developed for advanced reactors. However, 3 in January of 2019, the Nuclear Energy Innovation and 4 Modernization Act, or NEIMA, was signed into law and 5 required the NRC complete a technology-inclusive, 6 risk-informed, performance-based regulation for 7 advanced reactors by no later than the end of 2027.
8 As Dennis indicated, on April 2020, we 9 issued the rulemaking plan in SECY 20-032, which is 10 currently with the Commission. On July 13, we issued 11 a draft white paper with questions to help facilitate 12 discussions today with the ACRS on Part 53. We are 13 planning for this meeting to be the first of many 14 interactions with the ACRS on Part 53. In addition to 15 discussing Part 53, we will also be briefing the ACRS 16 today on Regulatory Guide 1.233, which was issued in 17 June of 2020 and endorses the licensing modernization 18 project or LMP methodology described in NEI 18-04, as 19 one acceptable methodology for non-light water reactor 20 designers to use to establish key parts of the 21 licensing basis and content of applications. LMP 22 focuses on identifying Licensing Basis Events, 23 classifying structure systems and components, and 24 ensuring adequate defense in depth. This briefing 25 will include a discussion on how we disposition the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 1 public comment received on the associated draft guide 2 1353.
3 As a follow-up to LMP we have started to 4 engage during several public meetings with the 5 southern led, NEI-coordinated and DOE-cost-shared, 6 Technology-Inclusive Content of Application Project or 7 TICAP. The purpose of TICAP is to provide guidance 8 for developing the content of the specific portions of 9 an application that are within the scope of the 10 licensing modernization project.
11 Similar to what was done for LMP, five 12 developers, General Electric, Hitachi, Westinghouse, 13 Kairos, TerraPower and X-energy, have expressed 14 interest in piloting TICAP starting in August of 2020.
15 In addition, the NRC is leading the Advanced Reactor 16 Content of Application Project, or ARCAP, which will 17 provide technology-inclusive, risk-informed and 18 performance-based application content guidance. ARCAP 19 is broader and encompasses the industry-led TICAP 20 project. ARCAP includes those portions of an 21 application outside the scope of the licensing 22 modernization project. We are planning to brief the 23 ACRS on TICAP and ARCAP in the future, and will be 24 working with the ACRS staff to schedule these 25 meetings.
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11 1 As Dennis also mentioned, we recently 2 published two mechanistic source term reports: One 3 from Sandia National Labs in January, and the other 4 from Idaho National Labs on June 30th on our public 5 website. They provide guidance for determining 6 technology-inclusive mechanistic source term for 7 offsite dose assessments for advanced reactors. These 8 reports were developed in response to letters from the 9 ACRS sent to the commission in 2018 and 2019 on the 10 licensing modernization project and our emergency 11 preparedness for SMRs and other new technologies 12 rulemaking where the ACRS expressed the importance of 13 the staff developing guidance on how source terms 14 should be developed.
15 And so we are prepared to support future 16 briefings on these reports of the ACRS. We are 17 looking forward to hearing from the ACRS today on Part 18 53, and any insights and feedback you all may have.
19 We expect that these activities will result in 20 additional interactions with the subcommittee over the 21 next year or so. This completes my opening remarks.
22 Thank you.
23 CHAIR BLEY: Thanks, John. I'm sorry I 24 misstated your name, to begin with. I guess we're now 25 going to Bill Reckley, is that right?
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12 1 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, Dennis. This is Bill.
2 CHAIR BLEY: All right, go ahead.
3 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, as Dr. Bley and John 4 mentioned, before we get into the discussions of our 5 development of Part 53, we wanted to provide an update 6 on our issuance of Reg Guide 1.233. Going to slide 7 two, as was mentioned, our first detailed interactions 8 with the ACRS, it actually started before September 9 2018, but in September 2018, we developed kind of the 10 complete package to bring before the ACRS and 11 subsequently the Commission and the public, with a 12 coordinated effort that involved issuance of what was 13 then draft revision N of NEI 18-04, the industry 14 guidance document. The staff had prepared Draft 15 Regulatory Guide 1353 and we also presented to the 16 ACRS a draft commission paper because we thought some 17 of the matters that were involved in this methodology 18 warranted Commission consideration.
19 Ultimately, we had a subcommittee meeting 20 in October and that was followed by the full committee 21 meeting in February 2019, and ACRS issued its letter 22 generally supportive of the methodology in March 2019.
23 Going on to slide three.
24 CHAIR BLEY: Bill?
25 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, sir.
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13 1 CHAIR BLEY: Just a quick comment for you 2 guys. As we move from testing an approach to an 3 actual rulemaking, I think we need to look for gaps, 4 and some areas have come up in our discussions about 5 recent submittals on particular projects, that 6 reminded us that especially when you have new designs 7 and designs that might have multiple hazards and 8 things for which we don't have 50 years of history to 9 help us out, when one looks for initiating events in 10 the scenarios that follow them, you need something 11 very creative, and you have to start kind of from a 12 blank sheet of paper, and some kind of systematic ways 13 to look.
14 That idea, isn't really laid out in your 15 SECYs or the Reg Guide, or in the NEI document.
16 They're hinted at as the main PRA standard. I'm not 17 certain where the non-LWR standard actually stands 18 right now, or I don't remember the details there. So 19 I'm not sure that area is well covered and we're going 20 to be pushing on that a little bit as we go forward.
21 So go ahead.
22 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, thank you. And I 23 think that would be fully appropriate. So with that 24 background, moving on then to slide three, and 25 catching up on what happened after our interactions NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 1 with the ACRS. So the ACRS letter was in March of 2 2019. We issued DG-1353 for public comment in April.
3 We did receive one public comment from Drs. Denning 4 and Mubayi, and we'll talk about that comment in the 5 next couple slides.
6 For various reasons, NEI went ahead and 7 issued Revision 1 in August of 2019. After some 8 internal delays we ultimately issued SECY-19-0117 in 9 December of 2019, to get the issues before the 10 commission. The commission's Staff Requirements 11 Memorandum was issued in May of 2020, and that, again, 12 was generally supportive of proceeding down the path 13 we had recommended. And we issued Reg Guide 1.233 in 14 June of this year, June 2020. Based on the 15 discussions that there were minimal changes to NEI 18-16 04 and minimal changes to Reg Guide 1.233 from the 17 drafts, we requested, and ACRS agreed not to do 18 further review.
19 Onto slide four, on the public comment, I 20 view the comment to kind of be in two different, but, 21 closely related issues. The first is on the actual 22 frequency consequence curve, Dr. Denning observed that 23 the use of a complementary cumulative distribution 24 function would enable applicants, designers, and the 25 staff, to see the contributions of event sequences to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 1 the integral risk since the CCDF, the complementary 2 cumulative distribution function is a way to look at 3 the integration of the risks.
4 The other part of the concern, again 5 somewhat related, is that looking as licensing 6 modernization project does in the NEI-18-04 and Reg 7 Guide 1.233, at individual event sequences and making 8 judgments on individual event sequences, that process 9 might introduce variability and flexibility to 10 analysts that would change where the event sequence 11 was plotted in terms of frequency, and that might 12 bring up an issue of, again, variability between 13 analysts, or even the ability to continually subdivide 14 event sequences in order to try to reduce the estimate 15 of the event frequency. So we looked at that comment.
16 MEMBER KIRCHNER: I'm sorry, John. Bill?
17 I'm sorry, John, 18 CHAIR BLEY: Mr. Kirchner?
19 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes, sorry, Dennis, this 20 is Walt Kirchner. May I ask a question of Bill?
21 CHAIR BLEY: Sure.
22 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, just for the 23 record, would you - I think I get it, but would you 24 define what a complementary cumulative distribution 25 function is in this situation?
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16 1 MR. RECKLEY: I'll give it an attempt and 2 then Marty Stutzke, if you're on the line, please come 3 to my rescue through the phone-a-friend option here.
4 But I think the public comment included this figure, 5 which I think is a good way to consider how that would 6 be used. Now this is plotting two different licensing 7 basis event plots. One in red, and I'm on slide 11 as 8 a backup slide. One in red for the first event, and 9 one in blue for the second event, and you can see the 10 contributions of the uncertainties as you plot that 11 over both frequency and consequence. The licensing 12 modernization project, NEI 18-04 methodology would 13 look - if those events were not part of the same 14 family, might look at those two events separately for 15 comparison to the frequency consequence target.
16 The complementary cumulative distribution 17 function would also look at them individually, but 18 also integrate those two events and all of the other 19 licensing basis events to give you the black line 20 which would give you the integrated risk for all the 21 LBEs. Marty, if you're on, can you maybe go a little 22 deeper?
23 MR. STUTSKE: Yeah, Bill, this is Marty.
24 Can you hear me?
25 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, thank you.
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17 1 MR. STUTSKE: Yeah, this is Marty Stutske, 2 I'm the senior technical advisor for PRA in NRR DANU.
3 The frequency consequence target used in the LMP is 4 nothing more than a scatterplot of PRA results where 5 the x-axis being the consequence, and the y-axis being 6 the frequency. So it's true, you're comparing 7 individual sequences against the limit line up there.
8 In contrast, a complementary cumulative 9 distribution function, the y-axis becomes an 10 exceedance frequency. So what you do then, is you 11 pick a consequence and you say what is the frequency 12 of the sum of the frequencies of all of the sequences 13 that have a consequence greater than or equal to your 14 x-axis value.
15 MR. CORRADINI: Marty? Marty?
16 MR. STUTSKE: Yes.
17 MR. CORRADINI: So I guess, I think I 18 understood why the y-axis is different. This is 19 Corradini. But I'm confused as to why there is a 20 series of points for any one LBE. I thought, unless 21 this is a uncertainty example for the red and the blue 22 line, but isn't there for a given LBE, an estimate of 23 a frequency and an estimate of a consequence? Or why 24 is it a family of points?
25 MR. STUTSKE: Okay, yeah, let me be clear.
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18 1 You're right. There should be one dot for each event 2 sequence family.
3 MR. CORRADINI: Okay.
4 MR. STUTSKE: With a consequence and a 5 frequency. So when you take the entire PRA results, 6 it's however many event sequence families you have is 7 the number of dots on the graph.
8 MR. CORRADINI: So why are the red and the 9 blue showing six dots for every LBE? That's what I 10 didn't understand with this.
11 MEMBER KIRCHNER: I think, Mike, it's 12 multiple, within a family of events that are similar, 13 it's multiple events. That was my takeaway from this.
14 MR. STUTSKE: Oh, so this is not one LBE, 15 this is a family of sequences.
16 MEMBER KIRCHNER: That's what I think. I 17 don't know what poly means on the graph, but that was 18 my sense. You got one set of events that are similar 19 and you look at them and you get a curve from each 20 individual event.
21 MR. CORRADINI: Okay.
22 MEMBER REMPE: So when we, like, this --
23 CHAIR BLEY: Richard Denning is on the 24 line, he can clarify it.
25 MR. DENNING: Can I clarify that? Is it NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 1 okay if I clarify? So if you interpret the former 2 curve there as a limit on the complementary cumulative 3 distribution function, it limits risk. That is, if 4 you integrate the curve against the y-axis, it 5 identically tells you what the total risk is. In the 6 interpretation that is in NEI 18-04, you don't limit 7 risk. You could, for example, have at one rem, you 8 could have a thousand sequences that each individually 9 satisfied the one rem, and would clearly have an 10 unacceptable risk. Okay?
11 Whereas, if you interpret it on the 12 complementary cumulative distribution function, you 13 actually limit the risk. Okay, you don't have this 14 ambiguity of where you could look at it, at a LOCA, 15 for example, and divide it if you wanted it to, into 16 five different kinds of LOCAs. If you've got to 17 consider a single point you also must consider, as is 18 done in NEI 18-04, you also have to consider some 19 uncertainty about that, right? Because we don't know, 20 in any event, you have to consider what's the 21 variability or uncertainty, and we will get into that 22 in detail.
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20 1 event like LOCAs, okay, and then you also, in order to 2 satisfy a level of risk, you then develop the 3 complementary cumulative distribution functions for 4 the total. And that's what that dashed black line is.
5 So you know that you have limited the risk of all of 6 the LBEs by taking into account the complementary 7 cumulative distribution function.
8 MR. MOORE: Excuse me, excuse me. I think 9 Member Rempe has been trying to say something.
10 MEMBER REMPE: Well, thank you, Scott.
11 When we discussed this with Karl Fleming, my 12 understanding is that if you had two sequences that 13 are 10 rem, or a 10 rem and a 12 rem in the group, the 14 analyst is obligated to pick the 12 rem, and then 15 multiply the frequency by two, so you eliminate the 16 gaming that could be performed by the analyst.
17 This has been discussed in some of our 18 prior meetings, and you are supposed to consider 19 uncertainty distributions in the consequences, as well 20 as the frequency, if you're going to accurately apply 21 this. And Dennis, maybe you can speak up too, but we 22 have mentioned this concern about gaming in the prior 23 discussions. Now, what I don't remember, and maybe 24 Bill Reckley or Marty Stutzke can tell me too is, did 25 that concern get put into the final documentation?
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21 1 Because this is not a new problem.
2 MR. RECKLEY: There's not a specific 3 mention except for referencing the ASME/ANS non-Light 4 Water Reactor PRA standard that talks about the 5 processes to be used. You're right in that this 6 particular issue has been talked about as part of 7 NGNP, and even before that, as part of the 8 methodology. The other thing that, going back to 9 slide six, no, slide five, in our disposition, is that 10 we don't want to come across the staking issue with 11 the proposal in the public comment. The use of 12 complementary cumulative distribution functions is a 13 good idea, it's actually mentioned in the non-Light 14 Water Reactor PRA standard as a methodology to look at 15 cumulative risks and to make sure that, as Dr. Denning 16 mentioned, you don't focus singly on specific event 17 sequences, but you're also looking at the aggregate or 18 total risk. That's handled within NEI 18-04, and the 19 Reg Guide by including separate aggregate or 20 cumulative risk measures against the NRC safety goals.
21 For example, that's the primary one.
22 That's a way to do it to also make sure 23 that you don't forget about the total risk. So there 24 would be advantages to using the CCDF. We looked for, 25 going on to slide six, one has to consider what the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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22 1 methodology was actually developed to do. In the 2 context of the Reg Guide we try to make clear that, 3 actually, even the target figure, the frequency 4 consequence target doesn't correspond to regulatory 5 limits. It is instead a tool that would help us do 6 the primary objectives of this methodology, which is 7 to identify the event sequences. This may go a little 8 bit to what you were mentioning earlier, Dr. Bley, of 9 whether there's enough guidance on how you identify, 10 and especially how you look at various, you know, 11 internal and external hazards. But we can have that 12 discussion as we go forward.
13 The methodology also, by looking at the 14 margins, and the impact of assuming various failures, 15 supports looking at the safety classification and the 16 performance criteria that would be set up for both 17 safety-related and non-safety related with special 18 treatment structure systems and components. And then 19 it supports a general evaluation of defense in depth.
20 Getting to Dr. Rempke's issue about 21 looking at event sequences and trying to make sure 22 that one would not game the system, if you will, we do 23 look, you have to look at the methodology and how it's 24 used. It has an emphasis on function and system level 25 evaluation. So that provides a certain degree of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 1 comfort. You also have the various reviews that would 2 be done as part of the PRA standard. The reviews of 3 the applicant and the designers themselves and then 4 the reviews by the NRC.
5 For those reasons, the staff continues to 6 think that the methodology described in 1353 and 7 subsequently the Reg Guide, is one acceptable way.
8 Going to the back of --
9 CHAIR BLEY: Bill? Bill? This is Dennis.
10 Let me jump in a second. I'd like to summarize a 11 couple things if I can, and then have you go ahead.
12 Kind of everybody who's spoken is right, and I want to 13 thank our former member, Rich Denning, for coming in 14 on the meeting today, I appreciate it. And I 15 mentioned that the coauthor of his comments, Vinod 16 Mubayi, was one of the primary authors of this area in 17 NUREG-1860, so well qualified. I think most PRA 18 practitioners, you know, they're generating a CCDF at 19 the end which is, as Marty well-described, an 20 exceedance plot which summarizes the overall results, 21 and, of course, that's a good measure.
22 I was reasonably comfortable with what was 23 proposed in the NEI document and that the staff has 24 supported because it does have this fallback of an 25 integrated risk measure included. So the idea is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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24 1 covered, and back to Joy and her discussion of Karl 2 Fleming's area. I think this is an area where if this 3 is going to become a rule then the guidance probably 4 needs to be clarified a little better on this idea of 5 families to avoid the problem. That's a problem 6 that's kind of everywhere, and looking at PRA results, 7 one has to be careful to understand how those 8 scenarios have been broken down. But maybe the 9 guidance there could be cleaned up a little bit. I 10 think at this point, Bill, go ahead. You've got your 11 actual target curve up here.
12 MR. RECKLEY: Well, and we can use it for 13 questions. I was just going to make one last comment 14 on the concern about frequencies and being able to 15 potentially, continually try to subdivide in order to 16 lower a frequency. And this is a practical 17 observation. It's not really built in, necessarily to 18 the process as a counter to that but just for the 19 committee members to be aware, our expectation is that 20 most designers are going to adopt a design objective 21 of making sure that all the design basis events and 22 beyond design basis events, don't exceed one rem or 23 some other measure in order to take advantage of 24 things like the Emergency Planning Zone Rule or the 25 siting, the population-related siting paper that we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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25 1 brought to the committee a little while ago.
2 And so as you as make that line a straight 3 line at one rem, or again, some other measure if we 4 pick it up, but it also is kind of a guard against 5 just trying to lower the thresholds. Again, it's not 6 a perfect system, but it is just a practical limit 7 that you don't gain very much by lowering your 8 frequency of all of the frequencies from 10 to the 9 minus 2 all the way down to the lower threshold is 10 using the same consequence measure of one rem. I just 11 want to make that observation.
12 So again, we did appreciate the comment 13 and again, from the staff's viewpoint we were 14 presented with a methodology and asked to make a 15 determination of whether that methodology was good 16 enough. It wasn't a decision as to whether there 17 could have been things that could be added. My own 18 observation is that if we were to pick up CCDF, again, 19 it would be most likely in addition to the 20 methodology, and as we said, it might be a very good 21 addition. It's already mentioned in the PRA standard 22 as a way to look at the cumulative risk.
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26 1 using the same curve or a different curve. If we went 2 down this route we would have to make all of those 3 decisions, but the decision we were asked to make was 4 whether what was proposed in NEI 18-04 was a workable 5 methodology, and we think that it is, and that's what 6 we reflected in our disposition of the comment.
7 Just in terms of updating, the last slide 8 here is just the Commission SRM on SECY-19-0117.
9 We'll get into this discussion also a little bit in 10 the Part 53 topic we're about to pick up, but the 11 commission generally endorsed this, and then also 12 reminded us in that last paragraph that the safety 13 goals and other established commission policies and 14 regulations related to safety and risk metrics are 15 applicable to advanced reactor in general, and then 16 how we would build that into the framework.
17 CHAIR BLEY: Thanks, Bill. This is Dennis 18 again. Two things, one I got knocked off the Skype 19 meeting for about a minute, which is okay, Dave 20 probably didn't even notice that happened. I 21 appreciate we've had a good discussion on this, and I 22 wanted to let that go as much as we could. At the end 23 of this meeting I'm going to ask the members to 24 consider whether we want to or need to have that 25 October full committee meeting. And I think the real NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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27 1 key to that is if we want to write a letter since all 2 but one of us is attending today. So keep that in 3 your minds for the end of your meeting. There are a 4 few of these issues that we might want to give a 5 heads-up early on, and that would be the only point, 6 and to let the commission know we're following this.
7 Please continue. Thanks.
8 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. So kind of along that 9 path, and switching topics a little bit, using slide 10 eight, just to talk about some of the future 11 interactions and getting to what Dennis was 12 mentioning. There's a fair number of topics on here, 13 so we will have to coordinate our interactions with 14 the ACRS and then when ACRS responds via letter, would 15 be appropriate. And when we get into Part 53, I think 16 we have some flexibility, but whatever would be the 17 most useful we can decide during that discussion.
18 So just going quickly, you're aware there 19 are design-specific applications that the ACRS will 20 need to weigh in on, and some others that they'll be 21 given the option to weigh in on, things like topical 22 reports. The remaining discussions today will be on 23 Part 53. As Dr. Bley mentioned, we did commission a 24 couple reports on mechanistic source term, and once 25 you have an opportunity to read those we can decide NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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28 1 what interactions would be requested.
2 I'll give you a warning ahead of time, 3 these are fairly high level discussions. Although 4 they might include examples of technologies, the two 5 reports we provided were not aimed at how do you 6 develop a mechanistic source term for a reactor 7 technology of x, y, or z. It was a kind of high-level 8 process for what needs to go into developing source 9 terms.
10 CHAIR BLEY: Bill? Excuse me. The last 11 indication we had was that you are also developing a 12 Reg Guide related to this. Is that still true?
13 MR. RECKLEY: I'll let John weigh in. At 14 this point we may as we go further down and see what 15 the reaction is to these reports and whether it 16 warrants going to the next step of issuing an actual 17 Regulatory Guide, or if we start to look at individual 18 technologies, whether it makes more sense to have a 19 Regulatory Guide that would follow up.
20 We also have some technology-specific 21 reports. Oak Ridge is doing some work, Molten Salts, 22 Argonne and Idaho on fast reactors and gas-cooled 23 reactors. So one of the discussions maybe we could 24 have during a committee meeting is where would 25 regulatory guidance in the form of a Reg Guide NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 1 actually be the most useful.
2 CHAIR BLEY: Okay, thanks, yeah, we'll 3 look forward to pursuing that with you. Go ahead.
4 Well, before you go to your next bullet, John 5 introduced the next bullet, and if you can say a 6 little more about what you're talking about here with 7 this TICAP thing, I'd appreciate it.
8 MR. RECKLEY: Sure. Okay, so we mentioned 9 in Reg Guide 1.233, kind of as a predictor, that we 10 will need additional guidance. At this point we have 11 two Reg Guides specifically for advanced reactors, and 12 one of the ones that we thought would be useful is to 13 go into more detail on actually what goes into an 14 application.
15 So that is the content of applications 16 discussion. We've broken that into two parts. The 17 first part is the unplanned event portion of an 18 application. So if you think traditionally, this 19 would be FSAR Chapters 15, the safety analysis.
20 Chapter 19, the PRA assessments, as well as the 21 discussions of individual systems and their roles in 22 addressing those unplanned events. Also some of the 23 work in the early FSAR chapters on hazards, external 24 hazard assessments, for example.
25 So the unplanned event portions of an NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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30 1 application is what is included in TICAP, and it's a 2 significant part of a safety analysis report. We are 3 working with kind of a coordinated effort that's 4 similar to licensing modernization, as John mentioned.
5 There's a DOE-cost-shared initiative with industry, 6 and we expect to get a guidance document from NEI that 7 would take and build upon NEI 18-04 to say, from that 8 methodology, this is how you transfer it into a FSAR.
9 One example would be a safety-related system would get 10 this amount of detail in a discussion. This is what 11 would need to be described for a non-safety-related 12 with special treatment kind of SSC. This is how the 13 performance criteria would be established and 14 monitored, for example. So that's the TICAP portion.
15 MEMBER REMPE: Bill, this is Joy. Can I 16 interrupt you?
17 MR. RECKLEY: Sure.
18 MEMBER REMPE: I was planning to bring 19 this up in the next part of the discussion, but I 20 can't resist here. When we first started doing this, 21 most of us, as I had envisioned, you'd have reactor 22 where you put fuel in it at the site, and then you 23 take the fuel out and you, at some day dispose of the 24 vessel or whatever. Nowadays we're talking about 25 bringing a loaded core to the site, and maybe you do NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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31 1 a few things once you get there, but then after you 2 run the reactor you take the loaded core someplace 3 else.
4 Is your vision considering this not only 5 for how you're going to select the licensing basis 6 events, but also the content of the application?
7 Because you might have more risk with this 8 transportation issue than you do with the actual 9 operation of a small modular reactor.
10 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah. And the next-to-the-11 last bullet on microreactor issues, for example, one 12 of the things we'll have to do, and we'll have to work 13 with industry on what is the content of their guidance 14 under TICAP, and how far are they going to take it to 15 address the issues that you just mentioned. If that's 16 not picked up as part of that effort, we could pick it 17 up in the subsequent discussion, which is things that 18 we're putting under advanced reactor content to 19 application, or issues that are not picked up with the 20 unplanned event.
21 I don't believe that TICAP would probably 22 pick up transportation, for example. So maybe we need 23 to pick that up in advance reactor constant to 24 applications. We may be able to take large advantage 25 of existing guidance on transportation containers and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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32 1 guidance and requirements, but we will have to make 2 that assessment.
3 So this has a lot of moving parts, as 4 you're hinting at, and exactly where any particular 5 issue lands, we are still kind of working out and 6 coordinating. But we do have them all on the radar 7 screen.
8 MEMBER REMPE: Yeah, because even, you 9 know, licensing basis event may not just be when the 10 reactor is sitting there running, and so yeah, I think 11 we need to broaden our perspective. And I'm glad to 12 hear that the staff is thinking about it even if we 13 don't have an answer yet.
14 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, thank you. And Walt?
15 I think somebody?
16 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes, Bill, this is Walt.
17 It would seem to me, Bill, one area that would in your 18 guidance -- I'm seeking some clarity in the use of 19 terminology. Let's start with safety-related versus 20 non-safety-related or whatever, or not safety-related.
21 For example, often we are presented in presentations 22 from the staff, we have safety-related, not safety-23 related, and then important to safety, not important 24 to safety. So sometimes that framework is used, and 25 then sometimes what we hear is it's safety-related or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 1 not safety-related, risk-significant, not risk-2 significant, and so on.
3 So given that this is more of a risk-4 informed approach, it seems to me some clarity is 5 needed in terminology and definition so that when it 6 comes time to break down, not the contents of the 7 application, but the contents of the reactor design 8 itself, and classify SSCs, I think this is going to be 9 a real challenge for you going forward.
10 MR. RECKLEY: We agree. Actually, when we 11 get into the Part 53 questions, one of them goes 12 exactly to terminology because as you mention, within 13 the existing Part 50 and 52, there are definitions.
14 And those were clarified in various papers regarding 15 important to safety, they were also then further 16 enhanced under the passive reactors, and the 17 introduction of RTNSS, Regulatory Treatment of Non-18 Safety Systems. And then 50.69 has its own categories 19 that you mentioned that are based on risk 20 significance. And you have all of that history under 21 Part 50, and then what we ultimately did under Reg 22 Guide 1.233 was introduce yet another set of 23 terminology.
24 MEMBER KIRCHNER: I know. That's my 25 concern.
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34 1 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
2 MEMBER KIRCHNER: I think clarity here is 3 needed.
4 MR. RECKLEY: Right, and I think we've 5 talked about this in our past interactions, was that 6 that is a challenge. We're expecting under Reg Guide 7 1.233 that anybody that uses the methodology adopts 8 the terminology out of NEI 18-04, but we do realize 9 that sets up a different definition and a different 10 discussion than maybe a similar design that would pick 11 it up under Part 50. And we've tried, and I don't --
12 any suggestions would be appreciated.
13 CHAIR BLEY: This is Dennis again.
14 Thinking about this TICAP and about Part 53 as well, 15 Mike Corradini often says, you know, work the problem 16 backwards. What's, you know, kind of to the old 17 style, what's the worst thing that could happen to 18 this? And you've got some documents that hinted that 19 it would seem that the content of applications and the 20 depth of applications ought to be linked to the worst 21 -- kind of the worst things that could happen, 22 especially when we start thinking about some of the 23 microreactors, which I assume would be under this same 24 umbrella, so there needs to be some kind of scaling 25 that's built in based on the kind of maximum source NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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35 1 term one would be dealing with. Is that part of what 2 you're planning?
3 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, in that Reg Guide 1.233 4 mentions that people might want to take an approach 5 like a maximum hypothetical accident approach. We 6 have had some discussions with individual designers 7 that are using or contemplating using that kind of 8 approach. One of the things, and it's all related, as 9 you mention, but maybe when you look at the 10 mechanistic source term documents that if an applicant 11 is able, or a designer is able to show that hazard 12 just is not able to put the radionuclides on a path 13 for release because they're retained within the fuel, 14 or maybe the first and second barriers, we've said 15 we're amenable to looking at those kind of approaches 16 if they can demonstrate them. It might be a big if, 17 but that's from a process-wise, we'd be open to it if 18 they can show it. And that kind of approach is used, 19 for example, in some of the research and test 20 reactors.
21 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, this Walt Kirchner 22 again. On this topic, this is another area where I 23 find some clarity is needed. Source term has 24 different meanings for different people or applicants, 25 I would guess as well.
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36 1 The traditional source term if you're 2 going through the 10 CFR 50 and 52 process, is to 3 hypothesize a maximum creditable accident no matter 4 what, and then use that as the quote-unquote "source 5 term." Now any reactor that's operated by definition 6 is going to have fission product inventory buildup.
7 Depending on the fuel type used, that may be a hazard 8 in and of itself without operation, et cetera.
9 So there is always, with any advanced 10 reactor, or any micro-reactor, or any large reactor, 11 there always is a hazard. There seems to be -- I 12 think you're going to be presented with arguments that 13 we don't have a source term. And when people say that 14 they're thinking of 10 CFR 50 and 52. But clearly, 15 any reactor that's operated, builds up fission 16 products and hence presents a hazard, and that's what 17 the NRC has to assure, the adequate protection of the 18 public. So that it seems to me that you're going to 19 run into a lot of arguments about source term.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. And it's sometimes, as 21 you mentioned, a terminology issue. They have an 22 inventory, obviously, and I think maybe when you look 23 through mechanistic source term papers you can see 24 we're trying to get the discussion about where are the 25 inventories and how are you controlling them or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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37 1 inhibiting their release as being the topic, as 2 opposed to, as we have for Light Water Reactor saying 3 the source term is what is put into the containment 4 and then model the containment for what is the public 5 dose. So I think we'll continue to have some 6 terminology challenge as we go through.
7 In general, for non-Lights, the source 8 term as we're using it is actually what leaves the 9 last physical barrier. In other words, if you're an 10 analyst, what would you input into your atmospheric 11 dispersion code? But again, that's different because 12 we're now saying it's on the other side of the last 13 wall, if you will.
14 MR. CORRADINI: Bill, is that any 15 different than TID 18.444 and the original approach to 16 Part 100? It's essentially the same thing.
17 MR. RECKLEY: Well, it's somewhat the 18 same. It's just, again, it's largely in my view a 19 terminology issue. The source term as it was defined 20 in TID and NUREG-1465 is the radionuclides that are 21 put into the containment, and that's what's called 22 source term. And then you model it for what gets out 23 of containment, and then you model it for how it's 24 dispersed.
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38 1 structure might vary and as the discussion went, as 2 Dr. Bley mentioned, one of the first papers we did was 3 the functional containment paper, the source term as 4 we use that term, is now the radionuclides that are 5 past the last physical barrier.
6 MR. CORRADINI: Okay, good point. I'm 7 sorry, you said it much more clearly.
8 MEMBER PETTI: So Bill, this is Dave 9 Petti. It just seems that with all, even just the 10 discussion among the committee here, that some sort of 11 a document from NRC, some sort of guidance is 12 necessary to help people understand what the rules of 13 the road are. My view is there may be more than one 14 way to get to a source term, to lay out, sort of, some 15 options, but at least try to remove some of the 16 confusion that could exist, but out of such guidance.
17 I think there will always be questions, but I think 18 without guidance you'll have even more and it will 19 just take longer to, you know, to get everybody 20 through the process.
21 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, thanks, Dave. And 22 we'll finish this up and then move into Part 53, which 23 will be another opportunity for us to try to clarify 24 all of this. The other thing, and this is just an 25 additional complication, is it will also matter what NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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39 1 you're doing that assessment for. And we may approach 2 in the future where, from a licensing standpoint, you 3 can do as Dennis mentioned, and have some very - try 4 to avoid the term - but very conservative assumptions 5 that would go in and basically say for licensing 6 purposes we're taking a simplified approach because we 7 think we can maintain the inventory or prevent the 8 inventory from release, whereas if you're doing a more 9 best estimate, an actual analysis, you may have to go 10 into more detail.
11 And a designer might need to do that for 12 other reasons, like occupational dose or economic 13 reasons, to do more detailed assessments of where the 14 radioactive material might end up or might present a 15 challenge, even if you can show with high confidence 16 that it's not going to get out of the facility. So 17 this is all, you know, it's all a complicated endeavor 18 on the part of both the designers and us to try to 19 navigate.
20 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, this is Walt 21 Kirchner. Sorry for the frequent interruptions. No, 22 I'm not sorry; I apologize. The one thing that was on 23 one of your earlier view graphs and also you had 24 presented in past meetings, I don't think on the 25 tabletop exercises conducted today, people went NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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40 1 completely through the defense in depth part of the 2 exercise. And I'm wondering what guidance you're 3 going to provide to get out of one person's judgement 4 versus another on what is sufficient defense and 5 depth.
6 How are you going to generally kind of 7 wrap that part of this up in terms of guidance? When 8 is enough, enough? When is, for example, just no 9 matter what, you know, we had a former member who 10 would say I just want an essentially leak-tight 11 containment, period. And that's, of course, also 12 subject to definition, but you get my point that, you 13 know, in the final analysis, you've done all this and 14 so on, but defense in depth, when is enough, enough, 15 and how do you decide that?
16 MR. RECKLEY: Right, and other than trying 17 to follow through with the process that was laid out 18 in NEI 18-04 and the Reg Guide, that's currently where 19 we are. There is, as you mentioned, a certain 20 subjective element to that, engineering judgment 21 element to that, that will maintain.
22 How we decide when is enough, enough gets 23 complicated because going back to the backup slide on 24 slide ten, what we expect is that designers are going 25 to come in and try to utilize the margins that are NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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41 1 available to them through the designs in order to get 2 flexibility somewhere else, like emergency planning 3 zones is the common example, or population related 4 siting considerations we talked about a couple months 5 ago. Or there will be something else.
6 The last bullet on future interactions is 7 staffing.
8 CHAIR BLEY: If I might interrupt yet 9 again. I think, Bill, the most challenging area where 10 a designer will want to use margin is cutting down on 11 the number of systems that are safety-related because 12 there's an economic cost associated with that.
13 MR. RECKLEY: And we -- yes.
14 CHAIR BLEY: That's where I think you'll 15 run into the problem, yes, on emergency planning and 16 so on, but that one probably becomes where the 17 designer first tries to use the margin that he or she 18 believes they have versus the consequence curve, the 19 frequency consequence curve.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Right. Yeah, and a lot of 21 that will be -- within this methodology I think it 22 provides the opportunity to hopefully give the 23 designer the ability to come in and say, We're gonna 24 add this system for defense and depth. The 25 methodology as it stands would generally allow that to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 1 be done without making it safety related. Go ahead, 2 Dennis.
3 CHAIR BLEY: This is for Walt and others.
4 This is a place where I felt NEI 18-04 made a good 5 step beyond what was in 1860 15 years ago. They 6 really laid out a structured approach for looking at 7 the defense in depth issue and considering various 8 different approaches to that. It's one area where, at 9 least the last time we talked, the tabletops hadn't 10 fully exercised this methodology, and I guess I'd sure 11 like to see that at some point. This is an area we 12 might dig into in a future meeting somehow.
13 MR. RECKLEY: Right, okay. The other part 14 of it is we will see as it gets exercised, and that 15 will be where we need to remain agile enough to see 16 that some of this work that's going on in parallel, if 17 you keep track of it and incorporate any lessons, both 18 from the application of this in designs like Kairos, 19 and you guys were looking at some of those topical 20 reports, or a different committee is, we're going to 21 be watching how it's applied to the versatile test 22 reactor. They're going to use this kind of 23 methodology. So we will keep an eye on it.
24 Trying to finish this up, and all of this 25 is a great discussion, and it feeds right into Part NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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43 1 53, that we're going to get into next so I don't think 2 that we're really getting behind because a lot of this 3 is the same discussion.
4 So I tried to explain what TICAP was, 5 that's the unplanned events portions of a safety 6 analysis report. There would be other guidance on 7 other things outside of the final safety analysis 8 report, sections on unplanned events, the normal 9 effluents, for example, technical specifications.
10 There's some interest in additional 11 guidance on what goes into a construction permit under 12 Part 50 because it's been a long time since we've 13 looked at a Part 50 construction permit, especially 14 for a reactor design that's significantly different 15 than large light waters. The next to the last bullet 16 I mentioned.
17 There is a pending SECY paper on 18 microreactor issues, and then out of that paper the 19 gist is an information paper that identifies various 20 issues, including the fact that micros might be 21 deployed differently and might bring up issues like 22 transportation and manufacturing even more so than 23 what we've dealt with to date.
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44 1 discussions internally, is on staffing, and questions 2 like if a reactor can show inherent features, can 3 those features negate the need for licensed operators.
4 Would it be possible to go to autonomous operations 5 either through digital systems or inherent mechanical, 6 physical attributes, remote operations.
7 So all of these questions, we're just 8 beginning to discuss what would go into a future paper 9 on staffing, and it may be one or more of these 10 issues, depending on the timing and the applications 11 that we get in and the feedback we get from industry.
12 So I guess all of this --
13 MEMBER REMPE: Bill, this is Joy.
14 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah?
15 MEMBER REMPE: And I didn't interrupt you 16 when I wanted to about the construction permit 17 application, and what's required. You do have an 18 ongoing effort with the SHINE Medical Isotopes effort, 19 and there's a lot of coordination going on in the 20 staff because I think that's a good example that could 21 shed some light.
22 MR. RECKLEY: There is, and I'm sorry I 23 should have mentioned that. Yeah, we're looking very 24 closely at what was done to issue that construction 25 permit and then as they enter the next phase, how you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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45 1 go from the construction permit review, over to the 2 operating license review. So thank you. Yes?
3 MEMBER REMPE: Thanks.
4 MR. RECKLEY: So the Part 53 discussions 5 in a different slide presentation, Dennis, are we 6 ready to jump into that one?
7 CHAIR BLEY: It's not. I'm going to call 8 a break at this point, and I think you're right. I 9 think we've made a lot of progress through some of 10 the, at least background material, and even some of 11 the questions in the Part 53 discussion. Maybe when 12 we start there you can go through the first few slides 13 pretty quickly because I think you already talked 14 about many of them.
15 Let's take a break. It's ten 'til. Let's 16 come back at ten after. What will that be back east?
17 That will be ten after 9:00 here. Ten after 11:00 18 east coast time. And we'll go right through, and if 19 we need it, we might take after an hour, we might take 20 a short five or ten minute break then before we finish 21 up.
22 So at this point we'll take a break. When 23 we come back we'll be on the next slide set. If we 24 can get those set up ahead of time. I'll see you back 25 here at ten after.
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46 1 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 2 off the record at 10:49 a.m. and resumed at 11:10 3 a.m.)
4 CHAIR BLEY: Okay. It's 10 minutes after, 5 we're ready to start again. Bill, will you be going 6 ahead or will it be by Bill?
7 MR. RECKLEY: This is Bill Reckley. I'll 8 continue.
9 CHAIR BLEY: Okay. You're up.
10 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Thank you. So as we 11 mentioned, some of this I can go through relatively 12 quickly because we talked about it in the last part, 13 including the background. We have considered 14 rulemakings in the past as has been mentioned, the 15 Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act 16 directed us to do a rulemaking and to have it 17 completed no later than December 2027.
18 To schedule, as Dennis mentioned in the 19 introduction, we don't have a Staff Requirements 20 Memorandum yet. We are aware, and the interaction 21 with Senator Barrasso is a public record that at least 22 a number of senators expressed a desire for us to 23 speed it up. And the Commission in the response said 24 they would give direction to the NRC staff on a 25 schedule. So 2027 is the latest schedule. One should NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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47 1 not be surprised if we get some encouragement to go 2 quicker.
3 I'll go into that, as Dennis mentioned, 4 maybe with ACRS interactions in a couple slides. One 5 of the things we maybe didn't talk about under NEIMA 6 is their definitions, so on Slide 3, these have come 7 out of the act. Advanced reactors means a nuclear 8 vision or fusion reactor, including a prototype plant 9 that has significant improvements. And then the act 10 lists those in terms of proliferation-resistance, 11 risk, economics, fuel, and a number of attributes that 12 would be an improvement over existing plants, or 13 plants that were under construction.
14 So our working scope with this then is 15 light water small modular reactors, non light water 16 reactors, and fusion reactors.
17 MEMBER PETTI: So Bill, can I ask you a 18 question? What are you going to do about fusion?
19 MR. RECKLEY: There's two thoughts 20 currently. And it's as good a place as any to talk 21 about it because I don't talk about fusion too much 22 throughout the presentation. The first thought would 23 be if you have a risk framework, can fusion actually 24 just be treated like any other reactor?
25 Our initial thoughts are that because the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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48 1 Atomic Energy Act spells out for production and 2 utilization facilities and their use of special 3 nuclear material, the Atomic Energy Act itself sets 4 out a number of requirements that we would have to 5 fulfill for fusion. And they may not all be needed.
6 We're still assessing, but it may be that although 7 fusion would be addressed through this rulemaking, 8 that there is a distinction made between fusion 9 reactors and those using special nuclear material with 10 a thought that the fusion reactors, if it pans out, 11 might be handled more like -- I won't say exactly 12 like, but more like a materials licensee facilities 13 like accelerators.
14 So we're still just thinking about that.
15 We had planned a workshop with the Office of Science, 16 Fusion Energy Sciences within DOE in March. And 17 unfortunately, that was delayed because of the COVID.
18 We're looking now to have a workshop or a public forum 19 again with the Fusion Industry Association, DOE, other 20 stakeholders in the September, October timeframe.
21 We'll be talking about specifically developing a 22 regulatory framework for fusion within this activity.
23 MEMBER PETTI: So Bill, back in the 90s I 24 authored a DOE safety standard on fusion, and that DOE 25 standard got -- you have to Google it, Safety of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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49 1 Magnetic Fusion and Facilities or something.
2 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah.
3 MEMBER PETTI: I want to say DOE 6005.
4 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
5 MEMBER PETTI: The framework is very 6 similar to LMP. We borrow it heavily from, at the 7 time, it was through GA framework. The difference is 8 in the details, right? The nature of the radioactive 9 materials. It's a much more distributed system in 10 terms of hazards because you're pumping tritium all 11 over the place. So there are differences in terms of 12 the details, but I think you probably can fit it in at 13 the high level. You know, they had a frequency-14 consequence curve.
15 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
16 MEMBER PETTI: All of that sort of stuff.
17 So it's just that when you, you know, the devil's in 18 the details. It has to look at it in a different way.
19 But I think there could be a lot of overlap in --
20 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, I've looked at those 21 and I think you're right. And the part of the 22 discussion might be whether, again going back to the 23 Atomic Energy Act and all it requires for facilities 24 using special nuclear material, whether we would want 25 to encumber fusion with all of those. It may be that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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50 1 that's the easiest way to go. We haven't decided yet.
2 And then the other thing within fusion, I 3 think most people are familiar with facilities like 4 ITER, the big facility under construction in France, 5 but we'll have to decide. Fusion has as many 6 approaches because of the isotopes you're able to work 7 with, and the size of the reactor that you might be 8 working with. They are just as varied or maybe even 9 more varied than fission reactors. And so if we're 10 going to try to address all of those, it would be 11 amenable to a risk informed approach like you're 12 mentioning.
13 Then the other definition within NEIMA is 14 for the regulatory framework and the technology-15 inclusive framework. Going down specifically to the 16 rulemaking plan that we submitted to the commission in 17 April, SECY-20-0032. And Dennis mentioned, our first 18 proposal is to develop a new part. That provides us 19 kind of an opportunity we think to as much as we can 20 start with a clean slate and try to construct 21 something that would be the best for a range of 22 technologies.
23 The next slide, I'll just go to the --
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51 1 the advisory committee. And so as we get into this, 2 and then hopefully at the end I'll try to go through 3 this all relatively quickly. Most of this 4 presentation is a list of 14 questions. I don't plan 5 to spend a lot of time on each question.
6 We can go through them and maybe pick 7 which ones might be of most interest. But I think the 8 biggest thing to keep in mind is that this is one of 9 those rare opportunities where we're starting 10 relatively with a clean slate, and we're at the 11 beginning of the process. So how we interact would be 12 important.
13 When the ACRS would decide to send us 14 recommendations, again, we can work that out. I would 15 imagine you would especially want to do that if you 16 thought we were going down the wrong path. So 17 although the 14 questions read as if we are totally 18 from a blank slate, we have given it a little thought.
19 And we use this slide in public meetings to talk about 20 how we thought part 53 might look. And the first part 21 was kind of a decision, and we talk about this within 22 the rulemaking plan.
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52 1 both going to miss an opportunity. And two, it's just 2 very difficult to talk about those first steps without 3 having a good understanding of how the whole project 4 life cycle fits together. And so the proposal in the 5 rulemaking plan is that we go beyond licensing and we 6 build a whole regulatory framework, not just a 7 licensing framework, but a regulatory framework.
8 So how would that work? One of the key 9 things would be to clearly define what are the highest 10 level safety or risk metrics. So what are the 11 fundamental safety functions, what are the metrics 12 like the 5034 criteria of 25 rem over the course of 13 the event at the low population zone. Like the NRC 14 safety goals. How they get worked in in terms of risk 15 metrics, the use of something similar to the frequency 16 consequence targets. And this might be an opportunity 17 to go to something more that would be like a limits 18 exceedance factor.
19 With the emphasis we put before, remember 20 that the frequency consequence targets, NEI 18-04, we 21 have specifically said we are not able to correlate 22 those to existing requirements because existing 23 requirements weren't defined in those terms. And that 24 turned out to be problematic throughout the Next 25 Generation Nuclear Plant project. And so early on, we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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53 1 decided in NEI 18-04 that we would ask, and the 2 industry guidance document changed those from top 3 level regulatory requirements to FC targets.
4 Well we're now going to be doing a 5 rulemaking. If we were to decide to put a frequency-6 consequence figure in the rule, that could now then be 7 a regulatory requirement, and you could use something 8 like limit exceedance factors against that curve if we 9 wanted to do that.
10 Then you would also have regulatory 11 requirements just like we do now on normal l 12 effluents. Those things that are in Part 20 and also 13 for light water reactors in Appendix I to Part 50 on 14 normal effluents. And then there'll be other factors 15 that we have to define within the rules, or make sure 16 other rules are there to identify.
17 So once you're able to define those actual 18 risk metrics, safety metrics, the idea was that the 19 rule would then look and say, "What is the role of the 20 various parts of the lifecycle in meeting those 21 requirements?" So at the highest level, the 22 functional design, how are you looking at those 23 performance metrics?
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54 1 metrics? How do you maintain that during 2 construction? For example, what testing you do to 3 make sure that the equipment actually has the 4 capabilities that were intended to be built in at the 5 functional or system level.
6 Then during operations, how are you doing 7 configuration control, how are you doing surveillance 8 and maintenance, how are you controlling design 9 changes. And then ultimately, what needs to be done 10 during retirement or decommissioning phase to maintain 11 those requirements?
12 So all of this is currently within our 13 framework for the operating fleet. It's just a matter 14 of again starting with a clean slate. This is an 15 opportunity to try to define the role of each one of 16 these project lifecycle parts. And maybe importantly, 17 the relationship of one part to another.
18 And those that have been around for a long 19 time, including myself, much of Part 50 was really 20 aimed at the, at least initially, at that functional 21 and system level design requirements. TMI came back 22 and reinforced some of the importance of operating, of 23 those things that you do during planned operations.
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55 1 operation.
2 But the thought is this is an opportunity 3 to look at this as an integrated system. And in some 4 cases, you may be able to benefit by knowing what is 5 going to be required during operations in order for a 6 designer, and just as importantly for us as the staff 7 to say, "In terms of how deeply I look at a design, I 8 can build into that logic what I know will be done 9 during operations to maintain configuration to do 10 surveillance and maintenance." So again, I'm not --
11 this is done now. We're just trying to lay it out a 12 little bit from the very beginning.
13 CHAIR BLEY: Bill?
14 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, go ahead.
15 CHAIR BLEY: Two related questions. This 16 is Dennis Bley. One, your discussion sounds like you 17 already started a white paper on this. So first 18 question is is that true, are we going to see 19 something like that? And then the second question is 20 if you decide to make Part 53 whole and not relay on 21 Part 50 and Part 52, does your thinking lean toward 22 having all of the approaches in 50 and 52? And by 23 that I mean construction permits, early site permit, 24 either a design cert and Combined License or an 25 operating license. Are you thinking about including NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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56 1 all of those, or have you given all of that much 2 thought yet?
3 MR. RECKLEY: Our working assumption is 4 that we'll address all of those. And then it's just 5 a sentence or two within the rulemaking plan. And 6 then also see if there is something in addition that 7 we might add.
8 In other words, we would plan at this 9 point to support under Part 53 either the traditional 10 two-step CP, construction permit operating license, or 11 any of the combinations that are allowed under Part 12 52. And then we're also looking to see if there's 13 anything in addition that we might be able to do 14 beyond that.
15 MEMBER BROWN: Bill, this is Charlie 16 Brown. Can you hear me?
17 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, sir.
18 MEMBER BROWN: Okay. Just an 19 amplification of Dennis's question, or a backtrack 20 maybe, under requirements definitions -- you open with 21 that. That's how you kind of lead into this whole 22 picture. Does that mean an examination of like all the 23 general design criteria?
24 Just for information, since I'm a meaty 25 guy as opposed to commercial guy, went through and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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57 1 looked at all the GDCs yesterday. And a good bit of 2 those are very, very generic. Does that mean a re-3 examination or a generation of a whole new class of 4 general design criteria?
5 MR. RECKLEY: Excuse me. the general 6 design criteria and then the advanced-reactor design 7 criteria, developed under regulatory guide 1.232, are 8 generally organized around the same fundamental safety 9 functions that we talk about elsewhere. We talk about 10 it in NEI 18-04. It's talked about in various NRC 11 documents, even IAEA documents, talk about basically 12 the fundamental safety functions as being the 13 retention of the radionuclides. That's the ultimate 14 goal.
15 And then the related safety functions such 16 as controlling power level or reactivity, and 17 controlling heat removal, sometimes also introduced as 18 things like controlling chemical attack. That might 19 be important for some design. So I think the notion 20 would be there that we would define within these 21 highest level requirements something analogous to the 22 general design criteria.
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58 1 in the GDC. Which again, align generally with those 2 three fundamental safety functions. But yes, there 3 would be something there along those lines.
4 MEMBER REMPE: Bill? Charlie, are you 5 done?
6 MEMBER BROWN: No. Can I finish the 7 question?
8 MEMBER REMPE: Oh yeah, go ahead. I'm 9 sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt.
10 MEMBER BROWN: No, that's okay. Thank 11 you, Joy. You talked about them being a technology --
12 how did you phrase that when you answered me?
13 MR. RECKLEY: Well we use the phrase 14 technology-inclusive.
15 MEMBER BROWN: Yeah. I looked at them 16 from that standpoint and most of them fundamentally 17 address the things you talk about, heat removal, 18 boundaries, radiation requirements, et cetera. So 19 they're pretty technology-inclusive as they are. And 20 it sounds like what you're telling me is that Appendix 21 A would be something all total new if you have an 22 Appendix A.
23 I mean, that's what Appendix A is, is the 24 GDCs fundamentally. So it sounds like you're thinking 25 about generating a new Appendix A with however you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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59 1 want to phrase it, with one through whatever they turn 2 out to be. That's the way I got your answer. Is that 3 right or wrong?
4 MR. RECKLEY: I'd say it's kind of early.
5 But I'll just give you my thinking, was that we 6 wouldn't have Appendix A. But this would be within 7 the main body of the regulations. But again, that's 8 largely format to me. Obviously Appendix A is an 9 appendix, but it's one of the most important parts of 10 Part 50.
11 So if you had rolled the GDC into, you 12 know, and gave it a number instead of an appendix, it 13 would be largely the same. But the level of detail 14 and how far you go down in those system level 15 requirements will be one of the things that we talk 16 about. And again, we're just -- we're pretty much at 17 the outlying stage at this point.
18 And I don't even want people to over think 19 where we are right now because we're still open.
20 We've been giving it a little thought because we had 21 the time to do so. But as we'll get into the 22 questions, we're really amenable to receiving 23 suggestions that would propose something different to 24 us.
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60 1 Bill sort of reminded you of. A couple years ago, or 2 three, we went through the advanced-reactor design 3 criteria and went through those same discussions. And 4 that's probably where they're starting. I'd take one 5 second to, you know, a couple seconds to fill in a 6 little history. Because we thinking of tech specs and 7 design criteria as always being there.
8 Originally, there were no such things and 9 because people started getting construction permits 10 and then coming in with designs that didn't quite meet 11 the staff's expectations, these things developed to 12 kind of warn people where they needed to go after the 13 construction permit.
14 And then I think Joy had something she was 15 trying to get in.
16 MEMBER REMPE: Yes. I actually like this 17 figure as a layout. And I'm hoping that it's 18 preliminary, but when I looked at it, this is where I 19 wanted to bring up scope. I had already mentioned 20 about transportation to and from the site. It seems 21 like embedded in this figure is that you're only at 22 the site.
23 So maybe you can think of a way to adjust 24 it to consider that. The other thing is since you got 25 the issue of retirement, waste generation comes in.
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61 1 Dave mentioned fusion earlier today. My understanding 2 is you get a lot more activated materials. Even the 3 gas reactor, because of its low power density, has a 4 lot more low level waste. But maybe we ought to start 5 thinking of the whole lifecycle and what -- we might 6 end up with some different thoughts about what might 7 be of more concern with some of these designs.
8 And so have you thought about maybe 9 modifying this figure, or are you open to maybe 10 thinking about modifying it to more explicitly 11 indicate to the public that you are considering some 12 broader scope than what we have with the existing 13 fleet?
14 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, we would be amenable.
15 And some of what you said -- again, we're kind of 16 early in the process, but some of the things like the 17 waste and the decommissioning, we currently have a 18 rule -- and I'm going to, I forget the number --
19 under Part 20, that even as you do the initial design, 20 you think through minimizing contamination to support 21 decommissioning.
22 So that would be under normal ops and 23 performance criteria or other over there in the purple 24 box that we would need to put that in as the attention 25 continues to increase on micro reactors. How this NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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62 1 fits in and either we incorporate things into this to 2 support things like transportation or we at least have 3 a good connection between the requirements here and 4 then the requirements on the transportation side of 5 our regulations.
6 And they would be different. Obviously 7 when you roll a new micro reactor out of the factory, 8 your concerns on the transportation will be different 9 than when you retire it and need to transport it 10 somewhere else. So yeah, we're amenable to any of 11 these discussions. And really what we'll be looking 12 for as we go through this is, in large part, make sure 13 we don't miss anything within this framework.
14 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, this is Walt 15 Kirchner. I'd like to go back to Charlie's 16 observation and concur. And to just point out that 17 rather than relegate it to an appendix if it, like you 18 said, a part of it's just format. But if it's a 19 number's part of 53, probably better. But capturing 20 at least at a high level those principles, categories 21 and principles in the actual regulation I think is 22 important.
23 One of the things that the GDCs do is that 24 they -- this is going to sound a little strange, but 25 it makes the regulatory process much more predictable.
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63 1 By which I mean the staff uses the GDCs for their 2 determination of the performance of a system, the 3 performance of the reactor as a whole. And this 4 provides predictability in the regulatory review 5 process.
6 The expectations are clear up front and 7 the framework of the GDCs provides a structure for the 8 staff to conduct its reviews as reflected in 0800, the 9 Standard Review Plan, in great, great detail. I'm not 10 proposing 0800, but it allows them to -- you want to 11 be technology-inclusive and at the same time flexible 12 because there are such differences in the designs that 13 we expect that you will be reviewing in terms of 14 technology choices and specific issues with each of 15 those technologies. But it avoids what I'll call the 16 arbitrary and capriciousness of other reviews, like in 17 the DOE world.
18 And I won't go any further with that 19 comment on the public record than --
20 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
21 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- to say it provides 22 structure and expectation. So I think it's very 23 important to capture that GDC framework in the actual 24 regulation not relegated to a reg guide, although the 25 reg guide that's been developed is very nice about NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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64 1 adapting for specific reactor technologies. But I do 2 believe you do need something like the GDCs as a part 3 of the framework.
4 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
5 CHAIR BLEY: Some words from the joint 6 committee and the AEC back in about 1960 --
7 MR. RECKLEY: Did Dennis drop off?
8 CHAIR BLEY: No. Did you hear me? I just 9 made a comment.
10 MR. RECKLEY: Oh, okay. As we go through 11 the interactions with you guys and stakeholders in 12 general, trying to strike that balance between 13 predictability and clarity that you get through 14 something like the GDC versus the flexibility that you 15 get through performance based approaches more like 16 that presented in NEI 18-04, trying to get the best of 17 both worlds and where that balance is, that'll be part 18 of what we're trying to do in this rule. And it goes 19 back.
20 I guess Dennis is -- well a number of 21 members might remember. But this is in some part kind 22 of related to the structuralist rationalist approach 23 that was the number of a whole bunch of ACRS meetings 24 and interactions and papers back during the 25 development of, I guess is that reg guide 1.174. Back NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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65 1 in that timeframe. So many of those questions remain 2 what's the right balance. You have to do both, I 3 think. You can't have it all one way or the other.
4 But trying to strike the balance is what we'll be 5 trying to do. So --
6 MEMBER BROWN: Bill? I just had -- I'm a 7 little bit parochial, I mean a little bit with this 8 particular comment. Since I do I&C stuff, protection 9 reactivity control systems, when I go back and look at 10 what it's like, GDC 20 through -- I don't know, 29 or 11 30 or something like that. Those are basically 12 performance based. I mean is the idea that I don't 13 need independence if something's performance based?
14 Or that I don't need reliability and testability?
15 MR. RECKLEY: No, no, no. Again, I --
16 MEMBER BROWN: Bill, I'm losing the bubble 17 a little. I keep hearing this performance based 18 stuff. In my mind, I know what performance based 19 means. I'm not so sure it's well defined even in the 20 way I think about it. Like protection system 21 functions to shut down the reactor. What it needs to 22 be is that's a performance based function. Like Walt 23 says, throwing the baby out with the bathwater gets a 24 little bit difficult for me --
25 MR. RECKLEY: No, no. Yeah, not --
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66 1 MEMBER BROWN: -- in a longer term view.
2 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, okay. And I didn't 3 mean to imply that many of the GDC are relatively 4 flexible and performance based in terms of giving you 5 options as to how you might incorporate those things 6 into the design. So no, I didn't mean to make that 7 implication.
8 MEMBER BROWN: No, I'm not accusing you of 9 anything. That was not my intent, I'm sorry. That 10 was not my intent. It's just I get a little bit 11 concerned when people lose sight and they start 12 thinking everything in these GDCs is prescriptive, but 13 it's not. Even the coolability issues. Forget the 14 instrumentation type stuff, you go back to reactor 15 cooling. All reactors has to be cooled in some way.
16 And that particular GDC just fundamentally said you 17 got to be able to cool them under various conductions.
18 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
19 MEMBER BROWN: So I think we just have to 20 be very, very careful about thinking about doing 21 everything brand brand new, and then we lose what's 22 been learned. Like Dennis says, many of these things 23 evolved after -- the first plant shipping port didn't 24 have any of these.
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67 1 way we did the Navy plants in terms of principles. So 2 I mean I just get concerned that we lose what we've 3 learned over 60 years, which has been very valuable, 4 in the process of trying to get something that's more 5 reasonably approached from a licensing and a review 6 basis.
7 MR. RECKLEY: All right.
8 MEMBER BROWN: I'll quit right there.
9 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. And again, we'll test 10 all of this out as we go forward. The only thing I'll 11 mention, as we go forward and look and different 12 technologies, the role and the importance and the 13 timing of some of these changes, and the general 14 design criteria for light water reactors were 15 developed.
16 And I agree with you, they are 17 performance-based and they generally at the high 18 level. But they were developed with the notion in 19 mind that reactivity was something you had to address 20 very quickly because a mismatch between power and heat 21 removal and a light water reactor is something that is 22 a fast-acting transient.
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68 1 may change. And we just need to be able to look at 2 that and see where -- what would be the most 3 appropriate criterion. I mean this is getting down 4 into the details, and we're still working on the 5 framework. So going over just converting that figure 6 into what Part 53 might look like, we would think it 7 might look like this. You would have general 8 provisions.
9 All the regulations have to start off with 10 a certain amount of those provisions that tell 11 applicants and licensees and the NRC staff how the 12 process works. But then going back to the figure that 13 you would have -- for example, I'll describe these in 14 terms of subparts, just like Part 52 is divided into 15 subparts. But maybe you have subpart B, and it would 16 talk about those safety objectives.
17 What are the regulatory limits? How do 18 the safety goals figure in? And that sets out how 19 safety the facility has to be. And then you would go 20 into, again as I mentioned, what's the role of the 21 design requirements, what's the role of siting, what's 22 the role of construction and manufacturing in meeting 23 those safety goals.
24 The requirements for operation in terms of 25 programmatic controls that we talked about.
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69 1 Configuration control, maintenance and surveillance.
2 And then what would be the role during decommissioning 3 or retirement? And then you would have those parts of 4 Part 53, or those subparts related to licensing and 5 maintaining the licensing basis information. So this 6 is all of the -- this is basically -- Part 52 is 7 largely oriented towards the applications. Then the 8 things like 50.59 for controlling your licensing basis 9 information, 50.74 on providing updates to the FSAR 10 and then administrative requirements.
11 So this is just a general possible layout.
12 And then getting to Dennis's question on how we might 13 interact, if we were to develop a framework like is on 14 Slide 5. If we have some early discussions and 15 thinking that something like this would be the way to 16 go, then the most important thing, because everything 17 is built off of it, would be the purple box.
18 And we would want to start having 19 discussions on that, you know, as early as later this 20 year or very early next year because whatever schedule 21 gets defined for us by the Commission when we get our 22 instructions, if we keep this framework, it all builds 23 off of how do we define the purple box on Slide 5.
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70 1 as early as later this year or very early in 2021.
2 The ultimate schedule of when we would have to finish 3 those discussions, the Commission will tell us.
4 So within the whitepaper, and I heard it 5 mentioned earlier, the whitepaper by and large -- we 6 started writing an Advanced Notice of Proposed 7 Rulemaking because that's what we proposed to do in 8 the rulemaking plan. It was just a vehicle to start 9 us to engage stakeholders. What you're seeing in this 10 whitepaper is what we started as the ANPR, whether we 11 end up doing that or not.
12 The most important thing is that we start 13 to engage stakeholders, whatever vehicle that might 14 be. So one of the things that we would be looking for 15 both from the ACRS, since that's today's discussion.
16 And then we'll be having this same discussion with 17 public stakeholders. What is the interest, what do we 18 see as the major issues and challenges so we can set 19 out a schedule and a kind of a plan as to how we're 20 going to talk about the various issues.
21 MEMBER BROWN: Bill?
22 MR. RECKLEY: Yes?
23 MEMBER BROWN: When you talk about 24 stakeholder interest, didn't the -- what is it, the 25 NEI whatever it is, didn't that say do it as opposed NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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71 1 to asking people if they have interest in that 2 rulemaking? Don't you have to do the rule now based 3 on the rule?
4 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. We 5 have to do the rule. The question would be what are 6 the stakeholder's interests in working with us to do 7 the rule, not whether we do the rule. Do they want to 8 play, or do they just want to tell us go do it and 9 we'll see what you propose at the proposed rulemaking 10 stage, and then we'll comment.
11 We hope that's not the point. I mean the 12 outcome. We hope stakeholders agree to work with us 13 all throughout the development of the proposed rule so 14 that we don't spend however much time coming up with 15 a finished product, and then people telling us they 16 don't like it. So that's what I mean by stakeholder 17 interest.
18 MEMBER BROWN: It sounds like you would be 19 then in the mode of offering them at each stage, which 20 you have something to propose, you reach out to them.
21 MR. RECKLEY: Right. Right.
22 MEMBER BROWN: Is that what you're talking 23 about?
24 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
25 MEMBER BROWN: Okay. All right.
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72 1 MR. RECKLEY: I think that's how it will 2 work by the time we're instructed. And then the other 3 part is the last bullet, preparing both the proposed 4 rule and seeing what related guidance might be 5 appropriate, and we're receptive to any aspect. The 6 next few slides we're going to start going through 7 some of the questions.
8 MEMBER BROWN: Can I interrupt you one 9 more while you're on Slide 7? When you go out for 10 comments or stakeholder interest, I went back and 11 pulled up the 2006 ANPR, whatever it is, which was 12 multiple pages and was so broad, I mean it sounded 13 like you had so much stuff, nobody would ever get 14 anything defined. Are you going to try to narrow it 15 somewhat more?
16 MR. RECKLEY: Well yes, and as an example 17 --
18 MEMBER BROWN: That was a disaster in my 19 own mind.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Just as one example, that 21 particular ANPR had I think 60 questions. We did look 22 through it and we tried to narrow it down to start the 23 interactions I think. I mean they did have a 24 companion document in 2006 that kind of went over the 25 framework.
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73 1 I think because we've been directed to do 2 a rule, we have somewhat of an advantage in -- well in 3 that we will be past the question of whether to do it, 4 and people should be providing feedback on more 5 specific things about what should be in it and how it 6 should look. But yes, we are going to try to narrow 7 it down. And it's a good teeing up, I guess, to go in 8 the next couple slides. One of the, on Slide 8 is 9 just the rulemaking objectives. I don't think this'll 10 be surprising, number one.
11 And two, it's basically to maintain the 12 same level of protections as exists for the operating 13 fleet. And then the third one is going to, again what 14 the Commission told us most recently in the Staff 15 Requirements Memorandum for SECY-19-0117. And then in 16 more description in an older SECY that goes back to 17 SECY paper 10-0121.
18 And this is where the third objective of 19 the rulemaking comes from, which is to ensure that to 20 the degree advanced reactor designers are able to 21 provide attributes that are talked about in the 22 Advanced Reactor Policy Statement, that the 23 expectations in that Advanced Reactor Policy Statement 24 is that those attributes, things like less 25 vulnerabilities to accidents, increased thermal NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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74 1 margins, slower responses leading to releases, those 2 kind of attributes in the Advanced Reactor Policy 3 Statement gets translated into operational 4 flexibilities.
5 And one example we've used in the past is 6 the tradeoff between those attributes and reduced 7 consequences that then enable you to do things like 8 reduce emergency planning zones, or come up with 9 different criteria for population related siting 10 considerations. And then number four and five are 11 just trying to make sure the proposed rule is 12 developed such that it's clear.
13 And this would also be an opportunity 14 during which we might have to identify and resolve 15 areas like staffing. And the time period that we have 16 to resolve issues like that might get determined by 17 the rulemaking schedule if it's not needed to be 18 resolved for some other reason, like an actual 19 application.
20 CHAIR BLEY: Bill? Two things, this is 21 Dennis. This number five is a little rule-y, I think.
22 One problem I envision is that some of these issues 23 won't be clear. Turn it around. When you see some 24 new unique facility design that mixes chemical hazards 25 and nuclear hazards in odd ways, new problems will be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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75 1 identified.
2 I think somehow we need to leave a -- by 3 the time we're done, we need to leave something like 4 your number five that has to be resolved on each new 5 unique design. I don't think you can resolve all, you 6 know, identify these up at the level you'd be working 7 at for a technology-inclusive rule.
8 And the other thing is we've got an hour 9 left, so as you can comb through the questions, we can 10 go through those in about 45 minutes. That'll leave 11 us a little time at the end to get comments from the 12 public and from the members of the subcommittee.
13 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Again, I was just 14 planning to step through the questions at the highest 15 level. Most of them, or many of them, we've talked 16 about before. This first one just have we defined the 17 right objectives. Second one, we are taking the 18 definition out of NEIMA in terms of what reactors were 19 under construction, given AP-1000 was under 20 construction at the time. Our general thought is that 21 that captures generation three and three-plus type 22 reactors as not needing to be.
23 It's not excluded, but they don't need to 24 be in the scope. And so just a general question about 25 what should be within the scope. You can tell we've NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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76 1 given some thought, I think, to where we envision this 2 going. But one of the simplest questions remains for 3 Part 53, do we incorporate in, as Dennis I think you 4 mentioned earlier, do you try to incorporate within it 5 the licensing processes, so they'll be sections on 6 licensing, or do you just try to define technical 7 requirements and then refer back to Parts 50 and 52 8 for the licensing part?
9 Again, there's no right or wrong to any of 10 these things. Some of it is just ease and 11 understanding and clarity as to where the rules are.
12 But a question that we have is what do stakeholders 13 think about what Part 53 should look like, whether 14 it's like we describe it or whether it's more narrow 15 to be just technical requirements.
16 A big one, again, this is within the 17 previous figure. The way we're currently thinking the 18 rule might look, this becomes kind of like the 19 foundation or the cornerstones on how the whole part 20 would work is how do you define the performance 21 criteria. And is it possible to define a single set 22 that's possible for all technologies?
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77 1 reactors in specific, but going up to the higher level 2 safety goals looking at consequences in terms of off-3 site doses.
4 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, this is Walt 5 Kirchner. I'm assuming, since you -- based on what 6 you just said and also the previous idea, I'm assuming 7 that you would take the same approach as 50 and 52 8 with regard to dose limits, which gets into 9 consequences of course. That you wouldn't try -- I 10 mean 10 CFR 100 is 10 CFR 100.
11 You're not going to try and change the 12 outside to 10 CFR 50, 52 part of 10 CFR. In other 13 words, I'm not saying this very well, you would take 14 things like -- and forgive me if I don't remember the 15 exact number. It's 10 CFR 52.34 which talks about 16 contents of applications and demonstrating that the 17 dose at the exclusionary or boundary is less than 18 what, 25 rem per two hours. And at the LPZ, 25 rem 19 for the entire course of the event, et cetera.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
21 MEMBER KIRCHNER: I'm assuming we would 22 still use those and put them in 53.
23 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah. Our interpretation of 24 past commission decisions, including the ones I 25 mentioned, SECY-10-0121, and then even more recently NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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78 1 SECY-19-0117, is the Commission is telling us those 2 metrics are good enough and are to be used.
3 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Good, good. That makes 4 your job a lot simpler actually if you --
5 MR. RECKLEY: Well it does. Yes.
6 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yeah. And it provides 7 some agreed upon basis to -- as measures for what's 8 acceptable in terms of --
9 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
10 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- consequence to the 11 public. Okay.
12 MR. RECKLEY: And then just as we were 13 having discussions early on, on reg guide 1.233, part 14 of the what we'll need in my view to construct within 15 Part 53 though is that advanced reactors have said 16 that when they incorporate the attributes from the 17 Advanced Reactor Policy Statement, that they are able 18 to meet those criteria and then have margins that are 19 greater than what we've seen historically.
20 And then they want to use those margins to 21 do things like incorporate smaller emergency planning 22 zones, reduce staffing, or other things. And so to 23 me, the trick within Part 53 will be to have -- to use 24 those potential advanced reactor attributes and build 25 within the rule how it interplays with those other NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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79 1 areas to give them the operational flexibility. And 2 that's one of the reasons we built it in as an 3 objective so that we could get some comment and 4 suggestions on that.
5 CHAIR BLEY: I'd remind the members that 6 we wrote a letter not too long ago on the staff's 7 implementation action plan on population-related 8 siting considerations. And then in paper, the staff 9 was not recommending any change in the current rule 10 where Walt was, but it was recommending a change in 11 the guidance for implementing that rule, especially 12 the guidance dealing with population density 13 requirements. And probably, you'll be using these 14 implementation action plans as part of your thinking 15 going forward. I assume that's why they're there.
16 MR. RECKLEY: That's right. And we're 17 trying to tie these things together and make sure we 18 get maximum use out of things like what we just talked 19 about, the reviews that were done of NEI 18-04, and 20 the ongoing reviews of things like TICAP. We want 21 them, if at all possible, to be supportive of what 22 we're doing under Part 53.
23 Risk metrics, more specifically I guess a 24 question. It's related to the previous question on 25 setting up the performance criteria. But to what NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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80 1 degree do we incorporate the safety goals into the 2 regulations? That would be a change in how we've 3 historically treated that particular policy statement, 4 and the consideration of risk insights.
5 So we have a question in that regard:
6 would people expect to see something like a frequency-7 consequence curve in Part 53, or would it be at a 8 higher level and simply talk about managing the risks 9 using appropriate consideration, some higher level 10 language. And then things like frequency-consequence 11 curves, or the target figure would be in guidances.
12 All of these things we'll kind of have to 13 work out and decide as we prepare the rule. And then 14 to the degree that we are already thinking that things 15 will need to go in guidance, we'll have to consider 16 whether the existing guidance is at the right level or 17 whether we need additional guidance.
18 Again, we gave some thought in the 19 rulemaking plan and we talked that we think it should 20 be addressing the whole lifecycle of the facility, not 21 just a licensing framework. But that's what our 22 thinking is. We're looking for feedback.
23 Going to what Walt was mentioning earlier, 24 there's a whole range of terminology. And we realized 25 even in SECY-19-0117, we were using different NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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81 1 definitions than were in Part 50 and 52. So one 2 question is just on definitions: is it okay for Part 3 53 to define a term different than it's defined in 4 Part 50, or do we need to try to make sure we avoid 5 that kind of confusion within the whole Title 10, if 6 you will?
7 Just a general question on performance-8 based regulation. The Commission, since 1990s, has 9 had a general policy of encouraging risk-informed and 10 performance-based approaches. Just a general question 11 on how we might incorporate performance-based concepts 12 such as the guidance document that was produced back 13 in that timeframe in the early 2000s, NUREG/BR-0303.
14 CHAIR BLEY: Hey, Bill? Can I back you up 15 one? On the definitions, it's not something I usually 16 get too concerned about. But I think it does create 17 difficulties with changing definitions. And I know 18 the staff has put together a glossary of definitions 19 trying to avoid this problem.
20 And, boy, it seems like it would be 21 worthwhile to try to clear that up. I know you got 22 some difficulties now with the NEI document. But 23 being consistent within the regulator offers some real 24 help to people who are trying to use it, although that 25 would require bringing other documents into agreement.
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82 1 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah. I don't disagree, but 2 it's a challenge. Only because --
3 CHAIR BLEY: I get it.
4 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah. Talked about this 5 one. One of the questions that we're raising is that, 6 this goes really back to the objectives, and we had 7 two levels of safety defined under the objectives.
8 One, the traditional reasonable assurance of adequate 9 protection.
10 And then the second one was the provision 11 that we typically use when we are looking at a 12 substantial increase in the overall protection, and we 13 consider costs. So in initial licensing, we don't 14 provide as much clarity on distinguishing between 15 those two criteria.
16 And so this question is just going to 17 stakeholders and say, as we develop this new part, 18 should we be looking at those two things and 19 distinguishing between the two. And even at initial 20 licensing, should we be looking at cost-effectiveness 21 when we're making licensing decisions.
22 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, pragmatically, 23 since you brought that one up as a question -- this is 24 Walt Kirchner. Boy, at the initial licensing when you 25 have -- and I don't mean this in a pejorative sense NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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83 1 for some of these advanced reactors, a paper design.
2 3 You're really not going to have specs or 4 good cost information until you go out in the next 5 step and do the, you know, prepare procurement specs 6 and so on. So it would just pragmatically I think be 7 very difficult to -- it could be open-ended arguments 8 about cost at that phase.
9 I mean, they would be heuristic or 10 estimates maybe falling back on LWR experience and 11 pricing of equipment and such. But I just think that 12 would prove very difficult at the initial stage of a 13 specific license review.
14 MR. RECKLEY: I agree. None of these are 15 easy, and they come with challenges to implement. As 16 you just mentioned, this one would be somewhat hard to 17 say at an early stage we're already deciding there's 18 not a cost-effective -- that there is or isn't a cost-19 effective way if you try to make that decision too 20 early on.
21 The other observation though is that, as 22 we've looked at how we've done backfits on operating 23 plants and even considered putting in place 24 requirements that somebody would need -- would pick up 25 at a future time, a forward-fit requirement, that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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84 1 initial licensing wasn't talked about in those 2 guidance documents, in the Management Directive 8.4, 3 that provided additional clarity on how we use those 4 provisions for initial license. So the question is 5 should we. You're exactly right, there'll be 6 challenges in trying to do it.
7 MEMBER KIRCHNER: If I'm the designer and 8 I'm submitting my advanced reactor design, you 9 basically if you think about you've got -- you're 10 looking as a designer for a sweet spot. You're 11 balancing cost, reliability, and safety. And they're 12 all interrelated.
13 I would presume that your applicants will 14 come in with their most cost-effective proposal, in 15 their estimation, as their opening gambit. So I just 16 would be concerned that it would be very difficult to 17 get into -- you mentioned backfitting where you have 18 actually a much better basis for making an estimate of 19 the actual cost of the backfit versus the increased --
20 the gain in terms of whatever the metric is, rem 21 avoided or whatever.
22 So my sense is that they will come in to 23 you with their best most cost-effective proposal, and 24 it probably will go in the other direction. I mean, 25 the arguments that will ensue I predict will be, is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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85 1 this system safety-related or is it not?
2 And if it wasn't safety-related and you 3 insist and they have to change it to be safety-4 related, then it likely would cost more to first 5 order. But, you know, but I think it would be very 6 difficult to make that in the cost an initial factor 7 in your review.
8 MR. RECKLEY: Again, I agree with you to 9 it would be a challenge. You or someone else was 10 asking earlier, how do you make decisions on defense 11 in depth, and when is enough enough?
12 This question is somewhat related to that 13 which is at what point when you're deciding how much 14 additional margin to add, not only do you change the 15 classification of a system maybe from non-safety with 16 special treatment up to safety-related, but when do 17 you even need to have a backup that would even be non-18 safety-related special treatment?
19 Again, I don't have answers. One of the 20 questions is to what degree do we bring in this same 21 logic that we use in the operating fleet to try to 22 make decisions on when is enough enough?
23 This is question 10 on slide 16. Just 24 again, a more general question of how do you take an 25 integrated look and ensure that what you're doing in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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86 1 terms of safety, security, how emergency preparedness 2 fits in, how do you take this integrated look and make 3 sure that Part 53 has enough? But it also provides 4 the potential for flexibility where the safety 5 features of the reactor might warrant it.
6 This is just a similar question to what we 7 talked about before. We are using, or we could use 8 within the rulemaking, things like NRC Safety Goal 9 Police Statement from 1986. We think the Commission 10 has told us to use that. But as a question to 11 stakeholders, is this an opportunity for us to 12 revisit?
13 One of the questions we put to 14 stakeholders in a public meeting is to what degree is 15 this an opportunity to align ourselves with other 16 international standards? And should the rulemaking 17 try to do that, or just recognize that as you go from 18 country to country, the methodology is generally the 19 same, but recognize that any particular point on a 20 frequency-consequence target figure or any particular 21 offsite dose criteria might change from country to 22 country.
23 Again, the methodology will generally fit, 24 but as you do your assessment, you still might need to 25 make either different arguments or even potentially NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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87 1 make modifications to address the differences between 2 standards. Again, it's a generally broad question of 3 whether we should maintain what we have, or use this 4 as an opportunity to look elsewhere, or look for 5 tweaking the guidance, or tweaking the requirements in 6 this case by changing what will go into Part 53.
7 Quality assurance, this was an issue 8 people mentioned back in 2006, is some of these 9 questions are basically the same questioned we asked 10 back in 2006 in that ANPR. And whether there's an 11 alternative to how we're currently doing quality 12 assurance. Not that quality assurance doesn't remain 13 fundamentally important, but is there time now that we 14 might look for different ways to do it?
15 And now that you have QA organizations 16 surrounding NQA-1. You have additional standards on 17 the international arena. You have a whole set of ISO 18 standards. So just a general question of whether we 19 could revisit how that's done. This one goes to the 20 guidance and standards area. If we're going to 21 develop a Part 53, it'll have a large -- it could 22 potentially have the need for a large number of 23 standards and guidance documents.
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88 1 organizations or NEI or Nuclear Industry Council or 2 some other group identify potential guidance documents 3 that we could endorse. Or to the degree there are 4 needed guidance documents will it fall on the staff to 5 try to develop those as we're doing the proposed rule?
6 And then the catch-all question 14 which 7 is just, you know, these were just some initial 8 questions. We boil down the strong events and then we 9 boil down the 60 or so that was offered in 2006 to 14 10 questions. But are there other matters that we didn't 11 identify that people want to bring up?
12 So with that, Dennis, we're open to the 13 broader discussion and then also maybe the path 14 forward in terms of starting to talk about when we 15 might come back.
16 CHAIR BLEY: Yeah. I think that's good.
17 But first, let's go to the members and see if any have 18 more questions or want to say anything about the 19 questions you folks have posed.
20 MEMBER PETTI: So, Bill, this is Dave 21 Petti. I didn't hear a lot about certification about 22 the overall approach, which is something I hear in the 23 advanced reactor community a lot. In terms of how you 24 weigh all these questions, it just seems to me that 25 simplification and the schedule is being imposed from NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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89 1 the outside, they answer your questions for you 2 instead of, say, the more thoughtful approach.
3 MEMBER BROWN: Dennis, I can't really hear 4 you.
5 CHAIR BLEY: That was Dave Petti.
6 MEMBER BROWN: Oh, Dave? He's speaking 7 very softly. I couldn't hear him. I didn't know if 8 it was your connection or what but I just --
9 MR. CORRADINI: I think, Charlie -- this 10 is same as Corradini. I barely hear you, Dave.
11 You're very muffled.
12 CHAIR BLEY: Well, he asked some 13 questions. If Bill heard him, maybe he can respond.
14 If not, maybe Dave can say them again.
15 MR. RECKLEY: Well, I'll summarize, Dave, 16 and push back if I mischaracterize it. But Dave's 17 primary point was simplification in both design and I 18 think expectations for what would be in Part 53. And 19 we hear those. The other thing I would point to in 20 Part 53 in addition to trying to make sure we're able 21 to address simpler designs, ones that are using more 22 inherent and passive features, is when you try to make 23 this rulemaking technology-inclusive, our preliminary 24 thinking is that pushes you up higher to be more 25 general, to be simpler in what the rule requires.
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90 1 The counter to that, as some other people 2 have raised, is you are now perhaps less clear because 3 you're now saying you're up at a functional level in 4 terms of what you're imposing in asking applicants and 5 designers to provide. So that'll be I think one of 6 the primary challenges, is to try to balance the --
7 what I'm looking at now, the Part 53 rulemaking, the 8 simplicity that we want to maintain and keeping it up 9 at a high level, and then the tradeoff with clarity 10 because the higher you get, most likely, the less 11 clear you are.
12 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, this is Walt 13 Kirchner. If I might make a specific observation, and 14 also given the schedule that you're likely going to 15 have to work against, it seems to me that one would --
16 borrow is not the right word, but use what are 17 accepted metrics that are well-defined or actually, 18 how should I say it, that can be calculated by the 19 applicants.
20 And I'm referring again specifically to 21 the dose at the exclusionary boundary and the LPZ, and 22 rather than the safety goals themselves. I have the 23 safety goals right in front of me, as you were 24 speaking, and I just quickly looked at them again.
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91 1 saying, if you go that high a level, you open the door 2 for endless arguments.
3 And even the safety goal statement, which 4 I have in front of me, points out that there are 5 sizeable uncertainties still present. Now this was 6 written -- and I'm talking about the quantitative 7 parts of the safety goals. When was this written? In 8 '86. I would submit there's still large uncertainties 9 in terms of the relative measures versus, you know, 10 the more qualitative goals.
11 So if you use that, I just don't see how 12 you get to closure. It seems to be a much better path 13 as to use what is accepted as a surrogate for the 14 safety goals in the case of dose there at the EAB and 15 the LPZ, and then do things like the paper Dennis 16 reminded us of your proposal on how to then take the 17 existing regulations and provide guidance in terms of 18 determining, like, LPZ.
19 And that to me would pragmatically let you 20 get to closure in a reasonable timeframe. If it gets 21 too high-level, I just don't know that you can get to 22 closure. Or you don't get to closure with the 23 applicants because of the large uncertainties in the 24 actual licensing process, if indeed they're going to 25 compare against the safety goals. You see what I'm NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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92 1 saying?
2 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, I do. Again, and 3 that'll be the challenge. I think our initial 4 thinking is that we would probably end up using both.
5 But both the traditional 25 rem at the low population 6 zone, or EAB. And in addition, somehow using the 7 safety goals. But how we do that, that'll be part of 8 the discussion as we try to set up what the 9 performance requirements would be.
10 MEMBER BROWN: I would just echo Walt's 11 thoughts a little bit because the lack of specificity 12 or what people term as prescriptive requirements just 13 increases uncertainty and an increase number of RAIs 14 and back-and-forths on why you're doing it this way 15 vice the other, and it becomes very difficult to close 16 those out. That's a real worry to me as well. I'm not 17 trying to argue one way or the other, I'm just saying 18 that is a problem.
19 MR. RECKLEY: And we'll be looking for 20 real smart people to help us with that, like you guys.
21 MEMBER BROWN: I'm not so sure anybody, or 22 there's enough smart people in the world to do that.
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93 1 that's software-controlled out to the outside world, 2 that they can come in if they want to, or do you just 3 close the door based on hardware? That's a specific 4 thing.
5 That's just my own parochial area that I 6 have to deal with. I just think you can fight about 7 that forever and say, well, gee, I can do it whatever 8 way I want. Well, no. We don't want the door open.
9 somewhere, you're the regulator and you're responsible 10 for safety. Your ultimate issue is safety. Sometime 11 you have to say, no, do it this way. I can see that 12 being we're falling away from that in some 13 circumstances. That's always the other argument that 14 seems to want to prevail. That's my thought process 15 relative to Walt's comment.
16 MR. CORRADINI: So, Bill? This is 17 Corradini.
18 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, sir.
19 MR. CORRADINI: Can you hear me?
20 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, sir. I can.
21 MR. CORRADINI: Okay. So let me ask you 22 a couple of pointed questions, and you tell me that 23 that's to be determined. So I'm thinking about this 24 relative to a research reactor as an alternative. In 25 a research reactor, whether it be one megawatt, or a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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94 1 few megawatts, or a sub-megawatt in size, I don't have 2 to worry about external manmade hazards.
3 Is there a power size here that's going to 4 say that if I'm below a certain power size, I don't 5 have to worry about external manmade hazards, or must 6 I consider it regardless? And then I add to that 7 concern about multiple modules.
8 If I decide that I have a small machine 9 and meets all the new criteria of the new 10 CFR 53, 10 does that mean it's on a per-module basis, or is it a 11 population of modules on a site? Are those things 12 going to be identified in 53, or did I miss a question 13 in that area?
14 MR. RECKLEY: Well, they'll need to be 15 addressed in Part 53 in terms of the natural -- I 16 mean, manmade hazards, and to some degree even natural 17 hazards. It, on approach can be as you identify those 18 top-level criteria that I mention back in the figure, 19 the purple box, what are the dose criteria, what are 20 the risk metrics.
21 Then you can look and see in terms of 22 hazards, manmade or natural, is there a way -- I guess 23 my response would be you have to address it. But one 24 way to address it might be there's no way for a 25 manmade hazard or some other hazard to challenge those NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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95 1 performance metrics. And so if I look at a manmade 2 hazard related to, let's say, toxic gases, if I have 3 a plant that doesn't require people -- so I'm building 4 a house of cards here, but if I have a plant that 5 doesn't require people, then maybe my concern about 6 toxic gases is less.
7 A design feature, like putting a plant 8 underground, might be able to address something like 9 explosions from a nearby railroad line, or an aircraft 10 crash. So they will need to address all of those 11 things, but they might be able to address them by 12 having design features that show that those hazards 13 can't challenge the safety metrics that are 14 established within the part. In terms of multiplant 15 versus -- or multiunit, you know, NEI --
16 MR. CORRADINI: Bill, whatever you want to 17 call it.
18 MR. RECKLEY: Right. NEI 18-04 was set up 19 on per plant basis, which is different than Part 50.
20 One of the questions, maybe we should have added it, 21 is a question would be, should Part 53 be set up that 22 way. When we said throughout the development of the 23 Part 53 that we would build off of things like Reg 24 Guide 1.233, it does provide us a vehicle to go to 25 multimodule, and address it perhaps more clearly than NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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96 1 Part 50 has.
2 CHAIR BLEY: Okay. Thanks, Bill. We're 3 nearing the end, but I'm going to -- I'm sorry, we'll 4 get a chance to go around and have members make 5 comments. While Bill's still up, let's only address 6 questions to him and save comments for a couple of 7 minutes from now. Go ahead, Vesna. You had 8 something?
9 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Well, I'm going to 10 save comments when we go around.
11 CHAIR BLEY: Perfect.
12 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: I don't have any 13 question, I just have a comment.
14 CHAIR BLEY: Perfect. Anybody else have 15 a question? Then at this point, I'm going to thank 16 Bill very much, and all of his staff who helped out on 17 this for giving us the status of where they are. When 18 we go around to members, I'm also going to ask you 19 about October. If we would have an October meeting, 20 I would ask the staff to have a very short 21 presentation just on Part 53.
22 And the reason we'd do that is if we want 23 to write a letter. I'm inclined that it'd be a good 24 time to send a letter to the Commission, just a short 25 one, saying we're on board, we're following this. And NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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97 1 we have a couple of issues, if we do, that we want to 2 make sure the staff pursues. But we'll get to that in 3 the minute.
4 Are there any members of the public either 5 on the web broadcast or on the outside line who would 6 like to make a comment? Please make sure the outside 7 line is open for us, our staff.
8 OPERATOR: The line is open for comments.
9 CHAIR BLEY: Okay. Is there anyone from 10 the public who would like to make a comment? If so, 11 give us your name and your comment.
12 MR. LYMAN: Hello. This is Ed Lyman from 13 the Union of Concerned Scientists. Can you hear me?
14 CHAIR BLEY: Yes, Ed. We can. Please go 15 ahead.
16 MR. LYMAN: Yeah, hi. Yeah, so I 17 appreciate this meeting. I'd just like to say that 18 UCS did not oppose the passage of NEIMA, and we 19 testified twice that we have a neutral position. The 20 reason why we didn't oppose it is because we believe 21 that it gave the Commission enough discretion and did 22 not micro-manage what to do vis-a-vis licensing 23 advanced reactors.
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98 1 and with the competence of the technical staff that it 2 would do the right thing. But I'm starting to regret 3 that decision. And that is because I don't believe 4 this is going in the right direction. And I do 5 appreciate some of the concerns I heard raised by 6 members about the ambiguous and the amorphous nature 7 of what's taking place here.
8 The potential for not only having 9 discretion on how standards are met, but also what the 10 standards actually are. And that seems like an 11 invitation to chaos. And I don't think the vendors, 12 if that's what they thing is going to help make their 13 lives easier in trying to license these reactors, I 14 think they have surprises ahead because I don't see 15 how this -- how weakening or making standards more 16 ambiguous is going to actually help in resolving these 17 issues, many of the difficult issues that we heard 18 with how do you license paper designs with very 19 limited operating experience, or no operating 20 experience with a very weak or sparse experimental 21 database with regard to only important factors that 22 would need to go into these determinations such as 23 mechanistic source term.
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99 1 and hold the feet to the fire because I don't think 2 that the Commission's political leadership is actually 3 safeguarding public health and safety in this respect.
4 On that note, I can't think of any other regulator 5 that is so content with not imposing stricter safety 6 standards on future facilities.
7 So we have this whole enterprise is based 8 on this artifice that the Commission expects advanced 9 reactors to be safer, and it's building a regulatory 10 infrastructure based on that expectation. But as we 11 heard Bill Reckley say multiple times, even for 12 designs that have some inherent safety features, that 13 the vendors are going to look for ways to use that 14 margin in other ways.
15 And so without a strict or a compelling 16 mandate from the Commission that you have at the end 17 is going to be in return fleet, you're going to end up 18 with reactors, you know, possibly locking for decades 19 to come with using the additional margin up in getting 20 relief for things like EPZ security and safety already 21 in the system. So that just doesn't make sense to me 22 for a forward-thinking agency.
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100 1 on the safety goals, which were developed decades ago 2 specifically so the parent fleet would meet them is 3 not an appropriate parameter to use if you're going to 4 use a new criteria. So that's my comment, and I 5 appreciate your time. Thank you.
6 CHAIR BLEY: Thanks very much, Ed. And we 7 have your comments on the transcript. We appreciate 8 them. Anyone --
9 MEMBER BROWN: Someone was just speaking.
10 Dennis, who was just speaking? It got garbled on my 11 end.
12 CHAIR BLEY: That was Ed Lyman from the 13 Union of Concerned Scientists.
14 MEMBER BROWN: Oh, okay. I just wanted to 15 comment I actually agree with him, a good bit of what 16 he said. So thank you, Ed.
17 CHAIR BLEY: Anyone else have a comment 18 from the public line? Okay, we're going to close the 19 public line and come back to --
20 OPERATOR: Public line is closed.
21 CHAIR BLEY: I'm sorry, who?
22 OPERATOR: Public line is now closed.
23 CHAIR BLEY: Thanks, I'm sorry. Hear 24 while I was talking. I'm now going to go around to 25 the committee members. And I think this time, I'm NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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101 1 going to call people by name, because I'm looking for 2 general comments and also specific thoughts if we 3 should write a letter in October to at least lay out 4 a few things that we want to bring to the staff's 5 attention, and to let the Commission know that we're 6 tracking this at this point in time. So let's go to 7 Ron Ballinger.
8 MEMBER BALLINGER: Yeah. I agree with 9 your comment related to we should meet and have a 10 letter. I'm talking as a metallurgist now.
11 Historically, we have had painful experience with 12 respect to things that pop up in a design as we build 13 it and over history. And they're largely related to, 14 at least on the materials side, degradation that 15 occurs that we didn't anticipate.
16 So I'm curious as to whether or not 17 consideration, since Bill says we have an option, we 18 actually have a clean sheet of paper, whether 19 something could be incorporated in the requirements to 20 take a look at what some famous government official 21 has termed unknown unknowns. And I don't know how you 22 do that, but it seems to me that there's an 23 opportunity here.
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102 1 right now. And so I'm just curious as to whether that 2 some consideration should be given to that. Thank 3 you.
4 CHAIR BLEY: Thanks, Ron. And maybe make 5 some notes on that to have around come October.
6 That'd be useful. Charlie?
7 MEMBER BROWN: Well, I've made most of my 8 comments.
9 CHAIR BLEY: Back to your earlier comment.
10 MEMBER BROWN: I've made most of my 11 comments earlier. But one of my general concerns I 12 would echo Lyman's comment relative to everybody's 13 assuming these advanced reactors are going to be safer 14 and have more margin, but margin tends to get used to 15 generate more power.
16 And based on the few designs, very few, 17 there's a lot of other aspects to some of these 18 designs that add other non-safe factors to how they 19 operate and their waste products. So I'm not quite as 20 confident that these new advanced reactors are all 21 safer than the pressurized waters, which had a very 22 definitive nature of unsafeness that we have to deal 23 with, and we know what it is.
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103 1 end up not being able to get a plant defined very 2 well. And so that's my general concern, is an 3 overarching concern. So I'll be quiet now and let 4 somebody else go on.
5 CHAIR BLEY: Thank you, Charlie. Now 6 Vesna?
7 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Okay. I found the 8 button to activate my microphone. Okay. I can 9 actually -- I mean, I have too many notes actually to 10 talk about that, so I will just keep this on high 11 level. I think we definitely should write the letter 12 about that. One is to address the questions.
13 I mean, which we couldn't do in all of 14 those, my notes, if I, you know, go through them now 15 where I can talk for half-hour. So I think that 16 writing letter to address some of the questions from 17 this presentation, and maybe to talk about licenses 18 through our review of the advanced plants and some 19 things like that, how would that help in the new 20 regulation.
21 I mean, what issues did we notice that the 22 regulation has an issue with it needs some, you know, 23 exemptions and things like this. I think that can be 24 very helpful. On the high level, I just want to say 25 the following, that's it's no -- I mean, I don't think NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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104 1 the human race will progress if we always try to 2 address all the risk associated with different things.
3 And obviously when we are meeting with 4 some totally new designs, we will not be able to do 5 that. So we can make an honest attempt to, you know, 6 keep this as safe as our understanding in this moment, 7 but we will have to learn, you know, with every new 8 technology, new lessons.
9 So in my opinion, I think it's very good 10 to keep this as simple as possible on this level. We 11 were talking about cost-effective designs, but we also 12 should talk about cost-effective regulation because we 13 should really make this the practice going through 14 approval not to be too complex, because the complexity 15 doesn't really help in identifying important issues.
16 It often, actually buries them.
17 So in order to keep this simple enough, I 18 think it's also the selection of what is going to be 19 criteria or risk matrix or criteria to -- what to base 20 regulation on, that's very important to see how 21 complex this regulation will become, you know. So for 22 example, I'm not big fan as you know of the F-C curve.
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105 1 many, you know, sequences, groups and things like 2 that.
3 And that can be also as an option, but it 4 should be open to other approaches to the measures of 5 risk. And one other thing, which I always also think 6 is extremely important, it will be very good to run 7 some example how would that actually look in actual 8 application.
9 And since we only have example of the 10 existing plants or the advanced plants, which have the 11 PRAs which are extremely complex, and example can be 12 very complex. We can actually run it just on one 13 attendant group. So simplify just to see example how 14 would this all go through the process. That's it.
15 CHAIR BLEY: Thanks very much, Vesna. And 16 for all members, if you get a chance to summarize your 17 thoughts, then send them to me sometime over the next 18 few months, that would be very helpful. I'll probably 19 send out a reminder. Walt, let's go to you. We have 20 your comment from a few minutes ago.
21 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes.
22 CHAIR BLEY: Any other comments?
23 MEMBER KIRCHNER: I've made a lot of 24 comments already so I should be brief. Just yes to 25 the letter. And what was not clear to me, it doesn't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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106 1 have to be answered here, but whether 10 CFR 53 would 2 be a one- or two-step process, or some hybrid. And 3 address some of what I see problems in 10 CFR 52. And 4 I'll just stop there.
5 CHAIR BLEY: Thank you. Yeah, I guess 6 that comes under a kind of a lessons learned Vesna was 7 talking about. After Walt, Jose.
8 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Hello. Yeah, this is 9 Jose. I'll also be short. I think we should have a 10 letter, and I would like to schedule sometime to make 11 like the advertisers do with focus groups. Just have 12 a letter and go line-by-line changing the grammar, but 13 try to reach a consensus of the group.
14 On the advice, I'm going with the 15 following same advice that many of the members have 16 already said, but attack it from a different point.
17 My concern has always been, right, recently is the 18 NUREG-0800, the Standard Review Plan, is an excellent 19 document.
20 I mean, it's the best invention since 21 sliced bread for locating reactors because it accepts 22 all of the built-up experience, the crowd-sourcing of 23 everything that can happen to one of these reactors.
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107 1 trying to seek outside the box and say what is my 2 reactor applying -- that is not covered by the SRP.
3 So when one identifies the DBEs, maybe I don't think 4 it's a rule, but we need to make sure to say that the 5 SRP is not the beginning -- it's not the endpoint, 6 it's only the beginning. Look outside of it for your 7 reactor particular things. Okay. And that's it.
8 CHAIR BLEY: Thank you very much, Jose.
9 Dave Petti?
10 MEMBER PETTI: So my greatest concern is 11 how complex this could potentially be for designs that 12 will be much less mature than what historically has 13 come to the Commission. And I'm just wondering if 14 there's a way to have some pilot projects that could 15 be done that even the ACRS could participate in to 16 help us all just get a better understanding of what we 17 think the issues are or could be to help, you know, 18 get this over the finish line. That's it.
19 CHAIR BLEY: Thanks very much, Dave. Joy?
20 MEMBER REMPE: This time I'm slow on the 21 button. Yeah, I would like to see us do a letter. I 22 guess I have to quickly point out that when I became 23 a parent, I realized that I had not thought of things 24 that my kids could do to say, no, that's now what you 25 should. A new rule was imposed.
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108 1 And I'm looking at this figure on slide 2 five thinking about the scope, as I've mentioned 3 earlier. So I hope in our letter that we talk about 4 the need to, as other members have said, to think 5 outside the box because of new chemical issues and 6 hazards, transportation hazards. And if we're going 7 to do the whole lifecycle, we've never really thought 8 a whole lot about the waste maybe, and the way we 9 should, because we haven't as a country been able to 10 address it.
11 And maybe we should think about that too 12 in the lifecycle diagram. And so anyway, I would like 13 to see us discuss that in our own letter. And I liked 14 Jose's idea about having discussion times for the 15 points, although I know you'll probably have a draft 16 you circulate. But it might make it more effective on 17 how we generate the letter. Thank you.
18 CHAIR BLEY: Thanks, Joy. Matt?
19 MEMBER SENSERI: Thank you, Dennis. The 20 members have raised some very important points here in 21 my judgment, and I don't have anything that I'll add 22 on top of that. So I would think that the points are 23 value-added, and that we should come together as a 24 committee, get consensus, and provide our formal 25 thoughts in the form of a letter, and that's all I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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109 1 have. Thank you to the staff for the good 2 presentations today.
3 CHAIR BLEY: Thank you, Matt. Now I think 4 I'll turn to our consultant, Mike Corradini. Are you 5 still there, Mike?
6 MR. CORRADINI: Yes, sir. I am. Can you 7 hear me?
8 CHAIR BLEY: Clear as a bell.
9 MR. CORRADINI: Okay. So in going through 10 all the members' comments, I think the one that I want 11 to come back to, Vesna went through a series of what 12 I'll call bullet points to kind of match exactly what 13 concerns me.
14 And I think Dave said it best, which is we 15 have to find at least a pathway through this because 16 however much we say these are new advanced reactors, 17 none of these things haven't been thought of in the 18 1950s. We might have new technologies that can be 19 applied to them, whether it be to instrumentation or 20 monitoring or materials, but these reactor concepts 21 have been around.
22 So it's not that the concepts are new, 23 it's a matter of how you essentially work with them 24 relative to a licensing framework. And since staff 25 wants to do a licensing framework that goes beyond NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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110 1 just licensing of a particular reactor type, I really 2 do think we've got to keep it as simple as possible.
3 Just because it's simple doesn't mean that the process 4 is going to be non-conservative.
5 Just the opposite. You can think of it by 6 keeping the same safety goals, whether it be the 7 qualitative safety goals or the quantitative safety 8 goals of CDF and large release frequency, or large 9 release, radioactivity release. And still be more 10 conservative in terms of how you estimate these 11 advanced designs and how they perform, and still do a 12 good job of it.
13 So my thought is to keep it as simple as 14 possible. And I would just simply go back to what 15 Vesna said, is she had three or four points relative 16 to that, and try to at least do this. Now my 17 recommendation would be that the ACRS get involved in 18 this early and often.
19 Without that, we're going to come back to 20 this and eventually and have all the same questions.
21 And I think this possibly may be the one good example 22 that the Commission wants ACRS input from the 23 beginning. And so to the extent that, Dennis, you 24 feel comfortable with it, I think you want to do this 25 as much as possible. That's it, thank you.
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111 1 CHAIR BLEY: Thanks so much, Mike. Gee, 2 I'm happily surprised by all the comments from the 3 members. I had a whole list of things I wanted to 4 talk about, and I don't think --
5 MEMBER BROWN: Dennis, Dennis?
6 CHAIR BLEY: Yeah, Charlie. Go ahead.
7 MEMBER BROWN: I forgot one point when I 8 was making mine, and it goes along with Mike's comment 9 about the -- I forgot how he phrased it, simplicity or 10 not getting too complicated. Bill's comments on their 11 slide three relative to separating the design 12 operational programmatic from existing licensing 13 processes relative to permits, Part 50 and 52.
14 And that was an interesting comment 15 because if we're going down this path, it seems to me 16 you could simply this process if you did separate 17 them. In other words, use what's out there for what 18 I call the hammer-and-tongs part of the business as 19 opposed to the more advanced thinking and advanced 20 reactor concept part, which is the first part in terms 21 of the regulations and technical standards. I meant 22 to say that in my ending comments, and I'm sorry for 23 interrupting you, so.
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112 1 for everyone, if you made some notes and you would be 2 happy to send them to me, and I would appreciate that.
3 I do have a couple of quick things. I agree with 4 almost everything all of my colleagues have said.
5 I would like to talk some time in the next 6 couple weeks with Derek, and maybe you can set this up 7 Derek, but also Larry and Scott, for how we can 8 legitimately do something like the focus group that 9 was suggested by Jose. We talked about doing 10 something like this in the past, and we've never 11 really implemented it.
12 But given this is going to take a few 13 years, and it's of lasting importance, I think it 14 would be good for us to really hash out among 15 ourselves our thoughts before we engage further with 16 everyone. Bill, you're probably surprised that we 17 need a letter, but we leaned so far that way that I 18 think we should count on having a meeting in October, 19 and a letter.
20 And I will ask, and we'll work through 21 Derek on this, but we just have a presentation on Part 22 53. Somebody turn off their microphone. On Part 53 23 and fairly short because all but one of us was here at 24 this meeting. I got involved in something, it took me 25 back through the history a lot in recent months. And NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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113 1 there's an interesting history on the tech specs and 2 the design criteria and how they came about.
3 But also our committee was pretty much 4 opposed to the design criteria as being nothing more 5 than sort of mom and apple pie. But after several 6 years, both the Commission and the vendors and the 7 staff convinced the committee that the value of all 8 these things were all clear to the folks at the time 9 they needed to be considered.
10 The value was it made it clear to people 11 submitting applications what they need to consider.
12 And that issue of taking out some of the variability 13 in the licensing process was a key part of that. At 14 this point, we'll be going forward. I don't think we 15 have any more time.
16 And I guess there's another meeting coming 17 up in about an hour. Thanks to everyone to today and 18 especially further discussions from the staff. And I 19 thank our former member, Rich Denning, for coming in 20 to explain his comments. At this point, the meeting 21 is adjourned.
22 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 23 went off the record at 1:02 p.m.)
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ACRS Future Plants Subcommittee Regulatory Guide 1.233 Guidance for a Technology-Inclusive, Risk-Informed, and Performance-Based Methodology to Inform the Licensing Basis and Content of Applications for Licenses, Certifications, and Approvals for Non-Light Water Reactors July 20, 2020 1
ACRS Interactions
- NEI 18-04, Risk-Informed Performance-Based Technology Inclusive Guidance for Non-Light Water Reactor Licensing Basis Development (Draft Revision N, September 2018)
- Draft Regulatory Guide (DG) -1353 (September 2018)
- Draft SECY Paper (September 2018)
- ACRS Subcommittee and Full Committee (February 2019)
Meetings
- ACRS Letter Dated March 19, 2019 2
Post-ACRS Activities
- Issuance of DG-1353 for public comment (April 2019)
- One public comment received (R. Denning & V. Mubayi)
- NEI 18-04, Revision 1 (August 2019)
(no significant changes from Draft Revision N)
- Issuance of SECY-19-0117 (December 2019)
- Commissions Staff Requirements Memorandum (SRM) related to SECY-19-0117 (May 26, 2020)
- Issuance of RG-1.233 (June 2020)
(minimal changes from DG-1353) 3
Public Comment
- The development and interpretation of the frequency-consequence curve proposed to be endorsed in DG-1353 does not have a strong technical basis. An underlying weakness of the proposed logic of assessing each candidate licensing basis event is that results could be influenced by the way an analyst chooses to define and group event scenarios. A better approach would be to consider a frequency-consequence curve as not only a tool for assessing individual licensing basis events but also as a bound on the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of accident sequences.
(ADAMS Accession No. ML19158A457) 4
Disposition of Public Comment (ADAMS Accession No. ML20091L696)
- The staff agrees that the approach described by the commenters may be a viable alternative to the methodology described in DG-1353 and NEI 18-04.
- Suggested approach (complementary cumulative distribution function) offers some advantages in terms of supporting the assessment of cumulative risk and the contributions from various licensing basis events.
- The methodology in DG-1353 and NEI 18-04 includes assessments of cumulative risks (e.g., a comparison to the NRCs safety goals) 5
Disposition of Public Comment
- NEI 18-04 methodology supports the established objectives o Identification and assessment of licensing basis events; o Establishing safety classifications and performance criteria for plant features; and o supporting evaluations of defense in depth
- Issues related to defining event sequences are expected to be addressed by the implementation of consensus standards, integrated decisionmaking processes, peer reviews of probabilistic risk assessments, and the reviews performed by the NRC staff.
- For these reasons, the staff has determined that the methodology described in DG-1353 remains one acceptable approach for informing the licensing basis for advanced reactors and decided not to alter the guidance documents as requested.
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SRM dated May 26, 2020 (ADAMS Accession No. ML20147A504)
The Commission has approved the use of the technology-inclusive, risk-informed, and performance-based methodology described in this paper as a reasonable approach for establishing key parts of the licensing basis and content of applications for licenses, certifications, and approvals for non-light-water reactors.
The staff should remain open to continuous, critical examination of its thinking regarding approaches and metrics for the licensing of this coming class of advanced reactors.
In its work on the regulatory framework for advanced reactors, the staff should continue to recognize that the Commissions established policy on the application of the safety goals and safety performance expectations provides an acceptable minimum safety standard for new reactors while taking into account the need to adapt the aspects of our current regulatory framework for reactors that provide operational flexibility based on risk assessment, such as the more than minimal increases in risk test in Section 50.59, the Maintenance Rule of Section 50.65, and the quality assurance criteria of Appendix B to reflect the significantly lower risks inherent in the design of advanced reactors.
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Possible Future Interactions
- Design-specific applications
- 10 CFR Part 53, Licensing and Regulation of Advanced Nuclear Reactors
- Mechanistic Source Term
- INL/EXT-20-58717, Revision 0, Technology-Inclusive Determination of Mechanistic Source Terms for Offsite Dose-Related Assessments for Advanced Nuclear Reactor Facilities, June 2020
- Draft Regulatory Guide - Technology-Inclusive Content of Applications (TICAP)
- Regulatory Guidance - Advanced Reactor Content of Applications (ARCAP)
- Content beyond TICAP/Licensing Modernization Project
- Construction Permit Applications
- Microreactor issues (pending information SECY paper)
- SECY Paper - Staffing Issues (Licensed Operators, Autonomous Operations, Remote Operations) 8
Questions/Discussion 9
Backup: Event Selection & Analysis 10
Backup: Public Comment Example - complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF)
See public comment, ADAMS Accession No. ML19158A457 11
Backup: Risk-Significant SSCs
- A prevention or mitigation function of the SSC is necessary to meet the design objective of keeping all LBEs within the F-C target.
- The LBE is considered within the F-C target when a point defined by the upper 95%-tile uncertainty of the LBE frequency and dose estimates are within the F-C target.
- The SSC makes a significant contribution to one of the cumulative risk metrics used for evaluating the risk significance of LBEs.
- A significant contribution to each cumulative risk metric limit is satisfied when total frequency of all LBEs with failure of the SSC exceeds 1% of the cumulative risk metric limit. The cumulative risk metrics and limits include:
- The total frequency of exceeding of a site boundary dose of 100 mrem <1/plant-year (10 CFR 20)
- The average individual risk of early fatality within 1 mile of the Exclusion Area Boundary (EAB) < 5x10 -7/ plant-year (QHO)
- The average individual risk of latent cancer fatalities within 10 miles of the EAB shall not exceed 2x10-6/plant-year (QHO) 12
Backup: Safety-Significant SSCs
- An SSC that performs a function whose performance is necessary to achieve adequate defense-in-depth or is classified as Risk-Significant (see Risk-Significant SSC).
Summary Risk- Safety-Safety- Significant Significant PRA Modeled Related SSCs SSCs SSCs SSCs All Plant SSCs 13
ACRS Future Plants Subcommittee 10 CFR Part 53 Licensing and Regulation of Advanced Nuclear Reactors July 20, 2020 1
Background
- Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Approaches to Risk-Informed and Performance-Based Requirements for Nuclear Power Reactors, dated May 4, 2006 (71 FR 26267)
- NRCs Vision and Strategy report (12/16) for non-light-water reactors and related implementation action plans identified a potential rulemaking to establish a regulatory framework
- Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA; Public Law 115-439) signed into law in January 2019 requires the NRC to complete a rulemaking to establish a technology-inclusive, regulatory framework for optional use for commercial advanced nuclear reactors no later than December 2027 2
Background - NEIMA (1) ADVANCED NUCLEAR REACTORThe term advanced nuclear reactor means a nuclear fission or fusion reactor, including a prototype plant with significant improvements compared to commercial nuclear reactors under construction as of the date of enactment of this Act, (9) REGULATORY FRAMEWORKThe term regulatory framework means the framework for reviewing requests for certifications, permits, approvals, and licenses for nuclear reactors.
(14) TECHNOLOGY-INCLUSIVE REGULATORY FRAMEWORKThe term technology-inclusive regulatory framework means a regulatory framework developed using methods of evaluation that are flexible and practicable for application to a variety of reactor technologies, including, where appropriate, the use of risk-informed and performance-based techniques and other tools and methods.
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SECY-20-0032, Rulemaking Plan
- SECY-20-0032, Rulemaking Plan on Risk-Informed, Technology-Inclusive Regulatory Framework for Advanced Reactors, dated April 13, 2020
- Proposing a new 10 CFR part that could address performance requirements, design features, and programmatic controls for a wide variety of advanced nuclear reactors throughout the life of a facility.
- Focus the rulemaking on risk-informed functional requirements, building on existing NRC requirements, Commission policy statements, and recent activities (e.g.,
- Expect extensive interactions with external stakeholders and the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) on the content of the rule.
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Technology Inclusive Regulatory Framework Project Life Cycle Requirements Functional System Construction Operation Retirement Definition Design Design
- Fundamental Safety Functions
- Prevention, Mitigation, Testing Surveillance Performance Criteria Maintenance (e.g., F-C Targets)
- Normal Operations Configuration (e.g., effluents) Control
- Other Design Changes Plant/Site (Design, Construction, Configuration Control)
Clarify Controls Analyses (Prevention, Mitigation, Compare to Criteria) and Distinctions Between Plant Documents (Systems, Procedures, etc.)
LB Documents (Applications, SAR, TS, etc.)
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Example - Possible Layout
- General Provisions
- Technology-Inclusive Safety Objectives o Regulatory limits, safety goals
- Design Requirements
- Siting
- Construction and Manufacturing Requirements
- Requirements for Operation
- Decommissioning Requirements
- Applications for Licenses, Certifications and Approvals
- Maintaining and Revising Licensing Basis Information
- Reporting and Administrative Requirements 6
NRC Staff White Paper
- The NRC staff developed a white paper (ADAMS ML20195A270) to support discussions with ACRS and other stakeholders
- Soliciting information that:
- 1) Defines the scope of stakeholder interest in a rulemaking to develop a technology inclusive framework for advanced nuclear reactors,
- 2) Identifies major issues and challenges related to technology-inclusive approaches to licensing and regulating a wide variety of advanced nuclear reactor designs,
- 3) Supports prioritizing and developing plans to resolve identified issues within the rulemaking for the wide variety of advanced nuclear reactor designs, and
- 4) Supports the development of the proposed rule and related guidance.
- Staff receptive to feedback on any aspect of developing a technology-inclusive regulatory framework to support the regulatory objective, whether or not in response to a question listed in this white paper or future solicitations.
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Part 53 Rulemaking Objectives
- 1) Provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection of the public health and safety and common defense and security at reactor sites at which advanced nuclear reactor designs are deployed, to at least the same degree of protection as required for current-generation light water reactors;
- 2) Protect health and minimize danger to life or property to at least the same degree of protection as required for current-generation light water reactors;
- 3) Provide greater operational flexibilities where supported by enhanced margins of safety that may be provided in advanced nuclear reactor designs;
- 4) Ensure that the requirements for licensing and regulating advanced nuclear reactors are clear and appropriate; and
- 5) Identify, define, and resolve additional areas of concern related to the licensing and regulation of advanced nuclear reactors.
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 1. Regulatory Objectives: Are the regulatory objectives, as articulated above, understandable and achievable? If not, why not? Should there be additional objectives? If so, please describe the additional objectives and explain the reasons for including them.
- 2. Scope and Types of Advanced Nuclear Reactors: Should the scope of the rulemaking be limited to advanced nuclear reactors as defined in NEIMA or should the scope include all future applications for licenses, certifications, or approvals for commercial nuclear reactors regardless of design?
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 3. Technical Requirements versus Licensing Process: Should the framework focus only on those regulations related to technical standards (i.e., design, operational and programmatic requirements) and rely on the existing licensing processes in Parts 50 (e.g., construction permit and operating license) and 52 (e.g., early site permit, combined license, etc.) or should the framework develop a new alternative licensing process that looks different than the existing processes? If the latter, what should this new licensing process look like? Should this new process be self-contained, such that it would provide its own licensing, procedural, administrative, and reporting requirements?
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 4. Performance Criteria: NEIMA calls for a technology-inclusive framework for advanced nuclear reactors, which encompasses a wide range of reactor technologies and power levels. To what extent should the NRC try to define a single set of performance criteria for all technologies and sizes (e.g., estimated offsite doses from postulated events),
versus developing specific regulatory approaches for different categories of advanced nuclear reactors such as microreactors and fusion reactors?
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 5. Risk Metrics: In a risk-informed performance-based regulatory regime, should risk metrics be included in the regulations? Possible examples of risk metrics include the quantitative health objectives described in the NRCs Safety Goals for the Operation of Nuclear Power Plants Policy Statement (51 FR 28004, Aug. 4, 1986, as corrected and republished, 51 FR 30028, Aug. 21, 1986) and the frequency-consequence targets described in SECY 0117, Technology-Inclusive, Risk-Informed, and Performance-Based Methodology to Inform the Licensing Basis and Content of Applications for Licenses, Certifications, and Approvals for Non-Light-Water Reactors.
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 6. Facility Life Cycle: How could the new Part 53 licensing and regulatory framework align with the design, construction, operation, and decommissioning phases of an advanced nuclear reactor facilitys life cycle?
- 7. Definitions: Should terms in the new Part 53 have identical definitions to terms in Parts 50 and 52? For example, SECY-19-0117 proposes to accept definitions for terms such as safety related and design basis event for non-light water reactors applications that differ from the definitions provided in 10 CFR Part 50. If possible, please provide alternative terminology for non LWR technologies.
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 8. Performance-Based Regulation: How should the requirements developed for this alternative regulatory framework incorporate performance-based concepts such as those described in NUREG/BR-0303, Guidance for Performance-Based Regulation?
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 9. Identifying Levels of Protection: Regulatory requirements in Parts 50 and 52 have been imposed as either needed to:
- 1) ensure a facility provides adequate protection to the health and safety of the public and is in accord with the common defense and security; or 2) provide a substantial increase in the overall protection of the public health and safety or the common defense in security when the costs of implementation are justified in view of the increased protection. Should specific requirements developed in this Part 53 rulemaking be identified as either needed to provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection or justified as cost-effective safety improvements?
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 10. Integrated Approach to Rulemaking: In developing the requirements for this alternative regulatory framework, how can an integrated approach be developed to address areas such as safety, security, emergency preparedness, and other means to prevent or mitigate the potential release of radionuclides from an advanced nuclear reactor?
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 11. Consistency with Historical Standards: SECY-19-0117 describes a methodology that is meant to support the licensing process through identifying key safety functions, events that might challenge those functions, performance criteria for equipment and related programmatic controls, and defense in depth. The methodology uses risk-informed and performance-based criteria that are derived from existing regulations related to potential offsite doses and from the NRCs Safety Goal Policy Statement (51 FR 30028; dated August 21, 1986). Should this rulemaking use these existing criteria or should this opportunity be used to adopt or develop alternative criteria? If so, please describe possible alternatives and explain the reasons for using them within the regulatory framework being developed for advanced nuclear reactors.
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 12. Quality Assurance: Should quality assurance, as it is currently defined in Appendix B to Part 50, be a requirement in the new risk-informed, performance-based regulatory framework?
Alternatively, should NRC regulations defer to internationally recognized, independent certification schemes for assessing quality processes at commercial nuclear facilities and at suppliers of equipment and services?
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 13. Stakeholder Documents, Standards, Guidance: The NRC encourages active stakeholder participation through development of proposed supporting documents, standards, and guidance. In such a process, the proposed documents, standards, and guidance would be submitted to and reviewed by NRC staff, and the NRC staff could endorse them, if appropriate. Is there any interest by stakeholders to develop proposed supporting documents, standards, or guidance?
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Questions for Public Feedback
- 14. Other Issues: Are there significant issues, possible approaches, or other topics related to the initial crafting of a regulatory framework for advanced nuclear reactors that are not addressed in the above questions? If so, please identify the subject areas and, if possible, provide a suggestion on how the new framework could resolve the issue or incorporate a proposed approach.
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Part 53 Rulemaking 21
Backup Slide - Integrated Approach Siting near densely Functional populated areas Containment EP for SMRs (SECY-18-0096) and ONTs Licensing Modernization (SECY-18-0103)
Project Insurance and Liability Environmental Reviews Consequence Based Security (SECY-18-0076) 22