ML20236P128
| ML20236P128 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 08/05/1987 |
| From: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 8708120227 | |
| Download: ML20236P128 (102) | |
Text
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f UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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Title:
Briefing on the Status of B&W Reassessment Location:
Washington, D. C.
l Date:
Wednesday, August 5, 1987
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Pages:
1 - 75 Ann Riley & Associates Court Reporters 1625 l Street, N.W., Suite 921
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Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 hakOIQ@y 070005 PT9.7 pyg
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D I SCLA I MER 4
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This is an unofficial transcript of a meeting of the 7
United States' Nuclear Regulatory Commission held on s
8/05/87 In the Commission's office at 1717 H Street, 9
'fi.W.,
Washington, D.C.
The meeting was open to public 10 attendance and observation.
This transcript has not been 11 reviewed, corrected, or edited, and it may contain
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12 inaccuracies.
-g 13 The transcript is intended solely for general 14 informational purposes.
As provided by 10 CFR 9.105, it is 15 not part of the formal or informal record of decision of-the 16 matters discusse.a.
Expressions of epinion in this transcript 17 do not necessarily reflect final determination or beliefs.
No 18 pleading or other paper may be filed with the Commission in
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19 any proceeding as the result of or addressed to any statement 20 or argument contained herein, except as the Commission may j
l 21 autherl=e.
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3
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BRIEFING ON THE STATUS OF~B&W REASSESSMENT 5
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[PUBLIC MEETING)
.7 8
9 Nuclear Regulatory Commission
-10 Room 1130 I
11 1717 H Street, Northwest 12 Washington, D.C.
13 14.
Wednesday, August 5, 1987 15 l
16 The Commission met in open session, pursuant to 17 notice, at 2:03 o' clock p.m., the Honorable LANDO W.
- ZECH, 18 Chairman of the Commission, presiding.
19 20 COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
21 LANDO W. ZECH, Chairman of the Commission i
22 THOMAS M. ROBERTS, Member of the Commission 23 FREDERICK M. BERNTHAL, Member of the Commission 24 KENNETH CARR, Member of the Commission 25
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-STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT COMMISSION TABLE:
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S.
Chilk 3-W.
Parler 4
'V.
Stello 5-B. Jones
-6 D..Crutchfield 7
T. Murley 8
W. Wilgus 9
G. Skillman 10 N. Rutherford 11 12 13 14
-15 16 17 18 19 2b 21 i
22 23 24 25
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P R O C E E D I if G S 2
CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
3 In January of 1986, Victor Stello, shortly after he took on the 4
assignment of Executive Director for Operations, called for a 5
reassessment of the safety of B&W reactors as a result of a 6
number of complex transientt that had occurred at various 7
Babcock and Wilcox designed facilities.
8 This meeting this afternoon is a follow on to the 9
November 6, 1986 informational briefing by the Babcock and 10 Wilcox Owners Group.
Today I understand that the Owners Group 11 and the NRC staff will both brief the Commission concerning the 12 results of the Babcock and Wilcox safety reassessments.
13 At the conclusion of the November 6, 1986 briefing by 14 the Owners Group, the Commission requested that the staff 15 monitor the recommendations resulting from the Owners Group' 16 program and its implementation.
17 I am looking forward in hearing from the staff when 18' they come to the table concerning the results of their efforts 19 in this regard.
We have a lot of ground to cover this morning 20 with the owners group and the staff appearing before us.
I 21 would ask that you try your best to adhere to the time 22 schedule.
23 I understand there are slides available in the back 24 of the room. Do any of my fellow Commissioners have any opening 25 comments to make?
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[No response.]
2 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
If not, please begin.
Mr. Wilgus.
3 MR. WILGUS:
Mr. Chairman and Commissioners, good 4
afternoon.
5 CHAIRMAN ZECH:, Good afternoon, sir.
6 MR. WILGUS:
I am Walter Wilgus, vice president of 7
nuclear operations for Florida Power Corporation and I am also 8
the chairman of the Babcock and Wilcox Owners Group Executive 9
Committee.
10 Along with me this afternoon are all of the 11 executives of all of the operating B&W plants, Gene Campbell 12 from Arkansas; Hal Tucker from Duke; Dick Wilson from GPU; Carl 13 Andognini from SMUD, Don Sheldon from Toledo; Jim Darling from 14 TVA and Charlie Pryor from B&W is with us also.
15 It is my privilege today to reintroduce to you the 16 B&W Owners Group Safety and Performance Improvement Program, 17 SPIP as we call it.
Last November 6, we e:cplained the SPIP 18 which was then in progress.
We are able to discuss conclusions 19 and end product today and what we are going to do with that end 20 product.
21 Mr. Skillman, the chairman of the assessment effort, 22 will describe the program and the findings and Neil Rutherford, 23 the steering committee chairman, will discuss how we intend to implement the program and its recommendation.
I will provide 24 25 some additional closing remarks.
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The B&W owners Group plants, our plants are safe and 2
the safety and performance program which consists of a 3
reassessment of the safety and operating issues will make them 4
even safer.
This program was developed by the owners Group.
5 It was reviewed and agreed to by the NRC staff.
It focuses on 6
overall safety and specifically looks at balance of plant, 7
human operating and burden items and relative transient 8
performance.
9 We developed definitions of transient complexity and 10 identified the perceived and the real problems in terms of 11 these definitions.
We developed programs to define and 12 recommend actions to solve these problems and enhance the safe 13 and reliable operation of our plants.
14 our program was developed with considerable thought, 15 research and analysis.
We used the historical data and facts 16 from all B&W plant trips since 1980 including TMI-2.
We i
17 defined those which caused severe transients to occur.
la our program used this as a foundation, shored up with 19 potential plant performance and goal setting.
Independent 20 review of our program was provided by a distinguished advisory-21 board chaired by Bill Lehman of EPRI and Bill is with us here 22 today.
23 This Board provided guidance and counsel to the SPIP 24 team and we believe it was instrumental in making a good I
25 program better and technically stronger.
The other members of
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-this' team were Bob Brodsky from Beta, Dr. Sol Levy 1 rom SLI and 1
2 Dr. Neal Todrey is from M.I.T.
3 Additional independent input was provided by NPR 4
Associates who performed an extensive sensitivity study 5
detailing the thermal hydraulic sensitivity differences between i
6 NSSS designs and SAIC who performed a PRA review to assist the 7-core' risk damage of our complex transients..
8 We believe this program is unique both to the nuclear industry and to owners group in that we, the executives of the 9-10 Owners Utilities, have initiated and funded the program 11
. voluntarily.
The magnitude of resources to perform this 12 program amounts to over eight million dollars including over 50 13.
man years of utility effort.
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We have involved the staff in the progress of this 15 program.
We have used our established organizational structure 16' to provide the man power, the input and the direction.
We 17 supplemented our own resources with outside contractors and most import'ntly we gave this SPIP utility management team the 18.
a 19 independence and the resources necessary for them to pursue the 20 tasks while monitoring carefully what their progress was.
21 We feel very strongly that it has been totally
'22 appropriate for us to leave with this assessment.
i Our people 23 have the. detailed and first hand knowledge of our plant's
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I 24 behavior and we have substantive basis to discover, to address 25 and to correct those issues or problems which cause our plants
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to be perceived an.either' unsafe or to'be poor performers.
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.We'have the technical and operational insight and we 3
have the resources to conduct a thorough and comprehensive 4-reassessment. -Most importantly, we possess the motivation to 5
do a thorough and comprehensive. job.
Each'of the executives clearly understands lhis 6
7-independence upon the others.
The action or inaction of one 8
bears strongly on the others.
With the increased awareness of this interdependence comes the' incentive to do a credible job 9
10 and-to implement the recommendations in a timely manner
-11 consistent with our commitments, our means and our plant 12 design.
13 Any outlier will experience peer pressures to move 14 forward.
We as the executives are fully committed to this 15.
program.
It is clear to us that implementation will' i$ prove 16 safety and performance.
We have already seen some of these 17 benefits as will be noted shortly, our strong executive level 18 commitment and our dedication'to the program will ensure 19 implementation of that program as Mr. Skillman will now 20 describe for you.
21 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Thank you very much.
- Proceed, 22 please.
23 MR. SKILLMAN:
Good afternoon.
I am Dick Skillman.
24 I am chairman of the safety and performance improvement program 25 for the B&W Owners and I am an employee of the GPU Nuclear i
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Corporation.
'2 The-primary goal in the safety and performance improvement program is.to make the B&W owners Group plants 3
4 safer.
our program has had two distinct emphasis, one is on-5 the reduction of complex transients-and the.other is on the 6.
reduction in overall plant trip frequency.
7 Our goal is to make the plant safer and to 8
. demonstrate that gain in safety by reducing the per plant 9
complex transient frequency by a factor of three by 1990 and by reducing'the per plant trip frequency by.a factor of two by-10 11 1990 on a three year rolling average basis.
12 The plants will be made safer through the 13 implementation of the recommendations resulting from-SPIP.
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-While we wish to'have long, smooth-runs of uninterrupted power,
- 15; we accept asLappropriate those valid plant trips which are 16-caused'by' legitimate protection requirements.
17 on the other hand,'we.wish to eliminate as far as 4
18 practical those trips which should not have occurred.
19 Following each trip will always be a change in plant 20 parameters.
We desire that the_ post trip response be one that is smooth and predictable and one in which the operators have 21 22 increased confidence in controlling.
23 We intend to eliminate repeat of the previous complex L~
24 events and the potential for future complex events by l
25 implementing the SPIP recommendations.
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CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Let me ask you about that just real briefly. I understand that some of the B&W plants have a 2
3 practice of using reactor trip from bd-lh cower level to redistribute or remove deposits from the secondary site of the 4
5 once through steam generators and thereby improve thermal 6
performance.
7 But what my question is is isn't this kind of in 8
conflict with your reduction of trips and how do you see this 9
as a method of increasing your thermal performance?
It seems 10 to me that that is in conflict with what you are trying to do.
11 MR. SKILLMAN:
Sir, that is not a general policy of 12 the owners Group although we would like to note that we are 13 addressing basically unplanned trips, sir.
However, if you 14 wish to get into more detail on it, Mr. Dick Wilson of GPU will 15 be most happy to make a few comments on it.
16 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
I would just like to know what the 17 owners Group, how you see this practice.
I know some of the 18 B&W people do it and I was just wondering how the owners Group 19 viewed that.
Is that a good practice or is that something that 20 you would subscribe to or not?
21 You are saying that you are going to reduce your 22 trips two-fold and I don't see how you can reduce your trips 23 two-fold if you continue that practice.
Maybe the practice is 24 good, maybe it is important.
I know it has been done 25 successfully but I just feel that I would like to hear a little
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2 MR. WILGUS:
As an Owners Group, we do not advocate 3
that practice as a routine operation.
4 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
So then, we need to hear I guess from 5
those who do think it is a good idea.
So your emphasis would 6
be on reducing the trips and you would be against that then?
7 MR. SKILLMAN:
Our emphasis in the program is the 8
reduction of unplanned trips.
9 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Unplanned trips.
10 MR. SKILLMAN:
Yes, sir.
11 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Do you consider this a planned trip?
12 MR. SKILLMAN:
Yes, sir.
13 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Is it a good practice?
Is it a 14 practice that you as the Owners Group would recommend be 15 continued?
Set aside the trip business.
16 MR. WILGUS:
I don't believe, sir, that we would 17 recommend that practice be continued uniformly across the board 18 at all of the owners Groups.
We would probably have to look at 19 that on an individual utility basis.
20 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
I would ask you to do that and work 21 it into your Owners Group discussion any way and maybe if you 22 have a view on that, it should be shared with those who do 23 think it is a good practice.
24 MR. WILGUS:
We will do that, sir.
25 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
All right, fine.
Thank you.
You may
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1 proceed.
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MR. SKILLMAN:
Next slide, please.
3 Prior to discussing the recommendations, I would like 4
to address the conclusions reached and those conclusions are in 5
three major areas.
6 The first area has to do with B&W plant specific 7
conclusions.
These address, in particular, the conclusions 8
regarding the unique features of our plants.
9 The second set of conclusions has to do with tne 10 complexity of transients and these describe our findings 11 regarding the systems and components involved in the complex 12 transients experienced by our plants.
13 The third category are the trip initiator conclusions 14 regarding the systems and components involvnd in our overall 15 trip experience.
16 Next slide, please.
17 on this slide, you will see conclusions regarding the 18 B&W plant design.
The internal event initiated core damage 19 frequency or stated differently, the risk of core damage of our 20 plants is comparable to other PWR designs.
21 The areas of plant thermal hydraulic, hence 22 performance sensitivity, are different for our NSS's than for 23 an NSS designed by others.
The key to this conclusion is 24 recognizing and understanding our steam generator's ability to 25 vary its heat transfer rate, this energy transfer rate, based
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-on' secondary side pressure versus primary side temperature.
2 The point is, our plants are sensitive and different 3
but not less safe.
4 I would like to briefly touch on four items related 5
to sensitivity because they constitute significant findings or 6
conclusions to the B&W Owners Group.
7 Regarding our pressurizer, the perception is that 8
our pressurizer are too small.
Actually, cur pressurizer are 9
as large as or larger than the pressurizer on other PWR 10 designs of comparable ratings.
11 Further, the size of our pressurizer is adequate 12 based on accepted methods of comparing pressurizer volumes 13 whether that be: the post trip out-surge volume or the pressure 14 margin to safety injection.
What is different, however, is the 15 lower level instrument tap location on our pressurizer 16 compared with others.
17 The significance of this is while considered too la small, our pressurizer have several thousand pounds of 19 inventory remaining in them when the fluid level clears the 20 level tap, hence giving the impression of a small pressurizer.
21 The next bullet regarding our OTSG's, our steam 22 generators, the perception is that the small OTSG water 23 inventory results in rapid dry-out and hence the potential for 24 core damage is greater.
We concur that the inventory is less 25 and that dry-out occurs earlier on our plants on loss of
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l' feedwater^ events.
2 However, the time available for reintroduction of 3
feedwater to the steam generators are similar to those'of other-4-
PWR designs.
5 Another perception is that our control room operators 6
are more burdened particularly following-plant trips on our 7~
plants than on other PWR's.
On ordinary trips, the operators in our plants are less burdened than operators at other plantsL 8
9 because of the automatic control features of the integrated 10-control system.
11 1 on trips or transients which involve or are caused by 12-misbehavior of the integrated control system, the burdenLis increased because of the integrated nature of the integrated-13 14 control system.
The program has addressed this operator burden-15 issue.
16 The next to the last bullet, the perception is that 17 the integrated control system is inappropriate for use as a 18 method of nuclear steam supply system control.
The integrated 19 features afforded by the integrated control system are 20 beneficial and are worthy of retention.
21 The ICS which consists of electronic signal 22 processing and control logic components is highly reliable.
23 The ICS.is susceptible to input signal failures, failures of 24 externally activated equipment and power supply failures.
25 These types of failures can cause the ICS to be ineffective or
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to lead to complex transient scenarios and because of this 2
potential, several key ICS and NNI issues are areas targeted 3
for improvement by the key safety and performance improvement 4
program recommendations.
5 To sum our conclusions regarding the uniqueness of 6
our plants, we accept that our plants are different.
The key differences lie in the steam generator design and the ICS 7
8 method of plant control.
9 The impact of these two is to make our plants more 10 responsive to secondary side thermal hydraulic changes and 11 these differences provide us several key performance advantages 12 which are worthy of retention.
13 We understand these differences and have developed 14 recommendations to address them and the recommendations are 15 among our key recommendations.
16 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Let me ask a question.
I am 17 not a nuclear engineer.
I am not a thermal hydraulics expert 18 as anyone here in Research can tell you.
Maybe you are going 19 to address this and if you are, we will just go on, but one of 20 the things that has been talked about for a long time 21 especially among the uninitiated, I guess, is the once through 22 steam generator and the fairly relatively small steam generator 23 inventory.
24 You say that it is adequate.
Are you going to tell 25 us, it seems to me there is a word "provided" that must go
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15 1L' after that and.the "provided" may mean because the~ original 2
design did.this and that or should have done.this or that or it 3
may involve because we are.taking the following steps.
4 Could you outline for us briefly what leads you to 5
the conclusion of adequacy there?
In one sense, of course, it 6
is adequate.
It runs the plant but we all know what we mean 7
here and as you have said, they can dry out rather quickly.
8 If you are going to do that later, fine.
Otherwise, 9
maybe you could comment on it just briefly.
.10 MR. SKILIMAN:
Let me comment on that now.
The basis 11 for this statement is our having performed the sensitivity 12 study which'gives us an indication of the rate at which the 13 reactor coolant system temperature and pressure parameters 14 change as.a function of secondary side temperature and pressure 15 parameters.
16 What we know is that the B&W/NSSS. design is 17 comparable in terms of general thermal hydraulic sensitivity in 18 terms of the, manner of which the entire plant responds to
-19 various changes.
20 Those changes being developed by the secondary 21 plants, differing heat transfer and energy transfer modes, as 22 they apply back to the reactor coolant system.
23 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
What you are saying is the 24 overall plant is comparable, and I will just say in its inertia 25 toward a major event?
I think that is what you are saying.
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o 16 1-Can you name me those specific elements that 2
compensate for the once through steam generator?
I don't know 3
whether that is possible.
What is it that makes it a similar inertia against a major accident, given the character of the 4
5 once through steam generator?
6
-MR. SKILLMAN:
Primarily two components.
First of 7
all, the ability of the once through steam generator to remove 8
great quantities of heat promptly as a result of introduction 9
of emergency feedwater to the once through steam generators.
10 The emergency feedwater is injected high into the 11 tube bundle.
There are 15,000 tubes per generator.
By design, 12 the generators remove heat very rapidly and hence, heat can be 13 removed and is removed rapidly by introduction of emergency 14 feedwater.
15 As important, the make-up and purification system, 16 which is always running on a B&W unit, for most of the 177's, 17 is also the high pressure injection safety grade pump.
When 18 one looks at the performance of the plant in terms of time to 19 core damage from dry out of the generators, the B&W design 20 fares well.
21 There are obviously differences between two loop and 4
22 four loop plants and two loops of one type versus another, but 23 in general, the B&W units fare well in the time between when 24 action is required and protection of the core.
It is on that 25 basis that we make this statement, the OTSGs are appropriate
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and we wish to. retain their advantages.
'2 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
That would apply that these
'3 specific systems you have mentioned, emergency feedwater and 4
the make-up system, water purification cleaning system, that 5-the maintenance and. operation of those is proportionately more important, high pressure injection, than it might be at other 6
7 plants?
Is that a fair' statement?
8 MR. SKILLMAN:
That's a fair statement; yes, sir.
In 9
fact, the high pressure injection system is safety grade and so 10 are emergency.feedwater systems.
11 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
My emphasis is on 12 maintenance.
I hope that is your emphasis.
13 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
I would ask the staff to comment on 1
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14 some of these things, too, if they can.
If they can't today, 15 then at the time when they can comment on them.
I think it 16 would be important to hear from them on some of these things i
17 that you have talked about here in your conclusions.
I know 18 they have been the subject of controversy.
I appreciate your 19 views.
I think it would be important for the staff at the 20 appropriate time today or some time later to address them.
It i
21 would be helpful.
22 You may proceed.
I 23 MR. SKILLMAN:
The next slide, please; number seven.
4 24 I would like to share with you the conclusions 25 regarding transient complexity.
The Owners Group has
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maintained detailed' records of each reactor trip and ensuing 2
transient beginning in January, 1980.
Thorough and critical review of'the plant's behavior over this time period has-3 permitted us to develop _a number of specific conclusions 4
5 relative to this behavior.
6 We can demonstrate that our history is one which is 7
free from frequent, repeated, identical, individual component 8
failures or frequent misoperation.
Said from a different 9.
perspective, we do not have the history of ICS failures per se 10 or pressurizer failures per se, or steam generator failures, or 11
_ operator burden.
12 Common to this is our major conclusion which is 13 mismatch of primary heat generation to secondary heat removal, 14 the phenomenon which leads to the complex transients.
These 15 complex transients can be accurately characterized as over 16 heating events or over cooling events.
A third category is
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17 overfill, overfeed, these are rare, but are serious enough to 18 be included in the safety and performance improvement program.
19 Over heating events are numerically infrequent 20 compared with the number of over cooling events and we regard 21 each over heating event as highly significant because of the 22 potential, real or imagined, for such an event to eventually 23 result in core damage.
24 of importance with regard to the over heating event is the common element among all of them, which is operator 25
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decision and action.
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A large number of our complex transients have 3
occurred when the plant is re-starting from a shutdown l
'4 condition.
These transients are normally characterized by over 5
. cooling events and they have as common elements, relatively low 6
heat generation rate, high emergency feedwater flow rate, rapid
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7 reduction of secondary pressure and temperature, causing rapid 8
reduction of primary temperature.
9 These over cooling events are frequent when accounted 10 for in the B&W Owners Group's transient history, but these do 11 not constitute significant safety concerns because in spite of 12 the sometimes rapid temperature and pressure reduction, and in 13 spite of the potential violation of our procedurally allowed 14 pressure temperature window, the actual mechanical limits of 15 the reactor coolant system are not threatened.
16 We regard the over cooling events as significant 17 because in some cases, the operator's responses to these over 1B cooling events have created conditions that spawn an ensuing 19 over heating event.
Because of this, we attribute still 20 greater significance to this class of events than their actual 21 threat to the reactor coolant system pressure boundary would 22 warrant.
23 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
They can be significant for 24 other reasons as well; can't they?
You basically don't 3ike 25 rapid temperature drops.
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MR. SKILIMAN:
We could prefer not to have them, but 2
a rapid temperature drop itself is not an item of safety 3
significance.
4 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I am jusit saying there may be 5
other reasons such as the vessel itself.
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6 MR. SKILLMAN:
That's the point we are making.
Even 7
though that rapid temperature pressure reduction may occur, our 8
data show that is not a significant safety concern.
9 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I'm not sure we are saying 10 the same thing.
For the reasons you are here concerned with, I 11 agree.
You also don't want rapid temperature reduction in the 12 vessel itself, for example, or am I missing a point here?
1 13 MR. SKILLMAN:
We don't want that to happen for a lot 14 of reasons.
15 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
For other reasons; ETS.
I 16 guess all I'm saying is I am not sure I would say it is not a 17 significant safety concern.
18 MR. RUTHERFORD:
I think the point here is that yes, 19 we are concerned with over cooling events if they get into the 20 100-200 degree category.
Rapid over cooling of 50 degrees, et 21 cetera, is not that big a safety concern.
22 MR. SKILIMAN:
The over cooling misbehavior is 23 dominated by two particular balance in plant systems.
These 24 are the secondary system pressure control system and the 25 emergency feedwater system.
These two often pair in post-trip
.a 21 1
misbehavior, both the main feedwater system and the integrated 2
control. system also participate frequently in post-trip 3
misbehavior.
4 Next slide, please.
5 This pie. chart shows the various complex transients' 6
thermohydraulic categories based on our operating experience 7
history.
The' complex transients are sorted by over cooling, 8
over heating and overfill, overfeed.
The significantly greater 9
portion of the complex transients are over cooling transients.
10 over heating events constitute a small fraction of the total 11 number of complex transients since 1980.
12 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
How many of that 90 percent 13 are in the category you just mentioned, Mr. Rutherford?
50 14 degrees and under, let's say.
15 MR. RUTHERFORD:
I would say only one or two of those 16 approxin.ately nine that we had, fall out of that category.
17 Even there, they were not that significant.
18 MR. SKILLMAN:
Next slide, please.
19 This pie chart shows the systems most needing 20 improvement based on the system operating experience of our 21 plants.
The percentage shown represents the number of times a 22 specific system has contributed to the complex transient out of 23 the 51 significant transients we have experienced, as Category 24 C and significant B transients.
25 From the relative frequency of involvement, I
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'22 1-particular system dominance is clearly identified.
That is, 2
the emergency feedwater system, which is EFW; main feedwater, 3
which is MFW; ICS, integrated control system; secondary steam 4
pressure control, SSPC, contributed the most towards the 5
complexity-of transients.
6 Next slide, please.
7 The detailed records kept by the B&W Owners Group
.8 have permitted us to understand the trip initiators for each of 9
the. trips experienced.
We have learned that the bulk of our i
10
-trips come from two sources.
First, balance of plant and 11 components.
Two, personnel.
4 12 The reactor coolant system and its major components 13 and instrumentation are not common plant trip givers.
I 14 In specific, before 1985, the turbine generator was 15 the dominant trip initiator.
Actions were taken by the B&W 16 Owners Group to reduce this trip contributor and those actions 17.
have been successful.
J 18 The current dominant trip initiator is the main 19 feedwater system.
We have among our key recommendations, many
.20 which'directly and indirectly, are. going to reduce the. number 21 of main feedwater system induced trips.
Also high on the list 22 of trip initiators are the trips contributed by the integrated i
23 control system, predominately input signal failures and the 24 plant electrical' system.
Recommendg.tions regarding these two 25 are also high on our priority'1'ist.
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Next slide, please.
2 I'd like to present the recommendations, several 3
recommendations, from the safety and performance improvement 4
program.
The recommendations are the output or the product of 5
the program.
Each of these results from the combination of a recognized consensus need by the B&W Luners Group plant owners 6
7 and an accepted, verified technical basis.
8 The recommendations are presented in a hierarchy of 9
the executive summary of our document, B&W, 1919, which is the 10 SPIP documentation.
The specific recommendations entitled 11
" Typical Key Recommendations," are presented to give you a 12 sense of-the degree to which the safety and performance improvement program has interrogated the plant behavior issues 13 14 and determined the need for change.
15 The key recommendations are those which have been 16 identified as highly important to achieving the SPIP goals by 17 review and by engineering judgment.
18 Please bear in mind that the general topic of the 19 recommendations is applicable to all B&W Owners Group plant 20 owners and that each recommendation may not be applicable.
I'd 21 like to repeat that.
The general topics apply to all plant 22 owners and each recommendation may not be applicable.
23 While we have over 180 recommendations currently identified for implementation, I will speak just about several 24 25 of them.
The detailed listing of the total recommendation list
24 1
is contained in B&W 1919.
2 Specifically regarding the integrated control system, 3
the integrated control system is essentially an electronic 4
signal processing and control logic system, and it has suffered 5
power losses which have caused the ICS and NNI to contribute to 6
complex transients.
This single issue has caused us to offer 7
as our number one priority key recommendation, that each 8
utility will ensure that its plant will go to an known safe 9
state on loss of ICS/NNI power, and that the plant will remain 10 at that known safe state when power is restored.
11 obviously, highly important is also the prevention of 12 loss of power for the ICS/NNI in the first place.
13 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
How are you going to do those 14 two things?
15 MR. SKILLMAN:
By doing a plant specific review, 16 identifying how the components fail on loss of ICS and NNI 17 power and ensuring that when that power is lost, the components 18 go to where we want them to, and that in that state, the plant 19 is safe, that it is well understood 2nd the operators have 20 confidence that they can take that plant from that status to 21 where they want the plant to go.
22 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
The plant specific 23 differences, I would assume, are not so great that you can't, 24 for example, reach some generic conclusion about -- maybe you 25 haven't got this far yet.
How are you going to prevent loss of
c 25 l
1 power?
What steps are going to be taken generally speaking?
2 Has no analysis of that been done yet?
3 MR. WILGUS:
Yes, sir.
We are in the early stages of 4
the implementation.
The 181 recommendations of which a few key 5
ones we are discussing now, are now being very intently studied i
f 6
by each of us.
I don't know that we have a specific answer to 7
that question.
8 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
You don't have an answer to 9
that yet.
10 MR. WILGUS:
No.
We have done the investigation and 11 the correlating of data.
We are now implementing the program.
12 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Ensuring that you go to a 13 safe state, if you do lose power, in your judgment, I take it, 14 that is if not straight forward, an achievable engineering 15 design goal, or you wouldn't be saying it, I guess.
16 MR. WILGUS:
Yes.
Each plant has a different 17 architect engineer.
Each plant will have its own unique 18 features and it will have to be investigated very thoroughly 19 and corrected.
20 MR. RUTHERFORD:
I wouldn't want to leave the impression that we haven't already done a lot of things in this 21 22 area as far as power supply reliability and also ensuring a 23 known safe state.
We have gone down the road to some degree.
24 We have a little further to go.
There has been work already 25 done.
=
26 1
COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
For example, power supply reliability, can'you give me an example of what you have in 2
3 mind or where you are heading on this?
4 MR. RUTHERFORD:
We have all implemented' automatic 5
. bus transfers on' loss of power to give you redundancy, those 6
. types of modifications.
7 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Let's proceed.
8 MR. SKILIMAN:
Next slide, please; number 12.
9 The neto group of recommendations addresses emergency 10 operations and people, particularly the operators and their 11 potential reluctance to take certain specified actions.
12 We recommend that.the emergency operating procedures 13 be reviewed to assure that wherever extreme actions are 14 specified, that the plant conditions truly require that action.
15 We accept that the operators have been trained to take these 16 actions, yet we want to emphasize the need for both the 17 training itself and for management to reinforce the necessity-18 to take these actions when the procedures require it.
Other
]
19 key recommendations are shown.
l 20 Next slide, please; number 13.
21 Our next group of recommendations addresses improving 22-the reliability of the main feedwater and condensate systems.
23 Review of our data on main feedwater system reliability shows 24 that the area needing most attention is the area of control of 25 the main feedwater pumps.
Hence, our top recommendation in
e 27 1
this category is to implement a program to identify improvements needed in the main feedwater pump control system 2
including the integrated control system.
Other key 3
4 recommendations are also shown.
5 Number 14, please.
6 Our next group of recommendations addresses 7
ccrrecting instrument air system failures and ensuring that the 8
plant will go to a known safe state on loss of instrument air.
9 The B&W Owners studied extensively each plant's instrument air 10 system and developed functional target criteria which 11 represented a technically sound, modern instrument air system.
12 The recommendation is that each plant compare its own 13 instrument air system with the target criteria and upgrade as 14 necessary.
Several other key recommendations are shown.
15 Next slide, number 15, please.
16 Our next group of recommendations address the 17 secondary system pressure control system.
Post-trip control, 18 both steam and feed flow, has been a contributor to complex 19 transients and the objective of this group of recommendations 20 is to enable the operator to control the energy balance between 21 the primary and secondary systems post-trip, providing control 22 and isolation capability in the main control room, of post-trip 23 steam and feed paths, including the turbine bypass system and 24 the atmospheric dump system, is regarded as important to this 25 objecuive.
3
28 1
Slide 16, please.
2 Emergency feedwater is injected into the B&W owners 3
Group plants, OTSG tube bundle, with over 15,000 tubes per 4
generator, excellent heat transfer occurs.
Our key 5
recommendations with regard to emergency feedwater are to 6
ensure that the emergency feedwater system is made thoroughly 7
reliable.
In addition, to reduce both the magnitude and 8
frequency of emergency feedwater over cooling.
9 Our recommendations include flow rate and fill rate 10 limitations on the system and reducing spurious emergency 11 feedwater actuations.
12 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
How much is the start time 13 for these emergency feedwater pumps going to be extended?
What 14 is the change there?
15 MR. SKILIMAN:
We are thinking of extending the start 16 time by a matter of 60 or so seconds.
17 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
What is it right now?
18 MR. SKILIMAN:
Prompt or within several systems.
We 19 are thinking that should be extended to 60 to 120 seconds.
20 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
That is for exactly what 21 reason?
22 MR. SKILIMAN:
What that will do, Commissioner 23 Bernthal, is permit the primary coolant system to begin to 24 decay in terms of heat generation rate, so that at the time the
{
25 emergency feedwater is injected, there is more of a match J
f, 29 1
between the then existing heat generation rate, total primary 2
system heat inventory and emergency feedwater heat removal l
3 capability.
The real intent is to get all that matched.
4 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Thank you.
5 MR. SKILLMAN:
I would like to make several additional comments before Neil Rutherford presents our plan 6
7 for implementation of these recommendations.
l 8
We have thoroughly investigated the balance of plant 9
systems and have offered recommendations for improvement in l
10 those systems which will make the B&W Owner Group plants safer.
11 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
We have talked about that here in the 12 Commission recently.
I commend you for that.
Balance of plant 13 is still obviously something that not only your plant and your 14 type of plant but other plants, it seems to me, could use more 15 attention on.
Your emphasis on balance of plant is appropriate 16 in my judgment.
I think that is exactly the right thing to do.
17 Don't drop that emphasis with all the other specific things you 18 are doing on the nuclear steam supply system side.
Keep that 19 emphasis on balance of plant as well.
Both are necessary in my 20 judgment.
21 MR. SKILLMAN:
Thank you, i
22 The basis for our recommendations includes the Owners 23 Group's operating history; several particularly thorough and 24 independent studies; extensive balance of plant review, all of l
25 which have been focused to create technically sound and
30 1
beneficial recommendations.
2 We expect significantly improved plant operations 3
resulting in safer operations to be the result of 4
implementation of these recommendations.
5 Neil Rutherford will explain our program for 6
implementation.
Neil?
7 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
May I just ask one more 8
question here?
I noted in your report and maybe you said this 9
as we were walking through and I didn't hear it, that 10 apparently 1 of every 5 trips involved what you call complexity 11 and trip behavior of the plant.
How does that compare with 12 other plants?
I'm not sure what " complexity" means.
I assume 13 it is bad.
14 MR. SKILLMAN:
We honestly don't know.
We keep 15 records of every trip and have been doing that since 1980.
We 16 know that other Owners Groups have data programs but to our 17 knowledge, their programs do not include the feature which 18 assesses the relative complexity of each ensuing transient l
19 compared with others.
What is different in our program is our 20 TAP program provides us the ability to measure the complexity i
21 based on understanding how 6 parameters have behaved following 22 the trip and we hence, grade the transient by those e 23 parameters.
24 We know that other people, other Owners Groups keep 25 track of trips and what equipment has been involved in a trip,
31 1
but.to our knowledge, we are the only ones that have the 2
grading system which is for us a magnifying glass to 3
understanding just how the plants have behaved.
I 4
COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Is that because other plants 5
don't lend.themselves easily to that sort of thing?
I can't 6
think of a reason why that would be true.
Maybe someone from 7
Duke or someone who has-different plant varieties could 8
comment.
9 MR. RUTHERFORD:
The database just isn't there to 10 compare units.
11 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
They just have not as a 12 practice followed that sort of thing for other plants.
13 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Right.
If you went out there and 14 dug through a lot of reports and built a database, you could 15 come up with that.
That work has not been done.
16 One other comment, as Dick mentioned, the complexity 17 of transients pas a definition that we came up with, to 18 categorize and try to put them in boxes as far as level of i
19 severity.
20 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
To the extent that is an 21 effective method of categorization, it is a pretty important 22 thing to do.
Maybe our staff could comment on that.
I don't 23 want to over emphasize'it, but it does seem like you have 24 focused on the complexity, meaning they ranked 7 out of 10 or 25 whatever in complexity with each trip, and that 1 out of 5 had I
i 1
32 1
a number of things going on that disturbed you.
It would be 2
interesting to know what the other plants do under similar 3
analysis.
4 MR. RUTHERFORD:
I would like to put that number 1 5
out of 5 a little bit in perspective.
We had approximately 10 6
out of the approximately 240 transients that we categorized as 7
Category C.
The other remaining 1 out of 5 were transients 8
where one parameter slightly got out of the box.
I need to put 9
that number a little bit into perspective.
10 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Maybe our staff can comment.
11 Thank you.
12 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Thank you very much.
Proceed, Mr.
13 Rutherford.
14 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Good afternoon.
My name is Neil 15 Rutherford.
I'm with Duke Power.
I am currently Chairman of l
16 the B&W Owners Group Steering Committee.
17 I'd like to briefly discuss the present status of 18 recommendation implementation.
As previously indicated, we 19 expect over 300 recommendations for plant improvement will i
20 result from the SPIP program.
The recommendation tracking 21 system currently has 181 recommendations; 73 of which are noted 22 as key recommendations.
The balance of the recommendations will be reviewed by the Steering Committee and placed in the 23 24 recommendation tracking system in the near future.
25 All of the owners have committed resources to
1 j
a s
33 1
evaluating the remaining recommendations, to determine 2
appropriate actions for their individual plants.
As we have 3
previously stated, the Executive and Steering Committees will 4
be actively monitoring the implementation process to ensure 5
that the goals of the owners Group are met.
6 Next slide, please.
7 To this point, you have been presented with a program 8
that I think has been very effective in identifying potential 9
improvements for the B&W units.
Obviously, this potential 10 cannot be realized unless the recommendations are implemer;ted 11 in a timely and quality manner.
To ensure both the timeliness 12 and quality in review and implementation, the Executives have 13 directed the Steering Committee to construct a program for 14 assessing and monitoring the actions of our members.
15 I will discuss some of the details of that program in 16 a moment.
17 We intend to review timeliness on all recommendations 18 and implementation quality on a selected set of 19 recommendations.
20 As for the timeliness of review and implementation, 21 all of the owners recognize the impact that one plant can have 22 on the others failing to implement the recommendations in an 23 orderly fashion.
In looking at the schedule, one has to 24 realize that the bulk of the recommendations have been 25 generated in the last several months.
Therefore, the utilities I
i l
e 4-
'34 l'
. ill be going through the process of evaluating the w
2 recommendations as they apply to'their particular unit over the 3
coming months.
-4 Implementation will then proceed with due 5
consideration for an individual utility's unique plant 6
configuration, resources, and operating schedules.
7 The Owners Group through the Steering and Executive 8
Committees will ensure that each utility is implementing the 9
recommendations on a. reasonable schedule.
10 I would note that many of the recommendations are 11 software related, that is changes to procedures, changes to 12 maintenance practices, that type of thing.
They should be 13 implemented in a fairly shcrt timeframe.
14 Those recommendations involving hardware 15 modifications, however, the schedules would obviously be longer 16 to allow for a design and appropriate scheduling into unit 17 outages.
1B In either case, the Owners Group will be monitoring 19 the progress of the individual utilities by means of the 20 recommendation tracking system, to ensure that we have no 21 outliers in terms of overall progress.
The Owners also intend 22 to compare the future performance of'our units to the defined 23 goals for trip and transient reduction, to ensure that implementation of these recommendations is indeed effective.
24 25 Next slide, please.
1
c 35 1
We also-intend to check quality of implementation at 2
individual utilities.
To accomplish this, we are going to 3
select some of the most important recommendations out of the 73 4
key recommendations for further review.
Each utility will 5
prepara an information package, describing the actions.they intend to take, and how this satisfies the recommendations.
6 A
7 review team will then examine these packages to determine if 8
the intent of the recommendation will.be met.
These design 9
reviews would be supplemented by interfacing with the 10 responsible utility personnel where appropriate.
11 We. recognize that individual plants may employ 12 different means to implement recommendations.
However, the 13 depth of their review and effectiveness of their correction 14 actions should be consistent with the other owners.
The 15 results of these reviews will be reported to the Executive 16 Committee for further action if appropriate.
17 As I mentioned, 181 recommendations have already been 18 approved by the Steering Committee and placed into the 19 recommendation tracking system.
Although many of the 20 recommendations are recent, the owners have implemented'a 21 number of earlier recommendations and we have experienced some i
22 performance improvement as a result.
l l
23 For example, trips have been avoided at Crystal River 24 and Arkansas as a result of the recommendations that have been 25 implemented.
=
36 1
The Owners Group considers implementation of the 2
remaining recommendations critical to the success of the SPIP 3
program.
We will be monitoring the process to ensure that disposition of these recommendations are aggressively pursued.
4 5
We will also be providing periodic updates of the 6
recommendation tracking system to your staff so that they also 7
may monitor our progress regarding implementation status and 8
schedules.
9 MR. WILGUS:
Mr. Chairman, I would like to make some 10 closing remarks, if I may, sir, 11 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Certainly; proceed.
i 12 MR. WILGUS:
The B&W Owners Group plants are safe and 13 the implementation of the SPIP recommendations will make them 14 even safer.
The scope of the reassessment undertaken by us is 15 correct and sufficient in that it has identified areas for 16 safety and performance improvement and that it will lay to rest 17 many misconceptions regarding the B&W/NSSS design.
18 Safety and performance will be improved at our 19 plants.
We have already had evidence of this in that 20 implementation of some of the earlier recommendations has 21 avoided trips in our units, as Neil just mentioned.
- Further, 22 our reviews indicated that some transients which have deviated 23 from the normal range would not have done so had program 24 recommendations now known to us have been implemented. By 25 reducing the number of plant trips, we directly reduce the
)
37 1
chance of severe transients.
2 Additionally, with the lowered number of trips, we 3
expect higher plant availability and reliability.
All this is i
4 a direct result of making our plants safer.
5 The SPIP has been totally visible to the staff since its inception and we will continue to make it totally visible.
6 7
The staff can readily monitor performance through the progress 8
and tracking reports we will make to them.
SPIP 9
recommendations will remain in our tracking system until they 10 have been fully dispositioned at all of our plants.
Tracking 11 reports will be upgraded and sent to the staff on a periodic 12 basis.
With this visibility, staff and regional personnel and 13 residents can easily maintain overall NRC cognizance of 14.
implementation status.
15 Naturally, all 300 plus recommendations cannot be 16 accomplished immediately.
Some recommendations, as Neil noted, 17 are fairly easy.
However, some are quite difficult and will be 18 time consuming requiring engineering, design, installation and 19 check out work.
20 The SPIP recommendations will be phased and made part 21 of our individual plant schedules and will be implemented over 22 the next few years.
Individually and collectively, we will 23 monitor the implementation performance and assure that the implementation occurs in a timely and logical manner and we 24 25 will take whatever actions are needed to assure proper program i
4 1*
l-38 I
1-attention and dedication.
2 We the executives of the-B&W plants are dedicated to 3
the pursuit of excellence in the operation of our plants.
As 4
part of this dedication, commitment-to the SPIP recommendations i
1 5
is strongly endorsed by us all.
Our Executive Committee, our 6
Steering Committee and Transient Assessment committee, will be 7
heavily involved in the detailed monitoring of the implementation and will perform surveillance of such B
9 implementation.
10 To a large extent, the information gathering phase 11 and the integration phases of this program are complete.
12 Implementation is underway.
However, the B&W owners will 13 continue to learn more as our experience base expands.
We will 14 stay aware of our experience and its behavior trend, so while 15 the SPIP program, as we are presenting today, with the 16 dedicated team, will come to an end, a continuing information 17 gathering process has been created and will continue to exist 18 with appropriate integration and implementation following the 19 things we find out.
20 This program has been, is and will continue to be 21 visible to the staff.
Safety is a major emphasis of our 22 program.
We believe that the owners' safety and performance 23 improvement program has been fully responsive to the staff's 24 concerns.
25 Thank you for the privilege of being here today to
4 39 1
present the program to you.
2-CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Thank you very much.
Questions from 3
my fellow Commissioners?
Commissioner Roberts?
4 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
A quick one.
You very 5
carefully point out that even though all these have an NSSS
(
signed by Babcock and Wilcox, each plant is different.
6 I am 7
reading from B&W 1919.
B Would you give me some sense, and I don't mean 9
precisely, you are going to have approximately 300 10 recommendations, the same ratio, about 40 percent are going to 11 be key recommendations, what percentage of those will be 12 implemented by all B&W owners?
Would you hazard a guess?
13 MR. RUTHERFORD:
I would say approximately 20 percent 14 of the recommendations would not be applicable to an individual 15 plant.
They would be left with the balance to disposition.
16 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
Thank you.
17 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Commissioner Bernthal?
18 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
That's an important question.
19 That means 80 percent do have generic application, the flip 20 side of the coin.
To the very end of your presentation, I must 21 confess a little concern that your group and the experts on 22 your group and the knowledge they represent, not to somehow 23 become unavailable as the implementation process goes on now.
24 I trust that by whatever mechanisms you have chosen within the 25 B&W Owners Group, that is not going to happen.
I certainly
I 40 L
1 hope it won't.
2 MR. RUTHERFORD:
We have an existing organization in 3-the owners Group comprised of a number of committees, an_I&C 4
committee, for instance.
They have been actively involved in 5-the generation of these recommendations.
They are a standing 6
committee.
They will be watching over what we are doing in the 7
future.
That is certainly one means that we intend, to keep 8
the expertise that participated in this study.
9 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
As far as you are concerned, 10 although the committee itself and I suppose most importantly, 11 those who have been leading the committee effort, will be 12 disbanded, the' people that really know and can follow 13 implementation will continue to do so and will report to the 14 B&W Owners Group, should there be problems.
Is that a fair 15 statement?
16 MR. RUTHERFORD:
That's correct.
17 MR. WILGUS:
In my introductory remarks, I noted that 18 we had used our existing structure to formulate this program.
19 That was done intentionally with exactly this purpose in mind.
20 At this point in time, while we no longer need the informal 21 team, all of the key members who have worked on this are 22 members of our Transient Assessment Committees, I&C Committees 23 and so forth, and operate in their normal functions through the 24 Steering Group.
25-COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Good.
In the same vein, one
J 41 4
1 of the points that'does concern me somewhat about implementation is that closing an issue out, closing out a 2
3 recommendation does not necessarily mean that a licensee, 4
utility, carries out the implementation.
They may look at the
' implementation recommendation and decide not to do it.
5 6
I'm not sure I would refer to that as closing out.
7 Are we going to have some way of tallying?
I would hope the l
8 Owners Group would tally close outs where the recommendation
{
9 was rejected and close outs where it was in fact implemented.
10 MR. RUTHERFORD:
We have a closed out operable 11 category and we have a closed, rejected category.
12 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Very good.
13 I want to compliment you on the fact that your Owners 14 Group in general it seems to me, and I'm sure your study group 15 has well, has tended not to focus on the lowest common 16 denominator.
I think there is a sense that you are trying to 17 reach an objective that involves excellence, as we all like to 18 say and talk about.
In your case at least that has meant the 19 lowest common denominator does not become policy for the Owners 20 Group and from all appearances, for this particular study.
21 I would compliment you on that.
I hope that 22 continues to be the practice within the owners Group.
23 could you tell me one other specific point here, one 24 of the main recommendations that has been around for some time, 25 I guess, the emergency feedwater installation, initiation and
42 l
1 control system.
Who has not installed that as of this date?
I l
2 understand that a number of owners have but some have not, I
3 think.
Could you bring me up to date on that?
4 MR. SKILLMAN:
Sir, all of the B&W owners --
5 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
All of them now have that in?
6 MR. SKILLMAN:
Let me say it carefully.
All of the 7
B&W plant owners have an emergency feedwater control system.
8 Some have a system called EFIC, emergency feedwater initiation 9
and control.
One plant has what is known as HSPS, heat sink 10 protection system.
One has a steam and feed rupture control 11 system.
Three units have a feedwater control system and is 12.
different from the others.
13 It is fair to say all currently licensed operating 14 Babcock plants have an emergency feedwater control system.
15 There are differences among them, owing to differences in plant 16 design and in plant age and so on.
All have them.
17 Neil, would you comment?
18 MR. RUTHERFORD:
They are all safety grade initiation 19 systems.
20 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Your judgment would be that 21 the capability of all those at least is approximately 22 equivalent?
23 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Yes, as far as initiation.
(
I 24 MR. SKILLMAN:
There are some differences between l
25 them.
They are comparable but they are certainly not i
w 43 1
identical.
Their design bases are different from one to 2
another because of the way in which the hardware is laid out, 3
when it was selected, the type of hardware it is.
They have 4
the same basic function in terms of prompt removal of decay 9
5 heat.
6 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Capability to handle 7
Would you say that is roughly comparable?
Are 8
there significant variations?
9 MR. SKILLMAN:
I'd say they are roughly comparable.
10 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Are they automatic systems like EFIC l
11 is, the other ones?
12 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Oconee is slightly different in that 13 initiation and control is automatic.
We have not installed an 14 automatic control system for feed line ruptures and steam line 15 ruptures like some of the other plants.
16 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Are you looking into that?
17 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Our design philosophy has been not 18 to do that.
19 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Are you familiar with the EPIC 20 system?
21 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Yes.
22 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
What it does?
23 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Yes.
24 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
You think you need not install that 25 type of system?
y.
44 1
KR. RUTHERFORD:
That's correct.
2 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
I would just say that I hope you you 3-have studied it very carefully.
I would ask the staff to. study 4
it carefully for you.
I'd like to know what they have to say 5
about it.
6 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I agree.
7 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
The systems are different.
I know they are tryihg tofdo the same thing.
It's an important 8
9-
, system.
If one is a little better than.the other, I think we 10 ought to all know about it.
I'm sure there might be 11 disagreements.
I'd like to hear what the staff says about 12 that, too, please.
13
. COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I agree.
I was also going to 14 suggest that the staff make some comments on that.
It one last one; we have heard over the years'many times 16
. allegations whether founded and in some cases perhaps 17 unfounded, that the B&W design is an especially sensitive 18 design, perhaps difficult to operate.
I have occasionally 19 heard it referred to as the Ferrari of nuclear plants,' and not 20 everybody ought to drive a Ferrari or at least they ought to be 21 a good driver I guess if he drives a Ferrari.
1 22.
I trust you all have capable operators.
I'm sure you 22 do and I'm sure you are.
24 It is.also true I am told that there are elements of
.. 25 the B&W plant, however, that are less sensitive and are quite a
- f 6.
p 45 1
- desirable as compared to other plants.
Can you give us the 2
other side of the story?
I'm sure you wouldn't mind doing 3'
that.
4 MR. SKILLMAN:
Yes, sir.
Would you put-the 5
sensitivity study back up, pleasa?
I would like to draw your 6
attention.to the slide when it comes up.
This is work that was 7
'done for us by NPR.
8 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
He has a back-up slide.
This 9
was not a planted question, I assure you.
10 MR. SKILIMAN:
There it is.
As I said, these are the 11 executive, summary conclusions from the work that was done for i
12 us by our consultant, NPR.
That study was a comparison of key
{
13' response. characteristics.
Let me not read this for you.
Let I
14 me let-you read'it.
15 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Why don't you summarize it 16 anyway?
I'm a slow reader.
17-MR. SKILIMAN:
Number one, yes, our plants are 18 sensitive but they are not unsafe.
They are different.
They 19 do respond more quickly to changes in both primary and 20 secondary temperature.
I think the nub of it is to understand j
how the once through steam generator with the varying heat
.d 21 22
' transfer length changes its ability to transfer heat, hence, 23
. power.
'24 Our plants are not more sensitive to reactivity 25 upsets, for the same increase or decrease in reactivity.
You
4 46 1
get about the same output response in terms of pressure and l
2 temperature.
3 We are not more sensitive to coolant flow upsets.
In 4
fact, in our plant, when you say where are we more durable, our 5-plants can run with 1 or 4 or 3 or 2 reactor coolant pumps.
6 Other plants operate only with 4 reactor coolant pumps.
7 We are less likely on average to experience a leak 8-leading to a net loss of coolant.
The reason is because most 9
of our plants have a very large always operating make-up pump.
10 They are somewhat less sensitive to steam demand 11 upsets such as load. rejection and turbine trip.
That is 12 because of the ability of the once through steam generator to 13 change its characteristics to vary its heat transfer by varying 14 the water level and the super heater height.
15 A point we would like to make is that a reactor trip 16 or turbine trip is not necessary for safety, even though we 17 currently have that anticipatory trip, we don't need it for 18 safety.
19 I
We are not more likely to over cool following a 20 reactor trip.
I 21 We are more sensitive in the response to main i
22 feedwater upsets.
We acknowledge this, total loss of main 23 feedwater in our plants is serious.
The frequency of such 24 losses are not greater in our plants.
Our plants are in sum 25 but not all subject to greater cool down rates from overfeeding
1 l
l 47
)
i of emergency feedwater, and we have touched on that a number of j
times this afternoon, and are equivalent in terms of time 2
l 3
available to use alternate means of decay heat removal on a I
4 complete loss of all feedwater.
The point there is we are not 5
stranded if we lose main feed.
We have time to take action and 6
can take action and will be successful in taking action.
7 For most reactor trips, these plants, B&W/NSSS designed, do not impose greater burdens on plant operators but 8
do impose greater burdens on the operators in diagnosing and 9
10 responding to failures of the automatic control systems, in 11 particular, the ICS.
Such failures are more likely to lead to 12 complex transients in B&W units and that is why our number one 13 recommendation is a known safe state.
14 There are some positives and flip sides.
That is in 15 the executive summary that you have from B&W 1919.
16 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
It keeps coming back to the 17 ICS in many respects; doesn't it?
18 MR. SKILLMAN:
Many positive features of the ICS.
19 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Yes; I understand that.
20 MR. SKILLMAN:
As it works, it is great.
21 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Very good.
Thank you.
22 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Commissioner Carr?
23 COMMISSIONER CARR:
Sensitivity and balance of plant 24 that you have said is your primary sensitivity or at least the 25 trips are coming out of balance of plant and operator error,
= _ _ _ - _ - _ _ - -
- a; 48 1
the~ majority, and I hear.you say you are going to make the 2-balance of plant system safer.
One of ny real concerns is we 3
don't do good maintenance in the secondary side of the plant.
-4
'I'd like to know what changes you'are going to make in maintenance on the secondary' side and the general philosophy-5 6
of the Owners Group on balance of plant maintenance.
l 7
MR. WILGUS:
The sum of the recommendations in that' 8
area as' mentioned are'what we call the software 9
recommendations.
A large emphasis in that area'in on 10 maintenance practices and procedures.
We will cite and have cited in'a number of the recommendations improvement of 111 L 12 maintenance practices.
The implementation of the follow-up 13 surveillanceoftheimplementationwillprovideanoverhiewof 14 the application and follow-up on these types of 15 recommendations.
16 COMMISSIONER CARR:
Are those mostly generalities or 17 do you have a lot of specifics?
18 MR. RUTHERFORD:
We have specifics.
We have a number 19 of recommendations dealing with turbine bypass valve,. safety 20 valve maintenance, set points.
21-MR..SKILIMAN:
Tuning of the integrated control 22 system is a maintenance item.
23 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Valve maintenance in general.
I 24 MR. SKILLMAN:
Valves, pumps, emergency water pumps, 25 main feedwater pumps, they are all part of the recommendations i
-l
._. ]
't 49 1
from SPIP.
2 COMMISSIONER CARR:
They are all part of the 80 3-percent that I hope applies across the board.
4 MR. RUTHERFORD:
That's correct.
5 COMMISSIONER CARR:
There is an area where we can-6 make a lot of progress in and I think you have emphasized it
(
7 throughout your report but I don't think it got quite.the I\\
.s 8
highlight it needs.
9 That's all I have.
i 10 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
I think I know the answer to
{
i' i
11 this but I am going to ask.
Who was the original architect i
12 engineer for Arkansas?
Oconee I, II and III.
\\
13 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Duke.
Bechtel designed;the 14 containments but Duke was the main.
\\
15 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
Crystal River.
1 16 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Gilbert.
i
-l 17 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
TMI I.
18 MR. RUTHERFORD:
- Gilbert, t
19 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
Rancho Seco, l
20 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Bechtel.
v 21 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
Davis-Besse.
22 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Bechtel.
23 CO"MISSIONER ROBERTS:
TVA; their own?
WMP-I?
l 24 MR. RUTHERFORD:
United Engineers.
5 1
25 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
Thank you.
i n
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' CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Mr;3Ruthedford, I'd like to ask you a
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y question', if I.may.
Canrycu give us a feeling-for the current g[.'m
~. status ed implementation?
iod htve.said a lot about what you 3.
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Ccn ycu tell us what percentage
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MR. RUTHERFORD:
Wehave'dishsitionedaboutone-b:
7 third cy the recommendations that are 'in the tracking system r
8' curr Itly.. That includes a lot of non-applicable p
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recom,' men, dations. jWe implemented approximate 1'j 20 percen 9
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those.rsoommendations that would be applicable to an individual i
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That does' vary from plant to plant but on average, that 8.'
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' is,the, ? case'.
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j 33 N CHAIPNAN ZECH:
Do you have a record of what each
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c utility'* has done,so far?
14
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MR.. RUTHERFORD:
Yes; we do.
I 4
16'
' CHAIRMAN ZECH:' Doe,s the staff have that?
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MR. RUTHERFORD:
4 g
They have a recent copy.
I don't i
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They have the verrlion x,
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" 2 0' CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Fine.
I think it.is important that s.
i 3df the implementation -- results are what we are looking for of
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.e, 2f all utilities, not just some, but all of them.
I think that 2tf implementation, those records and that follow through is very
'l 24 important.
1
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.MR. RUTHERFORD:
Ye certainly agree.
s N) j'
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t 51 1
COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Could I just ask, how many of 2
those close outs did you say, 20 percent or one-third?
How 3
many of the close outs are rejects, non-compliances?
4 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Of that 20 percent, in rough l
5 numbers, we closed out approximately 30 recommendations per 6
plant.
On average, one or two 'f those are rejects.
o 7
COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Maybe staff would want to 8
comment on those, but not many.
9 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Is each utility contributing to that 10 average?
11 MR. RUTHERFORD:
I think it is a bit premature.
12 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Have all of them done something?
13 MR. RUTHERFORD:
Yes.
We are obviously not all at 14 the same point but everybody has gone down the road.
15 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
I want the staff to be watching that 16 and I'm sure they will and I'm sure you will be, too.
As you 17 mentioned, it is important that everyone come aboard on this.
18 This is what we are expecting.
19 Let me thank you very much for your informative 20 presentation this morning and for your personal efforts in this 21 program.
Implementation and results are important to me and 22 all of us here at the NRC.
I hope they are important to you.
23 You have emphasized them and I appreciate that.
24 We think that there are room for improvements.
You 25 have indicated that, too.
This is a serious effort to do just
i 52 1
that.
Follow through, implementation and results are what we 2
are looking for.
All utilities I expect to show us positive, 3
aggressive pursuit of chese recommendations.
4 Also, I would like to make one final comment on the 5
fact that I understand you are putting this organization into 6
the overall Owners Group.
I hope that doesn't mean a lack of 7
emphasis for follow through.
I hope that is not scattered 1
9 throughout the program.
The staff and the NRC, the Commission, 9
wants to be informed as to follow through.
We want it to come 10 from the Owners Group in some form and we don't want it to have 11 to come from five or six different organizations within the 12 Owners Group.
13 We expect the Owners Group in some way or another to 14 respond and follow through on what you have initiated.
I 15 presume that is contemplated; is that correct?
16 MR. WILGUS:
Yes; that is correct.
17 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Fine.
Any other comments from my 18 fellow commissioners?
19
[No response.]
20 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
We thank you very much.
We will ask 21 the staff to come to the table.
We appreciate it very much.
22 Mr. Stello, you may proceed.
23 MR. STELLO:
What I want to do is to make an 24 observation, sitting here listening.
What we had in mind when 25 we asked the industry to take the lead was a belief that an
P 53 1
awful lot that would.be done that really could improve safety 2
comes-not just from looking at safety systems and traditional e
i 3
things that we would look at, but to go truly and try to achieve excellence by looking at all of the things that needed 4
5 to be looked at to achieve that objective.
6 I think you've heard, at least as I listened, a significant part of what they're doing is in the balance-of-7 B
plant area where we don't have a lot of rules and regulations, 9
and this is the area where a lot of improvement can be made, 10 and we think it~is in their best interest to do so, and we're 11 convinced that they have taken that lead and now look for 12 seeing that all happen, and progress is being made.
13 What we're going to do this afternoon is turn'quickly 14 here to Denny Crutchfield in a moment.
Dr. Murley has been 15 taking notes and will try to respond to some of'these generic 16 questions that are raised and will do so quickly.
k 17 One last issue that we need to deal with, and we're
{
i 18 not ready to deal with it yet, is you can hear that there's a 19 very massive program of implementation that's going to go on.
20 Some of this is going to deal with some safety systems, the 21 bulk of it being balance-of-plant.
i 22 We need to find some way that all of this gets closed 1
23 up.
One of the things and one of the issues will be, when 24 they're all done and the last recommendation has, in fact, been 25 implemented and everything is operational, we don't want the I
i l
p.
54 1
plants all of a sudden to say, "Well, now you can forget it 2
all."
3 We'll deal with that later.
I don't think there's 4
any concern at the moment.
It is an issue that we have to deal 5
with, but we're not there yet.
6 So, Denny, why don't we let you get started, and Tom 7
can finish up at the end, answering some of the issues, so why 8
don't you go through the briefing first, and then we'll pick up 9
some of the questions that have been raised?
10 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Fine.
Proceed.
11
[ Slide.]
12 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
Just a little bit of background.
13 The scope of the program was to cover analytical projects and 14 systems reviews and some programmatic projects.
The analytical 15 projects were things like limited PRA work and things like 16 that.
Some of the programmatic activities included interviews 17 with operators, maintenance operators, folks like that, as well 18 as a look at some of the burdens on control room operators.
19 Once the Staff had sat down with the Owners Group and 20 resolved the outstanding issues, the Owners Group undertook the 21 leadership in the program.
There were some suggestions that i
22 the Staff had made that the Owners Group enhanced and took i
23 forward with them.
That included things like looking at
{
i 24 operator burdens, taking a closer look at the instrument air 25 system, and things like that.
So we did have an impact on the l
l
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A.
j 55 i
1.
overall program activity.
2 We are also doing'some' independent work as indicated i
3 on the slide, some human factors work, risk evaluation, et I
4 cetera.
5 As Vic mentioned, a key concern for us is the overall implementation of the recommendations, and as mentioned, we are 6'
7 looking carefully at the activity.
We're trying to decide the 8
best way to do that.
We're aware of the backfit considerations 9
and the policy statement on integrated schedules.
They will i
10 all be factors in determining how we're~ going to do that.
11 Could I have the next slide, please?
12 (Slide.)
13.
Our' intent was to assess the overall program and-14 results and provide the answers to the program by about the end 15 of 1986, with supplemental reports consistent with Owners Group 16 schedules due,.with the final supplement, approximately June of
'17
'87.
18 The program has been delayed for several reasons.
19 One, the' scope of the program has been expanded, and in some 20 cases the owners have expanded it into areas that we 21' traditionally would not have gotten into, things like
' instrument air and some of the other balance-of-plant areas, i
22
}
23 In addition, the. depth they have gone into, because l
24 of the availability of the resources that they had and the 4
25 knowledge that they had, was further than we would have gone.
_ _ - _ - - _ - _ - _ _ - - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ - _ - _ - - _ - _ - _ = - _ - _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _
56 1
So we think that's an appropriate. role for them to play.
c 2
In some cases, because of their. broadened program, 3
-their submittals were delays.
We recognized that, we
'4 understood it, and we agreed to it.
5 other situations, we sent questions out'to them to 6
get further/ explanation and enhance.our understanding.
They 7
provided responses, so that took time also..
8 In addition, there has been some resource 9
implications.
There has been some higher priority work that' 10 has come' forward.
Things like Rancho Seco and Davis Besse 11.
restart have.had an impact on the Staff.
There are a number of 12 folks who1have specific-detailed knowledge of the B&W reactors 13 within the Staff, and, as you can imagine, those folks are
/14 being stressed to some extent..
i 15 One of the impacts has not been the loss of my Tech 16 Assistant to one of the Commissioners.
That hurt, but --
17 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Sorry about that.
18
[ Laughter.)
19 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
As indicated, we received --
20 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
He's got a good home.
-21 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
We received the final version of 22 the B&W 1919 in July.
That includes the major submittal-on the
'23 ICS system.
So that is going to take a bit of time to do.
It 24 also includes a discussion of the prioritization of the 25-recommendations, which is also -- two very key and important i
o,
{
\\
57 1
parts.
2 Our current plans are to issue a status report in 3
August and follow that up with a generic SER in October, and that will address the overall implications of the program.
It l
4 l
5 will discuss the implementation plan that they have laid in 6
front of us, and it will also present our views as to why we 7
think the plants are safe while implementation continues.
8 COMMISSIONER CARR:
How does that availability of 9
Staff resources look, Vic?
10 MR. STELLO:
It's no problem.
11 COMMISSIONER CARR: 'So October is a good date?
12 MR. STELLO:
It will be.
13 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
There are -- as I mentioned, the 14 ICS/NNI is a very major area, and we may supplement the October 15 SER with some information on ICS/NNI.
16 If I can have the last slide, please.
17
[ Slide.]
18 Our current views on the overall indication of the 19 program are that the program does address our concerns identified in Mr. Ste11o's letter of January
'86.
The Staff 20 21 and the owners Group both have a better understanding of B&W 22 plant behavior, sensitivity, and corrective actions.
We feel 23 that the self-critical analysis done by B&W was an excellent 24 idea.
They have learned an awful lot about their plants, and 25 we have learned about their plants.
s 58 1
We hope and we think that they have put in place a 2
process whereby they continue to assess the events that they 3
have had and that they will have in the future, and we think 4
that's a positive result of the program.
5 With the Owners Group in the lead, we feel that there has been a broader program than we would have probably covered 6
7 by the Staff because of limitations on Staff activities and 8
resources and limitations on the knowledge of the plants that 9
we have, that the Owners Group has a better understanding than 10 we do.
11 We think there is also, in addition to its being 12 broader, it's in much more depth than we would have gotten 13 into.
For example, the ICS/NNI review is a very penetrating 14 examination by the owners, and it's been well worth it.
15 Our view is that implementation of the overall 16 recommendations should result in a reduction in trips and the 17 plants' complexity of transients and challenges to the safety la system.
19 Generally, that's the summation of views.
I have one 20 more slide, if we could get Slide No.
9, please.
21
[ Slide.]
22 That gives the question that you were asking earlier 23 relative to the status of implementation.
The numbers are 24 slightly different, because it was 178, the number of 25 recommendations that were provided to us in the 1919 issue on
3 -..
59 1
July 23rd, and as you can see, the utilities are listed down on 2
the left.
It's Arkansas and Duke, Florida Power, GPU, which is 3
TMI, SMUD, the System Services, WPPSS, who are somewhat 4
inactive at this time, TVA, and Toledo Edison.
5 As you can see, there's a spectrum of evaluation, implementation, a number that have been closed and have been 6
7 declared operable, whether that's the training has taken place 8
or the software place or the hardware is in place.
There are 9
some that have been closed as "not applicable."
10 We swept in the findings of the Davis Besse IIT and 11 the Rancho Seco IIT.
Consequently some of the recommendations 12 out of the program already are pertinent only to those two l
13 utilities.
14 There is another column indicates as " Closed-15 Rejected."
For those, the utilities have provided a basis as 16' to why they did not think they were appropriate for their 17 plant, and in some cases, there is no report, because they 18 simply hadn't had a chance to take a look at it and begin an j
19 evaluation.
l
{
20 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Do you agree with the bases 21 that have been provided, particularly in that one case, Crystal 22 River?
You've got a third here -- well, no, a fourth of the 23 closed issues there.
24 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
The "Closei-Not Applicables?"
25 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
No.
I'm thinking of " Closed-j
w.
60 1
' Rejected."' You've got seven out of -- well, it's not a fourth.
(
2 Whatever it is, there are five N/As there, "not applicable,"
3 but of the applicable ones, you've got a 25 percent ratio of 4
" Closed-Rejected."
5 Do you agree with the bases for those rejections?
6 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
We haven't examined them in detail 7
yet.
We will be doing that.
That's part of the longer-term
)
8 follow-up program.
9 MR. STELLO:
Do you know if the Owners Group agreed 10 with it?
11 MR.'CRUTCHFIELD:
We don't know that.
12 COMMISSIONER CARR:
Well, if I read that graph right, a
13 that's seven out of 73 about, right?
14 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
Yes.
15 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Seven out of 73.
16 COMMISSIONER CARR:
Those are, I guess, totals, if 17 you read them all the way across, in all different categories.
18 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Well, that doesn't add up to 19 20 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
The horizontal line should add up 21 to about --
22 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Oh, the ones you're 23 evaluating, yes.
But the ones they've closed out, of the ones 24 they've closed out, something in the neighborhood of 20 percent 25 anyway are rejects.
~
61 1
COMMISSIONER CARR:
No.
There's three reasons for i
2 closing them out.
3 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
21 and 5 is 26 and 7 is 33.
4 Seven out of 33.
5 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
But 46 of them have been declared 6
7 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I'm looking at a different 8
piece of music here.
No wonder.
Is this an old one or 9
something?
10 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
That's the key.
I think you 11 probably have the one that adds up to 73, which were the key 12 recommendations.
These are the overall total recommendations 13 that are being implemented.
14 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
All right, okay.
15 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
So, for example, to pick Florida 16 Power, there are 18 that they have under consideration and are 17 being implemented; 46 have already been implemented; 32 have 18 been closed out as not applicable; 7 have been closed as 19 rejected.
20 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
All right.
That looks 21 better.
22 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
Yes.
t I
23 MR. STELLO:
Mr. Chairman, if we can, I'd ask Dr.
24 i
Murley -- he has some additional points to make, to address 25 some of the questions that were raised during the Commission's
-._____--J
,p 62 1
briefing'with the Owners Group.
2 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Fine, please do.
Go ahead.
3.
MR. MURLEY:
There was-a question raised about the 4
once-through. steam generator, and the reply was given about'how 5
they have rapid cooldown ability from the emergency feedwater 6
pumps, and that's.quite true, of course.
But to complete the picture, I think it is true that the once-through steam 7
8 generator does not have the same thermal inertia as the U-tube 9
That's well-known.
10 And what that means is that casualties in the 11 balance-of-plant are felt quicker back in the primary system, 12 and we've seen cases of that.
j 13 Also in the event of a total loss of all feedwater, 14 the once-through steam generator would dry out faster.
15 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
That's right.
16 MR. MURLEY:
And there:!cre not as much time for 17 operators to respond.
18 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
But do you agree with what 19 seemed to be the implication that the overall thermal inertia 20 of the primary system was comparable?
21 I think that was the sense of what we were getting, 22 that although the once-through generator, as we all know --
23 MR. MURLEY:
But it's the generator that couples the 24 two systems, the primary and the secondary --
25 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Right.
63 1
MR. MURLEY:
And if that doesn't have as much thermal inertia as the U-tubes, then the upset is out in that system, 2
it gets fed back easier and faster, and I think that's the key 3
4 point.
5 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Okay.
6 MR. MURLEY:
They are addressing that, by the way.
I think the issues that they're addressing on the control system 7
8 and the ICS are the key issues.
9 A second point that I really do think needs clarified 10 is the bullet they had that overcooling events are not 11 significant safety concerns.
That really has to be very highly 12 qualified, because if they're talking of overcooling events of 13 50 to 100 degrees, then that's true.
You've still got enough 14 toughness in the outer parts of the vessel that that doesn't 15 concern us.
16 But when you've got a major overcooling event, like 17 we've seen in the case of Rancho Seco in 1978 where it cooled 18 down 207 degrees in an hour, one can get very severe thermal 19 stresses in that vessel, and that is a safety concern, and 20 there's no two ways about it.
21 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
That's right.
22 MR. MURLEY:
So in the sense that we have a f
l 23 pressurized thermal shock rule that just deals with this, that l
24 is a clear safety concern.
25 Third was a question that was asked about the i
y.
64 1
emergency feedwater control system.
We-wi]1'be reviewing these 2
systems.
We have reviewed some already, but we're going to be
- 3 reviewing them all pretty carefully.
4 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
So you are not prepared at
.this point to say that these systems are all approximately 5
l 6
equivalent in capability?
7.
MR. MURLEY:
I don't think we are.
Bob, do you have 8
anything to add on that?
9 MR. JONES:
They are different in capabilities.
They 10.
are, to the best of my knowledge, safety grade initiation.
11 There are many differences in the control features of them and 12 Mr. Rutherford explained that Duke doesn't have isolation 4' T 13 provisions for their generators.
14 The differences between the emergency feedwater 15 systems was supposed to be discussed in the emergency feedwater 16 report and we are still evaluating that report and looking at 17 the recommendations.
18 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Were all of these differences 4
19 mandated because of plant specific design characteristics or 20 were they just the old story of everybody building a better 21 wheel?
22 MR. STELLO:
The old story.
23 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
All right.
24 MR. STELLO:
It is plant specific, individual i:
25 utilities, individual designers and you seem to have a very l
v.
65 1
substantial variation-as you have already heard and it came 2
principally as a result of the utility wishes.-
~
3-COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I would be interested in.
hearing yourl conclusions about them when you reach your 4-5 conclusions.
6' MR. MURLEY:
Yes, we will.
One other final question, 7'
I guess'that was asked about, the complexity.
One-fifth of the trips had led to subsequent complexity and a question was 8.
9 asked, how does that stack up with over plants.
We have not in 10 the past collected that kind of data when we collect trip data.
11 It may be possible to reconstruct it.
We will go 12 back and take a look but our impression is that the B&W plants 13 are more, do have more complex transients.
That is really why 14.
we got this thing started in the first place.
l 15 MR. STELLO:
But we ought to make one point.
We do 16.
have.a system in place where we do review events and at least 17 write them in terms of their significance.
But I don't believe
~
18 that process is good enough to answer your question in the 19 detail that you are asking it.
l I
20 You ask us, do we know which ones are significant and 21, why.
Yes, but does it provide enough detail to get into the l
22 level'which the B&W Owners Group has gotten into, I think the 23 answer is no.
24 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Should we do that?
25-MR. STELLO:
Now I will start raising the resource l
L l
2 ir
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p 66
- 1. ;
1
' question.
2
[ Laughter.)
3 MR. STELLO:
There is only so much we can do.
We are 4
doing what~the important thing is and that is looking at all of 5
them and-getting a judgment on the significance of all of them.
.6-I'think that is the cut that is important.
As we getimore and-l 7
more of that, I wonder where do you draw the line and'say that 8
some of that is clearly an industry problem of excellence and' 9
they.ought to be worrying about it and they are. 'They are 10 doing a lot'more of that and depending on the resources of 11 where you cut it, I don't know that we need to do that'for our 12 job.
'[
13 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
All right.
14 MR. MURLEY:
That completes our comments.
15 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
All right.
16 MR. STELLO:
Mr. Chairman,'we are through and I guess 17 we.ought to come to a bottom line.
We have started this thing.
18 It is taking longer than I would like to have seen it take but 19 I am satisfied that the reason it is taking longer is more and 20 better quality work is being done which I believe will serve 21 our interest in terms of the health and safety of the public by
~22 taking that extra time and I think we are seeing a better 23 quality product and we have no reason to walk away from the 24 original view that this is the right way to go.
25
+
CHAIRMAN ZECH:
All right.
Fine.
Thank you very
r 67 1
'much.
Questions from my fellow Commissioners?
2 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS:
No questions, Mr. Chairman.
3 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Commissioner Bernthal.
4 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I wasn't sure what you said 5
about your ability to meet this October deadline.
Did you meet 6
that?
7 MR. STELLO:
I just told him I made a very large 8
error fo,r letting those statements in the slides.
I apologized 9L to him for doing'it and that never should have come up.
We 10 will do it.
11 COMMISSIONER CARR:
We are happy to discuss the 12 budget any time.
c
-13 MR. STELLO:
Yes, I know.
14 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Especially the Chairman.
15 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Yes, that's right, any time, all the 16-time.
17 MR. STELLO:
Tom and I have not chatted but I don't 18 sense any reluctance on anyone's part to do what we need to do 19 to get it done.
20 COMMISSIONER BERNTHA1:
I would hope in any case if 21 you don't have the money, we ought to talk to the chairman.
He 22 will get it for you.
23
[ Laughter.]
p 24 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Mr. Stello knows where it is and he 25 can find it.
i
t-68 1
(Laughter.)
2 MR. STELLO:
We do not.have a problem.
3 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
There, you go.
We jast solved that 4
one.
5 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Last one, the Brookhaven risk 6
evaluation, where does that stand?
I have forgotten and I find it incredible, which one was it that we did for NUREG-1150, 7
was 8
, that Davis Besse, which B&W plant?
9 MR. STELLO:
We didn't do one.
10 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
We didn't do a B&W plant?
11 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
No B&W plant.
12 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
No wonder I couldn't 13 remember.
All right.
Then the question is, where did the 14 Brookhaven evaluation stand?
How soon are we going to have a 15 fairly high quality result on that?
16 MR. MURLEY:
Which study are you referring to, 17 Commissioner Bernthal?
18 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I thought they were doing a 19 risk evaluation of a B&W plant?
20 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
We have had a draft response from 21 Brookhaven, I believe, about the middle or the latter part of 22 July, Bob?
23 MR. JONES:
That is correct.
24 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
We are working with Brookhaven now 25 to finalize it.
I would expect in early September we will see
x.
69 1
.the final-product.
2 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
So they have done a full 3
blown PRA or what have they done?
4-MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
No, they have not done a full blown 5
PRA.. Bob, can you explain in a little more detail?
\\
6 MR. JONES:
Basically, what was done is they took the 7
existing B&W plant PRAs, took the B&W operating experience and 8
contrasted them.
They said B&W experience says they have this 9
frequency of overcooling events, is that what I.have in the 10 PRA.
11 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
All right.
12 MR. JONES:
In addition to that, they talk the actual 13 plant experience and did precursor type studies, closeness to 14 core melt type studies, so-to-speak, following that using those
}
15 PRAs.
So it gets us at a significance issue, the category "C"
{
16 transients that have occurred at the B&W plants.
17 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Oh, I see.
So they really j
18 are benchmarking and trying tx) validate the existing PRA.
Is 19 that what you are saying?
20 MR. JONES:
That is part of it.
There was a 21 perception that B&W plants have more risk than other plants.
22 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Right.
23 MR. JONES:
Existing PRA information implies that B&W 24 plants do not have more risk than the other plants so the 25 question is, are the B&W PRAs wrong or are they, in fact,
g 70 0'
1 picking 1it up and it is just that these transients are. complex--
i 2
but not'necessarily' core melt significant.-
3 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: -All'right.
That is all I
)
4-have.
I would just make the comment that with great. reluctance I4am going ~to name a utility in a favorable light here because 5-6 one utility hes, we always get in trouble when we do'that,-and 7-I'suggest they go home and make sure'that everything is running 8
very well after I saw this, but as you know, one utility has 9
run three B&W plants'very well over the years with great
'10 success,;high reliability factors and that is Duke, of course,
- 11
.at the Oconee plant.
12' At least that lends some credence to the idea that
(-
13 these Ferraris as some unknown nuclear engineer characterized 14-them to me once as can be run very well and so I would hope.
I 15 that this extraordinary effort that we have gone through here 16 and I would expect.it may have been at some considerable 17 expense but nevertheless, I would hope that that would pay 18 itself off many times over in avoided down time and the many i
19 other problems that Rancho Seco and Davis Besse, I think, 20 exemplify learning the hard way.
Thank you.
21 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Commissioner Carr.
22 COMMISSIONER CARR:
No questions, Mr. Chairman.
23 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
I would like to make sure that the 24 staff in their continuing review and before you wind up this 25 program herc in a few months, that you really satisfy yourself 1
a
l 71 1
completely that you have carefully reviewed and verified the 2
results of this study group and insure that the individual j
3 utilities are implementing the recommendations that are 4
appropriate to them.
5 That is something I know that the Commission will 6
want to follow through on and I know the staff will follow 7
through on.
I also would like to ask the staff that when they finish this up, that you assure yourself that the present 8
9 requirements that we have for B&W reactors are appropriate for j
10 the long term and lead to a level of safety at B&W plants that i
11 is comparable to other pressurized water plants.
12 I would like to think we have that now but I think 13 that is a verification that we are looking for and I would ask 14 you to come up with that type of an analysis and conclusion to 4
15 give us the assurance that we have our requirements and our
{
regulations such that we can have the confidence that the B&W 16 1
17 plants are certainly as safe as the others.
l 18 I presume you are telling us they are now but I am 19 asking you, as you go through the process to verify that again.
20 With that, I would like to thank the staff, also.
21 Mr. Stello, do you have a comment you would like to make?
22 MR. STELLO:
One point you made to us that I would 23 like to take this opportunity while the owners are here, to 24 make sure that they heard you because the first thing that we 25 are going to do is ask them the very questions that you are
~ ~ ~
-t 72 li asking~us.
2.
CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Yes.
3 MR. STELLO:
We are looking for them to make sure 4
that they assure that all of the owners of these facilities 5
have done what they, this group that have studied these plants, 6
believe is the right thing.to do and I am not going to come and 17' tell you that we are satisfied until'they tell me and assure me 8
that they are satisfied.
9 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
That is fine and I agree with that, 10-but also I want to make sure that from our standpoint, we have 11 the requirements, we will have rules, requirements,
.)
12 regulations, anything necessary if you tell us you need 13 anything more.
I just want to make sure of that.
14 MR. STELLO:
That, we will deal with.
We know we d
15 have to deal with that.
i 16 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
I agree with you on the Owners Group.
j 1
17 I would like to commend the Owners Group for what they have
'l l
18 done, for the commitments that they have made but'I would like i
]
19 to say from my standpoint and I think I speak for my fellow Commissioners, wu are looking for more than just a commitment.
1 20 21 We are looking for implementation.
We are looking for results 22 and we are going to watch that and make cure that they come 23-about and if they don't, we are going to do whatever is 24 necessary to bring them about.
25 I think it has been a very worthwhile effort.
It is
_________-_---------A
l 4
73 1;
ongoing _,as.far as I am concerned.
It is not done yet.either in 2
.the staff or in'the Owners Group and I hope that everybody-1 3'
would agree with that..I think it has been a very important
\\
I 4' program as far as I am concerned, again, it is ongoing and we
. ill. hope to hear from the staff here soon when they have had a 5:
w 6
chance to review and verify everything, but again to the Owners-7 Group-and to all the utilities that have'B&W plants, we will be Lwatching this closely and especially the results of your it 9
commitments.
10-COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
I agree with.what you are
- 11-saying and as you know,.this Commission has taken a little bit 12 of stuff because we didn't go off and do all this by ourselves 13 and I would just like to ask the staff, how long.woulduit have
= 14 taken.us given our resource capabilities to do what they have 15 done in this period of time?
Do you want to give'meLaome 16 insight into whether we could have done that in any reasonable l
17 length of time?
18 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
I would estimate that it would 19 probably have taken us about twice as long because they have a I
20 much more detailed knowledge of the performance of their 21 facilities than we do, specific and identifiable facilities y
22-
"that we don't have.
23 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
So in your judgment, I trust 24 that what you are saying and I hope that we agree is the 25-following, that this has given us a real head start now in l--
t..
74 1
doing our own. independent evaluation.
2 MR. CRUTCHFIELD:
I think we are getting to the point where improvements'in those plants to enhance performance, 3
4 safety performance, are getting into the plants faster than had 5
the staff done the program by themselves.
6 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Thank you.
7
'MR. STELLO:
One more point I think is important and 8
Denny, if I wrong, please correct me right away.
I think that 9
the areas and truly getting these plants to strive for 10 excellence goes beyond areas that we would even look at so what 11 you are getting is not something that was just in more depth 12 but further reaching than we would have reached had we done it 13-ourselves, balance of plant issues.
14 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
Right.
Thank you.
15 COMMISSIONER CARR:
I think it is probably fair to 16 say that the staff couldn't have done it.
17 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:
That is really what I am 18 asking.
It is pretty clear that it is at a level of detail 19 that having been done, well, it is like any one of us with our 20 own staff, it is a great assist to have somebody else set the 21 blueprint in front of you and take it from there.
If you have 22 to start from zero yourself, we would all be putting in about a 23 120-hour week.
24 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Let me just make one final comment.
25 I think the Owners Group is to be particularly commended on
.i 75 1
their emphasis of balance of plant.
We don't hear that brought to this table very often in the forceful way that I think you 2
3 have brought it here today and to those of you in the study 4
group, to all of those who participated, I think your emphasis 5
on the balance of plants is appropriate.
I think it is 6
absolutely correct and I appreciate very much hearing it from 7
the utilities.
i 8
You hear it from us occasionally but I think it was 9
commendable, your emphasis on that part of it.
I think it is 10 actually a very, very important part of the plant and I think 11 that you should be commended for your emphasis on the balance i
12 of plant here and I trust that you will take that as a 13 commitment to follow through on that and perhaps show some 14 leadership for the other types of plants and emphasis on the 15 balance of plant.
16 I think you should get credit for that and.I hope 17 that you will help us follow through on that kind of an l'
18 endeavor, too.
Are there any other comments from my fellow 19 Commissioners?
20
[No response.]
21 CHAIRMAN ZECH:
Thank you very much.
We stand 22 adjourned.
23
[Whereupon, the meeting of the Commission was 24 adjourned at 3:50 o' clock p.m., to reconvene at the Call of the 25 Chair.]
l i
8
- x 1
i 1
2-REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE
)
I 4
This is to certify that the attached events of a 5
meeting of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission entitled:
6 7
TITLE OF MEETING:
Brtefing on the Status of B&W Reassessment 8
PLACE OF MEETING:
Washington, D.C.
9 DATE OF' MEETING:
Wednesday, August 5, 1987 10 11 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original 12 transcript thereof for the file of the Commission taken
(-
13 stenographically by me, thereafter reduced to typewriting by 14 me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and 15 that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the 16 foregoing events.
17 18
~
Suzanne B. Young ~
19 20 21 22 Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
23 24 25 L
i B&W OWNERS GROUP SAFETY AND PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM PRESENTATION TO NRC COMMISSIONERS AUGUST 5, 1987 ARKANSAS POWER LIGHT CO.
DUKE POWER CO.
FLORIDA POWER CORPORATION GPU NUCLEAR CORPORATION SACRAMENTO MUNICIPAL UTILITY DISTRICT SUPPLY SYSTEM TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY TOLED0 EDIS0N C0.
BABC0CK & WILC0X CO.
L:
1
B&W OWNERS GROUP
. SAFETY'AND PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM (SPIP)
{
PRESENTATION TO NRC COMMISSIONERS AUGUST 5, 1987 i
AGENDA I.
INTRODUCTION W.S.
WILGUS II.
SPIP CONCLUSIONS /
G.R.
SKILLMAN RECOMMENDATIONS III.
IMPLEMENTATION N.
A.
RUTHERFORD 0F SPIP RECOMMENDATIONS IV.
CONCLUDING REMARKS W.S.
WILGUS 2
a
OPENING REMARKS
)
{
o PROGRAM SCOPE DEVELOPED BY B&WOG AND AGREED TO BY STAFF q
l o
PROGRAM BASED ON HISTORICAL FACTS AND POTENTIAL PLANT PERFORMANCE o
ENGAGED INDEPENDENT SUPPORT AND TECHNICAL OVERVIEW l
o STRONG EXECUTIVE LEVEL COMMITMENT TO PROGRAM I
o CLEAR UNDERSTANDING OF INTERDEPENDENCE o
IMPLEMENTATION WILL IMPROVE SAFETY AND PERFORMANCE 3
6 B&W OWNERS GROUP SAFETY AND PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM IMPROVE SAFETY BY REDUCING THE NUMBER OF TRIPS AND COMPLEX TRANSIENTS ON B&W OWNERS GROUP PLANTS AND ENSURE ACCEPTABLE PLANT RESPONSE DURING THOSE TRIPS AND TRANSIENTS WHICH D0 OCCUR.
THREE FOLD REDUCTION IN COMPLEX TRANSIENTS TWO FOLD REDUCTION IN TRIPS 4
I SAFETY AND PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM CONCLUSIONS REGARDING:
o B&W PLANT DESIGN o
COMPLEXITY OF TRANSIENTS o
TRIP INITIATION E
'I l
5
\\
1 CONCLUSIONS REGARDING B&W PLANT DESIGN i
o RISK OF CORE DAMAGE IS COMPARABLE TO OTHER.PWR DESIGNS o
AREAS 0F SENSITIVITY ARE DIFFERENT THAN OTHER' PWRs o
PRESSURIZER SIZE IS ADEQUATE o
OTSG INVENTORY IS ADEQUATE o
OPERATOR BURDEN IS ACCEPTABLE o
INTEGRATION OF CONTROL FUNCTIONS IS APPROPRIATE o
PLANT IS. MORE RESPONSIVE TO SECONDARY SIDE CHANGES 6
s
)
CONCLUSIONS COMPLEXITY OF TRANSIENTS 3
)
l COMPLEX TRANSIENTS ARE PRINCIPALLY THE RESULT OF o
MISMATCHED HEAT BALANCE BETWEEN PRIMARY AND i
SECONDARY SYSTEMS.
I o
OVERHEATING EVENTS HIGHER SAFETY SIGNIFICANCE THAN OTHER EVENTS INFREQUENT COMPARED TO OVERC00 LING o
OVERC00 LING EVENTS NOT SIGNIFICANT SAFETY CONCERN MAY BE PRECURSOR TO OVERHEATING DOMINATED BY MISBEHAVIOR OF TWO SYSTEMS SECONDARY PLANT RELIEF EMERGENCY FEEDWATER OTHER SYSTEMS MISBEHAVIOR IMPORTANT ICS/NNI MAIN FEEDWATER
{
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CONCLUSIONS TRIP INITIATION o
MAJORITY OF TRIPS CAUSED BY BALANCE OF PLANT SYSTEMS / COMPONENTS OR PERSONNEL TURBINE GENERATOR DOMINANT TRIP INITIATOR BEFORE o
1985 o
DOMINANT TRIP INITIATOR CURRENTLY MAIN FEEDWATER o
OTHER IMPORTANT FREQUENCY TRIP INITIATORS ICS/NNI INPUTS ELECTRICAL f
10
ICS/NNI SYSTEM o
ICS/NNI POWER LOSSES HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO COMPLEX TRANSIENTS o
LOSS OF ICS INPUT SIGNALS HAS BEEN AN INITIATOR OF PLANT TRANSIENTS WHICH HAVE RESULTED IN REACTOR TRIPS AND COMPLEX TRANS?ENTS TYPICAL KEY RECOMMENDATIONS (1)
ENSURE THE PLANT G0ES TO A KNOWN SAFE STATE ON LOSS OF POWER TO ICS/NNI (2)
PREVENT LOSS OF POWER TO ICS/NNI (3)
ENSURE UNAMBIGUOUS STATUS IS DISPLAYED TO THE OPERATOR (4)
PROVIDE AUTOMATIC SELECTION OF VALID SIGNALS FOR KEY ICS. INPUTS (5)
REMOVE BTU LIMITS FUNCTIONS FROM ICS/NNI AS APPROPRIATE (6)
PERFORM SYSTEM AND/0R SUBSYSTEM TUNING.
INVESTIGATE IMPROVED ICS MAINTENANCE AND TUNING METHODS TO CORRECT POST-TRIP MFW SYSTEM CONTROL PROBLEMS AND DEVELOP A PERIODIC SURVEILLANCE / TUNING PROGRAM (7)
REPLACE RC FLOW SIGNAL INPUT TO ICS WITH EQUIVALENT SIGNAL BASED ON RC PUMP STATUS 11
EMERGENCY OPERATIONS o
OPERATORS AT TIMES MAY BE RELUCTANT TO TAKE CERTAIN EMERGENCY PROCEDURAL ACTIONS.
TYPICAL KEY RECOMMENDATIONS (1) rIEVIEW EMERGENCY OPERATING PROCEDURES TO ASSURE WHENEVER ACTIONS ARE SPECIFIED THAT THE PLANT CONDITIONS TRULY REQUIRE THE ACTION.
OPERATORS l
SHOULD BE TRAINED AND MANAGEMENT SHOULD REINFORCE THE NECESSITY TO TAKE THESE ACTIONS WHEN REQUIRED BY THE PROCEDURES (2)
VERIFY THAT HIGH-PRIORITY OPERATOR TASKS ARE IDENTIFIED FOR SPECIFIC TRAINING (3)
VERIFY GUIDANCE IN PLANT PROCEDURES ON DEALING WITH EXCESSIVE MFW, THROTTLING AFW, AND THROTTLING HPI 12
MAIN FEEDWATER (MFW) AND CONDENSATE SYSTEM o
IMPROVE RELIABILITY OF MAIN FEEDWATER AND CONDENSATE SYSTEMS TYPICAL KEY RECOMMENDATIONS (1)
IMPLEMENT A PROGRAM TO IDENTIFY IMPROVEMENTS NEEDED IN MFW PUMP CONTROL SYSTEMS INCLUDING THE ICS.
EVALUATE THE INTERACTION BETWEEN THESE TWO SYSTEMS
'(2)
CORRECT MFW PUMP CONTROL PROBLEMS (3)
ENSURE THAT A SINGLE ELECTRICAL FAILURE IN THE MFW AND CONDENSATE SYSTEMS WILL NOT CAUSE A LOSS OF BOTH FEEDWATER TRAINS (4)
ELIMINATE UNNEEDED TRIP FUNCTIONS ON THE MFW PUMPS (5)
ELIMINATE AUTOMATIC CONTROL OF THE MFW BLOCK VALVE EXCEPT DURING A REACTOR TRIP (6)
PROVIDE CAPABILITY TO OVERRIDE A CLOSE SIGNAL TO THE MFW BLOCK VALVE (7)
PROVIDE AUTOMATIC MFW OVERFILL PROTECTION l
CAPABILITY.
(8)
INSTALL MONITORING SYSTEM ON MFW PUMPS TO IDENTIFY CAUSE OF TRIP.
13
INSTRUMENT AIR SYSTEM o
CORRECT AIR SYSTEM FAILURES AND ENSURE THAT THE PLANT WILL GO TO A KNOWN SAFE STATE ON LOSS OF INSTRUMENT AIR TYPICAL KEY RECOMMENDATIONS (1)
COMPARE THE PLANT'S INSTRUMENT AIR SYSTEM WITH THE FUNCTIONAL TARGET CRITERIA IN THE SPIP " INSTRUMENT AIR SYSTEM REPORT" TO DETERMINE WHICH UPGRADES ARE NECESSARY.
(2)
PERFORM AN EVALUATION TO ENSURE THAT AIR SYSTEM l
FAILURE WILL NOT AFFECT THE ABILITY TO MAINTAIN THE PLANT IN A KNOWN SAFE STATE.
(3)
PERFORM OPERABILITY TESTING 0F CRITICAL AIR OPERATED VALVES, COMPARE WITH DESIGN BASIS STR0 KING TIME AND REBUILD AS NECESSARY 14
e :r SECONDARY SYSTEM PRESSURE CONTROL o
CONTROL OF POST-TRIP FEED AND STFAM FLOW HAS BEEN A CONTRIBUTOR TO COMPLEX TRANSIENTS
)
TYPICAL KEY RECOMMENDATIONS (1)'
PROVIDE (IN MAIN CONTROL ROOM) MANUAL CONTROL AND ISOLATION CAPABILITY OF ALL POST-TRIP STEAM AND FEED FLOW PATHS (EXCLUDING SAFETY RELIEF VALVES)
(2)
IMPROVE TURBINE BYPASS (TBV) AND ATMOSPHERIC DUMP (ADV) SYSTEMS l
PREVENT EXCESSIVE STEAM FLOW ON. LOSS OF ICS/NNI POWER CONTROLLABLE FROM CONTROL ROOM ON LOSS OF ICS/NNI POWER IS0LABLE AND CONTROLLABLE FROM CONTROL ROOM ON LOSS OF 0FFSITE POWER (3)
DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT STANDARDIZED PROCEDURES AND TECHNIQUES FOR MAINTAINING, SETTING AND TESTING-MAIN STEAM SAFETY VALVES (MSSV) TBV, AND ADV (4)
DETERMINE CAUSES AND CORRECT AN0M0LOUS MSSV i
PERFORMANCE
-(5)
ELIMINATE OVERLAP 0F TBV AND MSSV CONTROL POINTS POST-TRIP (6)
PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE PROGRAM FOR RELIEF VALVES NOT AUTOMATICALLY POST-TRIP ISOLABLE 15
EMERGENCY FEEDWATER (EFW) o EXCESSIVE EFW FLOW HAS RESULTED IN OVERC00 LING EVENTS TYPICAL KEY RECOMMENDATIONS (1)
ENSURE HIGH EFW SYSTEM RELIABILITY
- ENSURE VALVE FAILURE MODE PREVENTS EXCESSIVE FLOW ON LOSS OF ICS/NNI POWER
- ENSURE EFW FLOW CONTROL VALVE IS CONTROLLABLE FROM CONTROL ROOM ON LOSS OF ICS/NNI POWER i
- REMOVE EFW INITIATION FROM ICS/NNI (2)
LIMIT EFW FLOW RATE OR FILL RATE (3)
EXTEND START TIME FOR EFW TURBINE DRIVEN PUMPS i
'(4)
ENSURE MAINTENANCE AND TEST PROGRAMS CONFIRM COMPONENTS READY FOR SERVICE (5)
REDUCE SPURIOUS EFW ACTUATIONS 16 1
- 5 l
STATUS OF IMPLEMENTATION o.
OVER 300 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PLANT IMPROVEMENTS ARE EXPECTED FROM SPIP, 181 RECOMMENDATIONS HAVE l
ALREADY BEEN PLACED INTO THE RECOMMENDATION TRACKING SYSTEM (RTS).
o SOME RECOMMENDATIONS HAVE ALREADY BEEN IMPLEMENTED
.AND SOME PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT HAS RESULTED.
o BASED ON JULY 1987 ISSUE OF RTS REPORT:
181 RECOMMENDATIONS NOW BEING TRACKED 73 0F 181 ARE KEY RECOMMENDATIONS o
RESOURCES HAVE BEEN COMMITTED AT EACH UTILITY TO EVALUATE AND IMPLEMENT RECOMMENDATIONS o
B&WOG EXECUTIVE AND STEERING COMMITTEES WILL CONTINUE TO MONITOR PROGRESS AND WILL TAKE ACTION TO MEET SPIP GOALS 17 i
j
- 5 4
SPIP RECOMMENDATION IMPLEMENTATION j
1.
IMPLEMENTING RECOMMENDATIONS - CRITICAL FOR SUCCESS 2.
IMPLEMENTATION WILL BE FORMALLY MONITORED BY B&WOG' i
EXECUTIVES FOR BOTH QUALITY AND TIMELINESS:
IMPLEMENTATION-QUALITY WILL FOCUS ON A SELECTED SET'0F KEY RECOMMENDATIONS PROPER IMPLEMENTATION WILL REQUIRE CONSIDERATION OF PLANT UNIQUE CONFIGURATION, RESOURCES, AND OPERATING SCHEDULE RECOMMENDATION TRACKING SYSTEM REPORT IS MANAGEMENT TOOL 3.
EFFECTIVENESS IS MONITORED BY COMPARISON OF PERFORMANCE AGAINST DEFINED G0ALS.
18 L
w 1 GENERAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION QUALITY REVIEW o
EACH UTILITY PREPARE INFORMATION PACKAGES FOR IMPLEMENTATION TEAM REVIEW GENERAL CHARACTERIZATION OF RECOMMENDATION ACTIONS AT EACH PLANT
-- PROCEDURE CHANGE
-- TRAINING CHANGE
-- HARDWARE CHANGE
-- ETC.
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION OF ACTION EXPECTED END RESULT OF ACTION (WILL ACTION SOLVE IDENTIFIED PROBLEM?)
o REVIEW TEAM MAKES PLANT-TO-PLANT COMPARIS0N o
REPORT TO THE UTILITY AND THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ON APPARENT IMPLEMENTATION PROBLEMS 19
I CONCLUDING REMARKS o
SAFETY o
REGULATORY VISIBILITY o
FOLLOW-UP o
EXECUTIVE COMMITMENT i
20
4, a INDEPENDENT SENSITIVITY STUDY (CONTINUED)
~
ARE MORE SENSITIVE IN THEIR RESPONSE TO MAIN FEEDWATER UPSETS (THOUGH THE FREQUENCY OF SUCH UPSETS IS NOT GREATER THAN IN OTHER PWRs);
ARE, IN SOME BUT NOT ALL PLANTS, SUBJECT TO GREATER C00LDOWN RATES FROM OVERFEEDING 0F EMERGENCY FEEDWATER; ARE EQUIVALENT TO MANY OTHER PWRs IN TERMS OF TIME AVAILABLE TO USE ALTERNATIVE MEANS OF 1[",
DECAY HEAT REMOVAL, ON A COMPLETE LOSS OF ALL FEEDWATER;
)
FOR MOST REACTOR TRIPS, DO NOT IMPOSE GREATER CONTROL BURDENS ON PLANT OPERATORS; AND IMPOSE GREATER BURDENS ON PLANT OPERATORS IN DIAGNOSING AND RESPONDING TO FAILURES OF AUTOMATIC CONTROL SYSTEMS; SUCH FAILURES ARE MORE LIKELY TO LEAD TO COMPLEX TRANSIENTS IN B&W UNITS.
I i
INDEPENDENT SENSITIVITY STUDY-1 THE STUDY PROVIDED:
1 A COMPARISON OF KEY RESPONSE CHARACTERISTICS BETWEEN THE B&W NSS AND OTHER PWR DESIGNS.
RECOMMENDATIONS-FOR POSSIBLE ENHANCEMENTS TO THE B&W NSS TO REDUCE SENSITIVITY TO ROUTINE TRANSIENTS AND ABNORMAL EVENTS.
l THIS STUDY HAS CONCLUDED THAT, RELATIVE TO OTHER PWRS, j
B&W UNITS:
ARE NOT MORE SENSITIVE TO REACTIVITY UPSETS:
ARE NOT MORE SENSITIVE TO COOLANT FLOW UPSETS; ARE LESS LIKELY, ON AVERAGE, TO EXPERIENCE A LEAK LEADING TO A NET LOSS OF COOLANT; ARE SOMEWHAT LESS SENSITIVE TO STEAM DEMAND UPSETS SUCH AS LOAD REJECTIONS AND TURBINE TRIPS; A REACTOR TRIP ON A TURBINE TRIP IS J
NOT REQUIRED TO ENSURE PLANT SAFETY; ARE NOT MORE LIKELY T0 0VERC00L FOLLOWING A REACTOR TRIP; L
-- ---- -- l
.#+
SCHEDULING NOTES TITLE:
BRIEFING ON THE STATUS OF B8W REASSESSMENT SCHEDULED:
2:00 P.M., WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1987 (OPEN)
DURATION:
APPROX l-1/2 HRS PARTICIPANTS:
B&W OWNERS GROUP 30 MINS
- WALTER S. WILGUS (FLORIDA POWER)
CHAIRMAN' l
OWNERS GROUP EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
- GORDON R. SKILLMAN (GPUN)
CHAIRMAN OWNERS GROUP SAFETY & PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM
- NEIL A. RUTHERFORD (DUKE POWER COMPANY)
CHAIRMAN OWNERS GROUP STEERING COMMITTEE NRC 20 MINS
- VICTOR STELLO
- THOMAS MURLEY
- DENNIS CRUTCHFIELD DOCUMENTS:
- NRR vlEWGRAPHS
- BWOG VIEWGRAPHS l
YSSSS$NNNNNNNNNNNhNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN&&&&
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TRANSMITTAL T0:
K Occument Control Desk, 016 Phillips 9
2 ADVANCED COPY TO:
The Public Document Room g
8 to\\Stl l
DATE:
SECY Correspondence & Records Branch f.
?20M:
!:I Attached are copies of a Commission meeting transcript and related meeting I
They are being forwarded for entry on the Daily Accession List and li, do::ument(s).
No other distribution is tequested or ll-placement in the Public Document Room.
lj' required.
Okek b en N $ t d eG 6 h N+ D 4
Meeting
Title:
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Meeting Date: 9 5h'1 Open X
Closed l
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1l Item Description *:
Copies l
Advanced DCS I
'8 to POR Copy 1
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- 1. TRANSCRIP,T f
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- PDR is advanced one copy of each document, two of each SECY paper.
33 i 3 :-
C&R Branch files the original transcript, with attachments, without SECY ji papers.
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