ML20236T086
| ML20236T086 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 07/17/1998 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-3048, NUDOCS 9807270423 | |
| Download: ML20236T086 (105) | |
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-DISCLAIMER 1
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS JULY.17, 1998 The contents of this transcript of the proceeding
. of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Advisory Committee'on' Reactor Safeguards', taken'on July 17, 1998, as
- reported herein, is a' record-of the discussions recorded at the: meeting held on the above date.
This transcript had not been reviewed, corrected I
and edited and it'may contain inaccuracies.
l l'
1 1
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 2
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 3-4 5-SAFETY RESEARCH PROGRAM 6
I 7-8 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 9
11545 Rockville Pike 10 Room 2B-3 11 Rockville, Maryland 20852-2738 12 L
13 Friday, July 17, 1998 14 15'
.The Subcommittee met pursuant to notice at 1:00 i
16 p.m.
I 17 p
L 18' MEMBERS PRESENT:
i
.19 ROBERT E. UHRIG, Chairman, ACRS
'20 DON W. MILLER, Member, ACRS 21 MARIO H.
FONTANA, Member, ACRS 22
. GEORGE E. APOSTOLAKIS, Member, ACRS
'23 ROBERT L.
SEALE, Member, ACRS 24 DANA A.
POWERS, Member, ACRS 25 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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PROCEEDINGS 2:
[2:44 p.m.]
I 3'
CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
The meeting will come to order.
This-is a meeting of;the ACRS Subcommittee on Safety 4
5
'Research Program.
6 I am Robert Uhrig, Chairman of the Subcommittee on 7
the Safety Research Program.
~8 The ACRS members in attendance are:
George 9'
Apostolakis, Mario Fontana, Don Miller, Dana Powers, and 10 '-
Robert Seale..
i 11 The purpose of this. meeting-is for the l
12 Subcommittee to discuss comments and recommendations 13 included in the June 16, 1998, ACRS report regarding " Core 14l Capabilities" and the associated response from the NRC l
15-Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.
The Subcommittee 16 will gather information, analyze relevant issues and facts, 17 and formulate proposed positions and actions as appropriate, 18 for deliberation by the full committee.
I i
19 Amarjit Singh is the Cognizant ACRS Staff Engineer l
.20 Efor this meeting.
21-The rules for participation in today's meeting 22 have been announced as part of the notice of this meeting 1
23-previously published in the Federal Reoister on July 14, 24 1998.
25 A transcript of the meeting is being kept and will 70RJ RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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be made available as stated in the Federal Reaister notice.
2 It is requested that the speakers first identify themselves 3
and speak with sufficient clarity and volume so they can be 4
readily heard.
5 We have received no written comments or requests 6
for time to make oral presentations from' members of the
.7 public
-8 Let me start with a couple of comments.
Because 9
of the previous meeting in here today we've greatly delayed.
10 Some of us have airplanes and we would like to wind this up 11
.4:00 or shortly thereafter if at all possible.
I think 12 we're mostly familiar with the issues and that we can get 13
'right to the discussions.
So with that, Margaret, I believe 14 you wanted to say a.few words.
15 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yes, please.
Just a few 16 introductory remarks.
My name is Margaret Federline.
I'm 17 the new Deputy Director in Research and we appreciate the 18 opportunity to meet with you this afternoon.
I know the 19 meeting.this morning was long and you've had other members, 20 so let me get to the point.
I 21 We're here today to get your advice on the ccre i,
22 research capabilities.
We're very interested in your advice 23-in a-number of areas.
We see the Agency as in a transition at this point in time, and we fee ~
. hat research's mission 24 25 is going to be reflected in this transition of the Agency.
'l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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L
. -1 There are a number of external factors that are influencing 2
the direction that we're going to.take, and we think that as p
3-
- a. result of that that'the core capabilities is sort of a 4
work in. process at this. point in time.
And we would like 5
you.to work with us.
6 Ashok and I.have an interest in prioritizing the 7
.research activities in terms of both quantitative as well as
-8 qualitative risk insights.
And we think that that process 9.
may bring us some. insights for'the core capabilities 10
. identification as well.
So one of the concerns that Ashok
'11 andLI have at this point in time is to spend a lot of 12 additional resources on the paper that we have before we l
13-have benefit from this prioritization process of the 14 research activities until we have feedback from the 15-Commission on the paper and also until we have an 16 opportunity to look at it in the context of this sort of I
17 evolving mission that we see in research.
18 DR. POWERS:
Margaret, are you saying that we've
-19
- got more. time to think about.this core capabilities issues 20-because you anticipate getting more grist for that mill?
21 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yes.
22-DR'.
POWERS:
Great.
23 MS. FEDERLINE:
And we want your input on the 24 process.
I mean, let me very clear, we want to work with i
25 you very clearly.
The Agency effort, the core capabilities l.
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if of course, is going to be more broadly looked at in the 2
Agency, you know, research is a part of the Agency, so we 3
want to benefit also from the thought process that's going 4
on there.
5 So, you know,. we certainly want your suggestions 6
and advice, but I think we can take a little bit longer time 7.
to look at this problem.
So, essentially, you know, today l
18 we wanted to sort of focus on four topics, the first of 9
which is the definition and use.of core capabilities.
We k
10 find when you get five people in a room, you have six 11 opinions about what the definition of core capabilities are.
j 12 DR. POWERS:
I've got six myself.
13 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yes, right.
- Right, i
14
[ Laughter.]
15 MS. FEDERLINE:
So we feel like if we can make 16 some_ progress on agreeing about the definition and use that 17 that will.go a long way.
The next several issues that we 18 want to focus on are essentiality, the risk' considerations, 19 and the uniqueness to nuclear applications that you raised 20 in your letter.
I 21 So what we would hope to walk away from is some 22 agreement at the end of the meeting on at least how we feel 23 about those couple of issues so we can begin to-factor that 24 into our thought process.
So with that as some introductory 25-remarks, let me turn it over to Lloyd who is sort of going l.
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to lead us in our informal discussion.
2 MR. DONNELLY:
Yes, my name is Lloyd Donnelly.
3 Before we take a look at some of the handouts that 4
I've distributed here, I would like to mention that we, as 5
you probably know, will be meeting with the Commission on 6
the 6th of August to discuss two topics, the research 7
program and core capabilities.
I would anticipate that they 8
would have questions about the results of this exchange that 9
we're going to have today and as we go along I'll try to 10 make some notes in that regard and maybe summarize at the 11 end so that we could accurately characterize how we came out 12.
on some~of the issues.
-13 The first two things we wanted to talk to you 14 about are broader than core capabilities, but certainly 15 related.
And they are the future mission of the office as 16 we're seeing it today and the value added by the research 17 organization.
Clearly research could be conducted anywhere, 18 but we think there are definitely advantages to having an 19 Office of Research or an organization that conducts research 20 and we would like to get your comments on that.
This is 21 laid out in a document that we prepared earlier and
{
12 2 discussed with some of you.
23 So the first page and the second page of the 24 handout outlines those two areas.
And I guess I would just 25 like to have you scan the information that we have here and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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get some feedback from you on are we on the right target 2
perhaps particularly in light of what we heard today.
3 MS. FEDERLINE:
Just as background, the theme of 4
our Commission briefing is going to be, Research, a 5
Transition to the Future, and so we would like to make sure 6
that we are sort of thinking in the same veins in terms of 7
the current and future mission.
8 CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
Well, it's very difficult to pick 9
up and go through these, you know, at first glance, they 10 look like they'd be hard to argue with.
11 DR. POWERS:
Well, I'll say the same things that I 12 said when we looked at the draft version of this, it's keyed 13 to keep the people in Research very happy.
It's not keyed 14 to keeping the customers very happy.
And it strikes me that 15 you need a -- you need to become -- you need to present 16 yourself.
I think the activities are fine.
It's how you 17 present yourself as someone who is adaing value to the line 18 organizations that are interfacing with the licensees.
l 19 And so when you say we're going to develop and 20 maintain regulatory tools and databases, it seems to me you 21 need to cast that as we're going to help the line 22 organizations meet their gipper commitments to process X 23 number and we're going to do that by having the tools up to 24 date, and getting them there, getting better tools for them.
25 And that the sales job, I think, is missing from this.
The i
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activities you know from our research report these we think 2
are certainly among the activities, reducing uncertainties.
3 It seems to me that that's too bland of a statement.
What 4
you're doing is making it less necessary to invoke expert 5
judgment on things where quantitative analyses that are 6
sufficiently accurate will suffice.
I mean, that's the idea 7
you're trying to get across.
8 DR. SEALE:
And/or impose excess -- and/or impose 9
excessive margin and conservatism on the --
10 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yes.
11 DR. SEALE:
-- on what is acceptable to use as a 12 basis for regulation.
13 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
14 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Well, if you want to restructure i
15 it, it seems to me that you can give it a spin that starts 16 with decision making needs.
In fact, I think the words 17
" decision making" should be somewhere.
We have ignored the 18 subject, I think, for too long.
We are always talking about 19 assessments.
Because, for example, reducing uncertainties 20 is an activity which by itself is not worth supporting.
21 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Because their acceptance may be 23 large, but for the decision a hand, I don't care.
So start 24 with a decision and then add to it what Dana said, who is 25 making that decision?
Well, clearly somebody outside this i
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office, so you want to support that decisionmaking process.
2 Now, what do these people need to know?
They may 3
want something, you know, that adds -- enhances the 4
technical basis for the decision.
They may feel 5
uncomfortable with the present uncertainties that are 6.
relevant to that decision.
They will need regulatory tools 7.
and databases.
And I think these directly go on to 8
decisionmaking.
9 Now, keeping base with new technology anticipates 10 new decision problems So you also help in the 11 decisioncaking that way.
12 DR. POWERS:
And I think that's one of the things 13 that I would emphasize is that the Agency is going to be 14 confronted with issues that the current tools do not handle.
15-And it's not a case of, we think they might be.
I think in 16 the course of our discussions with -- on the research 17 programs we identify three or four issues where we 18 absolutely know positively industry is going.to confront you 19 with issues that you cannot handle with the current tools.
20
.And I am thinking on analysis of pressurized thermal shock.
21 The existing tools that's available to the line organization
.22 right now, the industry cannot live with those and so 23 they're going to come forth with a less conservative
-24 analysis that will not square with that regulatory guide.
25 You're going to have to have available to the line ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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organization something better than that.
And there are lots 2
of words in there where the conservatism, where can we 3
grant relief,_that we know absolutely positively the
~4' industry.is_ going to come in and say, relieve us on the 5.
. limits on burnup on the fuel.
We absolutely are going to do 6-that.
We know-absolutely and positively that the industry
.is going to come in and say, let us use digital software 7
8 systems for instrumentation and control.
And we simply 9
don't_have things in the existing regulatory guides that 10 allows you to handle those applications.
11 The choice is very clear to the Commission and you 12 can let the line organization do it in an ad hoc fashion 13 with whatever delay is intended with that, whatever 14 additional conservatism is, or they can let you do the 15 research and get armed and do it.
And I would be very. clear 16 with them about this that there is a cost to not doing 17 research.
18 CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
There are also a large number of 19 items that you might anticipate coming out of license 20 renewal, issues which we haven't really thought of yet.
'21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Like how to make it risk 22 informed.
23
[ Laughter.]
24 DR. SEALE:
Well, as a matter of fact --
25-DR. POWERS:
The trouble with that, Bob, it seems ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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to me is that if you come in with speculation then you get 2
the contrary speculation.
If you come in and say, I know 3
this is going to happen, I got the industry signed on the 4
' dotted line, they tell me they're going to do this, and 5
there's just no question you're going to confront this, then 6
there's no speculation on that.
You know, and there's a 7
good chance you get the line organization to sign on and 8
say, yeah, we need that.
9 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
10 DR. POWERS:
Whereas, the trouble you face with 11 the license renewal is the line organization saying, we 12 don't need any more research.
13 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
14 DR. POWERS:
You need to go knock them in the head 15 a little bit on that, but you have to do that off line.
16 DR. SEALE:
Yeah, you've got to give them a 17 problems list that they haven't thought about yet.
18 DR. POWERS:
Yeah.
19 DR. SEALE:
But, you know, yesterday we had a 20 subcommittee meeting on license renewal and one of the 21 things that was very clear there was_that the regulatory 22 position was incredibly enhanced because of the work that 23 has been done in research in the last -- over the years on 24 those things that had to do with 60-year lifes instead of 25 40-year lifes, you know, that kind of thing, the stuff that ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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was fundam:ntal that, you know, the numbers that went in
)
i 2
were different, but the precision with which the analysis 3
could be done was such that you could make informed estimates and assessments of what was going to be happening.
4 5
DR. POWERS:
Bob and I came to the conclusion you l
6 could claim $180 million?
(
7 DR. SEALE:
That's right.
One of the guys --
J 8
DR. POWERS:
Cost effectiveness for your research 1
9 that you've done in license renewal in the past?
}
10 DR. SEALE:
Yeah.
One of the comments that was 11 made was a little over a year ago someone estimated that it 12 would cost $200 million to do a license renewal application.
13 Now the number is around 20.
Now, obviously all of that is 14 not 15 DR. POWERS:
Well, they can claim.
16
[ Laughter.]
17 DR. SEALE:
Sure.
But on the other hand it is 18 very clear that one of reason that their level of confidence 19 has been enhanced is because they now have a much better 20 appreciation for what the agency's level of satisfaction is 21 going to be in terms of -- and what kinds of analyses it's 22 going to take in order to provide that compared to what 23 they're speculative version was at that earlier date.
24 DR. MILLER:
I think another issue is going to be j
25 timeliness which we heard --
I i
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DR. SEALE:
We heard about that today, too.
2 DR. MILLER:
That really hits almost all these 3
issues.
4 DR. SEALE:
And so it would seem to me that one of 5
the things you may need to do along with Dana's comment here 6
is quite separately get some of these really smart people on i
7 materials who understand or at least can make much better 8
assessments of what the process might be involved with 9
renewal to ask where the -- where the kickers are, where are 10 the surprises in the materials area, maybe the people in NRR 11 need to be told that there's a problem down the road that 12 they're not all that smart about.
13 MS. FEDERLINE:
They're afraid we're going to tell 14 them.
l 15 DR. SEALE:
- Well, 16 DR. FONTANA:
Along those lines, there's an EPRI 17 document that lists 15 different technical positions with 18 respect to license renewal and it would be of interest to 19 have some of your smart research guys take a look at it and 20 say, well, do we agree with this position, or don't we, or 21 is there an issue here.
1 22 DR. SEALE:
Yeah, are there outstanding l
l 23' uncertainties in there that need the result?
l 24 MR. KING:
I think we've already looked at that
. :2 5 document and I think for the most part we agree with EPRI, i
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but here have been some discussions back and forth.
2 DR. SEALE:
Tom King.
3 MR. KING:
Tom King is my name from research.
4 DR. POWERS:
Let me make sure that I voice my 5
opinion.
I think there is no mileage for you in making the 6-case for research lying in license renewal.
I think there's 7
mileage'to be made as an achievement of the past, but I 8
would not build much of a case on -- especially when you 9
have the line organization saying that they don't need you.
(
10 You're better to get line organizations that say they do 11 need you on that.
12' CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
George?
d 13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I'm asking permission to speak.
14 I mean, don't be surprised.
15
[ Laughter.)
16 DR. POWERS:
We're stunned.
l 17 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
You're so surprised.
18
[ Laughter.)
19 DR. MILLER:
This is the first time.
20 (Laughter.)
~
21 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Well, first of all I want to
. 22 apologize, I misspoke.
You actually do say that you are 23 going to provide technical basis for regulatory decisions.
24 So the word " decision" is being used, but I still think that 25 they should be emphasized that we are dealing with a l
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...~ _ - - _ _ _ - - _ - _ - _ - - - - _ _ _. -.. _ -_.
15
'1'
. decision making situation.
But the fundamental problem is 2
this, in my opinion, you are saying that you want to make 3
.the decisions cost effective, if you look at the double 4
bullets that follow though, where does cost come into the 5
picture?
6 Now, we have said in the past, in fact in our 7-research report that the line organizations can always make 8
a decision based on what they know at the time.
And that 9
decision is usually conservative.
In other words, it costs 10 somebody money.
And we-have a typical situation here that 11 you' find in many instances of this cost benefit or risk 12 benefit tradeoff situation that the people who make the 13 decisions.are not the ones that incur the costs.
It's the 14 licensees who do, not the guys who decide at NRR.
So what 15 is it that you will do, or we will do, as a collective body, 16 to make sure that this cost-effective thing that you have 17.
underlined here is an integrated part of this.
It's not 18 clear to me why should I spend money to reduce uncertainties 19 in a certain situation?
Why?
Just to know the better?
I 20 mean, where does the cost effectiveness come into the 21-
' picture ~unless we say, well, it's a guiding principle that 22' guides everything that we do.
23 MS. FEDERLINE:
I think it comes in, in 24 prioritizing your review based on risk.
You need to 25 prioritize the safety review based on risk.
And if you're ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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16 l'
able to reduce uncertainties in that area so you have a 2'
higher confidence in'decisionmaking, it should streamline 3-the'decisionmaking process.
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But there is nothing here'in the 5
. bullets that.says you are prioritizing anything.
6 Let's take one, reducing uncertainties in-area of
~
7 potential high risk of safety significance.
There is an-8 implied assumption there that if you reduce the
'9'
= uncertainties, the process will become cost effective, more
.10 cost effective.
11 MR. KING:
It'could be.
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
It could be.
13.
MR.' KING:
It could be.
I'mean, you could look at 11 4.
the first bullet and-think burden reduction.
You could look 15 at the third double bullet and think.of improving our own efficiency of being ready to handle these things we know are 16 17 going to come in from the industry which will be cost 18 effective, certainly for the-industry to have applications 19 processed in a timely fashion to allow best estimate 20' analysis to be used to shave margins and unnecessary 21 burdens.
I think they're sort of implied in a lot of areas.
'22 MR. SHAO:
Actually, Dr. Powers.just mentioned two 23 elements in our reactor -- this is Larry Shao from research.
24-Dr. Powers just mentioned two elements in our reactor vessel l
l 25 program which is cost effective.
The first one is so-called ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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" master curves" which can't -- it's a new way of finding 2
fracture toughness which would reduce so-called " unnecessary 3
conservatism".
The other one is so-called "PT curve",
4 temperature pressure curve which right now the industry has 5
been troubled to meet the PT curve.
They want to reduce t
6 conservatism.
So our research -- I'll just give you two 7
examples that would be cost effective, so-called --
8 reduction --
9 DR. POWERS:
And they're really lovely examples 10 because they're given to graphical display.
But they're 11 very transparent, it doesn't take much to show what you're 12 trying to accomplish and it's a bunch of bucks.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But my comment was l
14 misunderstood.
I mean, I don't doubt that there are many f
15 instances where your activities contribute to a L
16 cost-effective solution.
What I saying is that I don't see 17 a process that identifies areas where cost effectiveness is 18 an issue.
19 Somebody has to make a judgment someplace that we 20 are awfully conservative.
And what I'm saying is, maybe 21 that judgment should be structured a little bit better.
How 22 do we make sure that we know what the top ten or 20 items or 23 areas where additional research will lead to more 24 cost-effective solutions are?
Do we know that?
Do we have 25 a method of identifying those or are we relying on the l
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18 1-judgmsnt of people which may be very good, actually.
I'm 2
not putting it down, but since cost-effectiveness is reason 3
for doing a lot of this stuff, maybe it should be included 4
in this a bit tcore formally?
5 MR. SHAO:
Yeah, but a lot are coming from 6
operating experience now.
Like PT curve, when they try to 7.
Startup'a plhnt or at!utdown a plant, they run into 8
. difficulties.
They have -- they need the rooms.
They 9
cannot -- instead of 100 degrees per hour, they're to reduce 10 it to 20 degrees per hour.
For them it's very difficult to 11 operate a plant.
So a lot of things coming from --
12 MS. FEDERLINE:
Just to answer your question, the 13 two places that we see that coming in are our input into 14 improving the regulatory process.
We would see research's 15 quantitative risk insights as inferring priorities for 16 license reviews and inspections.
That's'one way we see it 17 coming in.
You know, that's yet to play out.
It's sort of 18 a controversial, should research play that role, but it's 19 something'we want to offer up to the Commission that we see 20 a role for research.
And I think the other area is the 21 prioritization of our own work.
You know, once we provide 22
-some' insights into improving the regulatory process, then we l
23 can step back and prioritize our own work based on 24 quantitative, qualitative risk insights.
125 And, you know, these are a little tentative at l
)
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this point because, as I say, we're in this transition 2
period'about how the Agency is going to change.
These are 3
kind of things that we're offering up from research.
4 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
For example, the industry has 5
come back with an initiative on the part of -- supported by 6
NEI which will be the next step in the risk-informed 7
applications.
And they have identified, as I remember, 8
three pilot projects in task zero.
Extending the time to 9
start the diesels; right?
And something with hydrogen --
10 PARTICIPANT:
Hydrogen sampling.
11 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
-- sampling, yeah.
Do we want 12 to have efforts in the Agency that would identify these 13 issues before the industry comes here and says, we're going 14 to save a lot of money here and we need relief?
Is that 15 what we are trying to do?
Or, another possible policy is to 16 say, they are really the guys who benefit from effective 17 processes, we'll let them come to us and propose issues and 18 then we will look at what is in it we can recommend to 19 improve'the regulatory process with respect to that issue.
20 Right?
So these are higher level questions, I think.
21 MS. FEDERLINE:
I think we --
22 DR. POWERS:
Why do they have to get involved in 23 that question?
Don't they have --
24 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Well, it says, " cost effective";
25
'what does it mean?
Either we drop it, or we decide what it l-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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.is.
2 DR.. POWERS:
It seems to me that I spent a good
)
=3 three weeks of my life this morning listening to people 4
asking for regulatory reform that demands research 5
initiatives.
It seems to me I listened to people talking 6-about minimal and zero and things like that which demanded 7-
~ quantitative analysis.
It seems to me that the word " cost 8
effective" where it's a wonderful buzz word and I use.it 9
myself every chance I can, it may be misplaced here and what l'0 you want to do is you want to have words that say you're 11 supporting the demand from the Commission that they achieve 12 greater efficiency in regulation through applications of 13 risk here and highlight the central role.
14 My personal opinion is that when we discuss
-15 risk-informed regulation with the line organization we hear 16 a lot of things that say, yeah, we're in favor of this, but
' 17.
we're not going to do it because we're uncomfortable with-18 the level-of quantification that we're getting.
And that 19 somehow you've got to own up to the fact that you're sister 20 organizations whereas they now know the terminologies of 21 PRA, don't have a visceral comfort with it that will come 22 one with improving the way you either present it to them or 23' its own capabilities.
And it seems to me that that needs to 24 be like bullet number one.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But there is a real issue here l
l:
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though.
Why -- I mean, why should this Agency worry about 2
improving the regulatory programs?
The public health and 3
satety are protected, thank you very much.
So cost is an 4
element in these decisions, but because we are a regulatory 5
agency we don't make it explicit except in some instances, 6
you know, $1,000 or whatever, and so on.
7 DR. POWERS:
But look in my notes, I think I 8
answered that question.
9 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I did look at your notes.
10 DR. POWERS:
And I said that if in fact nothing 11 changed, if the industry didn't change, and if the Agency 12 didn't change, I wouldn't need a research program.
But the 13 fact is, these things are changing.
And the reason -- and 14 they're changing on both sides of the fence.
The industry 15 is changing and they do have a cost drive to them.
The 16 Agency has changed and apparently they're going to have a 17 cost driver to them -- on them and so indeed costs are being 18 driven here, but outside the Agency.
19 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
But the Commission, I think, put 20 it in its strategic plan.
21 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yes.
22 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
They use the words " effectively" 23 and " efficiently".
So it's not just changes in the 24 industry.
2.
DR. POWERS:
No, no, they're changing on both
(
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sides of the fence.
2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay.
3 DR. POWERS:
So what is the one thing that you 4
come out of all this latest floteral is there are going to 5
be reduced resources available to the line organizations to 6
carry out their mission with no concommitment 7
DR. SEALE:
There's another bundle of words --
8 processes if you're a regulatory -- the details that support 9
the regulation.
So you don't have all that conservatism.
10 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
I think if you look at the whole 11 issue from a decisionmaker's perspective, most of what you 12 have here will survive.
You may have to edit it and change 13 some words, but it will survive because you do have the 14 basic elements.
I'm not saying that this is a revolution.
15 But from the decisionmaker's perspective, you may get some 16 additional insight.
17 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
18 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
For example there is a whole 19 literature in decisionmaking regarding the value of new 20 information.
Now, you cannot sit down here and, you know, 21 evaluate it following every line by the books on decisional 22 analyses, but there may be some ideas there that you might 23 use in a different way.
24 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
25 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Because it seems to me that by l
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20036 (202) 842-0034
23 just saying " reducing uncertainties" the question of why 1-2 comes up.
Why do you want to reduce it?
There must be a 3
. motivation behind it.
The technical basis to resolving 4
. safety regulatory issues, well, that small a risk is self
'5 explanatory, but recommending improvements to NRC's 6
regulatory programs, I mean, why?
What is the basis?
Is 7
the basis that now we know better, therefore, we know how to 8-improve it.
9 That leads to my next question, is one'of the 10 future missions of RES the dissemination of information 11
. within the agency, not just creating new information?
12 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yes.
13 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Because, you know, there may be 14 something in the literature out there that an NRR person has 15 no interest in going out and finding out what it is, but the 16:
research guys by their very own activities, they know what 17 is going on..
So they say, gee, that's a good idea, we can 18 use it in the Agency.
19 Now, I have to leave in a few minutes, so let me l
20 give you.one more problem that I planned to give.
The L
21 bullet before last maintaining high-caliber research talent, i
22-wouldn't it be better to say " maintaining access to l-23 high-caliber research talent"?
Some of it can be here, but 24-some of it can be outside.
25 DR. POWERS:
It seems to me, that's not a mission ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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anyway.
2 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
And it's not a mission anyway, i
3 exactly.
4
'MS. FEDERLINE:
Well, if you look at the strategic 5
plan, that is the Office's -- it's maintaining the capability that the' Commission established as the strategic.
6 7
DR. POWERS:
And, again, that's something that was 8
written and kept the researchers happy.-
I'm not sure it 9
keeps your customers happy.
l l
10 DR. FONTANA:
It's an important function, but it's 11 hard to defend and justify.
12 DR. POWERS:
I mean, I think that's just the 13 mechanics of the way you go about it.
In fact, this 14 committee sat around regaling itself over words that have 15 been communicated about best people and best facilities and 16 everybody said, they don't need the best, 90 percent of 17 their things is perfectly adequate.
18 DR. MILLER:
Well, you heard the word " good 19-enough" today.
20 MS. FEDERLINE:
Good enough.
21 DR. MILLER:
And in research that's what you may
~22 know also.
What is " good enough"?
l 23 DR. POWERS:
They can go to Ohio State, they don't 24 need to go to the best places.
25
[ Laughter.)
i l
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DR. MILLER:
Well, they didn't got to MIT.
2.
MS. FEDERLINE:
Is this a good opportunity to 3
segue to the core' capabilities definition?
I know your time
/4 is very limited and we're eager to take advantage of as much 5
as we can.
6 DR. POWERS:
However, I've never segued in my 7
-life.
l 8
[ Laughter.]
L 9-DR. POWERS:
My wife says I can't do that now that I
10 I'm. married.
l 11 (Laughter.)
12 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
What slide are we on?
13 MR. DONNELLY:
We're on the third page.
I was 14 going to hand these out individually and decided to do it as l
15 a package, so I didn't number'the pages.
But the third page l
i 16 headed " core capabilities definition and'use".
17.
As Margaret mentioned we thought it would be 18 useful to see if we were on the same wave length when it 19 comes to definition which we've included in the first bullet 20 and to talk about usage in the next two bullets.
There are
. 21 some key words in that first bullet -- first --
- 22 DR. POWERS:
This is very different than your 23 previous definitions.
24 MR. DONNELLY:
It's consistent with it.
It is not j
25 as explicit as some of the others.
The key words here are l
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26 1
minimum and that says the budget to support the work we may 2-have to do for the regulatory process may be bigger than the i
3 core, but the minimum is a set of skills and facilities that 4-if we don't have it, we don't believe we would be able to 5
effectively respond in the-future, not completely, but 6
effectively.
And that implies in a timely way, in an 7
independent way and with quality.
So I guess what we're 8
saying'is'those core capabilities defined as expertise level 9
as sent to the Commission we think represent that minimum 10 set to allow us to do that.
l
'll DR. POWERS:
" Core" in this case, you're using the 12 word " core" as saying, if I don't have that, you might as 13 well put me out of business?
14 MS. FEDERLINE:
No, it's not.
And we've had 15 discussions with Ashok and I wish he could be here, but 16 he'll be here for our future discussions.
He envisions core 17 capability as a level -- a minimum level that could respond 18 to all the activities.
Let's just take an example, of 19 severe accidents, for instance.
There may be subactivities 20 in severe accidents that you could maintain a particular 21
'subactivity and still be viable.
22 DR. POWERS:
I'm going to revert to my commercial 23 sector on core capabilities with the recognition that your 24 definitions are a little different.
When an organization 25 defines its core competencies and capabilities, in this case I
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the definitions are virtually the same.
They'll say, okay, 2
there are certain capabilities I have to have to even 3
participate in this particular field of endeavor.
If I'm 4
making widgets, I've got to know what a widget is and what 5
not.
And then there are competencies that I have that make 6
my widget'better than my competitor's widget in some ways, 7
and then there are competencies I have because I know that 8
this year's widget won't be any good next year.
So I have 9
to develop so.ne capabilities so that I can make next year's 10 widget.
11 In those three categories, which one are you 12 trying to hit, the one that just allows you to be in the 13 game at all, the one that makes you better in the game than 14 having your competitor which I have defined in my notes that 15 I passed out'here, your competition, as I see it, as having 16 the line organizations do the work themselves, or is it the 17 stuff so that you can be in the game five or six years from 18-now?
19 MR. DONNELLY:
I think the -- I don't want this to 20-sound like a flip answer, but I think the and is yes.
21 DR. POWERS:
Okay.
22 MR. DONNELLY:
All three.
23 DR. POWERS:
So it's to cover that whole thing.
-24 What's not a core! capability?
25 MR. DONNELLY:
What's not a core capability are
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1 28 1
resourc s that might be needed to deal with a certain volume 2
of work, but they don't represent a unique capability that's 3
not in the core.
4 Okay.
So if I lose the core, I'm out of that game 5
altogether?
6 No, let's take any particular area.
You could 7
lose part of that core and you might reach a conclusion that 8
it would be worthwhile still to keep a component of it or I
9 you might conclude that without the amount you can no longer 10 afford, that whole area is no longer viable and you get out 11 of it completely.
And I think we have to look at each one 12 on a case-by-case basis and see first of all what the 13 resources delta is, obviously a small delta on a large core f
14 capability is not going to put you out of business.
And I
15 secondly, does it have subcomponents such that you might get 16 out of one part of that core capability and recognize that 17 you wouldn't be able to effectively deal with issues coming 18 up in that area, but still keep another.
And that's the way 19 we're looking at it.
20 Now, if we were going to go to a definition that 21 said, any decrement below core puts you out of business, 22 then we've got to redefine what we've done.
23 DR. POWERS:
I think I'm going to wave my hand and 24 say, yeah, I know what you're talking about, but tell you, I 25 haven't got a clue what you're talking about.
I will say t
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29 that you articulate this -- you have an August meeting, 1
I think -- where I'd come up with a real hard cast example on 2
3 this because it's just going to cause all kinds of 4-questions.
You know, I mean, a real tangible example 5
because.I have a -- a good portion of my difficulty
'6 understanding your definition comes from I've got a bunch of
=7 other definitions-I'm familiar with and I'm trying to fit it 8
and it's-not fitting, i
9 MR. DONNELLY:
We have examples, we-could go into 10 them now, but I think --
11 DR. POWERS:
We may be more profitable to go on --
12 MR. DONNELLY:
-- so we agree 13 DR.-APOSTOLAKIS:
I know it's not this line, but 14
.these core capabilities are a' framework.
They are a 15 framework, is that clear to everybody else?
'16
.MP. DONNELLY:
I think we could have said, 17
" expertise core capabilities define".
i
)
18 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
19 DR. APOSTC6AKIS:
Ah.
Okay.
20 lDR. POWERS:
I think it's looking at this magnum
-21 opus'and saying, you know, here -- everything fit in there.
22 MR. DONNELLY:
And, of course,. embedded in --
23 DR. APOSTOLAKIS:
Or an envelope perhaps.
24 MR. DONNELLY:
Yes.
Now, the second bullet is one 25
-that comes to the point that was addressed in your letter to l-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C.
20036 (202) 842-0034
30 1-the Commissior relating core capabilities to budget and a 2
statement in.there that I believe says that we probably 3
can't afford 29 core capabilities given budget. constraints.
4 IMt. POWERS:
That has to do more with your l
. 5 ' ji definition in one of your SECY documents where you define 6
core capabilities in terms of work you are going to support 7
regardless of work load because of things that might come up 8
.in the future and things like that.
9 I think that -- I think that's where you ran into 10 the budgetary thing came in there.
I think in our 11 subsequent informal discussions we conceded that we were in 12 fact on the same wave length on that.
13 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
14 DR. POWERS:
That we felt core capabilities needed 15 to be defined first without regard to the budget and we 16 would allow budgetary things would undoubtedly come in and L
i I
17 in some way they intrude always.
18 MR. DONNELLY:
Oh, yes.
yes.
19 DR. POWERS:
But for the definition purposes that 20 was my understanding of how we were working --
l 21 DR. SEALE:
Yeah..
i 22 DR. POWERS:
-- when we wrote the letter and how l
23 our subsequent discussions with them clarified some things.
1 1
24 MR. DONNELLY:
Okay.
I guess I shouldn't have 25 moved off bullet one to say other -- are we in agreement I
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that this,is what we're all thinking about here or do we 2
have different definitions at' work?
3 DR; SEALE:
Well, certainly they have said'that
(
4 that was the basis we were working on, the budget did not 5
define the core capability, it may crimp the style of it, 6
but 7
DR. POWERS:
I think we operate on a different-8 definition of core capabilities right now.
I have Dr.
9.
Kress' notes here, I have my own notes and I can almost i
i 10.
assure you we were singing from a different definition than 11 what's up here.
I 12 MR. DONNELLY:
From the point of view that we i
13 should have defined it differently, i
14
[ Laughter.]
15 MR. DONNELLY:
Well, I'm -- you know, I think it's j
16 important as to whether we could have or whether we should 17 have.
l 18 MS. FEDERLINE:
I mean, can we agree that at least I
i 19 for a period of time we can use this working definition as l
j 20 long as -- I mean, I think it's important that we all --
l 21 DR. POWERS:
With the stipulation that I don't 22 understand the definition right now.
L 23 MS. FEDERLINE:
Okay.
24 DR. POWERS:
Okay.
But I understand that it's l
25 different than my definition of core capability and I i.
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.balieve it's different from Tom's definition of core i
2 capabilities.
I see no reason not to progress on this one.
3' If everybody --
4 MR. DONNELLY:
Could I just try one thing and 5
probably fail in terms of trying to explain it perhaps a 6
little~ differently?
7 As you know, when we looked at the regulatory.
8 functions that a core capability might support and we looked 9
at those 14 criteria in terms of frequency of occurrence and 10 other things within there, what we were looking at is 11 current and foreseeable future and trying to look out and 12 cay, I can't necessarily focus on exactly what we're doing 13 today and assume that's going to continue,.but what do we 14 think the past and the present tells us about the future?
15 Try to get a sense of that and then say, if our sense is i
16 right, what kinds of skills and capabilities at a minimum 17 leve] do we think we would need if these types of issues 18 will arise in the future?
What's the distribution that 19 we'll need?
And try to minimize that both in contractor and 20 in-house.
And that's where the rubber meets the road.
21 Either we did a good job of that or we didn't.
But that's 22 consistent with this definition.
23-CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
The committee's letter indicates 24
'that we thought the 29 areas was more than that.
It was an 25 excessive number, i
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1 MS. FEDERLINE:
And we can get into discussing
.2 that, I think whether 29 is the right number is a different 3
question.
We at this point would just like to agree on a 4
definition that we're all using.
5 DR. POWERS:
Can we strike the word " minimum"?
6 MR. DONNELLY:
Let me suggest another thing here.
7 Because you mentioned looking at the 29, we would see thic 8
definition operable at the individual level.
Let's say we 9
all agreed we needed a fuel behavior core capability, we 10 would say within there we're looking for the minimum set of 11 skills and facilities that will allow us to address issues, 12 problems, maintain tools that we see ahead of us in the 13 future.
14 DR. FONTANA:
Dana, would you -- if you replace l
l 15
" minimum" with "necessary" would that 16 MR. DONNELLY:
I would have a problem with that.
17 DR. FONTANA:
You would have a problem?
18 MR. DONNELLY:
Yes, because I'm trying to use this 19 word to distinguish between what we might need to budget in L
20 that area which could be considerably more than that minimum 21 set of skills which we would consider in the way we're 22 dealir? with it as being above core necessary because of 23 workload.
L 24 DR. FONTANA:
That really means that if you go 25 below this you might as well just junk it, i
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l' MR. DONNELLY:
And there are some cases where we 2
might and there are other cases where --
3 DR. FONTANA:
That's the criteria.
4 MS. FEDERLINE:
I think necessary -- I think 5
necessary does convey -- I think I can see the problem in 6
interpreting minimum because we had the same problem.
We 7
-all got.together several times, and,'you know, we had these 8'
discussions among ourselves.
9' DR. POWERS:
Deja vu all over again.
11 0 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
Right.
So minimum was --
11' DR. POWERS:
Sorry about'that.
1' 12 MS.'FEDERLINE:
wouldn't necessary be something 13.
'that we.could at least consider?
14 MR. DONNELLY:
We certainly could consider it.
15 DR.-POWERS:
I don't want to wordsmith it here.
16 When I said,.let's strike the word " minimum" I meant, 17
' mentally I'didn't mean -- you guys work on the wording all-
.18 you'want to.
I think what you're saying is the set that 19 you've chosen which may be the 29 is not necessary a minimum 20 set, but within any given element of that set the amount of l
- 21 activity that you define for that, that's the minimum.
22 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
That's right.
23' CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
Then that should be brought into 24 this definition here that something like within a given area l
L 25 core capability -- do I understand that correctly?
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35 1
MR. DONNELLY:
Sure.
But -- we could do that, but 2
then that would beg the question, well, what about all 3
areas?
And we believe that it's true in both cases.
I 4
think you do no.
I think you might agree on an individual 5
case with us, but you might say, you don't need all 29 of 6
those.
7 DR. POWERS:
Our minimum set, we were looking for 8
a minimum set, you came in with 2.9, we said, no the minimum 9
was less than that.
You were using minimum to mean within 10 the fuels behavior.
This is the minimum you can have.
11 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
12 MR. DONNELLY:
We certainly can do that.
13 DR. POWERS:
If you do anything less than that, 14 then you're not meeting your obligations, you're not out of 15 business, but you're just not meeting your obligations.
16 DR. FONTANA:
I think that's the proper way of 17 doing it.
It seems like the hard part is deciding what the 18 foreseeable regulatory activities are going to be.
19 MR. MAYFIELD:
This is Mike Mayfield from 20 research.
I was struggling with the same kind of thing.
We 21 had a discussion, actually, as Margaret said, several 22 recently on this kind of subject and I guess the way I 23 started framing it for myself is take one of the materials 24 areas since those are the ones I'm most familiar with and 25 the embrittlement area in particular.
That thing actually ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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rolls up several core competencies.
You've got the 2
materials teater folks, you've got the embrittlement 3
mechanisms folks and some of that kind of stuff.
The difficulty that I've been having with some of the phrasing 4
5 and I think you guys are having as well, is when you hit 6
when you say " minimum" or "necessary" you're looking at it 7
in too broad an area.
You have to step back and look at 8
what composes that area that we've defined as a core area.
9 And if you get into it and you say, well, all right, what's 10
_the minimum for doing irradiation mechanisms work, and as 11 we've described it in there, that's pretty much the minimum.
12 And if you start cutting a lot below that in that narrow 13 little area which I think is what Ashok describes as the 14 subset, if you're going to cut a lot below that$ then at 15 some level you're going to lose that capability, but you 16 haven't lost the whole core area as we've defined it in the 17 paper.
And that's how it started making some sense to me 18 when Lloyd uses the words " minimum" so I've agonized over it 19 a bit, I guess I started getting more comfortable with 20 minimum understanding that that core area actually 21 constitutes several of the smaller pieces.
But then that 22 flies in the face of the committee's statement that we had 23 too many core areas.
l 24 DR. FONTANA:
Well, I don't have any problem with 25 the number.
If it takes a certain number, it takes a l
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certain number, it's just that they need to be justified.
2 MS. FEDERLINE:
I'd kind of like to separate the 3
definition from -- because I think the process defines how 4
many.there are and you might have additional comments that 5
I 6'
DR. MILLER:
I think you could just eliminate the 7
word " minimum" and just say " skills and facilities needed to 8
effectively", that defined it, don't worry about the word 9
" minimum".
10 MR. KING:
Yeah, but then you can interpret it as 11 you need to have enough to cover your current workload which 12 may be over and above what you need just to maintain l
13 expertise.
That's the reason the word " minimum" is in 14 there.
15 DR. MILLER:
I'm not certain " minimum" adds 16 anything to this whole --
17 DR. FONTANA:
But it differentiates it between 18 that and the next bullet down.
19 MS. FEDERLINE:
I think that's the concept that 20 we're trying to say that core capabilities do not correlate 21 directly with the budget.
A budget, because of your 22 workload, you may have more radiation embrittlement 23 specialists or less radiation embrittlement specialists.
24 But in order to have core, you must have at least "a" 25 radiation embrittlement specialist to do the minimum.
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DR. FOMTANA:
That's why you underlined "needs".
2-It says,_"needs should not be constrained by lack of 3
budget".
4 DR. MILLER:
That's right.
5' DR. FONTANA:
The number of people you've got sure 1
1 6
is.
Which may be below the needs.
I.see what you mean.
i 7
DR. SEALE:
And that's what the bottom line is 8
about.
9 MS. FEDERLINE:
Uh-huh.
10 MR. DONNELLY:
Should we move to the third bullet 11 and just -- ence the organization has. agreed upon core l
12 capabilities even in research or anywhere, the idea would be 13 that it would give us a way to monitor where we were in 14 staffing status both in terms of qualifications and numbers
.15 of people relative to that core capability.
And if it isn't 16 defined, you really don't have a way to do that.
And you 17 can set up recruitment strategies and so forth to 18 replacement strategies to maintain that core once you have a 19 focus on it.
20 DR. FONTANA:
Would it be beneficial to do kind of
{
21 like a historical exercise here?
There are a lot of
(
22 programs within the commission which have been.just very, 23 very successful, wildly successful, and some that have not, L
24-and go back and see what were the characteristics that 25
' caused these things to come in to play, and what were the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I 39 1-characteristics that cause them to be very good?
Maybe you l
2 start making some correlations here.
3 DR. MILLER:
Well, how do you define success?
4 DR. FONTANA:
Well, I mean, the heavy section 5
steel program and the -- program, those are successful.
6 DR. MILLER:
How are you defining success?
7-DR. FONTANA:
Well, they haven't broken yet.
8 DR. MILLER:
Success in those days might have been 9
different than success in the future.
10 DR. FONTANA:
i That's one thing you've got to look 11 at.
Of course, you know, the other argument is that the 12-technology is so mature that there's not much more left to 13 doing it.
'I don't think you're quite there.
14 CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
I think we may have almost T
15 exhausted the ideas in core capability an we ought to move l
l 16 on to essentiality.
i 17 MR. DONNELLY:
Okay.
Let's do that.
I put this l-18 slide together to try to communicate better with you what we i
19 did in the way of essentiality and I guess I would underline i
20 again the middle of the third line there.
Did we build a l
21 good case that we need to have those types of expertise and l
L 22 facilities available to support realistic future regulatory 23 needs.
And we looked in six different areas as you know, 24 first being operational issues, the other being issues 25 coming out of new technology and research and then on down ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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the~line.
And our 14 criteria that we evaluated were tied i
2 back here.
So we believe that for the 29 areas we put forth 3
we built a good case.
I think you might have a different 4
view of that and we can certainly talk about that down the 5
roa'd here a little bit.
But I think this would serve as a 6
way to-(a) explain the way we were looking at essentiality 7
and the way we think we addressed it.
But I think you may 8
have a different view on the committee with respect to what 9
"essentiality" means and we wculd like to better understand 10 that.
11 DR. POWERS:
Essentially boils down -- it comes 12 down to the root to getting to them.
And there the 13 sentiment-that's the basis of both the notes and the letter 14 was that it should be a top-down process.
The strategy you 15 evoked-was let me define a gross set of candidate core 16
-competencies, let me go through my 14 questions and from 17 that find that these candidates indeed are essential.
And 18 the committee said that is a root to maintaining the status l
19 quo.
A good -- a guy that's clever can always find a reason 20 to answer the questions with a very high level.
A guy 21 that's very clever knows to answer a few of them in the 22 middle and a lot of them that are very high so that he 23
'didn't get interrogated.
He might even put in one that's 24 low.
25 The committee and the notes that we've gotten both l
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from me and from Tom all said, go from a top down process in which you parse out what are the tasks and the thinking 2
i 3
especially for this foreseeable future tasks and what do
{
4 they -- what are they going to demand of you?
5 Since our more-informal discussions I've continued 6
to think about that and say, okay, well, there's a large 1
7 body of work done here and though much of it I can't 8
understand without Larry Shao right there next to me to 9
explain what's in there.
You know, it's a huge database 1
10 there.
And I've come to think, well, no, it's not a matter l
11 of_--
it's a pretty good piece of information here.
What I 12 really need to do is now go through-and do the top down and i
.13 see if I in fact validate that.
If.I come down there and I 14 find, gee, based on what's coming down the-pike, I really 15 don't need a guy that's an expert in steam explosions.
Then-I l
16 I've got to get discontinuity and it's a discontinuity that 17 may resolve itself perhaps in the prioritization process or 18 it may resolve itself and say no, but the bottoms up just 19 gave me.a result that's not viable.
.20 I don't know how you do that, but I've come to --
21 my own thinking has come to be that I really like the 22 top-down process, but I have the suspicion that buried in 23.
here is a tremendous amoant of information that's more 24 meaningful to the people that wrote it than it perhaps is to 25 the people that read it.
But that's okay, the people that ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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wrote it are the guys that have to manage it, so it's good k
2 for them.
And it's not so important that the reader 3
understand it.
But if I'm going to sell it, I've got to 4
work on a top-down process because the people I'm selling it 5
to were generating those tasks that come about it.
And it 6
is from that that we said essential are the things needed to 7
satisfy the jobs that are coming to you and rather than the 8
evaluation of candidates.
And that create a different 9
thing.
10 Now, there's another problem with essentiality and 11 that comes back to the definition of core capabilities.
The 12 Committee operates very much from what was written in the 13 SECY document about here's what I'm going to support and I 14 don't care about " a workload.
But I just know these guys.
15 And, of course, we're using the fuel experience as our 16 example in that saying that, okay, here was a case where the 17 Agency in its budgetary and prioritization process said, we 18 know enough about fuel.
And, you know, all the things do is 19 they just get worse in time on a linear ramp and we can 20 predict that.
And they don't.
There's a cliff and we ran 21 into the cliff, somewhat fortuitously ran into it, I think, 22 and fortunately found that indeed we had on role guys that 23 were pretty much expert -- they were doing other things, but 24 they had a lot of expertise in fuel and they could jump 25 right in and come up with a pretty darned good program to ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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resolve the issue.
But had we waited five more years, 2
there's a good chance that half that expertise would in fact 3
been dead and irretrievable and the other half of it would 4
hav been from the Bahamas someplace.
And so we were lucky.
5 And, you know, that's a " phew sort of thing" and you didn't 6
-- that was the kind of thing the committee was saying those 7
kinds of technologies are essential.
And they come up with 8
a much smaller number of things that where if a crisis comes 9
up in a technical area and the NRC says, we've got to handle 10 this, who do we have on role?
Oh, my God, we don't have 11 anybody.
Well, is there anybody out in the university 12 community or the national laboratories?
There's nobody, i
13 we're in desperate trouble.
14 Now, okay, and you can define about six that fall 15 in that category.
And it gets to be a little bit bigger 16 depending how you do in Larry's area.
Larry, you've got to 17 stay around a long time because we really need you.
18 But, I mean, it just depends a little bit on what 19 you see the technical community is having -- the broader 20 technical community having -- has available to offer you and 21 what you think your time schedules are to get that.
I mean, 22 I can get a fracture mechanics guy for you, I guarantee you.
23 I believe the phrase we used was, "a hundred dollar bill 24 through any university in America will get you a fracture 25 mechanic."
But you may have to educate him for six months I
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before ha's useful to you.
2 MS. FEDERLINE.:
That's right.
3 DR. POWERS:
And that's fine, if you've got six 4
months, that's fine.
5 MR.-DONNELLY:
And the other part of that question 6
that we need to address is who is going to do the educating 7
8 DR. POWERS:
Yeah.
9' MR. DONNELLY:
-- if you are out of business.
10
.DR. POWERS:
Yeah, especially if Larry is gone.
11
[ Laughter.]
12 DR. POWERS:
I mean, that affects your definition, 13 but you see how our definition of essentiality went then, i
14 MR. DONNELLY:
Well, I saw two dimensions to it in 15 the way you described it.
In the first part when you talk 16 top down looking at the tasks, I would say we did exactly 17 what you talked about.
We may not have documented it well, 18 but remember I said that when we looked at each of these six 19 areas we tried to look to the future and say, what are the 20 kinds, you can call them tasks, are we talking issues or 21 problems or whatever, regulatory decisions that.we're likely 22 to be confronted with.
I think that's consistent with what 23 you're saying.
And so if we had done it well and documented E
24 it well, I think we would have been in agreement on that.
25 The second part of what I heard you say is l
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applying a tougher test in the areas of uniqueness, 2
' availability, timeliness, criticality than we applied.
3 We looked at the six areas -- talking about.
I 4
didn't hear anything new, it's just that I would conclude 5
from what you said, if you say six or six areas or so 6
instead of 29, you would apply a tougher test.
7 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
8 MR. DONNELLY:
And that means you may be carrying 9
around a different view of timeliness than what we had in 10 the back of our mind before --
11 DR. POWERS:
In fact, on the timeliness --
12 timeliness and.the ease of access, I'think it's almost 13 assured that we're saying, ah, you know, if it takes six 14 months to bring a guy on and get him up to speed, that's 15 fine, and I don't think you guys thought -- you certainly 16 thought a year was too long.
17.
MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
18 DR. POWERS:
Six months maybe it was arguable, you i
19 would have been happier if you could have him tomorrow.
20 MR. DONNELLY:
The other thing is, and I know Mike 21 and others here could speak a lot better to it than I can, 22 but as you know, in the laboratories and other places, 23 there's expertise that we have there, they might have a 24 r
fracture mechanic's label on them, but the knowledge base 25 that those individuals have accumulated over time and that ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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they have done through years of work and experience on the 2
very leading edge of what they do, I don't know if you 3
could, even if you'had people to train on the staff, get 4
people up to speed in a kind of a dead environment almost 5
within six months to do the kind of work you would want to 6
do.
So they thought about this as they looked at the real 7
world and the real picture they were dealing with and made 8
the calls the way they made them.
But I would suspect if 9_
we're going.to really reach a meeting of the minds with 10 respect to six or 29, I'm going to have to get into a lot more detailed discussion area-by-area and try to satisfy 11 12 ourselves that maybe we weren't tough enough on ourselves or 13 that maybe you were being too tough in that initial 14 judgment.
But that's only my personal view, 15-CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
I don't think that the committee 16 has any preconceived number in mind, six, or 12, or 35.
The 17 general feeling was that 29 was too many, but I don't think 18' anybody was ready to come up with the magic number and say 1
19 this is all we're going _to let you have.
The thing that 20 concerned us at some point was looking through some of the 21 ratings that it was something in excess of 50 percent in 22 some cases rated very high.
And there were hardly any low
{
23 ratings, and sometimes you can force yourself by saying I'm i
i 24 going to have a quota of so many high, mediums, and low to 25 allocate.
And that will force a prioritization that at ANN'RILEY & ASSOCIATES,..D.
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least ranks them.
Then after that you can decide where you 2
want to draw the line.
3
. MS ~ FEDERLINE:
That's why I think if we get into 4
a prioritization process then we can have some discussions
-5 on where we want to draw the line.
6 MR. DONNELLY:
Also, you remember in our paper we 7
had the metrics.
We.were using the metrics as a test.
8 First of all, we would have to agree that the metrics are 9
reasonable.
If they are not, then they are not a good test 10 bed.
But if the metrics in.there were reasonable for giving 11 a high,. medium, or low rating, and if our rationale is 12 consistent with the metrics say for a high rating, and we 13 gave it a high, then I think that's a basis for agreeing
-14
'that that's a reasonable high rating.
If on the other hand 15 the metric isn't good, or we were biased in our assessment 16 against that metric, then we ought to talk it through or 17 have some subsequent discussions on it.
I think it would be 18 beneficial for us and it'might be beneficial for the 19 committee too.
20 Ultimately we would like to have a broad 21 organizational acceptance that'what we've done is L
22.
reasonable.
We're always going to have some disagreements,
{
23 I would imagine, because there's quite a bit of judgment in l
l 24 it no matter how you try to do it.
But if people such as l
25
'the committee or licensing organizations or the Commission i
L i
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.are saying this-isn't reasonable, we've got to deal with 2
that.
3 We won't do that today obviously.
4 DR. POWERS:
Bob, I just persist in a belief that 5
we have very different definitions of core capability 6
floating between:the committee and the -- and certainly 7
what's written on this sheet of paper.
And I'm just 8
wondering, what you want to do is have a definition that's 9
useful to you and they've -- I think they have a definition 10 that's useful for what they saw and we have a definition j
11 that's useful for what we saw and the two are very, very 12 different,.I think.
k 13 MR. KING: -What is your definition, because I 14 didn't appreciate that-the committee had zerced in on a 3
15 definition?
16 DR. POWERS:
Tom, I neglected to bring the piece 17 of paper from my office that has it.
It's a definition that 18 appeared in the SECY document.
19 MR. KING:
The big thick one?
20 DR. POWERS:
No, no, in the thing -- the plans and 21 strategies.
22 CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
The one in our letter?
4
)
23 DR. POWERS:
No, it's in what you wrote for the 24 Commission before you produced this document?
l 25 MR. KING:
The methodology?
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~ 1 DR. POWERS:
The methodology, yes.
- Yes, i
2 CRAIRMAN UHRIG:
The one you gave me this morning?
3 DR. POWERS:
No, uh-uh.
It was a definition that 4
they used there and I would have to -- I'd just have to go
{
l 5
get it because I can't reproduce it from memory, because l
6 it's very specific.
But I have a feeling that the problem 7
with it is it's consistent with both definitions.
It's how I
8 you interpret the words.
And they were trying to avoid the 9
constraint of the budget on their definition of core l
10 capabilities and their interpretation of their words.
And 11 we interpreted the words of here are the research that we're I
12 going to create an ivory tower sort of environment for and 13 allow it to proceed ahead.
Some of that wasn't out of our 14 own volition.
That came from discussions from hydraulic 15 research and things like that.
And so we have two different 16 definitions floating here.
l 17 It becomes very clear when you read Tom's notes 18 which we really ought to give these guys.
I mean, we can 19 certainly give them my notes, I don't know whether we can 20 give them Tom's.
l 21 MR. DONNELLY:
Could I read the definition that's 22 in SECY 97-075?
23 DR. POWERS:
Uh-huh.
24 MR. DONNELLY:
On the second page we say, "within 25 this context there are two definitions".
The first one was l
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" expertise" and the second one was " workload".
I won't read 2
the whole thing on expertise, but it says, "first one can f
3 define a core capability as a minimum cadre of experts and 4
facilities" and I think that's consistent with what we said j
5 here, "that the Agency would want to have available" and 6
then this is a little bit different from words, but not in 7
thought, " independent of any known or highly-probable 8
workload demands from the regulatory process".
9 DR. POWERS:
That's the one we were operating on.
10 MR. DONNELLY:
Okay.
And you're saying the key 11 words for you are " independent of any known or 12 highly-probably workload demands"?
13 DR. POWERS:
I'm sure that that bore heavily on 14 us.
15 MR. DONNELLY:
Okay.
I think I see where we are 16 having a problem.
In the words that are in this paper, 17
" workload demands" were intended to convey, we know that we 18 have specific workloads in the future here that we have to 19 meet.
And we're saying, independent of the size or 20 magnitude of those demands which may require ten fracture 21 mechanic specialists, we can tell you we need one because 22 we're going to have issues in this area, we're not going to 23 say how big they are or how many we have, but we anticipate 24 having them.
So, therefore, we need one or two or whatever 25 it may be as a minimum in this core.
So maybe it's the -- I l
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don't know.
It setms to me as we're talking here, it's that 2
workload demands things because you said you would look at 3
taskings.
4 DR. POWERS:
Yeah, the distinction here is -- I 5
mean, it's clear to me, we've got to -- we just interpreted 6
the same words differently.
You said, " independent thinking 7
of how big it was".
We said " independent whether it even 8
existed or not."
Okay.
In other words --
9 MR. DONNELLY:
But, you see, that couldn't work in 10 our scheme because if we came to the -- or at least you 11 wouldn't be ab]e to justify very much of a core capability.
12 Because as we looked at our first category, operational 13 issues, we said, we don't see any.
We look at the second 14 category, advancing technology and new research results, we 15 don't see any.
We need to maintain or improve our tools, we 16 don't see any need.
Pretty soon we would be'asking a 17 question, do we need a core capability cr of we do, do we 18 need just a tenth of a person or something to have someone 19 around who remembers what's been done in the past.
20 And I think if you'll look at piping, there's an 21 area where we have a fraction of an FTE, and the reason is, 22 we don't see any big issues.
Not that we couldn't have some 23 piping problems, but we don't see any.
And we don't have 24 any n.ajor tools we're maintaining in that area.
So you come 25 up with a very small core capability, but we believe it's l
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important to have somebody on the staff that understands 2
what's been done in piping.
3-
.So I don't think we're that far apart.
So I think 4-it may be that we're looking at the words differently.
I'm 5
not sure.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but 6
DR. FONTANA:
I don't think we are either from --
7 it just appears, when we read it, it appears that it wasn't 8
developed from the top down.
It appears'that it was
'9 developed and here's what I got and let me --
10 MR. DONNELLY:
Now, let's justify it.
11 DR. FONTANA:
That's the impression I got got from 12 reading it.
And I think a lot of it is the way it's sold 13 and the way it's organized.
Am I mistaken?
I don't know.
14 DR. MILLER:
You're saying the way they presented 15 today, or the way --
16 DR. FONTANA:
Oh, no, no, no, the original thing 17 that I read.
18 DR. MILLER:
I think what they presented today 19
_gives me a feeling of top down.
20 DR. FONTANA:
Oh, yeah, Yeah, but I'm talking 21 about the original.
The original --
l 22 DR. POWERS:
I mean, 23 DR. FONTANA:
I'm not certain.
Dana are you I
24-talking about their current definition or their --
25.
DR. POWERS:
Well, I think this is the first time l
I i
l l
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53 1-that they've really claimed to have done top down.
I have 2
no douot I mean, it's kind of unavoidable.
I didn't see 3
how you-would avoid doing a top-down analysis.
And I think 4
you're going to -- I think had we seen that top-down 5
analysis rather than the subsequent, you know, how you 6
filled out'these forms in here, based on that, that it would 7
have been much -- much more palatable.
I mean, we would 8
have at least understood.
9 MR. DONNELLY:
Well, I tell you, we've had a lot 10 of hours spent trying to communicate effectively within the 11 Office of Research on the topic of core capabilities and 12 it's not surprising that we're going to have difficulties 13 down the road if we don't do a better job.
So --
14 DR. POWERS:
I mean, I have to sit down and think 15 carefully about the definition again, but I'm sure that's 16 the cause of -- I'm sure we got two causes of substantial 17 misunderstanding here.
One is our interpretation of the 18 definition and I'm sure what happens is that you came in and 19 said, okay, here's a definition, it was a little bit i
20 different.
It went in one ear and out the other because we 21 said, yeah, I know what the definition is.
And the second 22 one is that the top-down analysis did not appear -- it's not 23 transparent in the document.
And we had a great deal of 24 difficulty understanding the document and you and I went 25 through 16 things where it was just l-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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MR. DONNELLY:
I was hoping you wouldn't bring 2
that up.
3"
[ Laughter.)
4.
DR. POWERS:
Well, yeah, it was exactly what I 5
thought it would be.
The words make no sense to me.
They 6
seem terribly discontrolling.
As soon as I brought it to 7
somebody's attention Larry helped me on half a dozen of 8-them.
He says, no, no, no, it makes sense if you understand 9'
this, and I said, oh, yeah, it does.
But when I read the 10 words without -- you know, that's why Larry has to be 11 stapled to the back of the document is --
12-CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
Yeah, okay,-we're beginning to 13 run into a time situation.
I'd be happy to turn the meeting 14 over'to Dr. Miller here and continue on to the extent that 15 anybody wants to stay, but I hope we've given you a sense of 16 some of the issues and perhaps some of the 17' misunderstandings, and perhaps some of the differences that 18 are evident.
19 MR. DONNELLY:
It's been useful to me.
20 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yes.
Could we just summarize, 21-
'because we're going to have this Commission meeting and we I
22' want to make sure that we --
-23 CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
Okay.
Go ahead.
24 MS, FEDERLINE:
-- summarize.
Are you --
25 MR. DONNELLY:
You're assuming I can do that?
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MS. FEDERLINE:
Yes.
2
[ Laughter.]
3 MR. DONNELLY:
Well, with regard to budget, I 4
think I can summarize that.
I think we're both now right on
'5 exactly the same wave length, budget should not drive the 6
need for core capabilities, but certainly can influence how 7
many core capabilities you might have as. decisions are made 8
in the budget arena.
9 With respect to definition we have two problems 10 there at least.
One was this. area of trying to find a 11 better word than " minimum" perhaps in our definition and l
12 second getting over this hurdle of top-down which using your 13 definition I would assert we did.
14 DR. MILLER:
I think your first statements implies 15.
top down.
16' MR '. DONNELLY:
. Yeah, I did knot know at the outset 17 what your definition of " top down" was, therefore, I 18 couldn't say we did it.
But now that I understand what it 19 is, I would assert we did do it.
So I would think we're 20 pretty close on the definition.
I would say though that we 21 have not yet resolved the question of how tough we would be 22-in applying the criteria and concluding that a good case was i
23 made that we needed all these areas.
24-CHAIRMAN UHRIG:
I think in the final analysis 25 this is ultimately the responsibility of research.
And that l
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56 1
what you come up with, we can either agree or disagree, but 2
you have a basis for making your case.
You have to make it-3 to the Commission is really who you have to make it to.
4 MR, DONNELLY:
That's right, and they were looking 5
to your valuable input too, and postponed the meeting so 6
that they could have it.
So I think they were saying, yeah, 7
but we would like a little independent look at what these --
8 DR. MILLER:
You have to take each one of those 9-cores and make certain it meets this first two pages and 10 justify it.
11 MR. DONNELLY:
I would like to stay for a few more 12 minutes, if some of you can --
13 CHAIRMAN UHRIG:.All right.
Why don't I turn the 14 meeting over to Don.
15 MR. DONNELLY:
And not stay long, but talk about 16 these other two areas, the risk considerations and so forth 17 and see what you believe maybe we should have done better in 18 that area.
19 DR. MILLER:
By the way, I have a suggested 20 rewording on those first two pages you can take or leave.
21 MR. DONNELLY:
Good.
22 MS. FEDERLINE:
Good.
23 MR. DONNELLY:
We'd appreciate it.
24 DR. MILLER:
-- effectively communicate or not.
25
[ Simultaneous conversation.]
l l
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MR. DONNELLY:
Okay.
If we would go to the next 2
page on risk considerations, the letter that went to the 3
Commission said we needed to take risk and benefit, I think, 4
were the words, into account.
We believe that we did 5
address risk, we did it in a very qualitative, 6
non-quantitative way, and we did it by virtue of the first f
7 two regulatory functions that we might support.
One 8
operational issues and the second on issues from research 9
and new technology.
And we did it by looking at, as you see 10 here on this page, frequency of occurrence, or likelihood j
11 that things would change and what the safety significance, 12 if there was any, of that was.
And put down out rationale 13 for the frequency, put down our rationale for the safety
)
14 significance, but did not do anything quantitative.
And we
)
-15 would just like to find out do you think we should have done 16 more quantitative work to support our conclusions in that 17 area, or didn't you think we really addressed risk at all?
18 DR. POWERS:
I quickly learned in reading the 19 document that I was going to derive no help at all from 20 either one of the questions.
That frequencies of 21 occurrence, the scale is strange.
It had to be a bunch of 22 times in a year, or not very often.
And, of course, I'm 23 thinking about I'm sitting here thinking about the fuels 24 issues that occurs every five years, okay, so -- but still 25 it's a very important issue.
So it wasn't deriving any help l
{
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out of the frequency o2 occurrence and I couldn't understand 2
the safety significance.
3 I mean, reading the issue I could -- I would draw 4
a judgment, is it safety significant or not.
Reading the 5
words didn't help me at all.
6 DR. MILLER:
There was considerations used that 7
was probably appropriate, but the discrimination they used 8
is not 9
MR. KING:
Let me just respond to that.
I think 10 we looked at that a little differently, I think the fuels 11 area and probably in other areas, too.
You say, frequency 12 every five years, you're thinking maybe a new fuel design or 13 a mixed -- you know, a new cladding material or something.
14 We were thinking how often we get requests.
15 DR. POWERS:
That's right.
That's right.
16 MR. KING:
Look at some --
17 DR. POWERS:
And that specific one --
0 18 MR. KING:
topical report, specific plant 19 reload analysiF, whatever.
So it was a different thing we I
20 were looking at.
21 DR. SEALE:
And probably a different set of core 22 capabilities.
23 DR. POWERS:
And that particular one is exactly 24 what you did, and I said, but that's not the issue.
I mean, 25 I said, --
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MR. KING:
But it is the issue if you're faced 2
every month with some request in the fuels area you've got 3
to have people to be there to deal with it.
l 4
DR. POWERS:
And I sat there and said, if it's 5
happening every month, the line organization needs manpower 6
and expertise, research doesn't.
7 MR. KING:
It depends what's happening --
l 8
DR. POWERS:
No, no, the line organization may 9
well ask research to do the work on this, but the fact is i
10 you can transfer that capability over to the line 11 organization and managerially it wouldn't change.
12 Philosophically it wouldn't change.
11 3 MR. KING:
But the key here is not that we were getting amendments every month, the key was the issues are, 14 15 in our judgment, issues stemming from those amendments will 16 continue to rise several times a year.
I don't know, I i
17 can't speak to that.
i 18 But we were saying in the environment that we're l
19 looking at, we would expect issues we're going to have to 20
. address in research, not issues that the license -- not 21 amendment that the licensing organization is going to have l
22 to make a judgment on because sometimes they make a judgment 23 on them and there aren't any issues.
24 DR. POWERS:
But I didn't see any issues that it 25
-- I mean, we didn't ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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We didn't articulate them.
[
2 DR. POWERS:
On that particular one I know l
3 something about it.
And, I mean, quite frankly, that three 4
years ago there was not a reactor-fuel subcommittee for the 5
ACRS.
There were no issues.
The things were cruising along i'
.6 just fine.
The cores were being reloaded, occasional things 7
happened, there was a-little -- there was work going on 8-continuously to get the number of cladding failures'down and l
9 indeed topical reports came out and regularly reported.
We 10 didn't have -- now we've got an active fuels subcommittee.
11 Okay.
So issues -- the word " issues", there are capital "I"
12-issues and there are lower case "i" issues; and I think we 13
.were looking at capital "I" issues.
And those words don't l
14 help you on it.
15 DR. MILLER:
Aren't we in the point where we're 16_
defining what's research --
l 17 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
18 DR. MILLER:
-- and what might be -- you know,
(
19
'some things you may do routinely and pretcy.soon you should i
1 l
20 transfer those --
l 21 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
22 DR. MILLER:
-- to NRR because they become 23 routine.
i 24 MS. FEDERLINE:
And that's why we see the 25 interface of this activity with a broader agency core ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 competency activity.
l 2
DR. MILLER:
Research should be, in a sense, 3
31 ways just trying to -- being required to discover new 4
knowledge and applying it.
Once it's applied and it becomes 5
routine, it should not be research.
6 MR. DONNELLY:
That's correct.
7 DR. POWERS:
One of the --
8 DR. MILLER:
That's why Dana -- issues and issues.
9 DR. POWERE:
-- questions that I leveled at you 10 when you were here,.is the sense you got out of this thing 11 was research never solves any problems.
These are the same i
12 issues last year, they're the same issues next year.
They 13 have to keep going back and rebeating this horse all the 14 time because they never produce a product that can be L
15 transferred to the line organization and be done with it.
16 Okay.
And I think that I think that comes down 17 to just this issue capital "I"
issue, lower case "i" 18 definition.
I bring it up because first of all I fully 19 believe that research does solve issues --' resolve issues.
l 20 But I also know that there are a lot of people that claim 21 ycu don't.
And you want to be careful when you articulate 22 this, especially in front of a hostile audience or at least 23 a non-sympathetic audience that they not get the impression 24 that you guys want to keep doing the same things that you've 1
25 done in the past.
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'MR. DONNELLY:
Well, I agree with that, but I j,
'2 still think I would'like to talk about this subject a little 3:
bit more, again, looking at fuels.
And I have a -- let's 4
pass this around.
It might facilitate the discussion.
We 5
don't need to spend too much time on it.
6 If you'll turn to the 5th page in,-it actually has 7
a page 1 on it which is " Core capability assessment form 8
fuel behavior".
I think it's the next page.
Okay.
l' 9
Now, if you look at the two combined, the q
10' frequency of occurrence and the safety, I think you can see L
11 that the issues that are better articulated under safety l
12 significance, we aren't -- we're talking about the big "I",
1 13 new designs, materials and regimens of operation.
- Now, 14 maybe if we had done a better job of articulating the big 15 "I"
Issues under number one, you would have felt better 16 about that, or that we had covered it better.
17 DR. POWERS:
Under number one, I mean, it'says,
- issues stemming from licensing amendment requests continue j
18 19 to arise several times a year."
No, they' don't, I mean, but 20 those are very easy things.
21 MR. KING:
Not if they're new cladding, new 22 kilowatts per foot 23 DR. POWERS:
Do those arise several times per 24 year? uAnd do the existing tools have to be changed to 25 handle them?
Does the reg guide have to be changed to ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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handle them?
2 MR. KING:
The reg guide has to be changed, 3
period, right now.
Whether we end up having --
4 DR. POWERS:
Having a real serious problem.
5 MR. KING:
A moving reg guide whether we can come 6
up with some criteria that will be fixed for a good period 7
of time remains to be seen.
8 MR. DONNELLY:
If you go over to number six on the 9
next page and read what we said there that major deficiencies exist in existing tools in the areas of 10 11~
mechanical properties and cladding, et cetera.
12 17 POWERS:
Right.
And that's a very special 13 one, but that doesn't arise several times a year.
14 MR. KING:
No?
15 DR. POWERS:
That's a one-point special thing.
16 MR. KING:
That's true.
Now, if we --
17 DR. POWERS:
The other thing though, let me 18
. finish, and tb" s another thing that's going on in the 19 fuels area is we do have in our standard review plan a whole l
20 host of things that we go out and inspect that look like we 21 shouldn't bother anymore..
And that's another issue we're 22 dealing with in dealing with NRR is why do'you continue to 23 look at all these things we call saftels, you know, when 24 they don't appear to have any tie to safety or fuel I
.25 performance.
And that's another thing that arises many i
l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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times a year.
NRR is --
2 Especially -- maybe because you've been doing 3
major inspections of fuel manufacturers and even NRR says, 4
yeah, we have to inspect it because it says it does.
And we 5
still don't think it has any safety significance.
6 MR. KING:
Yeah, so it's a two-way street.
It's 7
not just because there's a safety issue, it's because 8
there's a resource burden type issue as well.
9 MR. DONNELLY:
Let mL say this, I think the 10 question here is twofold.
One, did we accurately, or could 11 we have done a better job of putting words down to talk 12 about frequency of occurrence, we probably could have.
But 13 had we done that, when you marry that up with the safety 14 significance that we've identified here, have we addressed 15 risk in a reasonable way in terms of looking at maintaining 16 a core capability.
Had we done it well?
And you would i
17 agree that we'd done it well.
Would we have adequately 18 addressed risk?
19 DR. POWERS:
You're asking a generic question.
20 MR. DONNELLY:
Only because it was highlighted in 21 your letter and we feel we need to get an understanding of 22 it.
23-DR. POWERS:
When the letter was written the 24 belief was that this risk should have appeared as a question 25 that it was suborned under the safety significance and that ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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allowed you to deal things in a qualitative sense that we 2
couldn't understand.
So they said, risk ought to appear 3
because at least it's a number that I can understand.
Okay.
4 What's the risk worth, fuel integrity here.
5 I think the question you're asking -- maybe there 1
6 are two question, should risk be suborned under the safety
{
\\
7 significance category?
And I would say right now the answer j
8 is undoubtedly yes because I don't think you have the tools available that would allow you to put risk down and give me 9
10 a risk worth of good fuel.
11 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
12 DR. POWERS:
I mean, you could put the question 13 down there, you just couldn't answer it.
14 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
15 DR. POWERS:
For most of them.
16 Okay.
I think this question -- so the answer is 17
-- to that one is, okay, --
18 MR. DONNELLY:
Given our ability --
19 DR. POWERS:
-- given your ability you're going to 20 have to confound this quantitative measure with this 21 qualitative measure.
I think that you have to be careful 22 about what things DBA space, and what things are actually 23 contributing to risk when you make those qualitative 24 judgments.
Maybe you want to distinguish between the two.
25 One is a regulatory necessity and the other one really f
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probably does have a safety significance.
2 DR. SEALE:
Down the road, in fact, that may 3
define a research objective.
That is to go to the point to 4
where you can get an assessment of risk if you feel that 5'
that's -- if you're able to make the case that that's a 6
necessary sophistication you need and it's treating that 7
problem.
8 DR. POWERS:
Right.
9 Now'then, probably the existing words is they just 10 say the issues related to new designs arise all the time and 11 it doesn't communicate any sense of why did you get this 12 high number?
And that -- I think that in the end is the 13 biggest difficulty I have.
I saw lots of high numbers.
14 This one -- you know, you've got a buy on me and I said, 15 yeah, I know all about the fuel behavior and it's a big 16 issue now and we're doing a lot of work on that.
As soon as 17 I got to the next one, then maybe I'm not so terribly 18 familiar with and I say, now why in the hell is that one 19 high?
I didn't think that was very important.
And I got to 20 digital electronics, and I said, that was no problem at all.
21
[ Laughter.]
22 MR. DONNELLY:
All right.
I think that's good.
23 And I think we got a sense of this earlier when we met with 24 you.
25 Okay.
And let's see, yeah, the uniqueness of ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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.1-
- nuclear. applications.
We didn't call it that, it's not 2
prominent, but certainly we were getting at it in the 3
question that we asked in each~ area.
If we went to a 4
.non-NRC' funded source, could we -- could we find this 5
capability in a timely and independent way.
6 DR. MILLER:
Well, does that relate to uniqueness 7
of nuclear application?'-
8 MR. DONNELLY:
In a way it does.
I think others 9
could speak to it better than I, but there are -- I don't 10
.know if Dana used it last time, fuel expertise.
11 DR. SEALE:
Does anybody have a rice bowl out 12-there that can keep this guys happy when you don't need' 13 them?.
14 DR. MILLER:
Okay.
I understand that.
15 MR. DONNELLY:
And it's the uniqueness of the 16 nuclear application that --
17 DR. MILLER:
There's fuels, reactor fuels, that's 18 obvious.
19 DR. SEALE:
There's another one.
20 DR. MILLER:
These for INC may not be so obvious.
21 MR. DONNELLY:
That's correct.
22 ~
DR. MILLER:
There's another-one that's obvious'i2 23
.you think aboutHit.
And you ask.yourself, why are steam 24
~ generators such a problem for nuclear application?
25 I've always asked that myself.
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DR. SEALE:
Well, one real good example is, it's 2
hard to retube a nuclear steam generator.
You can retube 3
fossil steam generators until the cows come home.
And in 4
fact, that's one reason those suckers have 65 percent 5
availability in spit of the fact that they're not nuclear.
6 But it's cheaper to retube them than it is to do all this 7
other stuff we're doing because we can't retube them, not 8
conveniently, they're in a box we call " containment";
9 they're radioactive and all of those other things.
10 DR. POWERS:
But why does that make it a 11 uniqueness with respect to research?
I mean, they've got 12 established technologies for doing these things.
13 DR. SEALE:
Well, not for assessing things like 14 rupture where you no longer have the kind of margins you --
15 I mean, --
16 MR. SHAO:
Okay.
If we generate in the Commission 17 industry, you don't do any ND like we are doing, so let it 18 crack, let it rupture.
But we can afford cracks, we can 19 afford ruptures. Even though we had the same generator --
20 you could plant in the commission industry when you plan, 21 you really have to examine that.
You can afford to have a 22 crack, you can afford the rupture.
23 DR. MILLER:
So they're unique to surveillance but 24 not retubing.
25 DR. SEALE:
Well, and the fact that it's --
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MR. SHAO:
No, even the examination is different l
l 2.
too.
'3 DR. SEALE:
It's not a magic thing -- I mean, it's 4
a magic thing, or it's a very special thing to break the 5
primary pressure boundary on a nuclear plant.
6 MR. SHAO:
And the Commission -- examine -- let it 7
. rupture, let it crack.
8 DR. SEALE:
Yeah, sure, so what.
9 MR. SHAO:
And then we retube.
10' DR. POWERS:
I think we understand the issues that 11 arise in the steam generators.
I guess the question that 12 came up that was pertinent to that is, okay, how much 13 expertise do you need to maintain on things like fracture 14 mechanics?
And that's where the persistent $100 bill 15-through the mechanical engineering department of any 16 university in America, I will get you fracture mechanic.
17 Why do you need --
18 The only rationale we could come up with for 19 understanding why you would need lots of fracture mechanics 20 here is the issues arise so frequently.
Yeah, it would just 21 be a pain in the neck going out to a university all the time l
22 if in fact that you had these issues coming along so L
-23 frequently it's a lot easier to call down one floor and say, I
L R2-4 Joe, I got another fracture mechanic's problem for you and 25 put it on the top of his stack.
I mean, otherwise, the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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exp3rtise exists out there.
2 MR. DONNELLY:
Mike, why don't you address that?
3 Would you please?
Mike Mayfield.
4'-
DR. SEALE:
I knew I'd get you up here.
5 MR. MAYFIELD:
Yeah, I got tired of that other 9
6 mic.
We have some experience with the $100 bill.
I wish I t
7 could.get them as chsaply at 100 bucks.
8 (Laughter.]
9 MR. MAYFIELD: 'The problems that we run into with 10 a vessel, if it was not an irradiated stainless steel clad, 11 heavy wall pressure vessel --
12 DR. POWERS:
You're cheating, you went to the 13 vessel.
I. wanted to stay on the tubes so I could stay away 14 from the irradiation --
15 MR. MAYFIELD:
We can stay with the tubes.
Okay.
16 I'll stay with the tubes.
And the thing that was 17 interesting there was for normal kinds of temperature ranges 18 I can probably get somebody for less than 100 dollars.
But
'19 what we were able to do was to say, ah, now we've gotten 20 into this severe accident scenario.
And you guys were briefed by the NRR staff and the tests that we did and we I
i 22-got into some creep rupture models and in canal 600 and what 23 do you really do for these profiles that we got from Charlie 24 Yader and his folks?
And that turned out to cost us more 25 than $10. 'That one we had to bring some fair talent to ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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-table.
Could we have gotten that same talent from the 2
aerospace industry or somebody that was accustomed to 3
dealing.with high nickel alloys and high temperature t
l 4
environments?
Maybe, but you have trouble attracting them 5
'where they_ understand pressure loading.
And where they i
l 6
really understand the application, could you have trained l
7 somebody?
8 DR. POWERS:
Yeah.
9 MR. MAYFIELD:
If you could have tracked them, you l
10 could.have trained them.
How quickly?
Well, unfortunately these things tend to -- you need somebody to come up to 11 12 speed fairly quickly.
The pressure loading is something 13 that not everybody is accustomed to dealing with.
There are 14 some. unique twists to it.
Can they learn it?
Of course.
l 15 Everybody has to learn it somewhere and then it gets down to i
16 the timing.
How long can you wait to come up to speed?
17 But if you go outside of that one you get into 18 some of the piping issues.
That has some --
l 19 DR. POWERS: 'When they talked about the l
20 accessibility people would say, yeah, but there's a subtle 21 twist here and there's a subtle twist there, and we needed a j
22 guy yesterday, you know, it's very urgent all of which maybe l
23 absolutely 100 percent accurate.
But that sense of urgency I
and complexity to things was not communicated beyond just 24 i
L 25 assertion.
4 f
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1 MR. DONNELLY:
I know.
l 2
DR. MILLER:
It seems to me that the nuclear part f
3 is in most cases is when radiation is involved.
I mean --
4 MR. DONNELLY:
Or pressures, when pressures aren't 5
an issue in other industries.
6 DR. MILLER:
Well, wait a minute, aren't pressures 7
.an issue in other fields?
8 DR. POWERS:
The chemical industry runs pressures 9
that makes these look like pikers.
f i
10 MR. MAYFIELD:
Some of the things Larry said about
{
11 the inspection were interesting because so often in a
.12 petrochemical area piping for example which is taken as a l
13 maintenance irritant.
And with some notable exceptions, 14 they by and large wait on the fool thing to leak and then go
'15 chop out the piece that's giving them grief and welding in a 16 piece.
17 DR. POWERS:
They'll hire hundreds of guys for the 18 summer to walk along the piping system with brooms.
19 MR. MAYFIELD:
So it's a different approach to the 20 same kinds of issue.
They don't do the rigorous kinds of 21 inspections that --
22 DR. MILLER:
We can train the guys to do a 23 different approach pretty quickly.
24 DR. SEALE:
They knew about leak before break we 25 ever thought about it i
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73 1
DR. MILLER:
It seems to me that --
2 DR. SEALE:
-- before we ever thought about it and 3
they count on it.
4 DR. MILLER:
-- still the issue is -- and they 5
count on it.
6 THE COURT REPORTER:
One at a time, please.
7 DR. SEALE:
And they look for it and they solve 8
the problem.
9 MR. MORRIS:
Could I interject -- this is Bill 10 Morris -- this thought?
We debated this issue for some time 11 before we developed the paper, Lloyd and I, and I remember 12 many afternoons when struggling over what to do about --
13 essentially the definition of what the expertise driven core 14 capability was, and I think a crucial part of that was the 15 timeliness.
And when you fold in the timeliness part of the 16 definition, now that's part of our definition, whether you 17 have bought into that yet or not.
I don't know, but that 18 was important.
j 19 DR. MILLER:
That's not uniquely nuclear.
20 MR. MORRIS:
I understand, but I think I'm going 21 to tell you how I got there through some areas with regard 22 to whether we needed the core capability in an area say such 23 as digital INC or maybe seismic.
The logic is this for me, 24 and that is, if we believe that timeliness is important to 25 be responsive, then -- and we also believe that we need some l
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way to figure out when you need to go out and drag the 2
dollar bill through the university.
And which university to L
3 drag it through and to know how to write the statement of 4
work to define the problem you want to solve, you need to 5
maintain some level of expertise or knowledge base within l
6 the Agency to do that effectively in my mind.
So what this l
7 is about is whether you have some small level of expertise 8
that enables you to trigger that activity or not, that is 9
the issue with regard to whether you need some core or not.
10 Are you with me?
11 So, whether the 29 is too many or not, because we 12 have chosen too many that are non-nuclear in their nature, 13 the issue of whether we need to maintain an expertise in 14 some of those areas or not which are not apparently nuclear 15 in their essence.
I 16 DR. MILLER:
So minimum core in a way could be 1
17 just having enough knowledge to find the right guy to do the 18 job.
19 MS. FEDERLINE:
And knowing when he's done an 20 adequate j ob.
21 MR. DONNELLY:
And knowing if the job needs to be 22 done?
23 MR. MORRIS:
Yes.
So --
24 MR. DONNELLY:
And knowing how it needs to e done.
25 DR. MILLER:
So maybe that way you could get to 29 l
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if --
2 MR. MORRIS:
And I think that's the way that we 3
believe we would get to 29 in some of these areas.
Or even I
4 though we have a small number of people -- you know, a small 5
resource involved, we still believe we maintain that level 6
of expertise would allow us to build up to some higher level 7
over time or on a timely basis respond to a low level of 8
work.
And so that was the way we got there to get all the 9
way to the full 29.
10 DR. MILLER:
Maybe you need a definition of two 11 different levels of core, one core of people that can really 12 do the work in-house, or anther definition of core that you 13 just --
14 MR. MORRIS:
Well, the definition --
15 DR. MILLER:
-- that Larry pointed out 16 MR. MORRIS:
-- that we used, was to be able to on 17 a timely basis do the work, respond and do the work.
And 18 that doesn't allow you the luxury of deciding that there may 19 be a problem and then maybe a year later having found the 20 person, got them up to speed, and now starting on the work 21 that they'll finish maybe another year or two down the road 22 or --
23 DR. MILLER:
Yeah, like a fast-moving technology 24 like digital INC.
Well, the problems are coming faster than L
25
'you can go out and find somebody to react t them.
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l' MR. MORRIS:
That's what I'm saying, yeah.
2 DR. MILLER:
I understand.
3 MR. MORRIS:
And that's what leads us to have 1
l 4.
included some areas that don't really necessarily require 5
knowledge of'the nuclear plant or. irradiation environment 6
aura to do.
I think that's how we got to where we got and 7
if you differ from.us on that. logic, that's what I think 8
will be useful to explore and define here.
l 9'
DR. MILLER:
Well, of course, those areas become 10 what I would call gray areas, wouldn't you say, Dan?
- Yes, 11 it's a matter of the eyes of the beholder in some of those.
12 DR. POWERS:
Yeah.
It is the eyes of the 13 beholder, that's the best words possible.
And all I can say 14
-is that the document as it exists didn't communicate the 15 timeliness problems -- what you thought.
I mean reasonable 16 men can disagree over how urgtat it is to address one of l
17 these issues and in the end the ACRS is going to cede to you 18.
guys because you have to do it.
19
.DR. MILLER:
Also you need to write the document 20:
to.the eyes of the beholder which is not you.
Who is going 21 to read your document.
It's not going to be us in the end.
22 We may' critique it.
The Commission has to make the decision 23 and they.aren't experts in the area.
24 MR. MAYFIELD:
Can I --
25 DR. MILLER:
Go ahead.
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MR. MAYFIELD:
-- it's going to exactly what you 2
said, read the document.
It's kind of mammoth the way it is 3-and when we were going through some of these, there were
.some iterations on how do we get this down to try and convey 4
'5 the message?
Try to convey the message without the thing 6
getting up to using up all the national forests in paper.
7-So there was -- you know, and maybe we didn't quite get 8
there, but there was an element of how do you concisely 9
convey the message?
10 DR. SEALE:
You didn't start out to make it that 11 way is what you're saying?
12 DR. MILLER:
Well,-that's part of your top down i 13
-writing is that you've got to be starting --
14-DR. POWERS:
'I think in Lloyd's presentation it is 15 heroic.
He did a pretty good job, but his heroic 16-presentation of what, four hours straight or something like 17 that, it was generally conceded that it might well help to L18-have two documents, this one being the database and one that
{
i 19
. explores things a little more' philosophically that's a I
l 20 little-easier to carry around in your briefcase.
But you 21
' notice that I do carry it around with me.
22
[ Laughter.]
23 MR. DONNELLY:
It looked well read too.
(~
24 DR. POWERS:
But my original one --
l
- 25 MR. DONNELLY:
Interesting how dog-eared it was.
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~ ^ ' ~ ~ ' ~ ~ ~ ' '
~^ ~~
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78 1
DR. POWERS:
No, the original one was all marked 2
up like yours, you know, with -- not fancy ones, but little 3
4 MR DONNELLY:
You've worn one out already?
5 DR. POWERS:
Well, then you sent me this one and I 6'
said, well, this one must be the latest version and so I --
7 and I lost all my notes.
You know, I threw away too 8
quickly.
9 MR. DONNELLY:
I think we've probably used more of 10 your time than -- and maybe, Margaret, we must want to 11 quickly address next steps.
12 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yeah, I just wanted to touch base 13 with you.
As we said, we're going to meet with the 14 Commission and, you know, we want to tell them that we're 15 talking to you about these issues, you know, having an 16 ongoing dialogue.
I guess we would see -- we would like to 17 do our office-wide prioritization this year and look how we 18 could incorporate more quantitative risk informatic.1 in.
l 19 And then we would like to look at insights from 20 what else is going on in the Agency in this effort before we 21 try to revise this document.
And we would like to get your i
22 feedback on that process.
I mean, from a management 23 perspective, I have to look holistically in the office, you 24 know, where to put my resources.
And I feel like I need 25 some of this additional information before I spend anymore i
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resources on this again.
2 Would the committee have a problem with that 3
approach?
4 DR. POWERS:
I personally would like to think more 5-about this because, I mean, it's clear that I've been 6:
laboring under_a missed definition.
I mean, I like my 7
definition'better than I like yours, but I had better learn 8
yours since you're the one that's writing the' document.
9 But I'm sure the committee would like to discuss 10 this more.
As I've said before, the ACRS is the one institution in all of NRC that is the most ardent supporter 11 12 of research and so we would like you to do a really good job
.13 here.
14 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yes.
~15 DR. POWERS:
And I'd like to think more about what 16 I have heard and:so maybe I need the same additional' input 17 that you need before you revise the document.
I'm going to 18 think about definitions.
I have a feeling -
I get the 19 sense, because it's said, over and over and over again, this 20-was an enormously difficult chore that produced this
. 21 '
' document that it involved lots and lots of discussion.
And 22
-I get the sense that the only way I'm going to appreciate 23 what's in this document is actually to sit down and try to l'
t
-24.
do it myself.
And I think I want to try and do that, at l
l 25 least on one of them.
Let me put the one I know better and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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just see what I come up with on that or where -- can I come i
2 up with a better -- so it takes a little time.
l 3
MS. FEDERLINE:
That would be very helpful to us.
4 DR. SEALE:
I think if -- and I am completely 5
sympathetic with your idea of trying to go in and understand 6
perhaps the risk question and sharpening up the definitions 7
and so forth before you try to rewrite the document.
8 On the other hand, and I think I agree with Dana, 9
we can use the opportunity the mull and try to do our 10 version of some of these things and so on too.
But on the 11 other hand, let's not wait until the lith hour again before 12 we get together --
13 MS. FEDERLINE:
Oh, no, yes.
14 DR. SEALE:
-- to do this because quite frankly we 15 are finding ourselves more and more often with important, 16 fairly detailed documents that we're trying to get out and 17 make our points on.
And at the same time there are eight of 18 those suckers at one meeting, you know, and it just gets --
19 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yeah.
20 DR. SEALE:
-- out of hand.
This last time we had 21 a letter on 50.59.
I don't think there's anything any 22 higher on anybody's screen right now, but my golly, there 23 was also AP 600.
24
[ Laughter.)
25 DR. SEALE:
You know, and so we wound up having to i
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1 put c'vory important piece of work in as an attachment to-2 our letter because we had not been able to look at it in the
'l 3
committee as a whole.
~
e
'4 Well, I don't need to tell you all of our 5
problems, except-to say that we want.to do a good job on it.
6 And we --
7 MS. FEDERLINE:
We do too.
8 DR. SEALE:
-- don't want to let it be the last --
9 so we don't want to wait until it's all hurry up and get it
{
10 out and, you know, that kind of thing.
11 And in the meantime our next version of this I
12 problem namely Bob Uhrig and Mario Fontana are going to be l
1 13
- starting to work on what we're going to do next year.
1 14 DR. POWERS:
-I was just sitting here thinking, 15 maybe-we want to change the strategy on that research report
'16 and focus it on some of these things like this so maybe it i
17 would.be -- you know, rather than inventorying the research 18-program.
19 DR. SEALE:
Yeah.
20 DR. POWERS:
I mean, quite frankly, the research
{
l' 21-program doesn't change one year to the next in dramatic 22 enough fashion to us.
Maybe we ought to focus in that --
23 DR.'SEALE:
Yeah, we might want to think about.
24 Jthat.
25-DR. POWERS:
It's a thing we need to kick around, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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and try to be helpful here.
2 DR. SEALE:
And if you have any ideas on perhaps a 3
change in. format that would more useful, we would be 4
interested in your input.
5 MS. FEDERLINE:.Okay.
Good.
We'll think about 6-that.
7 Well, should we plan to get together again after 8
you've had some time to think and just have another informal 9
dialogue.
10 DR.. MILLER:
Oh, no, I think definitely.
11 DR. POWERS:
Yeah, I think it would be useful to 12 get together for -- you know, a short period of time, just 13 to hear about what -- you know, after you've had a chance to 14 meet with the Commission and be scalded by whatever hot 15 water they want to throw on you.
16 MS. FEDERLINE:
Right.
17 DR. POWERS:
Or the high praise, of course.
18-DR. MILLER:
That's what I was anticipating.
19 DR. POWERS:
Yeah.
I know.
After you've gotten
{
20 rid'of the flower smell and things-like that, i
21 DR. MILLER:
Depending which side of the table 22 DR. POWERS:
From all the bouquets they've been 23 throwing at you and what new triumph you're going to get 24 together and maybe we could talk a little bit about strategy 25 and what you're going to gather just to keep up to speed on i
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83 1
this because I think this-is --
2 MS. FEDERLINE:
Yeah, I'd like to have one more 3
dialogue and then try.to put some sort of a milestone 4
schedule together --
5 DR. SEALE:
Yeah, that's a good idea.
1 16 MS. FEDERLINE:
---that we're both comfortable l
l 7
with.
j 8
DR. MILLER:
What kind of timing would you expect 9
on that?
10 MS. FEDERLINE:
Well, do you think we'll talk with 11 you in the next month?
i 12 DR. POWERS:
No.
13 MS. FEDERLINE:
No?
'14 DR. MILLER:
September.
We're supposed to take 15 the month of August off.
16 MS. FEDERLINE:
Well, after we talked to you in 17 December, I think we would be at least six months.
18 MR. DONNELLY:
There are a lot of things facing 19 the Office of Research other than core capabilities.
20 DR. SEALE:
I-bet you are.
21 MR. DONNELLY:
More money and the Commission is 22 expecting-efficiencies in our contracting process.
We've 3
'23 got to come up with an office-wide prioritization scheme 24 that's something else we would want to involve you with.
'25 And the list goes on..And I.think it's fair to-say that the
(
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84 1.
wholo Agancy, Research included, is going to have about half 2
the number of SES. people that we've had in the past and half 3
the number of supervisors that we've had going back a few 4
- years, i
l 5
DR. POWERS:
Is that why I've heard all the 6
cheering.and celebrating among staff members?
7 LMR. DONNELLY:
Well, some say that will improve g
8 productivity, other say it will detract from -- I would say 9
it would detract from some of the management initiatives 10 because we're just not going to be able to take on as much.
11 And we're going to have.to prioritize that work and decide
- 12 what's most important to do.
And even as you can imagine, I 13 think a prioritization scheme for the office is a fairly 14
. complicated thing that has to be well thought'through and we 15 want. buy-in from you,- buy-in from the licensing 16 organizations, buy-in from the Commission when we do it.
17 And so I'm just saying -- I don't know, I wouldn't commit 18 here to -- right now what we can do.
19 RMS.~FEDERLINE:
No, but when we get together with 20 you.in September we might want to discuss a schedule at that i
121 point in time.
22 MR. LARKINS:
I was going to say, maybe with Ashok 23 coming on board, maybe after you've had a time to sit down 24 and'1ist these things out, the areas where you would like to 25 interact with the ACRS on,-maybe some time late' September or l
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85 1-
. whanever get together and set up a scheduling meeting.
2 MS. FEDERLINE:
Good.
That sounds good, John,
)
3 DR. MILLER:
Any other comments from ACRS members?
f 4
['o response.]
N 5
DR. MILLER:
I think it's been a-very valuable 6
interchange here.
7 MS, FEDERLINE:
Yeah, we really appreciate.your 8
time.
We know how busy you are and how many different thing l
9 security have on your plate.
10 DR. POWERS:
On the other hand the research 11 program is essential to the Agency.
i 12 DR. SEALE:
That's right.
13 DR. POWERS:
You may not be appreciated sometimes, 14 but quite frankly they couldn't do what they've done in the 15' past and they won't be able to do what they want to do in.
16 the future without you, so it's probably a worthwhile 17 investment in time.
18 DR. MILLER:
It's probably nice to be in a 19 friendly audience too.
20
[ Laughter.]
21 DR. MILLER:
Thank you.
22
[Whereupon, at 4:41 p.m.,
the meeting was 23 concluded.]
"24 25 t
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l l
I PROPOSED AGENDA FOR 7/17/98 MEETING l
WITH ACRS SUBCOMMITTEE l
RES is currently scheduled to brief the Commission on the RES program and core capabilities on 8/6/98. A dialogue with the ACRS on the following proposed agenda items would help RES prepare this briefing. We would like to discuss three major topics as shown below:
FUTURE MISSION OF RES Provide technical bases for making cost effective, risk-informed, regulatory decisions by:
e oo resolving safety / regulatory issues while providing flexibility to licensees as appropriate oo reducing uncertainties in areas of potentially high risk or safety significance oo recommending improvements to NRC's regulatory programs / processes to achieve enhanced safety while improving efficiency and effectiveness; oo developing and maintaining regulatory tools / data bases; oo keeping pace with new technology such that licensee use of technology is not delayed by the regulatory acceptance process; oo maintaining high caliber research talent; and.
oo representing NRC on codes and standards committees.
VALUE ADDED BY RES e
Provide lona term strategic safety perspective, as compared to the more near term operational focus of licensing offices i
e Provide peer review and independent safety perspective Provide independent regulatory program / process assessment capability e
Sustain high caliber scientists capable of (a) developing and implementing effective e
resecrch programs (both in-house and through contract), and (b) translating technology derived from research results into regulatory tools and guidance.
e Achieve efficiencies and obtain current information by participating in cooperative research programs with industry and foreign researchers.
l l
2 Specific Information Supportina ACRS Letter to Commission on Core Capabilities:
e-Discuss ACRS views on how a core capability should be defined. Should the number of core capabilities that meet this definition be constrained by budget limitations? How -
would this work?
e What is the ACRS definition of "essentiality", how would it be incorporated into the RES core capability assessments and how would it change the outcome of the RES core capability assessments?
e How would the ACRS modify the core capability selection criteria to better incorporate elements of risk and benefit?
e Which research areas are not considered by the ACRS to be unique in their application to nuclear technology?
e Which research areas are considered by the ACRS to be areas for which indeper.dence in technical assessment is not essential?
g:\\ brown \\acrscore. cap 7/7/98 1
s L
f L
FUEL BEHAVIOR Definition of research area:
This area is currently concemed with the development of the technical basis for NRC regulatory criteria and review capabilities to ensure the safe operation of nuclear fuel assemblies. Future work could include the performance of spent fuel and cladding integrity under dry storage and transportation conditions. The primary type of work to be performed in this area encompasses
- 1) the performance of experimental programs to provide a data base for regulatory criteria, the understanding of related phenomena, and analytical modeling for safety analysis; and 2) the
- development and maintenance of state-of-the-art fuel behavior analysis tools (FRAPCON for steady-state calculations and FRAPTRAN for transient calculations). Fuel-related regulatory criteria are used to ensure that anticipated events and postulated accidents do not evolve into severe accidents with unacceptable consequences to the public health and safety. Fuel related criteria that are used to prevent the loss of coolable geometry following postulated accidents are requied by 10CFR 50.46, and those used to ensure fuel integrity during normal operation and anticipated operational occurrences are required by 10CFR 50, Appendix A. Other related criteria are found in Regulatory Guides and the Standard Review Plan. The analysis tools provide the NRC with the ability to perform independent analyses.
Assumptions' Requests from the nuclear industry to modify operating licenses (e.g., power upgrades) and improve operational performance (e.g., longer operating cycles, new fuel designs) will continue to be received. Operational events involving cladding and fuel damage will continue to occur (domestically and intemationally). Fuel behavior research will continue intemationally (e.g.,
France, Japan, Norway). Additionally, under Subsection 180 of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 as amended, transportation package designs for shipment of DOE fuels must be certified by the Commission.
State of technoloov/knowledae:
Fuel damage criteria were developed for normal operation, anticipated transients, reactivity-initiated accidents, loss-of-coolant accidents, and several other postulated accidents. When most of these criteria and related analytical tools were being established in the 1970s, it was thought that fuel bumup in commercial plants would not exceed about 40 GWd/t. The data base that supported the criteria and analytical tools included specimens with burnup to that level. However, the industry has extended fuel bumup to much higher levels (as high as 62 GWd/t) in recent years and has introduced new fuel designs with advanced cladding materials.
Additionally, vendors of spent fuel cask designs have applied for storage of fuel with burnup up to 65 GWD/t, which is well above the bumup level for which current methods and assumptions have been approved. This has required a reevaluation of NRC regulatory criteria and l
modification of related analytical tools. While there is a basic understanding of the behavior of Zircaloy clad oxide fuel, a fundamental understanding and quantification of factors related to I
l higher bumup and to new fuel designs and materials should be developed.
i l
4
_________._.__.__.____-____..__m._m-.
y KEY QUESTICNS FUEL BEHAVIOR t
What portion of the core capability, if any, can be obtained from other than NRC.
funded sources, and if so, can it be obtained in a timely manner and with L
Independence?
l There is no practical non-NRC source for fuel rod experimental data and analysis (codes). All such codes in the U.S. have been developed by the vendors or EPRI. They are proprietary and would not give NRC a capability that is independent of the regulated industry, A few foreign govemment codes might be made available, but they are generally not open for public scrutiny. Previous spent fuel dry storage performance data and criteria were developed by DOE in the late 1970's after reprocessing was stopped and under the dry cask storage demonstration program as provided in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. Experimental data needed for code development and I
regulatory criteria can be obtained, in part, from foreign govemment programs.
l Industry-developed fuel behavior data is limited.
l 2.
What are the different disciplines that need to be supported? Which of these disciplines should be at NRC and which should be at contractor organizations?
Which would appear if not supported by the NRC?
Two different disciplines are needed: (1) materials science, covering zircanium metallurgy, ceramic engineering, and including experimental procedures, and (2)
I analytical modeling, including code running skills. Some of each is required at NRC to i
l define needed work and apply the results. Experimental programs require the use of l
contractors, particularly one with good analytic hot cells. In principle, the analytical work l
could be done entirely at NRC; however, the present contractor arrangement provides l
experimental capabilities, as well as a larger group of skilled personnel. While l
intemational efforts in this area would likely continue, domestically, the materials science discipline, as applied to transients and accidents would be diminished without NRC support. The analytical modeling discipline would be maintained by the industry, which we regulats, but NRC's independent capability would be lost if not supported by the NRC.
l 3.
What facilities are needed, if any? Why should they be supported? Will they be i
used frequently enough to justify their expense? If the facility was abandoned, l
would the cost to reassemble or construct the facility, if needed, be prohibitive.
l l
Provided that major foreign programs continue to operate key test reactors and cooperate with the NRC, we can probably meet our needs by maintaining the good analytical hot cells at ANL.' in these cells, we can examine irradiated fuel from U.S.
power reactors, measure cladding properties, and simulate some transients and accidents.
4.
If this area was at expertise core level today, what work would not be done?
l 1
If this area was at expertise level today, we would not be able to support the CABRI L___-_--_
water loop at IPSN which is designed to provide prototypical test data on reactivity
' insertion accidents.
5.
What is the regulatory alternative,if there was sio core capability in this research area?
Traditionally, NRC has developed its own fuel damage regulatory criteria based on its own research. Absent an experimental program, staff would have to rely on largely conservative criteria to make licensing decisions, e.g., decisions related to new designs for high burnup fuel. Without the ability to develop analytical models and to perform calculations for accident analyses, the NRC would lose most of its technical capability, and, thus its independence in this area.
l l
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REPORTI:R'S CERTIFICATE This is to. certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in l
the matter of:
l NAME OF PROCEEDING:
SAFETY RESEARCH PROGRAM i
l l
DOCKET NUMBER:
l l
PLACE OF PROCEEDING:
Rockville, MD were held as herein appears, and that this is the original r
transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and l
accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
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WAdLA l
w-q v
Cindy Tho' mas
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l.
Official Reporter Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
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