ML20238E716
| ML20238E716 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 09/09/1987 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-1609, NUDOCS 8709150154 | |
| Download: ML20238E716 (165) | |
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/CR5T~/407 R a~\\ A nv TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS In the Matter of:
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SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING ON
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FUTURE. LWR DESIGNS
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IGRs0FFEEs@i;a, D1%lffl5shbil.jjr6m AC3S943 Pages:
1 through 162 Place:
Washington, D.C.
Date:
September 9, 1987 l
Heritage Reporting Corporation O[ficial Reporters O.
1220 L Street, N.W.
Washington. D.C. 20005 (202) 628-4888 8709150154 870909 PDR ACRS PDR 1609
1 PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE 2
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S 3
ADVISORY COMMIT' FEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4
5 6
7 The contents of this stenographic transcript of the l'
8 proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory 9
Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS),
10 as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions 11 recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
12 No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at 13 this meeting accepts any responsibility for errors or 14 inaccuracies of statement or data contained in this transcript.
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 l
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1 PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE 2
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S 3
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4
5 6
7 The contents of this stenographic transcript of the 8
proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory 9
Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS),
10 as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions 11 recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
12 No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at 13 this meeting accepts any responsibility for errors or
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14 inaccuracies of statement or data contained in this transcript.
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 l
23 24 25 10
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UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION V
2 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 3
4 In the Matter of
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5
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6 SUBCOMMITTEE. MEETING ON
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FUTURE LWR DESIGNS
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Wednesday, 9
September 9, 1987 10 Room 1040 1717 H Street, N. W.
11 Washington, D. C.
20555 2
The above-entitled matter came on for hearing, 13 pursuant to notice, at 1:03 p.m.
14 BEFORE:
DR. CHARLES J.
WYLIE O
Chairman
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15 Retired Chief Engineer Electrical Division 16 Duke Power Company Charlotte, North Carolina 17 18 ACRS MEMBERS PRESENT:
19 MR. CARLYLE MICHELSON Retired Principal Nuclear Engineer 20 Tennessee Valley Authority Knoxville, Tennessee, and, 21 Retired Director, office for Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data 22 tJ. S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D. C.
23 DR. CHESTER P.
SIESS 24 Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering University of Illinois 25 Urbana, Illinois Heritage Reporting Corporation O
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ACRS MEMBERS PRESENT (CONTINUED):
U 2
MR. GLENN A.
REED Retired Plant Manager 3
Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant Wisconsin Electric Power Company 4
Two Rivers, Wisconsin 3
5 MR. JESSE C.
EBERSOLE Retired Head Nuclear Engineer 6
Division of Engineering Design Tennessee Valley Authority 7
Knoxville, Tennessee 8
ACRS COGNIZANT STAFF MEMBER:
9 Richard K.
Major 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 l
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PROCEEDINGS 2
CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
The meeting will now-come to order.
3 This is a meeting of the ACRS Subcommittee on future light 4
. water reactor designs.
I am C. J. Wylie, Chairman of the
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-Subcommittee.
And the other Subcommittee members in attendance 6
'are Mr. Carlyle Michelson, Chet Siess, Glenn Reed and Jesse 7-
- Ebersole, j
8-The purpose of this meeting is to discuss its reply.
9 to the April 22, 1987 staff requirements memorandum regarding 10-the feasibility, benefit, and cost effectiveness of selected j
i 11 and combined systems as recommended in the ACRS. letter of 12 January 15, 1987 on improved light water reactors.
l 13 Richard Major is the cognizant ACRS staff member for
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14 today's meeting.
15 The rules for participation in today's meeting have l
16 been announced as part of the notice of this meeting that was j
17 published in the Federal Register on August 24, 1987.
18 It is requested that each speaker first identify l
19 himself or herself and speak with sufficient clarity and volume 20 so that he or she can be readily heard.
21 Let me state this meeting concerns light water 22 reactor design future requirements.
It is in reply or we are 23 to develop a reply for recommendations to the full committee on 24 the recommendations that Chairman Zech made in request to the t
I 25 ACRS to perform additional work in the letter dated April 22, l.-
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_ from John C. Hall to Raymond F.
Fraley. During the 1
1987 2
meeting, we should. develop our reply to that letter or 3
recommendation to the committee in that regard.
4 In the matter preceding today in today's meeting, 5
several members have assembled some recommendations and they 6
are contained in a' sheet you have before you which'is a 7
tentative list of discussion topics for today's meeting on 8
possible courses of action for the committee.
7 9
What I would like to do is go around the table and 10 get comments first from individuals and then we can proceed I
11 with the discussion.
At the risk of being accused of the l
l 12 chairman leading, I will kick off the comments for today's j
- (3 13 discussion and, if you will bear with me, I will just make my q) 14 statement as to what I think we ought to do.
15 In regard to Chairman Zech's request contained in the 16 memorandum from J. C. Hall to R.
F.
Fraley of April 22, 1987, 17 the ACRS should advise the Commission that the ACRS does not 18 have the necessary roscurces to adequately complete the work 19 requested at this time.
State that the recommendations 20 contained in the ACRS letter of January 15, 1987 were submitted 21 as possible safety improvements worthy of serious consideration 22 in connection with future light water reactor designs and were
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23 based on judgments of the ACRS.
24 Recommend that the Commission develop an overal]
l 25 design philosophy in design requirements for future light water o
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reactors in keeping with its stated policy for future reactor 2
. designs; that is a fundamental objective of the Commission's 3
Severe Accident. Policy is that the Commission intends to take
-4 all reasonable steps to reduco-the chances of occurrence of a l
5 severe accident involving substantial damage to the reactor 6
-core:and to mitigate the consequences of such an accident 7
'should one occur.
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We recommend that the Commission should direct the
-9 NRC.staffLto perform a systematic and objective examination of-10 safety features and safety requirements for future light water 11-reactors taking into account the recommendations contained in 12 the ACRS letter of January 15, 1987.and those found in foreign
-13 reactors.
14
.We recommend that a steering group composed of 15 experts independent of the NRC staff be created to assist the 1
16 NRC in the development of a work plan to review the NRC's work..
17 The ACRS would intend to-follow the progress closely and advise 18 accordingly. It is suggested that the necessary resources be 19 allocated to this work and that the salient safety objective of 20 the decay heat removal be given highest priority in order.
21 The ACRS would follow the progress closely and advise 22 accordingly.
i 23 It io recommended that an international. meeting 24 devoted to the design features for future light water reactors l
25 be held as a starting point, possibly sponsored by the NRC and i
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held in Washington.
2 We note with interest that the General Electric 3
Company and the Westinghouse Corporation state in recent 4
correspondence that in their future advanced designs that they 5
meet most of the recommendations contained in the ACRS letter 6
and we note with interest that a recently received Swiss' design 7
criterion contains most of the recommendations contained in the 8
ACBS letter.
9 So, with that, I will ask for comments and go around 10 the table.
Glenn, you are next to me.
Do you want to comment?
11 MR. REED:
Well, I looked at Dr. Siess' five options 12 and it caused me to try to write something contributory and I rN 13 picked on his option 5.
And then I said, okay, going along LA 14 with item 5 on his tentative list, I jumped then to item 2.
15 Let the Chairman know we don't have the resources. And then I 16 jumped to his item 4 -- excuse me.
I went to his item 1.
"Let 17 the Chairman know we don't have the resources."
18 And then I went to his item 4,
" Allow the NRC staff 19 to manage the program."
20 Apparently, you, Charlie, have gone a lot further 21 than that.
It should involve objective outside expertise and 22 that we should involve -- have an international meeting.
Those 23 are nice things to think about. I don't know whether they can 24 be brought about.
25 I did then write up how I would suggest replying on
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.thefdecay-heat removal item through the Chair.
You know my 2.
bias.
I believe the decay' heat removal is the number one issue
'3-and I'believe that we can have better syttems with the l
4 pressurized water reactor.
We are not moving toward that.JWe 5
'are vacillating. I don't know how many of you saw the recent
- 6 write-up on "See-saw plus."
If you saw that, you saw'that 7
commercial engineering has come full circle.
They started out 6
with PORVs.
They took them all off the System 80 and now this 9
System 80-plus is going to have primary _ blow downs, eventually.
10 So, people keep spinning around with the issue of when we are 11 going to have an alternative principle for decay heat removal..
12 I think that it is long past time that the NRC and
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its leaders should come to grips with this ultimate principle, 13 14-research it and decide whether or not it should be put into future design.
16 So, I have written up something for people to try it 17 out and maybe those things that you talked about, Charlie, 18 could go into that.
19 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Chet, do you want to say something?
20 DR. SIESS:
First of all, I think we made a seriouJ 21 mistake in letting Bill Kerr write the memo of June lith to 22 Zech that says the Subcommittee is going to make an estimate of 23 the resources required and prepare a reply, et cetera, et 24 cetera, et cetera.
Especially a reply that we believe will be b
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I would have much preferred that right off the top of 2
our heads we told Zech very simply:
That's not our job.
We do 3
not make engineering studies for the Commission.
We don't have 4
the competence, we don't have the resources.
The things he 5
asked for are design-type decisions: feasibility, benefits, 6
cost effectiveness, reliability challenges.
And the ACRS was 7
not chartered with that in mind. And maybe two or three. members
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8 have some competence, but the committee certainly doesn't And 9
I would much prefer that we just simply said, "Look.
That is 10 not our job te do that."
11 I am not even sure that it is even necessary that 12 anybody do it.
Obviously, the convoy blintz has gone through 13 some of these studies and decided these are things they ought l
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14 to have in their plan, whether they are *or engineering or 15 political reasons is besides the point, EBRY has said that 1G they think all of these things are feasible, desirable, cost 17 beneficial because they are putting them in their guidelines.
18 GE and Westinghouse have told as the same thing. So, I'm not 19 sure why any more studies are needed.
Of course, that is a 20 very naive approach. I would have said a week ago that, oh, I 21 don't know why people shouldn't put in a direct torus vent in a 22 boiler, but the staff apparently has found several reasons why 23 it shouldn't be done.
Pilgrim has now stopped doing it.
24 The problem I have.with what Charlie has got is that 25 I don't think the staff is capable of doing this.
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1 think there is a national lab that is really capable of doing 2
it from anything but a safety point of view and that is not 3
what Zech limited himself.to.
He said cost benefits, 4
effectiveness, reliability, the whole picture. Those are the 5
kinds of things that aEs and/or utilities who do their own 6
engineering consider.
And if you tell the staff to do it, they 7
are just going to go out and contract with a national lab and 8
just what ycu will get, I don't know.
Maybe the witional lab 9
will subcontract it to one of the vendors or an AE.
I don't 10 know.
11 But, you know, I would be inclined to tell the 12 Commission, first, it isn't our job.
We weren't set up to do
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this and we are not really competent to do it and even if wo 13 14 were, we don't have enough money to do it or time.
The 15 committee obviously doesn't do it.
And then maybe raise the 16 question of whether it is even necessary.
Since enough people 17 have said, oh, these are great.
We are doing them -- we don't 18 know whether they're doing them or not, but whether they are 19 doing them in the sense we meant --
I just wouldn't go that 20 far.
21 MR. REED:
Chet, I agree with almost everything you 22 said.
I didn't suggest in my last paragraph and I didn't want 23 to spell out the national lab, I said, "Okay, it seems to me if u
24 we rigorously pursue this thing we should have the research go 25 forward as a follow-on to Tab 45."
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DR. SIESS:
I don't think it is a research problem.
2 Most of these things are design problems.
3 MR. REED:
DLawing together and satisfying people 4
that it is a beneficial and safe thing to do.
5 MR. MICHELSON:
You've got to design it first.
6 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, maybe we are discussing it 7
before we hear from everybody.
8 DR.-SIESS:
You design it, PRA it if you want to 9
prove it.
But the point is I th' ink Zech was just plain wrong 10 in asking us to do it.
I read that letter saying, you know, 11 "You guys put your money where your mouth is," --
12 MR. EBERSOLE:
But we don't have any money.
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DR. SIESS:
We don't have any money and it is not our
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14 job to put our money where our mouth is.
Our job is to make 15 recommendations and not to go into all the details.
16 MR. EBERSOLE:
But one interpretation, Chet, is that 17 you right now are making an estimate of the resources required.
18 One interpretation is to do just what you're doing and tell him 19 what we got to do.
1 20 DR. SIESS:
I know we don't have the resources, the i
21 incompetence or money.
22 MR. EBERSOLE:
You are talking about resources when 23 you talk about money.
24 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
1 think we should have said that at 25 the beginning.
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1 MR. EBERSOLE:
There may be a misinterpretation that 2
we are going to.do all this with this tiny little crew.
3 DR. SIESS:
Going to the next step and saying that I 4
don't think the staff could do it, I don't think anybody short l
5 of an engineer in the outfit can do it.
I think they know 6
that.
7 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, of course they must.
I think 8
what this is is just a skeletal suggestion from us as to'how to 9
undertake hiring whatever it is --
10 DR. SIESS:
We shouldn't be in that business.
11 MR. EBERSOLE:
What?
12.
DR. SIESS:
We shouldn't be in that business.
If 13 they want something done on this, if nobody had ever looked at
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14 it, if there wasn't CONVOY and WHOPPER and ABWR and all these I
15 things that have got some of these features in them and the 16 Commission really wanted to start narrowing our list down or, 17 more important, looking at the tradeoffs they could make.
In I
18 other words, if you had a dedicated decay heat removal system l
19 or if you had complete separation and then plus two, now, could 20 you relax on fire protection or sabotage or something else.
21 Even then, the Commission can't do that. They would contract it 22 out for somebody to do a PRA, maybe.
There's got to be cost.
23 They've got to get into the industry, somebody that knows cost.
24 And we should have told Zech, you know, "Thank you for the l
l 25 compliment, but this ain't our job."
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1 MR. EBERSOLE:
I can't believe that he assumed we 2
would take on a job that would involve 115 years
-- over a 3
substantial period of time.
4 DR. SIESS:
But the expertise of tiie ACRS to address 5
the feasibility, benefit and cost effectiveness of selected and 6
combined systems -- it's great. It's a great idea. It's exactly 7
what ought to be done.
You know, if you take these three 8
systems and now you add two more to them, it's the benefit of 9
those next two, what they were if they had been the first two.
10 It is just -- this is what GE and Westinghouse have dono, when 11 you talk to these guys about'how they went about it.
You might 12 not like the answer -- it's a major engineering effort.
U(~T 13 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I agree.
You are suggesting that we 14 write them back and tell them basically it is not our job --
15 DR. ET.PSS:
It is beyond our competence and 16 resources. And besides, we are not sure that it hasn't already 17 been done and mention that CONVOY which we wrote a letter onto
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l 10 him, told him CONVOY had it.
Or Westinghouse, GE all say,
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i 19 "We've got all these things."
l 20 Now, did they put them in because of cost benefit and 21 reliability.
Or did they put them in because the NRC wanted it I
22 or some of both?
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23 MR. REED:
Well, I think what Westinghouse and GE are l
l 24 claiming is that they have got things that are equivalent to of 25 which I would disagree.
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DR. SIESS:
Well, you are t ' king about one-2 particular item.
When you get into thi details of it, we have 3
written enough letters, you know, we have addressed this 4
question several times.
But we had a whole list of things 5
there Charlie has prefaced.
Sabotage, relocating the control 6
room.
7 MR. REED:
The current response to the Chairman, was 8
that a committee letter?
9 DR. SIESS:
I think we simply authorized Bill to 10 write it and didn't think much it.
11 MR. REED:
About what he would write.
12 DR. SIESS:
It was a memo to Zech from Kerr, and we 13 don't usually -- committee letters usually aren't in that form.
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14 And I think we simply told Bill to write something.
And if we 15 had really looked at it, you know, we might not have --
16 MR. REED:
He oversold our capabilities, that's for 17 sure.
18 DR. SIESS:
Well, we could, as Jesse says, we made an 19 estimate of the resources required and that's not difficult.
l 20 You know, half a million dollars, a million dollars, a couple 21 of years.
Whether it will be responsive is sticking your neck 22 out. I wouldn't even pay any attention to that letter.
1 23-CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Carl, do you have anything?
24 MR. MICHELSON:
Yes, first of all, I have a comment 25 that I think a meeting of this sort to discuss what we are Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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discussing today is inappropriate for recording purposes.
- And, 2
in the future, I would object to the fact strenuously of 3
recording a business meeting as opposed to a technical 4
presentation where the public may wish to share in all the 5
great knowledge that we receive that day.
So, that is just a 6
comment.
I don't think we should record this kind of a meeting 7
and it is no problem of the public attending.
I just don't 8
think it is suitable.
9 DR. SIESS:
That makes it easier for Rich to write 10 the minutes.
11 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, that is not a good enough 12 reason to record it.
But, at any rate, I thought I was going 13 to come here alone and I find I have already heard a great deal
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14 of agreement.
I had a real problem with getting -- the ACRS 15 getting into this activity.
It is just we are not prepared to 16 spend the kind of time and it would take a great deal of time 17 on the part of several members to try to make this thing go.
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18 And, further, we have some limited experience in the kind of 19 design activities that will in part be involved in this.
It 20 just is inappropriate for us to deplete our efforts by 21 concentrating on a problem of this sort.
Although I think the 22 problem is a worthy one, I just don't think we should be 23 involved. So, mv preference would be to write a friendly letter 24 back to the Chairman Zech from the committee this time pointing I
25 out that after further consideration of this issue, we havo l-l l
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1-decided'whatever.
2-And my own view would be that we have decided that we-3 simplyclack the resources and the availability of time to 4
pursue'this.
5 DR.,SIESS:
'I would think with the points you made 6,
thereLI would want to make its Even if we were given the money 7
to contract it out, the supervision of that contract by the 8
- ACRS would be --
9 MR. MICHELSON:
Inappropriate.
We don't even have
.10l the time to oversee this kind of an operation if it is to be i
11' done reasonably well.
And I don't think we should be involved l
12 in something if we'can't do it reasonably well.
13-DR. SIESS:
Now, I said I'm not even sure it needs to (J
14 he done in view --
15 MR. MICHELSON:
There, I have some difference of 16 opinion.
I just don't know.
I think it is a worthy study for 17 someone to do.
I just don't think we're the ones that should 18 be --
19 DR. SIESSt I would be willing to suggest is that 20 since, say, Westinghouse and GE have both said, "We have done 21 these things," it might be worthwhile for the Commission to l
22 look at what they have dono and see to what extent they are 1
23 consistent with our recommendations or to what extent they have 24 done the things that are centionnd in this letter.
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MR. MICHELSOl Well, that is getting on to what I 1
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was going to say in a more positive way as to what we should 2
do.
In the negative way, I just don't think we should get 3
involved in any kind of a detailed contractual arrangement or 4
whatever.
5 Now, in a positive way, I think we certainly have an 6
interest in this area at a fairly high plane.
We certainly 7
ought to, from time to time, look into how other people view 8
advanced reactor and advance light water reactor problems, 9
design issues.
And that is really the kind of approach that wo 10 made when we wrote our letter:
"Here are some of our thoughts 11 about some of these subjects."
Certainly not a comprehensive 12 list.
It just hits various issues that for one reason or (v~)
13 another various members have delved into and thought were 14 important to bring to light.
There are a lot of others that 15 weren't brought to light that are also important, I'm sure.
16 And that is the sort of activity I think we should be 17 involved in.
And maybe if there is a real interest, we can 18 become involved in a little more organized sense over a period 19 of time in such issues and in the process bring in other 20 people, talk to other people and so forth.
21 i.non Charlie and I were in Germany this summer, we 22 spent a little bit of time talking about the CONVOY design with 23 the Germans and Charlie issued a fine set of minutes on the 24 subject and I think there was a lot of interesting things there 25 that I would have liked to have had time to pursue with them,
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1 but we simply didn't have the time.
I believe that sort of 2
effort can be worthwhile.
3 DR. SIESS:
Well, why couldn't we say something in 4
the letter to Zech, for example, that we note that both General 5
Electric and Westinghouse in their future LWRs state they have 6
incorporated these features.
We feel sure that in doing so 7
they must have addressed the feasibility, benefit, cost and 8
effectiveness and we would continue to explore this further 9
with them as we review the ABWR and the lot.
10 MR. MICHELSON:
And we can also say, if we wish, we 11 could say that we would be interested in pursuing such 12 questions with the Germans and the French who seem to be the
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13 two principal European designers for this sort of thing.
There v) 14 are probably others.
15 MR. EBERSOLE:
Chet, that was going to be my comment.
16 We've got the stage set.
I mean the stage is already set for 17 us to do this with the AVWR and the AB.
There is another 18 advance reactor beyond the one we know about.
And there is 19 also a further advanced -- te have got to do this.
I think the 20 thing to do is to set up an activity to do which is more nearly 21 focused on seeing how many of these features are incorporated 22 as a frontal view.
Early in the game.
23 DR. SIESS:
But when AVWR comes in the next time 24 instead of just looking at how many of these features --
25 MR. EBERSOLE:
I don't want to look at the pieces.
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want to look at the whole thing.
2 DK. SIESS:
Find out to what extent they have looked 3
at the cost effectiveness, to what extent they have looked at 4
human factors, challenges.
Where did they look for tradc-offs 5
and maybe get a feel for that. It would be educational.
6 MR. MICHELSON:
And that we could und should do, I 7
think.
8 DR. SIESS:
Whether we would normally have done it in 9
just that fashion, I don't know.
Whether we will actually do 10 it in that fashion, we can certainly tell Zech that we will do 11 it.
12 MR. MICHELSON:
I wanted to emphasize that in the ti 13 letter that we did receive from Hall, there were really -- the V
14 Chairman made two recommendations.
First of all, he 15 recommended that we pursue a review of experience and design 16 features in European plans.
And then, secondly, he said, in 17 addition he thought we ought to addreas feasibility, benefit, 18 et cetera.
There are really two reque.sts that he made. One is 19 to continue to look at the European plants and the other was to 20 look at some of these things we had suggested.
21 DR. SIESS:
I got the impression he was really saying 22 that it is all right for you to look at the European ones.
23 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, he says -- he recommends that 24 we pursue its review.
I don't know if that was just being a 25 polite way of saying --
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1 DR. SIESS:
You and Charlie were doing that in your 2
visit.
3-MR. MICHELSON:
Yes, in a very small way.
4 DR. SIESS:
Well, you were doing it.
5 MR. MICHELSON:
But it was a part of it, yes.
6 And I think that we ought to pick up on that first 7
recommendation and indicate how we are -- what we have done so 8
far and how we are going to continue to pursue this issue as 9
well as address this second question.-- and that is where we 10 would say, "Well, we just can't get into the detailed."
11 There was another suggestion, simply because he did 12 make two recommendations and I think we ought to address both O) 13 of them.
14 DR. SIESS:
I guess there is a little-bit difference 15 in interpretation between you and me. when he said pursue its 16 review, I interpret that as continue to do what you have been 17 doing.
It is not something new.
That would say to pursue a 18 review.
But to pursue "its" review, it is a review we already 19 have underway and he recommends that we continue it.
I took 20 that as a recommendation for approval of what we were doing in 21 a continuing activity. I don't think it neede 9 response.
22 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, it is rat a new activity, no.
23 DR. SIESS:
I don't think it would need a response.
24 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, I was just trying to be 25 positive.
At the same time, I think we need a strong negative
(~s
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Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
20
- h-
, u
'1 in-the letter.
K 2'
MR. EBERSOLE:.Chet_ picked up later what I was going 3
tolsay.'But anyway, I will elaborate on that.
I think in doing 4
-- the stage,is set for us that the AVWR and the advanced AVWR 5
and the' corresponding, design'of Westinghouse'---I don't know of i
6 any others at the_ moment, except CE1ia pushing their reactor.
7-now a little bit.
-8 DR. SIESS:
What are the two VWRs you've got?
9 MR. EBERSOLE:
There is an advanced' reactor.beyond 10 the.AVWR.
I am not familiar with its extended details, but 11 there is another one somewhere.
12 Anyway --
-(}
13 DR. SIESS:
Beyond the Japanese one?
14 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, beyond the one we have heard 15 about.
16 MR. MICHELSON:
There are two versions of it, so to-17 speak.
1 18 DR. SIESS:
Well, I know there is a U.S. version and 19 a Japanese version.
20 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, let me tell you what I think, to 21.
set an order of business, Charlie.
Rather than looking at 22 these plants that the staff would have us look at it piece-s 23 wise, you know, and it comes in in little groups, I think we 24 should have a very large scoping document to cover these 25-features and all of their gory detail, if we need to.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I
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l 21
(~m.
\\_)
1 And I listed these.
At the front end of the list is I
i Have they really got it whipped?
Can it take an " Atlas"?
'2 3
Is it likely or unliko?
How have they done it?
Do they have 4
diversity?
]
1 5
I am trying to do these in the order of importance.
]
6 Let's kill the reactivity problem, first.
DR. SIESS:
Was that one of our -- were you 8
experiencing a --
9 MR. hBERSOLE:
No.
I just wrote this down.
I 10 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, At]as was one --
11 MR. EBERSOLE:
Atlas was on it. But, anyway, first of 12 all, we have to put to sleep the reactivity problem.
I was
/~T 13 mentioning to you these liquid metal reactors do it V
14 beautifully.
15 The second I think in order of importance, we must do 16 the shut-down heat remova'l system, whether it be dedicated or 17 multi-tracked, whether it be diverse or simply multiply 18 redundant. And I, of course, hold to the idea it be diverse and 19 independent and dedicated.
Not necessarily bunkered.
20 But these are the roots of our major problems.
That 21 is the locus of most of our hazard potential.
22 Now, I think coming down the scale of importance, I 23 think the small break LOCA probably comes next on the scene.
And following that, there is a loss of secondary cooling, which 24 1
25 is one of the burdens that the PWR carries.
('
l
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Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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(
1 And after that is the large break LOCA which was 2
formally and to some extent yet is considered a major problem i
3 in the design.
4 And then item 6 I have is the miscellaneous items of 5
which there t;e literally dozens and dozens which are causative 6
of these functions that I have just listed.
'And in there, I 7
.think we should focus in on the dependency on administrative 8
controls, operator dependency, the human factors and whether we 9
have intrinsic, manual or automatic safety systems.
10 I would even go so far as to say we should examine 11 these reactors and come out with comparative analyses in a 12 competitive context, PWRs and BWRs.
{}
13 DR. SIESSs ACRS should do that?
14 MR. EBERSOLE:
Yes.
As we look at them, I think we 15 are obligated to tell the Commission what we think about them, 16 the merits of these two machines.
17 And this is just due to my recent exposure, I think 18 it would be worthwhile to note there are certain features we 19 may never be able to get with these water reactors that we can 20 with the others, like walk-away cooling.
21 DR. SIESS:
At some point, this committee is going to 22 have to do something about the future. Right now we have got 23 this committee -- is this an ad hoc committee?
24 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yes.
l.
25 DR, SIESS:
And 1.his is just ad hoc to respond to the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
23 O-1 letter.
We're looking at the AVWR with the one committee and 2
the -- with another committee, and the advanced reactors with 3
another committee and --
4 MR. MICHELSON:
CE another committee.
5 DR. S1ESS:
And CE is another committee.
6 MR. EBERSOLE:
We are doing the thing we deplore.
We 7
are compartmentalizing.
8 DR. SIESS:
But what disturbs me, Jesse, is the idea 9
that you think we could come down on one side or the other on 10 the boiler and the PWR and let's see the technology is going 11 about 25 years and nobody has been able to separate them yet.
l 12 One year the boilers are having all the problems, the next year
{])
13 14 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, maybe we have to say that there 15 is no separation.
I don't know.
But I don't think it should 16 be just parked and left dead.
17 DR. SIESS:
You know, coming in as an outsider to 18 this business some years back, it just amazed me that two 19 processes as different as those have come up with equal 20 viability in the market place and then as I followed their 21 activity in terms of safety, you know, one year the boilers are 22 having torus problems, modification problems.
The next year 23 the PWRs are r<splacing steam generators.
And then we go back 24 to stress corrosion cracking and some other --
l 25 MR. EDERSOLE:
It has been a fascinating race.
l l
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1 DR. SIESS:
Haven't got either one of them right, 2
yet.
3 MR. EBERSOLE:
No, not yet.
I think it is easy to 4
demonstrate, though, if you can get away from the large LOCA 5
worry.
It's awful easy to cool a boiler.
6 MR. MICHELSON:
That's just one of many questions.
7 Let me understand what you said, though.
I kind of sense that 8
you are developing a checklist of things against which you 9
would look for in looking at the various Westinghouse, 10 whatever --
11 MR. EBERSOLE:
Yes.
And I would weight these 12 features at the front end of our effort.
(])-
13 MR. MICHELSON:
And that checklist in part is what we 14 have in the form of our light water reactor letter.
Those are 15 items -- that is nothing but a checklist of things. And are you 16 proposing to first of all expand that check -- you've named a 17 number of things -- were you proposing to expand that checklist 18 and use that as a master?
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
No.
I just wet,t to the roots.
20 MR. MICHELSUN:
No, no, no.
It's more than we put in 21 our letter.
There are a number of items there that we made no 22 mention of in our letter.
23 DR. SIESS:
I wasn't counting them, but I saw a 24 couple --
l 25 MR. MICHELSON:
There are a couple duplicates and l
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Y,Y 1
there are some that were never mentioned in our letter:
large i
2 break LOCAs and so forth.
3 MR..EBERSOLE:
These features are going to be in the 3
4 new reactors.
And I tried to put them down.
5 MR. MICHELSON:
But I have no --
6 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
There is one on there, emergency 7
coil cooling.
8 DR. SIESS:
I am just amazed --
i 9
MR. MICHELSON:
That letter is nothing but a series 10.
of questions.
11 MR. BBERSOLE:
I think this is a fair letter of 12 importance.
I think I have averted really Atlas and --
()
13 MR. MICHELSON:
Jesse, I wasn't -- I have no problem 14 with your items, I was just trying to understand what you are 15 proposing.
Are you proposing that we develop --
I 16 MR. EBERSOLE:
This is a frame work of a reactor 1
)
17 design process, 18 MR. MICHELSON:
So you are --
1 19 DR. SIESS:
In relation to the current issue.
I 1
20 MR. MICHELSON:
Are you proposing we first of all j
l 21 develop a more expanded checklist againsc which we will judge 22 these various projects?
l 23 MR. EDERSOLE:
This is hardly expanded, Carl.
24 MR. MICHELSON:
It is more than our letter.
25 DR. SIESS:
What we say to Zech, I think this is O
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26 o
'l-immaterial.
And trying to sie'in this-meeting and' lay,down-
~
2L ground rules as to how we are going.to'look at these plans, 3
forget-about it.
People will ask questions about what they are 4
interested in anyway.
5 101. EBERSOLE:
This is an approach to reviewing --
6' MR. MICHELSON:
But is-this what you are going to 7
suggest to Zech?
"This is what we are going to do."
8.
-MR.
EBERSOLE:
I would say that in the course of 9
examining the ABWR and APWR along this line approach.
10.
MR. MICHELSON:
Are you talking about a letter now 11; that you are --
12 MR..EBERSOLE:
That we would then pick:up the
(
13 features in this letter here in the course of.doing this.
14' DR. SIESS:
And we tell Zech, since Westinghouse and 15 GE said they have got all these things, that we continue our-16 review of'their plans.
We will tend to focus a.little more on.
17 the aspects of --
18 MR. EBERSOLE:
We will find it underneath as a 19 subheading here someplace.
20 DR. SIESS:
But that doesn't mean we are going to l
21 limit ourselves to these items.
22 MR. EBERSOLE:
No.
23 DR. SIESS:
My thought was that we will always be 24 luoking for these things.
1 25 MR. EBERSOLE:
Sure.
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27 iO l'
.DR.
SIESS:
But we would look a little more to see 2
how the trade-offs aro made, how the reliability came in, 3
challenges, human factors, burden on the operator, the things 4
that he mentiens.
5 MR. EBERSOLE:
Right.
And we would look early in the 6
design review. process not wait until we got to Chapter No.'15.
7 DR. SIESS:
I don't know how early you.can get there.
l 8
We've been on the ABWR for three years and WHOPPER for about as 9'
long.
10 MR. EBERSOLE:
I don't~think we have looked at it, 11 yet, in.the perspective view that we are talking about here.
I
.12 know we have looked at -- well, for instance, I hear that the
(])
13 ABWR is coming in without direct boiler.
14 DR. SIESS:
When you say the perspective here, what 15-.did Zech mention -- normally, we look at things as how they 16 effect safety.
And, frequently, we don't hear about anything 17 else.
That's not our job.
I mean if the plants go -- you 18 scram 10 times a year without thinking about it, but it'used to 19 be, you know, hang some more stuff on it to be sure it scrams 20 when it needs to.
And if it is a spurious scram, that's tough.
21 What Zech said was feasibility.
This doesn't say 22 something we spend a lot of time on.
Benafit, yes.
Cost 23.
effectiveness, you know, we don't believe anybody when they 24 talk about cost effectiveness.
And then selected and combined 25 systems.
In the past,.we just keep hanging things on.
We've
>]
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28 g
1 looked at it and I think some of the SCP looked at -- no. 'Some
-2 of the early IREPS or something looked at improved -- one other 3
time have taken this pair and showed --
1 4
MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, I interpreted selected and 5
-combined systems, for instance, a dedicated heat removal system 6
would combine lots of fixes on AC power, fire, sabotage, l
7 whatever.
l 8
DR. SIESS:
I don't know exactly -- I would take 9
that.
We've made an interest of that in our letter.
But if 10 you took this whole list of things, you've started off with the 11 dedicated heat removal system, you would have, maybe have a big 12 effect and then all the reset of the things would have very
(}
13 little.
14 On the other hand with eight other things, put the 15 dedicated heat removal system on the end, it might have very 16 little effect.
17 MR. EBERSOLE:
We have gone ass backwards in the 18 whole evolution of this business.
19 DR. SIESS:
But, normally, we don't look at that.
20 And, so, what -- I think the challenge to us here is to say:
21 Look at these plants who say they've got these things or say 22 they've considered them and see to what extent their decision 23 has been based on these criteria.
24 MR. EBERSOLE:
Chet, as you well know, the evolution 25 of this business can be characterized by that nice word, (3
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Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 29.
1 "catchitis."
We have found distended and exposed and' L
2-distributed-vulnerabilities all over tho place and we.have put 3
those patches on them.
- 4 Finally, we have amassed such a mass of grossly 4
5; complex system'of.doing' things that should have been simple in 6
the first place that we've got grossly extended costs.
We've-7 got-ambiguous safety problems.
We have not started out with 8
what we ought to start out with.
l
^
DR. SIESS:
It was always to add soraething else on.
10 MR. EBERSOLE:
I know.
And I think in the review 11 process, we should look at it in the new succession, in a new 12-sequence.
13 DR.-SIESS:
As I recall, when Westinghouse was in
_(J 14 here, they, in effect, said some of that was what they did.
15 They tried to simplify their systems.
They,tried to reduce the 16 number of valves.
They tried to reduce the number of inner-17 connections, as I recall.
Whether that is in the direction of 18 safety, I'm not sure.
But there was a lot.of talk about what 19 their objectives were, front-end, which a lot of the' members of 20 this committee simply ignored because they weren't related to 21 safety.
They said, you know, we're looking into reliability.
22 We want improved fuel burn-up and so forth.
We skip over all 23 that.
Now, we get down to what did you do about LOCA and what 24 did you do about dedicated heat removal systems -- the other
'25 things are in there and we've never paid much attention to O
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them.
2 MR. EBERSOLE I remember the South Texas was 3
supposed to be a model for improved.
l 4
DR. SIESS:
It's RESAR.
We thought RESAR.was great.
5 I still think it is better than anything they have as far as 6
separation.
7 MR. MICHELSON:
Not when they stuck the diesel oil on 8
top of the control room.
9 MR. EBERSOLE:
That was a funny thing.
l l
10 MR. MICHELSON:
At least it would only affect one 11 diesel.
12 MR. SIESS:
I cannot imagine an AE that would do
(}
13 that, but they did.
14 MR. MICHELSON:
Then they made the mistake of 15 allowing it to leak.
16 MR. SIESS:
Now, they have got to go and put the 17 patch on, which is vibration and vulnerability of the pipes.
18 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, actually it did not leak down 19 into the diesel room.
20 MR. MICHELSON:
Yes, diesel room, yes.
I did not 21 mean the control room, I mean that it leaked down to the area 22 of the diesel engine, put the fuel on the top.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
Yes, but now you put it on the bottom 24 and you have to have a pump and on top, you can use gravity.
25 MR. MICHELSON:
Yes, yes.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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%l
(
'1 MR. EBERSOLE:
See, there is a tradeoff.
lu s
2L MR. SIESS:
Yes.
'3
.MR. EBERSOLE:
Well to hang liquid above your head is l4
'not smart in any case.
5 MR. MICHELSON:
Never thought that this was-the best
]
6 practice.
l 7
MR. SIESS:
Well, Jesse, if you are worried about the 8
fire prot'ection of the building, some people have a lot of 9
comfort by having one of those' tanks up on the roof, rather Li 10
- than that connection down on the front wall, for the' Fire-11
~ Department.
12 MR. EBERSOLE:
As long as it is water,-instead of
/~\\
'13 oil.
,1) 14 MR. SIESS:
I know, but this is what trade-offs are.
15 MR. MICHELSON:
Some people try to put electrical 16 wir'ing below water pipes.and some people try to put it above 17 water pipes.
'18 MR. SIESS:
Some people wrap it around.
19 MR. MICHELSON:
And some for some of them it does not t
1 20 make a whole lot of difference which way it is.
There'is folk 21 lore in either direction.
22 MR. SIESS:
If the water is under pressure, it does 23 not make much difference.
r:
- 24 MR. EBERSOLE:
When we go through the ABWR and APWR, 1
L 25 the evaluation, we can just tag these items and do it front up.
Ok/
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L
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32 1
. CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, let me just ask this 2
question.
.3' Supposing tomorrow, the NRC Staff took general design 4
criteria 34,.and changed the words just a little bit to say, 5
show redundancy of components and redundancy in principle, 6
which would~ copy some other general design criteria.
7 What do.you think the vendors, how would they change 8
what they were presenting?
9 MR. SIESS:
Do you mean diversity?
10 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yes, diversity, use diversity 11 principles.
12 MR. EBERSOLE:
I don't know, I have always --
~V 13.
CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I would make you a bet it wculd come (Q
14 in entirely different than the present ABWR and the advance 15 PWR, and there would be some separation and some 16
' identification.
And what I have seen in the WAPWR and I was 17 involved in it, it,is sort of shoe horned in there, and hidden.
18 And it'is intertwined.
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
It is put in there as an after fit.
.20 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
And I want to call our attention to 21' it.
J 22-MR. EBERSOLE:
Well an automobile saves you --
23 MR. REED:
Well, a WAPWR is not redundant?
24-CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
In principle, I mean diversion 25 principle, yes, it is, but you will hardly recognize it.
'. (~y k/-
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
33
'im N.]
1 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, you will have to recognize it 2
in order to do that.
3 MR. REED:
It means a extension of lead and field.
4 MR. SIESS:
Well, first means various things to 5
various people.
You know, 6
MR. REED:
Well, in the commercial world, these would 7
be called after-market improvements.
8 MR. SIESS:
That plan has not been double checked.
9 MR. SIESS:
Well, suppose that we did change that 10 design criteria?
j J
11 What is the very in diversity it reduces the 12 probability of common mode failures?
I'
(>i 13 MR. EBERSOLE:
Yes.
14 MR. SIESS:
Is that what we want?
15 MR. REED:
It also changes the --
16 MR. SIESS:
You accept that though?
1 17 MR. REED:
Yes, and something else, it changes the I
18 heat removal from -- depending on the steam generators, and it 19 also affords depressurization.
20 MR. SIESS:
Well, depressurization, at least in my 21 simple mind and logic, is that it is awful easy to put water in 22 a pipe that does not have any pressure in it, compared to one 23 that has a --
24 MR. REED:
The diversity does not necessarily mean 25 that you cannot --
(~.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
34
' {)/.
r 3
MR. MICHELSON:
Yes, diversity does not lead you to 2
blowdown.
3 MR. EBERSOLE:
No, not necessarily at all.
4 MR. MICHELSON:
It just means using something 5
different either in principle or in component.
6 MR. EBERSOLE:
Right, but Jim, 7
MR. SIESS:
If you are trying to reduce common mode 8
failures, a great deal of your reduction in common mode failure 9
probability can come about because of separation, because one 10 of the most important contributors to common mode failures, is 11 a common environment.
12 MR. EBERSOLE:
But Jed, there were --
(])
13 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
The design common mode failures.
14 MR. SIESS:
Well, again, the diversity is not going 15 to get whe.t you want, necessarily.
16 MR. MICHELSON:
But his removal of pressure, it is 17 diverse in the sense that you no longer depend on secondary 18 transfer pads.
19 MR. SIESS:
Yes, but changing ZDC34 to say diverse, 20 is not going to put blowdown capability in the plan.
That is 21 one way of getting it.
22 MR. REED:
Well, let me make a point.
It may not and 23 somebody may resurrect closed heat exchanges as were on SIW and l
24 on the Navy things, but I think, in doing that, and they went 25 through the analysis, and problems of closed heat exchanges in i
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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7 e
p
,a, 35:
}
- 1 addition to steam generators, they would hit upon a blowdown.
2 2
MR. SIESS:
But you see, you are being indirect.
You 3'
want blowdown' capability, then say that you want blowdown 4
capability, don't say that you want diversity KE removal and GD 5
6 MR. REED:
Well, I have said that I want it, but the 4
7 8
MR. SIESS:
Don't worry about how to get it; tell 9
them what you want.
10 MR. REED:
But the technique for'that is'in'the 11 design criteria.
Say that it is not good enough.
12 MR. SIESS:
We are so far away from GDC now in
()'
,13 designing and improving plants that there are open to many 14 interpretations and that is the problem.
15 MR. REED:
Do you think that there never will be 16 updated?
17 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, I did not.say that, but what do 18 you mean by updating, will they ever be changed?
The answer is
-19 probably yes, they will be changed.
20 MR. REED:
Do you think that they should be changed l
21 one at a time, as experience dictates?
22 MR. MICHELSON:
Well you can wait for a whole batch L
23 if you want to do it that way.
I don't think that --
24 MR. REED:
Well, if it is a safety issue, should we 25-wait for a batch?
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-O 1-MR. MICHELSON If it is a safety issue, you don't 2
even wait to change the GDC, you just solve the problem.'
~
3 MR. SIESS:
Sure.
4 MR. MICHELSON:
And then later on, you may change the 5
GDC.
6 MR. EBERSOLE:
Anyway you would have to distinguish 7
~between static items and active items, and passive, active.
8 And there is a distinct difference, one passive 9
system may need three active subsystems.
10 MR. SIESS:
Gentlemen, why don't we get back to this 11 line up to. exactly what we are going to suggest to the 12 Committee?
I think that if nobody has disagreed with Charlie's
(]j 13 first sentence, we have not got the resources.
14 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, I think that we get beyond
'15 your first sentence.
I am not worried about the words, I am 16 worried about the principles.
That is purely negative, you 17 could stop there, if you want to be nice, you can then go on 10 and say some more.
And I thought that we had a little bit of 19 agreement in general tet-ms of pointing out that we think that 20 due to the fact that Westinghouse and GE have played with too 21 many of things in their design and we are in the process of I
22 looking at those plants now, and we will certainly look at i
23 these aspects of their design and see how they have taken them i
24 into account.
25_
And we are not going to drop the subject, and we are Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L
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37 O
1 not going to say, go to hell, but -- but it also implies, I 2
would hate to tell them that not only we can't do it, but i
3 somebody else should do it.
4 MR. REED:
May I tell you a story of some 30' years 5
ago. You know a lot of criticism has been directed at the 6
utility companies over the years, they are not doing a good job 7
and yet they were made the sole licensee, sole responsible 8
party.
9 I will tell you a story about how the first, one of 10 the first commercial nuclear power plants was site --
11 In -- there were a few utility offices who knew 12 nothing about nuclear, maybe one employee knew a little
(])
13 something about nuclear.
And parading past these officers of 14 the Yankee Company were groups of marketing people made up of -
I can recall names, Sam Unnemeyer III and his group from 15 16 General Electric, and Simpson and his group from Westinghouse.
17 And the homogeneous boys and Allen Weinberg and then some more.
18 And parading past these poor, uninformed executives, 19 were these people from marketing each telling their stories 20 about how great boiling water was, and PWR was and homogeneous 21 was, and sodium graphite was. And these people were supposed to 22 make a decision on what to do.
23 They had not capacity to make a decision on what to 24 do and the marketing people, of course --
25 Of course, but one person reduced it to the lieritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
38
/~N d
1 ridiculous, because he came in and he asked these executives, 2
the other presenters of reactors, what was the lowest cost per 3
kilowatt hour that the other people came out with?
4 And that man, who later became president or head man 5
at -- and the utility executives said, well, maybe it was two 6
or three mils per kilowatt hour and he went to the board and 7
wrote, 1.5 mils per kilowatt hour was what his would do.
8 Reducing all of this difference and this arguments 9
and these marketing approaches to absurdity.
All right, let me 10 say that we are still in sort of a position of absurdity, in 11 that, we, who ought to be leaders, or somebody ought to be 12 leaders are not reducing the conceptual aspects to the best
(])
13 options of reactors.
14 MR. MICHELSON:
What do you mean by "we"?
15 MR. REED:
We, the ACRS, we are not helping to reduce 16 these options and these marketing things and get to the best 17 options of conceptual design.
We are not doing that.
18 MR. MICHELSON:
There is a good question of whether 19 we should or not.
20 MR. REED:
Well, I think that we should help.
21 And what we are saying is, while we are answering the 22 letter, I am not even suggesting that perhaps the laboratory X i
I 23 should follow-on its A-45 work and come up with a diversity in l
24 principle is a good idea, and if it is a diverse in principle 25 from let's say, PWR.
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39 O
1 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, look here, I want to put that to 2
you, that is what I had in mind, I wanted to pick these topics 3
and then pick the options.
And illustrate how, in each design, 4
they were accomplished or not accomplished.
5 MR. REED:
Well, I think that it is a starting point, 6
the art of the possible, is that we can only pick one aspect to 7
pursue and I say, the most important is decay heat removal.
8 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, let's shut down the feeding l
9 process and then we can put that to sleep and then we can pick l
10 up number two.
l l
11 MR. SIESS:
Well, Jesse, your items could almost be 12 reduced to things that have been suggested before, that'there
({}
13 are only four items, that you have to regulate or really 14 rigorously pursue as far as safety is concerned.
15 One is criticality.
16 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well that is one.
17 MR. SIESS:
Another is containment and another is the 18 geometry of the reactor vessel and the fuel therein.
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, you are getting into details.
20 MR. SIESS:
And the other one is decay heat. removal.
21 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, these are not consistent topics 22 that you are talking about.
You create utility control and 23 then you jump to --
24 MR. REED:
1 think that we have to take a little 25 piece, like decay heat removal and then decide whether it is l
C:)
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1 good enough and if you say that it is not good enough, which 2
you have already done, in the -- then we must now suggest that 3
we don't have the resources and here is a path out of the 4
dilemm'a and the absurdity of everybody parading his own 5
version.
6 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, if I had to pick one subject, 7
because of limited resources or whatever reason, I think that I 8
would pick the same subject all right.
Of all the subjects 9
that I think that we could do some good on, that would be the 10 most likely.
And where good is needed, I think, that I am not 11 as worried about the reactivity problem as I am about the decay 12 heat removal for instance, although both of them clearly have
(])
13 to be achieved.
14 MR. REED:
Take up Charlie's suggestion.
He said 15 pick one subject -- decay heat removal and who in international 16 discussions, technical discussions, about decay heat removal in 17 Europe, Japan, if you want and here, and look at our 18 differences in where we are going.
19 Then the ACRS should recommend, perhaps and there 20 should be, perhaps the potential contractor in those meetings.
21 Then we should go out and decide what should be the best way 22 for decay heat removal for PWR's and for ABWR's.
MR. MICHELSON:
Well, isn't that sort of what A-45 is 23 24 supposed to be?
25 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
No.
O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L....--.
_____________________________________________.__________________________.________________m_
- _ _ - _ _ _ = _
s.
41 MR. EBERSOLE:
No, the A-45's are the -- of this 1
2 steam plant.
3
-MR.
REED:
Yes, the A-45 as it relates -- presumably 4-the A-45 has got to address new plants somewhere in there.
5 MR. MICHELSON:
They.are not going to do it though.
6-MR. REED:
Well, then we need an A-45.
7 MR.:MICHELSON:
I think that is a different issue 8
that.is laying on the table today, of this question basically 9
of advanced light water reactors and what should they look 10 like.
This is one important thing and if I could only do one 11 thing, this is the one that I would choose.
12 But I am wondering if that is what we should do at
-({) -
' 13,
all, as opposed to maybe something like Jesse suggested, or 14 like somebody else might suggest before we are done.
15 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well --
16 MR. MICHELSON:
Should we really focus on that 17 technical issue, in this arena, or should we focus on the issue 18 of advanced light water reactors and what should they look like 19 or which are the features that should be in them and so forth?
20 MR. REED:
I think that I would like to suggest right 21 out, that Dr. Erickson and his boys are best qualified to take 22 lon the contract to go forward with what you should do about 23 decay heat removal for future reactors.
24 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, that may be right and I would 25 not want to disagree with that.
But is that what we should do O
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1 as a response to site water?
2 MR. REED:
I think so.
3 MR. EBERSOLE:
He has sure got a background for it, 4
hasn't he?
5 MR. MICHELSON:
I am not quite ready to say that that 6
is what he had in mind, or if that is what our answer should 7
be.
l 8
MR. EDERSOLE:
I think that in this letter, we should 1
S carefully look for the words, in addition, Chairman Zech l
10 recommended that the ACRS address.
11 MR. MICHELSON:
What does that mean?
12 MR. EBERSOLE:
That is a very general word.
()
13 MR. MICHELSON:
Keep reading.
14 MR. EBERSOLE:
Address the feasibility benefit and 15 cost effectiveness of selecting a combined systems recommended 16 in --
17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well --
18 MR. EBERSOLE:
Then he says, the next critical word, 19 the review, should include plant reliability ate.
20 MR. MICHELSON:
Yes.
21 MR. EBERSOLE:
But the review can be a contracted 22 review.
23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
What Zech wrote here, is exactly 24 what I think that a numbor of us have said tnat staff should do 25 already but he has turned it around and put it on our 1
(
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 shoulders.
l 2
MR. MICHELSON:
So, now, the question is, what should 3
we do, what would we like to do, do like Glenn suggested look 4
at the decay heat removal or maybe like Jesse suggested, which 5
I think is looking at a broader spectrum of things.
Doing like 6
-- suggested, first of all, 7
CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, this was the list to be used, 8
when you reviewed the individual plants.
9 MR. MICHELSON:
I want to just do an orderly process 10 of' review in order of importance.
I 11 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
But you know, you have got to have a 12 requirement first, and many of these things are not
()
13 requirements, and that is the whole problem.
14 MR. REED:
The big brains of nuclear, the big 15 regulatory of nuclear, the big designers of nuclear have not 16 moved one step from 1957, thirty years ago, with respect to 17 lessening the utility executive's dilemma of what is best in 18 design of plants?
19 You can come right in 1987, run the same parade of 20 marketing people and the vendors past the utility execs, who l
21 make the decision on what they are going to do and they could 22 make the same mistakes over again, and not have the design 23 incorporations that they need, for best safety.
I think that l
24 we should lead in this situation.
25 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, that is, you are referring f
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L___-------
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!O 1
though, I'think to predominantly an economic.
- 2' MR. REED
I am not' talking economics.
I don't care
~
3 about economics, what I care about --
4 MR. MICHELSON:
Most of-what is preached when they 5
decide whether or not they are going to build a nuclear 6
plant -- everybody agrees that it is safe, but that does not l
7 become the.--
8 MR. REED:
We cannot solve Jesse's argument of 9
whether they are going to buy a BWR or
.PWR.
But we'should be 1
10 able to solve the argument of what the PWR should incorporate i
in the way'of-safety systems.
11 12 MR..MICHELSON:
Well, I think that the salesman's
.( )
.13 level that you are talking about, and I was in'on those for 14 many, many years, that it does not get around too much to talk 15 about the details of safety in that level. It gets around to 16 talking.about the economic advantages of PWR's and BWR's and 17 the particular vendors product.
18 MR. REED:
Well, I was in a different room.
19 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
What he is going to sell it for.
20 MR MICHELSON:
Yes, yes, but not that everybody --
-21 they would not even talk to you if you did not guarantee if it 22 was safe to begin with and that goes without saying almost.
23 They have some people to check the details to make sure that 24 they agree that it is safe, but beyond that, the executives are 25 concerned with economics.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 1MR. REED:
I was in a different room.
The' executives 2-that I'saw, listened to the stories a'nd they1could not really 3
judge whether.or not what was being told to them.was true, or 4
not, or whether it was.best or not, and they could have perhaps 5-
. flipped a coin to make their choice.
6 MR. MICHELSON:
Sometimes, I think that they might 7
have done that.
8 MR. REED:
They did not talk economics at all.
That 9
was left to their lead company and their purchasing people and-10 the Chairman of.the' Board of the lead company, somewhere in 11 Colorado.
12
'MR.'EBERSOLE:
Well, I seem to recall about-four j) 13 questions, and one starts with, can you build it?
And'is it 14 safe?
15 And.how much will it cost, and when can I have it?
16 MR. MICHELSON:
And it is the how much will it cost 17 and-when I can have it that were the time frames.
18 That they understood better than the first two 19 questions to begin with.
20 MR REED:
Well there was a little bit of economics 21 in that the man would come in and ask how many mils per 22 kilowatt hour the last presenter put on the blackboard.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, I am sure that you all read the 24 Admiral's letter, which he examined the cost distribution of I
25 nuclear power around the nation at large and he always found l-j Heritage Reporting Corporation L
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46 (3
wt 1
that it was just a shade under the cost per kilowatt hour of 2
whatever the competing cost was.
3 MR. REED:
Well, -- in the subsidization range 4
period, but that is soon --
5 MR. EBERSOLE:
Wherever he went in the country, it 6
was always just slightly less than coal, oil and gas.
7 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, you know, some of these things i
8 that were asked for in this letter, are nice things to have, 9
but to make a technical decision on what is prudent to do, you 10 don't need these things.
If you look at N plus 2, the-11 recommendation on N plus 2, the Staff says, yes, we think that 12 you ought to'do that, but we are not required to do that.
(])
13 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
If you look at N plus 2, the 14 recommendation of N plus 2.
The staff says yes, we think that 15 you ought to do that, but we are not requiring it.
16 DR. SIESS:
We cannot do that.
17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Cannot do what?
18 DR. SIESS:
We cannot make a statement like that.
19 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
No.
I am saying that is what the 2
20 staff said in reply to our letter.
We agree that you should 21 not do it.
22 DR. SIESS:
They cannot require it.
23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Dut we are not requiring it.
24 DR. SIESS:
They cannot require it under the present
)
25 regulations.
)
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1 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I understand.
2 DR. SIESS:
They'have not got far enough'into the 3
severe accident business to apply it there.
And even with the 4-I.P.E.s and'that stuff, unless they come up with something that 5
.does.not' meet the safety goal, somebody's' idea of a safety f
6
-goal,.they cannot require it there.
- i 7
MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, the classic deficiency is=in the 8
service system where they do'not have N plus 2, Charlie'.- They 9
have got two systems,.and one of them is guaranteed to fail.
-10 They have to meet the emergency without redundancy.
11 MR. MICHELSON:
Without single failure.
12 CHAIRMAN WYLIE: -That was what.I was alluding'to when Q
'13-I said that we' recommend that the Commission develop an overall 14 design philosophy.and design requirements for future white 15 water reactors.
16 MR. EBERSOLE:
Those are good words.
17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
They do not have it.
18 DR. SIESS:
I would try to put that in a letter and 4
19 debate it for a' couple of months.
20 MR. REED:
Let me ask this question.
If you had 21 dedicated removal, would you still want N plus 2 on the other 22 system?
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
Not necessarily.
'24 MR. REED:
Well, let's not talk about that.
j i
25 MR. EBERSOLE:
It would become an economic problem O
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L
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x/
1 then instead of a safety problem.
2 Dit SIESS:
I.am reading the Westinghouse letter.
i 3
And it mentions that during the design and licensing process l
4 for each of these designs that-attention is focused on j
5 improvements aimed at maximizing safety while maintaining the 6
economic viability.
This is the kind of stuff.
I 7
CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
But that last one, the economic i
8 viability thing, that is in the eye of the beholder as to what 9
that means.
j 10 DR. SIESS:
Yes.
And of course, that is not any of 11 NRC's business.
But the letter still says cost benefit.
Now 12 whether he is talking cost benefit in terms of safety or cost
(])
13 benefit in terms of something else.
You know, if you make it 14 expensive enough, they are not going to build it and you'cannot 15 get much safer than that.
A nuclear plant that is not there is 16 not going to hurt anybody.
Something else might kill them.
I 17 MR. REED:
Well, it is replacement that will hurt 18 somebody more.
19 DR. SIESS:
That is not our job.
20 MR. MICHELSON:
I had a little problem just before 21 Dr. Siess' comment on his question of dedicated.
I think that 22 you asked that if we had a dedicated removal would we also need 23 N plus 2.
Well, you have to be very careful about what you 24 mean by dedicated.
25 Do you mean a third train or do you mean two of them Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
49 AU 1
with a lot of physical separation and protection?
If'you only 2
mean two, then you are in the same problem that you had'to 3-begin with.
If one is needed and it fails, you cannot take 4
single failure in the other train.
And the removal is needed 5
routinely on the way down in the operation.
6 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, I do not know.
7 MR. MICHELSON:
We have a terminology problem always 8
when we say dedicated.
9 What do you mean, do you mean that extra one part to 10 the side?
11 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I think that is what it means.
12 MR. MICHELSON:
Your item one, dedicated bunkered, I
()
13 do not know about bunkered, alternate principle.
You do<not 14 need dedicated plus N plus 2, in addition to N plus 2.
p 15 DR. SIESS:
Gentlemen, we would never have got that 16 letter written if we had to define everything that we said in 17 it.
18 MR. MICHELSON:
No, no.
I think that wo defined I
19 clearly in our letter what it meant.
20 DR. SIESS:
Oh, no, we did not.
We-got it so muddy 21 that everybody voted for it except four people.
22 MR. EBERSOLE:
Who would disagree with me strongly 23 when I say that I think that the boiler and the concept of l
24 doing over-cycle boiling means to acquire an independent 25 dedicated process.
It is a very simple configuration.
O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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([1 1
DR. SIESS:
I think that it is immaterial to the 2
purpose of this ad hoc subcommittee.
3 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, I am trying to get on this N 4
plus 2.
5 MR. MICHELSON:
I would disagree with you.
You have 6
to :dentify the event that you are talking about and how long 7
after the event before the system will work.
4 8
MR. EBERSOLE:
I know, you have a design problem.
9 DR. SIESS:
This committee was appointed to reply to-10
-this letter and not to design the next boiler reactor.
11 MR. MICHELSON:
I think that we would agree first of 12 all that we do not have the resources and that we should go
()
13 ahead and tell him.
14 MR. EBERSOLE:
But does he not realize that and he I
15 really means that if we need to hire whoever, Sandia.
16 DR. SIESS:
No.
Because it costs as much as it costs 17 to run the ACRS.
18 MR. MICHELSON:
I think that we should not even 19 volunteer to go out and hire somebody to do the job.
You 20 should not use the resources as the argument on the why not, 21 but rather what Dr. Siess suggested, and that is that it is 22 just not appropriate for us.
23 DR. SIESS:
I have got a draft letter, if I can read 24 it.
I mean literally if I can read it.
But it starts off with 25 a memo dated such and such a date, "Mr.
Hoyle transmitted your m
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51-Fg
-1 recommendation that -- " and it would then. quote the two 2
. sentences, okay.
"We have= considered this request, and must 3
respond that this. task is not within the competence, resources
-4 or charter of the ACRS."
We could' argue to Saturday about-5' those'words.
6 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, it is a little terse.
'7' DR. SIESS:
No, I have got more.
8 MR. MICHELSON:
Oh, okay.
9' DR. SIESS:
And here I have written it three ways.
I
' 10 "This third issue that you have requested are those that must l
)
11 be done by designers of nuclear power plants.
Since both GE
~ 12-and Westinghouse have stated.that their advanced LWR designs
(])
13 already incorporate most or all of these features, we would 14 assume that such studies have already been made."
i 15 MR. MICHELSON:
I do not go along with that.
16 DR. SIESS:
Well, they say they have.
j 1
17 MR. REED:
Well, you go along with a semi' version of I
18 that.
)
19 DR. SIESS:
"As we review these designs in the coming 20 years, we will, of course, take special note of the extent to 21 which these features are incorporated."
Or something like 22 that.
=
23 MR. REED:
Well, change that paragraph to say that 24 one way of accomplishing the purpose is by the designers 25 bringing forth.
O.
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-DR.
SIESS: -But for what purpose?- We are not talk:ng 2
aboutia. purpose.
We are' talking about, "to address the 3
feasibility benefit.and cost effectiveness of selected and 4
combined systems recommended in the Camel letter including 5-plant reliability challenges, complexity, and burden on plant 6
maintenance personnel."- That is what they are talking about.
7.
MR. REED:
Okay.
Designers can address it, but I do 8
not like the objectivity of designers.
9 DR. SIESS:
Who else la going to address it?
10 MR. REED:
I think that it is time for the NRC with 11 the input of. competent design lab people to lay down a 12 conceptual design.
(]).
13 DR. SIESS:
That may be, but that is not what they.
14 asked us to do.
You may be perfectly right that they ought to
'15 develop new GDCs and do all of these other good things.
But we 16 are responding to a letter'which asks us to address the 17 feasibility benefit and cost effectiveness of these twelve 18
-items or. twenty items that we.had taking into account the 19 reliability challenges, complexity, and burden on plant 20 maintenance personnel.
Now that is what a designer does.
21 MR. REED:
You said that ACRS cannot do it.
22 DR. SIESS:
That is right.
And then I said those are>
23 studies that must be done by designers, i
24 MR. REED:
You said must be done and you said 25 designers.
O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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DR. SIESS:
Now you are reading this two different
-2 ways, and I see your point.
.I do'not_say that these studies i
3 can only be,done by designers.
I say that they are studies 4
that must be done when you design a nuclear power plant.
A
- 5 designer has to do these things to design the product that.is 6
going-to be any good.
7 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well_, 90. percent I think of the 8
design of the plants has been done by deterministic type 9
engineering, and.very few studies have been made.
10 DR. SIESS:
Of-feasibility and cost effectiveness?
11 CHAIRMAN WYLIEt Well, anything is feasible.
12 Feasible. moans.that you can do it.
-i
( ):
13 DR. SIESS.:
Oh, I know.
But do you not think that' 14 Westinghouse has looked to see whether it was feasible to put 15 in something or that it was cost effective to do this,-do you 16 not think that they considered plant reliability challenges?
I 17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I think that they used judgment.
18 Now they have made some studies obviously.
l 19 DR. SIESS:
I am not saying how they did it.
I am l
20 talking about most designers.
l 21 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I am not arguing the fact that you 22 have to do all of these things.
23 DR. SIESS:
You have to do all of these things.
24 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
That you said here to make the 25 judgments, and that is not true.
O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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DR.SIESS:
Okay.
But my point.got confused here.
2 3
4 5
6 7
8 9
10 11 12 f]
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 l
21 22 23 24 25 O
{
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m 1
My point, I guess, I will turn it around.
Westinghouse'and GE 2
have said that they have got all of these things.
Now I would 3
assume that somewhere in the process of getting them that they i
4 made some studies of the type that you are talking about.
~
5 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, I do not know.
I think that j
6 the guy who wrote that letter --
7 MR. REED:
Licensing and marketing.
8 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yes, a marketing guy, and he does i
9 know.
10 DR. SIESS:
Now let me modify this by taking out that 11 sentence and simply say, "As you know, both GE and Westinghouse l
l 12 has stated that their advanced reactor designs do indeed I
()
13 incorporate most or all of these features.
And as we review 14 them, we will take special note of it."
15 MR. EBERSOLE:
Yes, but let me stop here.
You made 16 some statement that had years in it.
I would restate that by 17 saying that we would make an evaluative effort to see whether 18 these features were incorporated as early as we possibly can.
19 DR. SIESS:
Well, I will be happy to say that, 20 because I am not going to be here for another year.
And you j
i 21 guys three years from now can explain why it took you three 1
22
- years, i
1 23 MR. EBERSOLE:
But the problem is that when you stack i
24 up the plant pieces together, by the time that you get to the
]
l 25 fifteenth piece, you have so far locked yourself in that you
(
i 1
l Heritage Reporting Corporation l
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\\-)
1 are with what you started with.
2 DR. SIESS:
You object to the coming years.
I
'3 started to put weeks.
Instead I was going to change it to 4
decades.
The thing would read just as well simply if we say, 5
"As we review these designs, we will - " and do not worry about 6
the time.
He does not care if we are going to review.them next 7
week.
8 MR. EBERSOLE:
You know what happens though, I have 9
done it myself.
You find in the fifteenth evolution of your 10 effort that you forgot something that you should have put in.
11 DR. SIESS:
Jesse, it does not make any difference 12 what we write to Zech.
What we write to Zech in this letter is j) 13 going to have no effect whatsoever on what the ACRS does.
14 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, let me ask a question.
We 15 wrote the letter in January.
And we said here are some things j
16 that we think, that the ACRS thinks, should be studied for I
17 inclusion in future design.
Now he turns around after 18 discussing the thing and says, hey,'how about doing these I
19 things for me here.
20 MR. MICHELSON:
How feasible is it and so forth.
21 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yes.
And you are right that we 22 should have never written that other letter.
Because we were 23 suggesting I thought when we wrote that letter in January that L4 the staff would conduct these studies.
25 MR. MICHELSON:
Or that they pass it on to licensees.
O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 1
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1 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Or however they are going to do it.
2 Dut that they examine these things for inclusion in future 3
designs as a requirement.
4 MR. MICHELSON:
This is just a partial checklist of 5
the kind of things that we thought ought to be looked at in the 6
future.
7 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Or required for future design.
8 DR. SIESS:
And we hurt Westinghouse's feelings by l
9 not saying that they had done some of them.
GE had done some 10 of them.
These were not all new ideas.
They were totaled up 11 from what we had seen in other places.
12 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
But what is bothering me a little
()
13 bit now is that we should say something here that reiterates 14 our recommendation that this work be done.
Not just write it 1
15 off and say do not do it.
16 MR. MICHELSON:
Oh, yes, I will go along with that.
17 The thing is that we are not the ones to do it.
18 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
No, I agree with that.
19 DR. SIESS:
What were your implementation words?
20 MR. MICHELSON:
In the letter?
21 DR. SIESS:
What we said at the very end, additional 22 comments below.
On page 2, we say, "Each is worthy of serious 23 consideration in connection with future designs."
Now what is 24 pretty ambiguous.
1 25 CHAIR 3AN WYLIE:
Yes 0
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(>
1 MR. MICHELSON:
Noncommittal is the word.
2 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
But if you take the opening sentence 3-of the second paragraph.
4 DR. SIESS:
I am just trying to see where.
5 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Look at that opening sentence up 6
there under dedicated and protected.
7 DR. SIESS:
No, I am trying to get it on the overall l
8 list.
1.
9 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yes, okay.
10 DR. SIESS:
-- recommend that future reactors 11 should be designed to be safer than current ones."
That, you 12 know, would be a safety goal type statement.
"We believe that,
()
13 it could be achieved with reasonable economy with better 14 technologies available.
There are a lot of things that have 15 been done by other people, and not all of these have been 16 incorporated in the newest reported LWR designs."
And that wss 17 the sentence that really should have been challenged.
"We 18 believe that many of these can be incorporated with an 19 acceptable effect on plant operations," and so forth.
20 Nowhere in here does it say that we ain't going to 21 approve something that does not have it, or that the staff 22 sh6uld require it.
23 MR. MICHELSON:
I do not think that we were that 24 clear in our recommendations or intended to be, or you would 25 not have got the letter of, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
59 J-)
Q 1
DR. SIESS:
We did.
So what we ended up doing was 2
putting down a list of things that we knew could be done that 3
we thought would improve safety.
4 MR. REED:
I have difficulty figuring out how you 5
people were able to do such a fine letter with me being absent 6
at the time.
And I do not think that you should undercut the 7
letter.
I think that you should perhaps repeat the importance 8
of those recommendations.
9 DR. SIESS:
Everybody thought that it was a great 10 list of recommendations.
11 MR. MICHELSON:
It was a partial list of the kinds of 12 things.
(])
13 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
If you look, as I said, at'the 14 opening sentence under dedicated protected removal.
It says, 15 "We recommend for consideration that future light water 16 reactors include a dedicated protected redundant removal."
17 DR. SIESS:
Do not recommend that the Commission 18 require it.
I' 19 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, how can they not.
Well, it 20 includes it.
21 DR. SIESS:
You see, the letter was addressing the 22 industry.
23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I assume that if we write a letter j
24 that we are offering our advice as to what should be done.
25 DR. SIESS:
But nobody has objected to this list.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 Nobody has objected to any item on the list.
2 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, the staff did.
3-DR..SIESS:
Everybody says we think this is a great 4
list.
These are all things that we are working on.
WAPWR says 5
we have got most of them in our plant.
GE says we have got all 6
of them in our plant.
Nobody has objected to the list.
7
.MR.
MICHELSON:
Some of them have not read'the list 8
very carefully.
9 DR. SIESS:
I know that, but nobody has objected to 10
'it.
11 MR. MICHELSON:
Just as an example to clarify'my 12 statement.
In fire protection, the key point of the whole
(])
13 thing was safety grade fire protection.
Nobody would ever 14 object.to-that.
Except I think that if they read'it carefully 15 the first thing that they would have said is why do we need 16 safety grade fire protection.
They all harped on the 24 hour2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> 17 versus 72 hour8.333333e-4 days <br />0.02 hours <br />1.190476e-4 weeks <br />2.7396e-5 months <br />, and that is almost immaterial.
But nobody ever 18 picks up on it, because I do not think that they ever red it 19 carefully.
-20 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
In answering the letter, the staff 21 under dedicated kayete removal system say, hey, you know it is 22 expensive.
It is going to cost S70 million.
All right.
Now 23 the $70 million is what they came up with on a back bid.
That 24 does not have any relation to future plants.
It is back bid 25 costs.
That is where they came up with that number.
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1 DR. SIESS:
They could make it $70 million if they 2
wanted to.
3 MR. REED:
They could make anything $70 million.
4 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
The point is though that they have 5
not really looked at what the requirement would be on a future 6
plant.
i 7
MR. MICHELSON:
Now what does dedicated here mean 8
though, do we know what we meant when we said dedicated in that 9
first item as an exhibit; nobody questioned that, but what did 10 we mean by dedicated?
Because Westinghouse says we have got 11 it, what does Westinghouse says we have got it, but does 12 Westinghouse WAPWR have dedicated kayete removal?
()
13 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
No.
14 MR. MICHELSON:
I think not.
But so what did we mean 15 even, although we did not want to get that proscriptive.
16 DR. SIESS:
Charley, the staff cannot require it.
17 Their criteria are expressed in terms of a single failure, et 18 cetera, et cetera, or in terms of severe accident problems I
19 which gets into BRAS.
And the staff is not designing plants.
20 They are setting criteria, and letting the industry come up 21 with a solution.
Now they end up designing questions and 22 answers to some extent and letting industry know what they will 23 accept or not accept.
I 24 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, the general design criteria
\\
25 for things are requirements saying that you do things in a Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 0
62 0
1 certain way.
2 MR..MICHELSON:
Sure.
But I think that what.Chet is 3
saying is that you cannot ask for more than that.
It does not 4
ask.for dedicated.
5 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Unless you change the general design 6
criteria.
7 DR. SIESS:
That is right.
8 MR. MICHELSON:
But that is-part of what you have to 9
do.
10 DR. SIESS:
Their response was we cannot requireLit, 11 but it is implied under the present regulations.
12 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Oh, I know that.
But this is for
(])
13 future plants, and I thought that_was what we were saying.
14 These are things that you examine.
You change the design
-15 criteria if you adopt these. things.
16 DR. SIESS:
You see, the Commission never got the l
17 point.
The Commission has got a policy statement on future 18 reactors that says that they want it to be standardized.
They 19 have got a couple of policy-statements I guess.
20 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, the future reactors addresses 21 basically severe accidents.
22 DR. SIESS:
Well, they have got a policy statement on 23 future reactors.
They had a laundry list in it, too, remember.
24 It is going to be multiple systems, but everything is going to 25 be simple and so forth.
It is in language that is a lot less O
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specific than this, and almost completely uninterpretable and 2
unenforceable.
3 We have another policy statement on standardization 4
saying that we strongly believe that future reactors should be 5
of standard design.
6 MR. MICHELSON:
Whatever you did was not right, was 7
it.?
DR. SIESS:
Let me give you an example of something 8
that was done in the past expressing an ACRS opinion as a 9
message to the industry.
We went through a long study on what 10 we called at that time metropolitan siting, close in siting.
11 We had a lot of meetings on it and developed a measure of site 12 population index.
()
13 And it was interesting when we met with the industry.
14 There were only two utilities in the whole United States that 15 was interested in close in siting, and that was Coned and the 16 Los Angeles area.
Not PG&E, but whoever is in San Bernadino.
17
'And it got to the point where the committee had 18 decided that maybe we had gone too far.
And we wrote a letter 19 pointing out that we really were not against close in siting if 20 certain criteria were met.
We had felt that we had given a 21 wrong message to the industry, and we wanted to give them a 22 message of what we would accept.
And in a sense, these were 23 the kinds of things that I".RS would accept in approving plants.
j 24 You know, we had a great deal of clout in those days.
25 If the ACRS was not going to buy something, you know, you had a l
(
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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()
1 hell of a time getting a CP.
We went through hearing after 2
hearing after meeting after meeting.
So this in part was a 3
message to the industry I think.
It was intended as a message 4
t.o the staff.
The staff does not listen that much any more.
5 For the staff to pick up on this, they have to go back and 6
revise everything, GDCs and everything else.
It is not going 7
to be imposed through BPAs, Part 100.
It is not going to be 8
imposed through PRAs.
i 9
MR. MICHELSON:
It might be imposed by ACRS.
10 DR. SIESS:
That is what I am saying.
It was a 11 message to the industry.
12 MR. MICHELSON:
Right now today though pushing on
(])
13 something hard.
14 DR. SIESS:
We reviewed Hope Creek.
15 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I do not know 16 MR. MICHELSON:
On future plants, yes.
17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
We pushed awfully hard on GESSAR on 18 some things that we did not get very far on.
1 19 DR. SIESS:
But we reviewed --
)
1 i
20 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
All they tell you is that it is not 21 a requirement.
22 DR. SIESS:
Look.
When we reviewed Newbold Island, a 23 close in site, they came up with a completely new containment
)
24 concept.
They revised the reactor vessel design, the whole 25 well system for better inspection.
They used direct injection Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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65 0
1 on the H.P.S.I. or the L.P.S.I.,
I forgot, one of them, into 2
the vessel.
There were four or five design improvements that 3
were made as a result of ACRS concerns during the course of the 4
ACRS review.
5 They were not told in advance that these were i
6 necessary for a bad site.
It was developed out of the 7
discussion.
Now they would have been justified in PRA or 8
anything else, I do not know.
Oh, I think that the leak 9
collection system on the main steam isolation valves came out 10 of that.
I am not sure.
You know, the collection system where 11 you dump it back into the vessel.
You know, routine release 12 limits, not accident limits.
The vessel design came out of
([)
13 concerns about vessel split.
14 So there was a case where the ACRS had an effect on 15 design good or bad or right or wrong.
And this is us telling 16 people things that we think would go for improved safety.
And 17 nobody has argued that these are impossible except the staff.
10 Now we are argue as to whether they have implemented the way 19 that we would implement it.
Somebody coming in and saying, 20 yes, we have a dedicated system.
Well, it is not.
21 MR. MICHELSON:
Not what we had in mind.
22 DR. SIESS:
Well, you know.
That has to develop as a 23 dialogue.
And I think that the opportunity for the dialogue 24 comes along with the ABWR.
And the WAPWR may be a little late.
25 They have already sold two ABWRs to Japan.
That is their O
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 problem.
2 Again I do not think that we have to defend this 3
-letter.
Nobody has attacked the letter as such.
It is 4
important.
The staff says we cannot require it.
Maybe we do 5
like the Germans do, you know.
If they require it, you do it.
6 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
In Germany, it is a requirement, N 7
plus 2.
8 DR. SIESS:
The requirement or the statement that it 9
is not safety related,.therefore just design it, do it.
10 MR. MICHELSON:
In terms of method of operation for 11 the future that might then lead us to a way of replying to the 12 letter, I think that we should give some thought to the idea
()
13 that there should be a subcommittee which is continuing to look 14 at this question of improved white water reactor design 15 features as opposed to reviewing the details of the ABWR 16 question or whatever.
17 Because I believe that there are a number of items 18 that perhaps need to be thought through more carefully and 19 completely among the items that we had already suggested.
I 20 think that there are a number of items that we did not suggest 21 yet for one reason'or another that ought to be kicked around in l
22 a subcommittee kind of level.
And if they are thought l
23 sufficiently important, to get the endorsement of a full 24 committee for such items.
25 In essence, I think that the subcommittee could O'
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G' 1
develop the checklist that Jesse was talking about.
Then that 2
same subcommittee should be asking that each project' review 3
committee such as ABWR as they are looking at look at this 1
4
'particular developed checklist of things and see how that l
5 particular project stacks up against the checklist of things to 6
think about.
7 In other words, it is a positive action on our part.
j i
8 It would take I think about all the level of resources that we l
l 9
could easily apply.
I think that to go beyond a subcommittee 10 doing this sort of thing is more than the ACRS has the 11 resources to do.
12 But we might be able to consider that kind of an
([
13 approach as a promise, and indicate to the Chairman that this 14 is what we are doing, and that subcommittee will look at 15 certain of these and try to expand upon and look in greater 16 depth at what these advanced light water reactors ought to Jook 17 like, and that it would be responsible to verify to the extent 18 to which the various projects that come along are incorporating 19 these things, and from time report to the full committee and 20 the Chairman in the form of a letter as to what we are finding.
21 That would be one approach.
But it would stay at a 22 high general plane to debate some of these issues in more 23 depth, expand some, and maybe introduce some new ones.
24 DR. SIESS:
That might work But in my experience, 25 we focus a whole lot better on caces than we do on the O
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1 abstract.
2 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, there is another alternative 3
that one could consider.
And that is that you should have only 4
one subcommittee looking at all white water advanced concepts.
5 And that the same subcommittee should also be looking at this 6
list or an expansion of it or whatever.
But then you begin to 7
get into more time than the subcommittee members would have.
i 8
You have to somehow subdivide our job a little bit.
l 9
DR. SIESS:
I think that what is important, and l
10 neither one of these accomplishes it quite the way that I think l
11 that it ought to be, I think that in terms of improvements that 12 the full committee ought to have a lot more involvement in the
()
13 ABWR and the WAPWR.
They should know a lot more about it than 14 they do.
15 MR. EBERSOLE:
Along these general lines --
16 DR. SIESS:
We have got three subcommittees that you 17 are talking about.
One is sort of overviewing, and the other 18 one is looking at the specific applications.
I think that you i
19 learn specific applications.
If you have got something to work 20 on, you can ask questions and you can get answers.
But I think 21 that the subcommittees ought to look at that, and to get them 22 in frequently.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
Yes.
24 DR. SIESS:
Those plants are damn far along.
We have 25 looked at them, and we have seen them.
)
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'l CHAIRMAN,WYLIE:
It has been a long time.
2 DR..SIESS:
'I know I have, and there have been some
,3 '
changes.
4 MR. EBERSOLE:
Chet, we are guilty of the very thing 5
that_we complained about which is compartmentalization and 6
specialization of effort.
7 DR. SIESS:
When are those plants going to be' coming 8
in for licenses?
9 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I do not know.
- 10' DR. SIESS:
In about two years from now.
11 MR. MAJOR:
A year and a half for the ABWR.
12 DR. SIESS:
I think that the full ACRS should have
()
- 13 seen that thing a half a dozen times or more before it comes 14 in.
15 MR. EBERSOLE:
When we do, I think that these 16 fundamental basic questions ought to be asked against the 17 background here.
18 MR. MICHELSON:
But my only comment on that is that I 19-would really like to see those be developed at some kind of 20 subcommittee level, not at full committee level.
Because then 21 you are back to trying to write the letter like the Camel 22 letter at full committee.
And I thought that was kind of not 23 the way to do it.
24 DR. SIESS:
Two subcommittees, let's assume that 25 there are still two subcommittees, to address these things as O
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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/^\\
'~
1 they are looking at those plants, as I suggested earlier.
And 2
then they bring them in to take them up issue by issue.
Maybe 3
in one three hour session, we discuss what is their whole 4
philosophy as well as their physical plant on dedicated heat 5
removal, what are they doing about heat removal.
6 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, what I was trying to do along 7
the line of just what you said before I lose the thought.
8 Somehow I think that we need to be reviewing and thinking 9
further on the issues and also raising additional ones.
And I 10 do not know if the ABWR would be doing that or should they, or 11 the Westinghouse people should be worrying about the boiling 12 water, all on the same basic problem.
()
13 DR. SIESS:
I think that we threw out about eight 14 issues when we wrote this letter.
15 MR. MICHELSON:
And there were quite a few that we 16 did not get on the table even.
17 DR. SIESS:
Well, there were a lot in there.
I kept 18 a tally and jotted down twelve I think it was, and there are 19 still.some others out there.
Thene are the ones that we agreed 20 on.
If we are trying to give the industry a message, which 21 certainly GE and Westinghouse got, because GE came back real 22 quick, you know, and says we have been doing all of this, we 23 would like to talk to you about how we are doing this, I think 24 they said, we should have taken them up on it.
25 But we will do a lot better in details on these items Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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/^3 i
V 1
now that we have got them.
We may have to refine them, and we 2
may have to change them, and we have to interpret them.
But 3
you can only go so far with words.
You have got to start 4
somewhere looking at systems and seeing what they have got and 5
how they got there.
6 MR. MICHELSON:
Right.
7 DR. SIESS:
Now how they got there is in effect what 8
Zech asked us by looking at the tradeoffs, the feasibility 9
benefit, cost effectiveness, reliability challenges, to what 10 extent can they argue.
If they say, well, I did not do it this 11 way because and they have a good reason for because, maybe they 12 are good reasons.
()
13 But my point that I was trying to make in my letter 14 here was that the things that he is asking us to do are the 15 things that the designer should be doing.
And presumably some 16 of it has been done.
And if it has not,been done, we would 17 like to find out to what extent it has or has not.
18 And we have got two examples.
We have not got access 19 to Konvoi.
There has been some talk with the Germans about why 20 they did certain things.
But you know, that article in 21 Nucleonics Weekly explaining why we cannot do things like the 22 Germans is true.
23 You can only go so far.
You can see what they did, 24 but you cannot do the same thing in the same way, because they 25 operate in a different system.
es k_)
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'l MR. MICHELSON:
Incorporation of foreign experience 2
ought to be a part of this whole business.
3 DR. SIESS:
Yes.. When they do things, they do things 4
for reasons.
'5 MR. MICHELSON:' But are you suggesting:only two 6
subcommittees then for the continuing approach, one on boilers 7
and one on pressurized water, is that what you are saying, and 8
nothing on -- that both of them would have'to look at the 9
. foreign as it relates to their areas of interest?
10 DR. SIESS:
I do not know how much they would want to 11 ~
look at the foreign.
12 MR. MICHELSON:
I really think that'I would like to
'()
13 see the one subcommittee, except that there is a lot of ground 14 for one subcommittee to cover.
15 DR. SIESS:
I was going to say that one approach 16 would be we are talking about the advanced light. water reactor 17 I guess.
This is the only advanced light -
is not EPRI 18 working on a small light water reactor, a modular.
Eventually, 19 we are going to look at those two, the GE and. Westinghouse 20 plants on a licensing basis.
And I wish I were around when 21 that happens, because it is going to be fascinating, because I 22 do not know what the licensing basis is.
3 1
23' CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, that is out.
l 24 MR. MICHELSON:
I think that he has a different basis 25 than that document.
'( )
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73 l'
DR. SIESS:
No.
.I mean by licensing basis.Part 100, 2'
severe' accidents, PRA, safety goals.
What now is the basis for 3
making the judgment that there.is no undue risk for health ~and 4
' safety of the public, is it compliance with the regulation, is 5.
it safety goals,.you know, the whole philosophical.
'6 MR..MICHELSON:
How do you' decide that.it is okay 7-now.
8 DR. SIESS:
Yes.
9-MR. MICHELSON: 'As opposed to the past.
10
,DR. SIESS:
Legally, how do you decide,.I guess.
I 11 have enough trouble knowing how we got reasonable assurance 12 before.
Now it is even more difficult.
But eventually, they
().
'13 are going to have to be licensed.
To go through the licensing 14 process, we have got to get specific.
15 But the other way is to think of them as examples of 16 so-called improved future reactors'.
They are both being 17.
advertised as improved.
And they are improvements, they are 18 significant improvements and differences.
19~
So we could certainly have an improved water reactor 20 committee that looked at those two in relation to this list.
21 If we have got a year and a half or two years, you know, they 22 can sort of alternate with them.
23 MR. REED:
Let me try again.
l 24 DR. SIESS:
And then when it comes up closer to the 25 licensing stage, you split your two committees probably.
O' Heritage Reporting Corporation j
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1 MR. MICHELSON:
When you get cown to the. final step 2
.here.where you areflooking at a lot-of details.
3 DR. SIESS: ~That might be two meetings.
j
~
4.
MR. MICHELSON:' We had a'little more back, was it on 5.
containment, which one did Sna subdivide the committee by 6
various areas?
7 DR. SIESS:
Severe accident.
- 8 MR.'MICHELSON:
Severe accident.
i 9
DR. SIESS:
And then we. dropped back. MR. MICHELSON:
Then we dropped back..
11 DR. SIESS:
We never used-it.
12 MR. MICHELSON:
Would this be a reasonable approach
()
- 13' to reinstituteLfor light water reactors, have a master
-14~
subcommittee that then has subcommittees on ABWR, and CE, and 15 whatever else came along on light water.
16 DR. SIESS:
Well, CE does not.have anything coming 17 along.
18 MR. MICHELSON:
I think that it is coming along.
19 DR. SIESS:
Does it have any significant 20 improvements?
21 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, we do not know.
22 MR. REED:
It has a primary blow-down system.
-23 DR. SIESS:
Okay.
24 MR. MICHELSON:
Is it reasonable though maybe to 1
25_
suggest that we go back and reorganize our light water approach Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
L+
17 5 b
1 oon the basis of the subcommittees, an arrangement of that sort?
2' DR. SIESS:
Or something like that.
3 MR. REED:
This is part of the reply, of course.
4' MR. MICHELSON:
I think that what Chet has written in 5
paragraph'one.is fine.
I think that his paragraph two modified
- 6 to take out the "must" sentence is okay.
I think that the next 7
thing to address and we should address this is that certainly 8
manufacturers have a vested interest in their design 1
9 continuity, a vested interest and a certain large amount of.
10 subjectivity.
Okay.
11 We should recommend and offer to the Commission that 12 there.should be a parallel effort of evaluation.
And that
([])
13 parallel effort in our opinion would be more objective, and l-14 might have more foreign input, and could avail itself better 15 without getting into the proprietary arguments.
l 16 MR. REED:
And that we think that the effort.could l'
17 best be handled to evaluate what is conceptually best for PWRs 18 and conceptually best'for BWRs -- best be handled by Erickson 19 and Company, as a follow-on contractor A-45, 20 MR. SEISS:
Let me speculate a minute.
I look at 21 what the Commission is doing, and I am sitting on the Advanced 22 Reactor Subcommittee, and they're not devoting many resources l'
23 to that.
'24 I don't know what resources they've devoting to BABWR l
l 25 and WALGO -- what kind of staff resources.
It seems to me the O-Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 1
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)
76 L :-
L*
1 cCommission'has made'its principle objective operating reactors.
'2 They've been saying some things about' future 3-reactors, but they're almost acting like there's not. going to p
4 be any future reactors.
5-A111the emphasis is on operation.
And here, we're l-
.6 sitting-around;this table and saying, you know, here are some g
7 future designs; here are some possible improvements..
8 You.ought to be thinking, get a little optimistic 9
that there is;a future in the nuclear business; there are going 3
10' to be some designs coming out.
11
- You can influence them now.
And'not.just 12.
standardization and certification, and that silly laundry list
+
L(])-
.13 they came out on the future reactors -- you know, they wanted.a 14' passive and inherent -- you remember the list.
15 Commented on it, but I didn't think it was very 16 helpfu'l to anybody.
It was contradictory enough.
But isn't 17 that what we're saying?
They ought to be paying more 18 attention.
l
]
19 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yes.
'20-MR.- SIESS:
And we ought to be paying more attention.
21 Now, we're spending a lot of. time on operating reactors, all J
22 the problems that are coming up; all the generic issue 23 resolutions and things of that sort.
24 But if we're going to have any influence on the 25 future -- and this is what Dave was pushing us into here.
This O.
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1 77 l
'(~%
\\)
1 is a statement.
Look at these things that are coming up, not I
I 2
working in the abstract.
3 MR. MICHELSON:
I think that's part of --
4 MR. SEISS:
A paragraph in our letter.
We ought to l
l 5
be able to do that -- we have to inform ourselves, first, I 6
think.
But I don't know what -- maybe they've got all the 7
resources they need, but my general impression was on the EPRI 8
effort, and on the advanced reactor's effort they've got a very 9
small -- you know, in fact, now advamced reactors there is a 10 branch in the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, just one 11 of the Branch Chiefs, and it is the Advanced Reactor and 12 Generic Issues Branch, a branch, Advanced Reactors and Generic
/( )
13 Issues, and Tom King has just been appointed Branch Chief.
14 And now, does that sound like very much emphasis on 15 advanced reactors?
16 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, --
17 MR. MICHELSON:
And as I say, I don't know what is 18 the EPRI work under?
Does anybody know?
l 19 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
That is a separate.
20 MR. MICHELSON:
That is still NRR, but that advanced 21 reactors is in research.
22 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, they don't look at that as an 23 advanced reactor necessarily.
The EPRI document is defining an 24 advanced reactor.
They are improved light water reactors.
25 MR. SIESS:
Well, the advanced reactors, I think are J
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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11 in research;because they are not even going to come.under the 2.
existing GDC, they are talking about re-light.GDC's and so 3
-forth.-
.4" MR. MICHELSON1' Their advanced. reactors are'the
'5 sodium and gas --
6'
.MR.
SIESS:
Yes, those are the reactors that 7-essentially could not be handled with the first criteria 8
because they were not written.for them, although weshave 9
managed to get -- and I.think that is the way that they
'30 separated _that out.
It required a new approach and they' stuck 11 it over in-research and why it is mixed up with generic issues, 12 I --
()
13 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, that too, does not make sense 14.
because they are unrelated.
There is a good relation between 15 improved light water and-generic issues, but there is little 16 relationship between the generic issues that we normally deal 17 with in the sodium and gas run reactors and so forth.
18-MR. SIESS:
It might be worth looking to see what 19.
kind of resources they are devoting to the future.
20 MR. EBERSOLE:
Chet, to try to home in on something, 21 if you look at ABWR, to what extent, to your' satisfaction, 22 have they handled the reactivity control problem?-
23 MR. SIESS:
I have not seen enough on ABWR to knowa c
24-MR. EBERSOLE:
You know they got rid of the double --
25 MR. SIESS:
Yes.
r i
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(") :
{
1 MR. EBERSOLE:
And they have a drive in as well as a 2
drop in.
3 MR. SIESS:
Not drop in, it still comes up.
- l 4
MR..EBERSOLE:
And they have a diverse -- system.
5 MR. MICHELSON:
So they have come a long way.
6 MR. EBERSOLE:
And everybody but Westinghouse has 7-diversity in the electronics.
And they all employ gravity fall 8
and none of them has an independent mechanical pump.
They all 9
employ the same mechanical pump use, and they all -- get the 10 power off, which is commonly accepted.
11 MR. MICHELSON:
Gravity is pretty reliable method.
12 MR. SIESS:
Well, it still works.
Redding Brown's --
.()
'13 inherent safety passive and active, and he points-out that 14 gravity is the inherent --
15 MR. EBERSOLE:
None, however, even approaches these 16 liquid metal jobs, you just can walk off and leave them and 17 they go to sleep.
18 MR. SIESS:
With metal fuel, Jesse.
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
Yes, of course.
But they --
'20 MR. MICHELSON:
What is wrong with the homogeneous 21 reactor then?
22 MR. EBERSOLE:
Don't wake up those dogs.
23 MR. MICHELSON:
The grass is always green further 4
24-out.
i 25 MR. SIESS:
They are all safe until you start to lieritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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0 1.
build it, but 2
MR. EBERSOLE:
I certainly have been impressed by the 3
EBR-II, 4
CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Listen, what are we saying about 5
-these recommendations today?
6 MR. SIESS: 'What I think that we ought to do, is the 7
first paragraph we sort of agreed on, we might not like the 8
words, but we cannot do it.
9
.Now, the second paragraph sort of says, without 10 saying it, that you know, we don't really see anything need to 11 do it, the detail type of analysis that he is talking about.
12 We have got two utilities that say that they have done it, and
()
13 we will pursue this with them as we review their plans.
14 Now, in view of the Staff's attitude, what more are 15 you going to get out of the Commission?
Even if the Staff.
16 wanted to do it, they could not do it.
?
17 MR. MICHELSON:
That is right, because they don't 18 have the information.
19 MR. REED:
I would like to add a sentence to your 20 second to last paragraph --
21 MR. SIESS:
They don't have the attitude to do it.
.22.
MR. REED:
Is that we suspect or we challenge that 23 the manufacturers have incorporated these features in their 24 designs, in the versions or in the way in which we think that l'
l 25 perhaps it suits the interests of -- risk.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 w---_____-
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1-That leads into the next paragraph, there ought to be 2
checks and balances on what the manufacturers are telling the 3
poor unsuspecting officers.
4 MR. SIESS:
That is what I said, we will take special 5
note of the extent to which these features are incorporated 6
into the design.
And then you can modify it how, and to the 7
extent'and manner in which and so.forth, but 8
MR. REED:
But you don't think that there is any 9
assistance needed for the NRC Staff and for ourselves in the 10 way of a study following on from A-45, to determine whether or 11
- not,
-12 MR. SIESS:
In fact A-45, that is just one issue that
- (])
13 14 MR. SIESS:
Look Glenn, 15 MR. MICHELSON:
That is just one of the various 16 issues --
17 MR. REED:
It is a key issue.
18 MR. MICHELSON:
But should we be pursuing the issues 19 in depth or should we maintain an overview?
20 MR. REED:
I really think that decay heat removal is 21 such a key issue that all others, orbit around that decision.
22 MR. MICHELSON:
I don't disagfee with you, but I 23 think that when we argue A-45, I will put that pitch in with 1
24 you along with a number of others, but the spare form is not in 25 the water.
/~)
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MR. SIESS:
The-study, they:have ways of getting --
2 basics.
3 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well there is one area in which we 4'
will have. difficulty.in reviewing projectsLto get any' feeling.
5 for and that is cost effectiveness of their alternatives.
They 6.
.are not going to talk costs.to us, I don't-believe.
7 MR. SIESS:
Well what are the legal aspects of that, 8
is that not~a court decision?
9 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, let me finish, we'have some, but 10 not much, it is rare that they talk about it, unless you have a 11
'particular modification-that you want and they will say that it-l 12 costs X dollars to do it this way, and Y dollars to do it this'
()
13 way and here are the benefits and here are the costs-benefits.
14 MR. MICHELSON:
Because if they can have a plant
-15 built in 17 months that is the biggest cost. savings they can 16 make.
17 M R'.
SIESS:
But I don't think that we can pursue cost 18-effectiveness of alternative areas very well with.the vendors, 19 they just generally don't talk about overall costs of plants,
)
20 because of the proprietary nature'of it.
21 But we can certainly pursue with them the reliability 22 of.those systems that they are proposing or the alternatives, 23 and in some of'these other issues.
Except for cost 24 effectiveness, I think that we could do a fair job.
25 MR. MICHELSON:
One of the key things, I think, in l
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my opinion and 1 tried to get it in a letter, is the 2
effectiveness of selected and combined systems. If you had the 3
dedicated heat removal system for when the blowdown, what else 4
could you get rid of?
5 MR. EBERSOLE:
That you could look at.
6 MR. SIESS:
If you have N plus 2, with separation, 1
7 what do you gain on pipe break?
What do you gain on fire i
8 protection, what do you gain on sabotage?
9 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Interaction.
i 10 MR. MICHELSON:
You could certainly think about 11 those.
I 12 MR. SIESS:
If you could increase your reliability of
,,()
13 on-site power sources, to 99.9, what does this do to our PHR 14 reliability?
Aux feedwater reliability?
Cost water 15 reliability?
16 MR. EBERSOLE:
And what does it cost to do that?
17 What do you interpret the effect to be of this recent 18 court decision from the safety aspects of design?
l 19 MR. SIESS:
Acreage.
-- says that they have always 20 done it, and I think that the way that the rules are written, 21 it does not mean a thing.
If it is essential for safety, you I
22 do it, it is only for the increment beyond that.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
But the question, you know, is the 24 degree of essentiality.
So it is still with us.
25 MR. SIESS:
Yes, and that is what I got back and I k
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1 don't know what our criteria are now for reasonable-assurance 2
is it.100 for severe accidents or whatever, but the point is i
3 that these things are all desirable, that we ao: for, we just 4
cannot do them.
i 5
MR. EBERSOLE:
I thought that there was a consistent 6
theme that came out of TAP-45, that said, if you had 7
consolidated, that is combined, into a dedicated system, all of 8
these costly features that you put out in the distributed l
9 systems, you would have been vastly ahead economically.
10 I thought that that came out but then since they are 11 oriented just to fix existing plants, TAP-45 is going to come 12 out very badly distorted as to what you could do with a new
(])
13 plant.
14 MR. SIESS:
But that is what Charlie was talking 15 about as to whether you are backfitting this stuff, or future, 16 and we agreed that it was future.
17, MR. EBERSOLE:
TAP-45 ought to have a preamble that i
18 says, that it is distorted because of its attempt fit patched 19 plants against a background of a modification that would 20 provide key functional features.
And it should not be so 21 recognized as a distortion of a general principle.
It is a 22 distortion because of the mode and time of the application of 23 the idea.
l 24 MR. SIESS:
Now, you know the kind of thing that I i
i 25 would like to do with say, ABWR, is start out and you say, if (3
\\#
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l' you'had this list.before you started designing the ABWR, what 2
would you have done?
3 MR. EBERSOLE:
That is right.
4 MR. SIESS:
And they would have said, you know, we 5
are orobably aware of most of these things, you have talked 6
about them enough and they are not news to us.
And then you 7
look at what they did, and say, now, do you think that this 8
meets what we said?
And they would say, well, we think that it 9
does the same thing and then you go into a discussion and some 10 of our opinions will change.
Somewhere we may get away~from 11
-the idea that if it is not safety grade, it is no good'.
12 Because when we do PRA's,.whether it is safety grade or not,
()
13 the reliability is assessed the same, right?
14 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, this is exactly what I want to L
15 do.
I see a -- ATWS for instance, what did you do with ATWS on 16 the ABWR?
17 MR. MICHELSON:
I think that what it is, is should we 18 develop a checklist by which we will judge these various 19 projects when they come through.
And I think that is probably
- c 20 basically a good idea.
21 MR. EBERSOLE:
We have always had it the way --
22 MR.. SIESS:
I had my list of things that have been 23 discussed on previous plants that I frequently knew who had 24 discussed them and in the Subcommittee, I tried to cover the 25 things that were of current interest to us.
Some of these were
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1 generic and we did not expect them to be done on all plants,
.2 but they got discussed in connection with that plant,.and
'3 sometimes our opinions changed.
'4 And that list was probably as long as this..In fact, 5
I could probably find one in the file somewhere that somebody 6
got out once as advice to some Committee chairman with about a 7
three page list, of Committee concerns that they were supposed 8
to address in a Subcommittee meeting, which you could never get' 9
around to.
-10 And part of that was to avoid discussing with the 11 full Committee, it never happened, but this one, is at a
-12 different level.
(])..
13 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, you know, I would-hope that --
14 I mean what I hope is that when we. wrote this letter in 15.
January, that the Commission would have picked up on this and 16 studied these items, with the idea that'if they proved out to 17 be of value, that they would incorporate these in the general 18 design criteria.
19 Now, maybe that is a poor assumption, I don't know, 20 on my part.
21 MR. MICHELSON:
If you give them time, I mean, it 12 2 could take years.
23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, I know, and apparently nothing 24~
is going to happen.
-25 MR. SIESS:
I don't think that you -- you know, we 1
)
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did not even phrase it such that they could.
How could they I
2 have incorporated a dedicated protective decay removal system i
3 and something else in, when we have said, you know, maybe if yo 4
have this, you can modify something else?
5 That takes a lot of study.
6 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, how do we communicate then the 7
things that we think should be done on the changes --
8 MR. MICHELSON:
By letter, just as we did on the 15th 9
' January, that is how we communicate these ideas.
10
{
CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, apparently you know, they send l
11 this'went to the Staff and the Staff answered it to the 12 Commission, and said, hey, some of these are pretty good and
)
i I) 13 s'ome of thS3e are not too good.
14 MR. MICHELSON:
Okay, now we start discussing with l
1S the Staff, the good and bad aspects of it, and we modify or f6 kind of narrow in on what we all agree are good ideas, and we i
17 start looking for these on the part of the vendor, and if the 18 vendoc does not come in with thcm, we ask him, why don't you, l
19 uhat is wrchq uith these?
)
1 20 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
And he says, it is not a I
1 21 requ ireme:n t.
22 MR. SIESS:
Bu t' that is not good enough on future
[
23 plants because we ccn -- that is not good enough.
l *,
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24 MR. MICHELSONt B T" thN is the problem, you said j
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1 25'
, discuss with t!Le Staff.
Wh;1t you heard from the Scaff was l
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b Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 f
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. people that were not thinking about futuro reactors, so that 2
now, you have either got to get the Staff thinking about future 3
reactors, or talk to the people who are worried about future 4
reactors.
5 And I am not sure that there is that many of them 6
over there.
7 MR. SIESS:
No, I don't think so either.
8 MR. MICHELSON:
Who wrote the response that you got 9
back on this thing?
10 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
It came from Stello, but I don't 11 know who wrote it.
12 MR. SIESS:
Is it-in here?
()
13 MR. MICHELSON:
Yes.
14 It came from a number of different people, probably 15 Stello and then he passed it around and got comments from 16 people and then he wrote the letter.
17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Tom Ream or somebody probably wrote 18 it to begin with.
19 MR. MICHELSON:
It is the April 13th letter.
l 20 MR. SIESS:
Okay, I have got it.
But you see, he 21 starts off with the policy statement, and I will admit that I 22 have not looked at 1070 since it came out.
23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, it is in here.
24 MR. SIESS:
You cannot have a whole copy of 1070, 25 just the policy statement.
(O
'~#
f Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 629-4888 i
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Okay, then I have looked at it.
I remember it'now.
2 And then he attached this list of controls you go through.
3 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yes.
4 MR. SIESS:
But as I say, I don't think,that we 5
should waste our time now defending errata, that was not Jack's i
6 point.
I don't really know what his point was, if you guys 7
sent us the list, why don't you do a little more thinking about 8
it, and a lot more thinking about it.
9 MR. MICHELSON:
Yes, and another question is how much 10 thinking we want to do and that is what we are going to tell 11 them.
12 MR. SIESS:
I think that we ought to do a lot more
()
13 but not along the lines that he is talking about.
We want to 14 explore those things with him.
15 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, I tell you what I think, I 16 think that if you want to know why he wrote the letter, he got 17 our letter that we suggested to look at certain things, and he 18 got the Staff's letter, and they said, some of them were not 19 too good, so that he wrote this letter, saying, well, let's 20 find out?
l 21 And that is the way that I saw it.
22 MR. SIESS:
This is another iteration.
23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
1 mean they said that you cannot 24 justify some things, and so he wrote and said, well, let's look 25 at the cost and the benefit, and all of this and see why not?
)
O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 t
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MR. MICHELSON:
I-don't think that the Staff spent a
.2 lot of time on our letter.
'3 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
No.
4 MR. MICHELSON:
And'also they picked up what they 5
wanted to and ignored what they wanted te and either I have'te 6-
. assume that they did not road it, carefully or they just did.
7 not want to discuss all of it.
They just picked up on certain 8
points.
9.
CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well they really did the study.
I 10 mean --
11-MR. MICHELSON:
That is right, or if they did, they 12 certainly.did~not fairly debate the issues.
()
13 MR. SIESS:
Did you read his letter, you know, when 14 he talks about the_ policy statement, you know, it says, meet 15 the current criteria, and the TMI rules, and take care of the 16
'USI's and the medium and non-priority GSI's and do a PRA, and 17 then the last part which is the completion of the Staff review 18 of the design with the conclusion of safety acceptability using 19 and I never understood that.
20 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Using what?
21 MR. SIESS:
Using the approach that stresses 22 deterministic engineering analysis and judgment complemented by 23 PRA.
24 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
But there is nothing in here, that 25 suggests that they are going to even look at future Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 4
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i I
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requirements.
He is just saying what he is going to do. And he 1
2 is examining it against existing regulations.
3 MR. MICHELSON:
In essence what we are saying is that 1
4 the existing regulations are not necessarily good enough for i
5 future plants.
6 MR. SIESS:
Well, yes.
And it'is clear what we are-7 saying there.
8 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, if we went beyond their 9
requirements, that must be what we are saying.
10 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Let me ask you, how do you interpret 11 the Commission's statement in the policy for future plants?
It 12 says that a fundamental objective of the Commission's severe
(])
13 accident policy is that the Commission intends to take all 14 reasonable steps to reduce the chance for the occurrence of a 15 eevere accident involving substantial damage to the core.
16 What are all reasonable steps?
17 MR. SIESS:
Yes, well, you see, the Germans, for 18 example, say that their plants are safe enough, and there is 19 still a residual risk.
And a residual risk could be reduced by 20 doing certain things, some of them are procedures, and some of 21 them may be putting in indented (sic) filters and these are 22 reasonable things to do.
They don't cost too much.
And they 23 make people more comfortable -- do them.
24 They didn't say seismic category one, safety grade 25 redundant, diverse etc.
They say, you know, put a pipe in here Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
92 r
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that runs over here to a room and put in a filter.
That is 2-reasonable.
That is a good engineering solution and it has got 3
a pretty good chance of working if you ever need it, and it 4
does not cost too much and it makes things a little safer if it 5
is something that was already safe enough.
That is their 6
attitude.
7 There is no way within our system that you could do 8
that, within our legal system that you could do it.
9 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
But you know, talking to Dr. Braun 10 about that particular one, he said, that they did not need the 11 filter, and their analysis showed that they did not need the 12 filter and that they got enough filtering by the containment,
({'}
13 plating out and so forth, that they did not need it.
14 But the utilities volunteered to put it in for 15 political reasons.
16 MR. SIESS:
And then it does not have to be reviewed.
17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
They just have a policy that we 18 don't make a safety grade category or --
19 MR. SIESS:
And the -- volunteered to put in a direct 20
-- vent, and the Staff raised so many questions about it that 21 they have now withdrawn it.
So that the valves are now forming 22 a pressure boundary and they certainly must be on the 23 containment boundary and now they are getting into all of the 24 red stuff.
25 And you see, we operate differently, we don't trust Heritage Reporting Corporation I
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1 nobody.
The ACRS' attitude in these things we have got'a 2
problem.
Obviously our plants all meet our present criteria,
)
3 the part 1 that releases the design basis for accidents, 4
But when you do PRA's, that seem to the safetv goals.
5 And they don't all meet the core melt criteria which should 6
scare the hell out of some utilities, maybe, but the problem 7
with the safety goals and at least some people on our 8
Committoe, is that the safety goals are expressed in 9
probabilistic terms so that the only way that you could show 10 compliance is by PRA.
11 And yo can never use a PRA to show that something is 12 safe, you can only use it to show that something is unsafe, lll 13 because uncertainties will drive you and if you worry about 14 uncertainties, you cannot accept the medium and you are going 15 to then look at the uncertainties and that will drive you or 16 you worry about completeness.
17 There has never been a PRA made, that somebody cannot 18 come in and ask, well, gee, you did not think of this or you 19 did not think of that, it is never complete. So you can only 20 rachet it one way.
And all that you have to do is to sit here l
l 21 and listen to Dave do that, he does not believe in any PRA yet.
22 He comes up with a number like 10 to the minus-5, and the lower i
23 it gets, the less you believe it, obviously.
24 And then the uncertainties begin to drive you.
So l
25 these things are all things that somebody on the Committee, or 9
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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a majority of the Committee, at any one point, thought that it 2
ought to do some good, just from the Staff, from a 3
deterministic engineering point of view, these ought to be 4
better, irrespective of whether they reduce the dosage from a 5
low point, and irrespective of where they change the 6
probability, of a core melt, or the probability or breach of 7
containment.
8 CHAIRMAN WYLIE: Yes, but you mentioned the Germans, 9
and that is how the Germans designed their plants. That is how 10 they come up with the in-flow tubing.
11 MR. SIESS:
They don't do too much PRA.
12 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
No, I said that they did not.
Back
'( )
13 when you asked them the question about PRA and core melt, they 14 shudder, they don't even talk about it.
15 MR. SIESS:
No, because they made some studies and 16 they find that the residual risk is about as low as can be 17 expected.
18 MR. MICHELSON:
They don't make too many risk 19 studies, they use PRA apparently in optimization, you know, 20 deciding on alternatives.
21 MR. SIESS:
They did a PRA on the ABWR and they are 22 doing a second one now.
23 MR. MICHELSON:
Yes, but did you notice what plant L
24 that was, it was Bilbus.
l l
25 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
It was the first of the standard I O Heritage Reporting Corporation I
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1 plants, and it was a big one.
2 MR. SIESS:
Carl, what you said, I will announce 3
again. PRA has two separate meanings, probabilistic risk 4
assessment which is most of what we are doing and probabilistic 5
reliability assessment which is what they do.
The reliability I
6 of systems and components and systems.
7 MR. MICH.ELSON:
How to improve it and they never 8
worry about getting to the bottom line risk.
9 MR. SIESS:
They don't believe the bottom lines, and 10
-I believe that the methodology will help to guide you in making 1
11 your selections.
12 We have a safety goal which is based on the bottom 13 line whether you like it or not, you see, and we are trying not
(
14 to regulate on it.
15 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Is this getting us any close to a 16 letter though?
17 MR. SIESS:
Well, I don't know, where are we?
18 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
We really have to come up with a i
19 letter, before the day is out.
20 MR. SIESS:
Well, I have got three things in this 21 letter, as I said.
The first says that the task is not within 22 the competent's resources of charter, and now maybe somebody I
23 will want to say that it is not in the charter, but then I go 24 on to say that both GE and Westinghouse has stated that their 1
f 25 designs, do indeed, incorporate most of all of the features.
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1 That is just reminding him.
2 And then go on to say that then as we review these
)
3 designs, we will take special note to the manner and extent of 1
1 4
which they incorporate these features.
And we are not going to k
5 drop it.
6 And I would be willing to stop with the first
's sentence, the first paragraph.
8 MR. MICHELSON:
I think that those three thoughts are 9
all good, I believe that those are things that we ought to be i
10 doing.
I think that we should be doing a little more, in that 11 I would like to see somewhere in the Committee a further effort 12 of looking at what we have already come up with in our previous
()
13 letter, and maybe it ought to be, you know, that Subcommittee 14 ought to go back and talk to the Staff about its letter, and 15 talk to the industry and if they wish about their views on it, 16 and talk to General Electric and Westinghouse since they have 17 sent a letter.
18 And just think about refining that checklist a little 19 more and also considering the things that we omitted that maybe 20 ought to be added and so forth.
21 In other words, I don't like to see that effort die, 22 with this one list of items.
23 MR. SIESS:
It should be followed up of course, on 24 future reactors.
25 MR. MICHELSON:
And who is going to do that, and we Heritage Reporting Corporation j
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1 had some firm idea of how we are going to do that, it would be 2
nice to put it in a letter, to give the Crairman something more 3
to hang on.
4 MR. SIESS:
I don't think that discussing the Staff's 5
answers with him was the function of the original.
6 MR. MICHELSON:
Was there a Committee?
7 MR. SIESS:
No, let the full committee discuss it 8
with the staff.
9 But following it up on the actual plants, in the 10 first place, is a little late, but we have got two of them and 11 I don't knc.c that CESSAR, they have not responded but we could 12 certainly talk to them and say, you read our letter, what are f'.Nx.)
13 you doing about it, and I don't know how far along they are on 14 80-plus.
15 MR. MICHELSON:
I think that they are coming in with 16 it, that is the sense that I get of it, from the correspondence 17 I see.
18 MR. SIESS:
I don't know what it consists of, because 19-I just have not seen any of the details.
20 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Are we going to say anything about 21 the first point of his letter about pursuing the foreign 22 reactors?
'23 MR. SIESS:
No.
24 MR. MICHELSON:
I think that we ought to continue to f
25 pursue that.
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MR., SIESS:
Well, I think that we will do that, as a' 2
. matter'of course.
-3 MR..MICHELSON:
Well,.no, it takes money, when the
.' 4 ;
foreign' money.comesaround for corps and travel, that is when 5
we are saying, we are doing this.for you..
6' MR..SIESS:
We asked'the Staff to look at foreign
'7 reactors and they. compared Honeywell with Snupps, and they 8
' compared the Sizewell Sizewell with Snupps,'and Honeywell with 9
something, Diablo?'
10 14R. MICHELSON:
I don't remember.
11 MR. SIESS:
Dut it'was something like that and they 12 did a couple of reports. When we meet with the RSK 13 periodically, we have tried to discuss some of these things, 14, particularly their reasons.- When Dave went-over a couple of 15 years ago and looked at the Kaete removal systems, all.over the 16' place.
And we.have a continuing effort there and I don't-think 17 that there is any reason to reduce it. We have not had that 18 much trouble getting foreign travel and we have got a pretty 19 good relationship with both the French and the Germans.
1 20 MR. MICHELSON:
I don't think that it is a question 21 of reducing, it is a question of whether we should maintain a 1
1 22 high level of attention.
I don't think that we have given what-1 23 I would call a high level of attention.
We have given it l
24 attention, certainly not in an organized or pointed sense.
25 Except for decay removal trip, which was a staff, that I think i
l
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Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4886 l
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.1 that' Ward went on.
2 To my knowledge, ACRS has.not particularly pursued-3L this pol'nt, and we certainly did not.even.this summer.
We 4
. picked it up as an-Issue on a trip which was for an entirely 5
'different purpose.
I am thinking more of a pointed effort.
~6-MR. SIESS:
Do you want to look at the hardware?.
1 7
MR. MICHELSON:
I don't know what you might go into, l
8 it depends on what you run into to begin with.. I think that we 9
need much more.information on the KONVOI design then we were 10 able to get in one afternoon.
11 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Oh, yes, we probably' thought of more 12:
questions after we left.
(])
13-MR. SIESS:
I think that it has to be a dedicated 14 effort with this objective in mind.
l 15 MR. MICHELSON:
Identify light water reactor features 16 that would be desirable for future plants, whether or not their 17 regulatory requirements and so forth, is immaterial,'what ought 18 those. plants to look like and having decided that then.you can 19'
~ decide what to do.
20 MR. SIESS:
Why not address this thing, you have
'21 mentioned three items in there, and the third item we have 22 already addressed, the names of existing plant that 23 incorporates the desirable features.
24-MR. MICHELSON:
Which letter are you looking at?
r L
25 MR. SIESS:
Zech's letter, Hoyle's letter.
O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L
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The third item we have already addressed, we wrote 2
him a' letter saying that the KONVOI l
3 MR. MICHELSON:
Yes, that bigger question was i
1 4
answered.
l 3
l 5
MR. SIESS:
So the first two items the sewage review.
6 And to simply state that we intend to continue our review of 7
the experience design features of some of the European plants, I
8 okay?
9
-Then with regard to the second recommendation, you 10 know, it could be referred to as two recommendations in the 11 introductory paragraph, quoting them, and say with regard to 12 the first, we intend to continue our review, and with regard to
(}
13 the second, we believe that this task is not within the 14 competence, resources or the Charter of the ACRS and then go 15 ahead if it requires a kind of resources and knowledge of 16 designers or something of that sort.
17 Cr just leave it.
And then not drop that, by saying, 18 however, whatever, as you know, GE and Westinghouse say that 19 they have done this and they have these features and we expect 20 to continue to give special attention to these as we review 21 those designs.
22 We are not going to drop that part of it.
23 24 25 O'
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 j
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There hasn't been a problem over the last couple of 2
months.
There have been some cost-benefit studies that show 3
some combinations and permutations of this outside activity.
I 4
MR. MICHAELSON:
I think what should be found there 1
5 is about our present level and we can do it -- it can be 6
incorporated easily with our present level.
If we want to make 7
it more positive by proposing new efforts, initiatives of 8
whether to go along other questions.
9 DR. SIESS:
I don't think so.
10 MR. MICHAELSON:
We could start out wiht a letter i
11 like that and then see if we want to keep it up.
12 DR. SIESS:
In the next couple of months there will 13 be a recommendation covered in committee at this meeting about i) 14 how to handle waste management.
It's going to require some l
15 reduction in other activities.
And we're going to recommend 16 that the committee actually take a good look at what is going 17 on and see what things we can cut back on.
Probably that would 18 be the principal subject of the October Planning Committee 19 meeting when it mee,ts.
20 MR. MICHAELSON:
I think the letter about this ought l
21 not to go until after the board decision.
I think it would be 22 premature to send it now.
23 DR. SIESS:
I don't think so.
I think it's fine now.
24 MR. MICHAELSON:
I don't think we can commit when we 25 don't konw what our resources are.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
102 (m) 1-DR. SIESS:
Well, though, if we just commit just the 2
first part --
3 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, if we say that, Carl,-you sort 4
of obligate yourself --
5 MR. MICHAELSON:
Look, Carl, I don't think we 6
absolutely should commit to look at these things on the two 7
advance reactors that we see.
I just want to look at them.
8 That's not a commitment.
9 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I just think that we could let them 10 know that that's the big reason for our influencing the 11 planning committee if we retreat after we've already committed 12 ourselves.
13 MR. MICHAELSON:
Do you think they'd get their O
14 commitment if they get us angry about the problem?
15 DR. SIESS:
One of the things we ought to consider to 16 retrieve is a relative effort that should be devoted to 17 operating reactors which are let's say, "a clear and present 1
18 danger," except the wording is in the right context.
I want 19 you can make at least in the present versus the future 20 reactors, which are not here yet, and are perfectly safe, 21 obviously.
And the Commission in every way I've seen in terms 22 of a planning guidance and so forth, is putting the major 23 effort on the operating reactors, which is where it belongs.
24 Whether they're putting enough effort on the future, which is 25 whether we're putting enough effort on the future, I don't
)
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l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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1 know.
We can simply wait until the future ones come in and 2
pass jusgment on them.
3 MR. MITCHELSON:
Well, they've already told us in 4
essence that they think our first priority should be operating 5
reactors --
6 DR. SIESS:
I don't remember that that list comes up 7
even to future reactors.
Now, the ACRS may decide that we 8
don't have any influence on safety of future reactors.
We 9
ought to get going and get knowledgeable and get our views 10 understood and if our views are wrong, be convinced that 11 they're wrong.
So that's one of the decisions I think we've 12 got to look ot.
13 MR. MICHAELSON:
So it's also a question, then, of
)
i 14 what should be our recommended timing on this order, before or
's 15 after the retreat?
16 DR. SIESS:
Well, I think that with a commitment that 17 says that, as we review these designs we will take special note j
l 18 of these steps and these --
19 MR. MICHELSON:
That won't hurt any because then I'm 20 not sure how much --
1 21 DR. SIESS:
THat won't be a commitment that's going j
22 to be that serious.
23 MR. MICHAELSON:
But that's not much of an offer 24 either.
{
25 DR. SIESS:
The Committee has really got to think l
l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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I about what's best for1the country as well as what interests we 2
- have on the Committee, and I'm talking about adding four or 3
five members in the next year.
Some of them are going-into the
'4 waste management area but we'll go at them to help with the 5
future reactors or. operating reactors.
6 DR. SIESS:
We want to remember that adding four or 7
five, we're losing four or five.
8 MR. MICHAELSON:
Yes, but they're new.
You get 9
different people, 10 DR. SIESS:
These new people are going-to be waste 11 management and the people you're losing are going to be reactor 12 types.
I mean, that's --
13 MR. MICHAELSON:
I'm not talking quite the same way
'O 14 we were, but again, that's something that needs to be thought 15 about.
It isn't just what we want to do; it's going to be.
16 what's going to.be best.
If we're going to really worry about 17 operating reactors, we might need a lot more operating reactor 18 types'on the Committee and maybe not designer types.
19 DR. SIESS:
'I really believe that what our approach 20 merits in effort -- keeping in mind the letters we've received 21 so far.on what they felt we ought to be working on -- and after 22 that decision is made, whatever it is, then its time to send 23 this letter, based on what we know.
24 MR. MICHAELSON:
That would almost be innuendo.
25 DR. SIESS:
And you want to have two letters one now I
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'and.one-later?
L 2
MR. MICHAELSON:
Yes.
l~
"3 DR. SIESS:
But suppose'this kind of decided that if
.4 weLreally wanted to split our effort 60 -'40 between operating 5_
reactor safety and future reactor componentry -- and.let's just 6
say we'just don't want-to test the future reactors that much 7
- but would rather give 80 percent of your effort on operating 8
reactors and waste management and only 20 percent on the-
.!L
-future.
10 I mean, I would like -- I would like any level of 11.
effort today.
-12
. MR:. MICHAELSON:
I agree with you.
13 DR. SIESS:
After the retreat, after we come up with
_ Og 14
-some decision regarding level of effort, we should come up with 15' some decisions regarding our level of effort, we should write a 16 letter to the Commissioner saying we have considered the scope 17.
of our activity to just how we ought to divide our effort and 18 this is what we recommend and not do it in the context of this 19 study to say that it was really a design study which we want to 20 dismiss --
21 MR. MICHAELSON:
What you'd really like to do is just 22
'get rid of this now and then later come back and say "here."
23 Decause that first letter will essentially be nothing more than 24 that.
25 DR. SIESS:
This says, "look, we don't want to do O
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1 it."
2 MR. MICHAELSON:
THe most we could see doing right 3
now is following on maybe they'll be our logic -- maybe the 4-logical approach --
5 DR. SIESS:
Should we use more than one paragraph 6
that says that we're trying to review this total of our 7
resource efforts.
l 8
MR. MICHAELSON:
And if this changes we'll let them 9
know?
10 DR. SIESS:
I don't know if we'll promise 'em 11 anything.
It's like Leo Curstein would. promise anything.
It's 12 like to say, if it happens, we'll tell you about it.
13 MR. MICHAELSON:
Right now we'd just like to cut them O
short'and just leave them hang there.
14 l
l 15 DR. SIESS:
It's like they answer this letter and get 16 rid of them.
I wouldn't expect us to coordinate this now.
17 MR. MICHAELSON:
You're not talking about the 18 retreat.
The one share at issue is present versus future.
19 Like other divisions.
Not something that you heard playing 20 chess.
21 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, one reason I brought this up at 22 that meeting is to illustrate here that they could do things.
23 That they don't need --- they've got a stable effort.
{
l 24 MR. MICHAELSON:
That's probably solved.
When they l
i 25 look at it he doesn't get into it and it'll impact about the Heritage Reporting Corporation l
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1-same.
2 MR. EBERSOLE:
But we've got to leave' proper respect 3-
.with that group.
4
-MR. MICHAELSON:
They've got a few'other group 5
' problems there in talking so much.
6
'MR.
EBERSOLE:
Well, their first problem is they.
7' always knew --
l
.8 MR. MICHAELSON:
THey were always talking about such 9
minor things asifires.
'10-MR.-EBERSOLE:
Well, fires are a hazard that uattered 11 and they had them under a break screen --
l 12' DR. SIESS:
Sodium and water, sodium and ash.
N
.13 MR. EBERSOLE:
They don't' care if they lose a 0-14 secondary loop-here; they couldn't care less.
Because they 15 fixed the -.the water pipe --
l.
l 16 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
What about Glenn's recommendations 17 to exclude the letters?
18 MR. REED: Because they ere third party involvement as 19 far as laboratories.
That was on the 845 extension.
21' DR. SIESS:
I think so.
It seems more appropriate 22 for 845 whether it's -- when that comes up.
But isn't it --
l 23 MR. EBERSOLE:
It isn't Sandia Laboratory.
I think l
'24 they've been pointing into the corner producing your classic 25 845 study because it considers institute plans but does not LO Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L
108
)
I consider D&BL845 in the light of plans.
2' MR. MICHAELSON:
That may be true, Jesse, but doesn't 3
that go in.your 845 letter?
MR. EBERSOLE:
No,.that's wrong.
4 5
MR. MICHAELSON:
Well, then, where is that going?
It 6
.goes in right in where the new nuclear designs go on.
7 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, this is the. detailed letter.
8 MR. MICHAELSON:
It should go out.
9 DR..SIESS:
We whould not confuse facts consistent 10.
with plans for future designs.
11 MR. EBERSOLE:
When will this letter come out?
12 DR. SIESS:
That letter clearly has nothing to do f -
13 with the best engineering designs out there.
It would never
.t 14 have gone out with those recommendations for backfits.
'Now,-
15 that's philosophically very-interesting because it says that 16~
the plants are safe enough without it.
We think the future 17-plans should hazard safety; we know of no reason why if they 18 could make them safer at a reasonable cost and it's a simple 19 system, then do it.
It makes sense.
That's engineering sense.
20 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Like it or not, you know they'll say 21 the cooling systems have been proven not to be necessary.
22 DR. SIESS:
That has nothing to do with this letter.
23 They can say that about any value.
They can say P:R ratios, I 24-don't need this; I don't need that.
I can go in with a gas-25 cooled reactor with a P:R range that can prove that I don't
- O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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()
- 1'
.need any containments We wrote a lot about our.40 percent-2 grades that will let you get away with.a hill but next'one will 3
have to have a containment -- and:the next two did.
4 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
You know, what bothers me a little 5
bit about it is that the letter we wrote in Jauary we pointed 6
out that here are the features which we recommend should be 7
considered as feature plans.
Now, it doesn't say specifically 8
how they were to consider this, along with --
.9 Now, with this case here, the -- removal, is 10 earmarked our number one consideration in that last letter.
11 They've done some work in resisting --'and that's extensive 12 work on this -- and they don't plan to do anything else.
And 13-it appears to me to be appropriate for us to say we ought to be 0
14
'doing something on future plans.
15 DR. SIESS:
Well, they've said what their policy is 16 on future plans.
Active resolutions, all. rapid coolants, all 17 safety issues, et cetera.
The 825s were all safety issues and 18 5's were future plans.
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
Now wait a minute, the way I hear 20 that's been resolved for existing plans.
'21 DR. SIESS:
That you know it's a resolution is only a 22 factor and not'as a future plan.
23 MR. MICHAELSON:
Okay, then we'll have no future 24 plans.
It'll be unresolved.
It's not resolved.
It was off of 25 future plans in the licensing process.
L O.
l lieritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 i
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'1 lDR. SIESS:
It's not a' concern now.
2 MR. EBERSOLE:
I think it'd be so bad they'd waive.it i
-i
.3 by the current decision not to use it that it made?
4 CHAIRMAN.WYLIE:
Yes, and.I'm afraid'to spread the 5
options.too thin.
You know how depending how the 845 comes 6
out.
It's best to just assume that to say'nothing about it.
7 DR. SIESS:
Is it the guage on the deliverable system q
8 out on Locklear the same as they had on Diablo Canyon in South 9.
Had they made improvements?
10 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I don't know.
11 DR. SIESS:
My understanding of Walker,and I-was on 12 the Committee designing that four years ago.and the features 13 that we'd hoped that they'd put into that blowdown system off 14 into outlay to -.into a refuge winch tank inside the pen tank 15
-- but since then, I have been next door to the side and it
'16 would appear that they have done away with it.
And they did 17 away with two of the blowdown lines, and I'm not sure whether 18 they did away with the refuge winch tanks.
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
I think that would be something we'd 20 have to explore.
Maybe like filters, they've asked so many 21 questions about it inside the staff didn't like it and it 22 didn't go.
23 DR. SIESS:
Let me ask a question:
why have we not 24' had papers on that?
At Westinghouse?
25 MR. EBERSOLE:
That's a good question.
]
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 e
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1 MR. REED:
My understanding is that subcommittee t
l 2
chairman --
3 MR. EBERSOLE:
Who is the subcommittee chairman?
l 4
DR. SIESS:
You got me.
5 MR. REED:
Yes.
You.
6 DR. SIESS: No I'm not.
7 MR. REED:
You're the subcommittee chairman ~with most 8
of the subcommittee.
9 MR. MICHAELSON:
No, I think Dave Word is the 10 Chairman of Westinghouse.
11 MR. REED:
They aren't the head of the subcommittee.
12 MR. MICHAELSON:
I've been at two subcommittee 13 meetings.
The last one was a long time ago.
7s :
14 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Who was Chairman?
15 MR. MICHAELSON:
At that time I was Chairman, 16 DR. SIESS:
Why worry?
Just for curiosity, why don't 17 you guys worry about the application on the 845 on the plants?
18 You've already seen one of this godamn crease.
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
It's an improved system that's been in 20 a dead space at Westinghouse for two or three years.
It's had 21 no offerings.
22 DR. SIESS:
If Westinghouse does nothing here and 23 hasn't gotten anything on the point, and shown us any other
- j 24 improvement in their basic removal systems, this committee can 25 tell them off in no uncertain terms.
g Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
We haven't heard it, though.
2 That's the problem.
See, what you just said, they've been i
3 changing things and there's been a period of silence.
4 DR. SIESS:
We have to give it to them first.
1 5
CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
We had two or three meetings with 6
him.
i I
7 DR. SIESS:
Was he worried about DHR and Boilers?
8 MR. MICHAELSON:
Yes.
3 l
9 DR. SIESS:
We've got to hear them -- interview them 10 first.
(
11 MR. MICHAELSON:
What about DHR and boiler,87 j
.12 MR. EBERSOLE:
We They've got that -- G-E $ot off to c'
13 a' point where they don't want to in Japan N-it's been suchia
\\~)i e
s 14 dead topic.
/
a, i
3 15 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Ward?
h.,
16 MR. MICHAELhN:
Yes?
/
d /
17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
This is April'!1987[ He may have'
/[.
l i 18 just beerrput in the Spring.
/
'/,
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?
)
Yeah, I forgot,who it was before
/
i 20-that but I thought it was.
^
21
' tut. REED:
You were the first one who said it might 22 be a conflict of interest.
Didn't you end up pn that one?
23 DR. SIESS:
No, then I thought it finally. vent'to 24. Charlie Wylie.
25 i MR. EBERSOLE:
No, Ward.
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1 DR. SIESS:
Who's got G-E?
2 MR. EBERSOLE:
Okun.
3 DR. SIESS:
If it was April, it was --
L 4
M.
Now that's not -- that's got to change too.
5 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Either that or you'd have. change the 6
tenure law.
7 MR. EBERSOLE:
Ask Lombarkin.
He's got a list.of all 8
of them, I think.
9 MR. MICHAELSON:
Who's got C-E?
It's coming out --
10 MR. EBERSOLE:
No, I can get C-E.
11 DR. SIESS:
Who's got C-E?
12 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Remick.
13 MR. EBERSOLE:
I got Babcocks & Wilcox.
14' MR. MICHAELSON:
Well, that's safe.
'~
15 MR. EBERSOLE:
Are we coming back?
16 MR. MICHAELSON:
I think so.
We gave him what he i
17 asked for.
18 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
What about?
/
3 19 MR. MICHAELSON:
He's got C&E heads coming out --
p d,
20 DR. SIESS:
No, I got C&E.
I got put in touch with 21 it.
22 MR. MICHAELSON:
You've got the Executive Landfill to 23 fill?
4 24 MR. EBERSOLE:
Let's write the letter.
MR. MICHAELSON:
Yes, back to the letter.
2S Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Anything else?
Is this the lawyer 2
who proposed, you know --
3 MR. REED:
I was willing to settle.
I wouldn't have 4
wanted to jump to a technical issue given this glossy general 5
answer.
I mean, I think I can jump into other technical 6
issues, too, but I would be likely to dispose of that.
7 MR. MIC11AELSON:
Unless we provide a separate letter.
8 DR. SIESS:
I think what we're going to do next is I 9
think we should do resource checks, what resources are 10 operating reactors and major eyeopener discussions with -- if 11 we can talk with suficient major parameters involved.
12 MR. MICHAELSON:
What about this letter of Glenn's?
13 This letter ought to be written.
(-
14 DR. SIESS:
Well, then let him write it in hopes that l
15 it will entertain.
16 MR. WYLER:
Glenn, I want to mention one aspect of 17 the blowdown equimobile system which is disadvant.ageous.
18 MR. REED:
That's not, not -- the letter.
19 MR WYLER:
I know, but that is disclosure.
Aren't 1
20 you going to --
l 21 MR. REED:
No, I'm not putting anything else in it.
22 MR. WYLER:
Are we going to put anything else into 23 Godwin's letter?
24 MR. MICHAELSON:
I don't see why we should.
I was 25 willing to settle for that third paragraph, about how we always O
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I
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Aad they are ableito be shaded?
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'cNR..HICHAELSON:
And it seems that the K-T removal is
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accomplishes it;; or accomplish it, are vacillating, we see each l
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7 MR. EBERSOLV:
Thera nught to be an independent, more f.,'.
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e 9
piichaps it uhould,be consioered as a follow-on at that 10 locatlidn? '
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MR. MICHAELSOL 'What would be hypropriate for the
. :s 12 845 issu6 had resolvEl opo. rating plans -- we don't think that A
13 itessIticion is suf[ table ror plans, the fact that the resolution l
.g.s Q
'i 4 pluiw h e sutisfied, and we don *t think that's the way to go for future plans, and we suggest that they commision somebody 15 s
s 16;n ts that they find some plants.:
.h7 MR. EBERSOL1M I don't,get why you don't want to put 7
~
3 lb1 it in this J.etter?
1 19 XR. MICHAELSON:
I don't $1 ant we should have one 20 subject.
../
l21
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MR. EBEtRSOLE:
Yeah, well, what the subject --
s g.
22 MR. MICHAELSON:
What i'm thinking about in the (f
s s
s
. 25
' letter he wrote ua about fM.ure plano to dedicate removal 24 system.
He Mimply picked'up on a letter we wrote about f 3, 1
25 removal systems and asked us to make cost studies of design n
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And we said, you guys
- 11 2-
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MR. REEDS So we said, we said you can't do it.
We 4
think:there should be further effort by doing this.
L 5-
-MR.lMICHAELSON:
But that's just one.of the many i-6L
. issues'inithe original letter..Why focus on this one issue?
'I y
7' don't look at the NRC in its contract to design and engineer 8-
- power plants.
We don't even trust' DOE to design them and they
'9 have a lot more resources than we have.
10 MR. REED:
Is that what you want?
~
11
.DR..SIESS:
Well, that's what we've been doing-for 30.
L
.12 years.
13-MR. MICHAELSON: ' Our. job is to preside over the
~
14 design and -- of this committee so that the NRC is safe'if it 15 is' licensing, and if it isn't we don't license.
And we have L
16 the' utility to want something that they can't license that's l
17 their problem.
IT is not our job to design nuclear power l' 8 -
plants..
19.
MR. REED:.
I don't agree with you.
I-thinkithat the 20' responsibility for design lies outside the utility.
We should p
21' have had licensed design a long ago and licensed designers.
22 And since we' don't have those, then we should suggest somebody L
23 to apply objectivity to these designers back at --
- 24" MR. MICHAELSON:
But that's kind of a different issue
- 25 than we've been focusing on.
It's a good issue but not a
.O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4808
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1 universal point.
But this is the clutter of the phase-out 2
departure --
i l
3 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, Glenn, we'd better hope that 4
when you told me you fixed one of these that it had been kicked 5
over a lot better.than in the old days?
1 6
MR. MICHAELSON:
Oh, yeah, the utilities have taken
]
7 their floggings and their losses and they're -- I'm sure 8
they're smart enough now not to get caught again.
9 MR. REED:
Unless we put more subjectivity into the 10 designs.
Less flaws in the designs.
And unless the industry 11 does, there never will be another reactor bought in the United 12 States -- maybe they'll buy one from Germany.
13 DR. SIESS:
Well, if the industry wants the plants to 14 be licnesed, they're going to depend on the NRC to tell them 15 what's safe enough, if its licensing is safe enough, if it has 16 a reasonable level of reliability in the economy.
17 MR. REED:
Well, if you will remember the aftermath 18 of Three Mile Island, there war a lawsuit lodged against B&W 19 first by the utility.
There was one thought about and started 20 against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Quite franky I wish 21 that it had gone forward.
But somebody decided you can't sue 22 us.
Sooner or later we're going to have to make designers in 23 design review as responsible for their product.
24 DR. SIESS:
But look, if the NRC could be sued for 25 not telling B&W they had a bad design, they'd quick point out Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
([ )
I to them that the NRC designs them.
2 MR. REED:
The job of the NRC is not to approve, it's 3
to reviw, correct?
All right, but if they should review 4
forthrightly and in-depth.
And that has to come from some 5
third party looking at proper concepts.
6 DR. SIESS:
What, the NRC has 7-8 hundred technical 7-reviews?
8 MR. REED:
Review?
Did you say approval?
9 DR. SIESS:
Did they review?
Approve?
Safety 10 evaluation?
The last paragraph in each section?
Signed 11 license of criterion, that once they --
12 MR. REED:
Did they say that in any license letter.
13 DR. SIESS:
The standard license review plan. tells 14 them what paragraph they've got to put in the SER and they keep 15 asking questions to which they -- and they can write that 16 paragraph as to their technical ability.
Now, that's why it's 17 a standard area.
10 MR. MICHAELSON: That's why it's a standard paragraph.
19 If you can write that paragraph, it's a basic criteria --
20 DR. SIESS:
And if it meets crieteria, if it meets 21 the regulations, it's safe, right?
l 22 MR. REED:
I thought the word " approve," though, is a J
23 avoided?
24 MR. MICHAELSON:
1 don't think they use the word 25
" approve."
I think that it's that they're on tight.
(Z) l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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'l DR. SIESS:
They have to agree that they make a 2
finding thatuthe plant will be built and operated with no undue 3
risk to the health and safety of the public.
The same finding.
4 the ACRS makes.
They never defined " undue risk," or-5
" reasonable assurance."
4 6
MR. MICHAELSON:
Well, I think that there is not a.
7 large risk to the public -- what I'm saying-is that the huge 0
' risk to the operating. personnel and the owner, financial and 9
otherwise -- well there are considerations in the licensing 10 process.for the owner that this might be an economic risk.
11 MR. REED:
Well, Chet takes the attitude, " buyer 12 beware."
I don't like tx) take that attitude on nuclear 13 reactors.
.( )'
14 MR. MICHAELSON:
The utility industry.needs to hang 15 together to make some kind of a regulatory body to review their 16
-- what they might buy from an economic perspective.
17 MR. REED:
Well, then you're saying that it is " buyer 18 beware," then?
19 MR. MICHAELSON:
Right now as far as the NRC, the 20 economic viewpoint is part of the " buyer beware."
21 DR. SIESS:
And the Carmel viewpoint it's " buyer I
22 beware?"
23 MR. MICHAELSON:
Oh, no, not Carmel.
That's when we 24 go from the same piece.
25 DR. SIESS:
You can argue it two ways on it -- you Heritage Reporting Corporation J
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1 can argue three ways on Carmel.
Until it would cost about a 2
million dollars you could get a Carmel.
If the utility-3 industry were to completely shut down by a Carmel, then it 4
would be closer to it.
And whoever we get on this Committee 5
there are many of us who have pulled onto the challenge until 6
we have a perfect debate before we had some of our defense of 7
our conventional pullout.
Because there was a tremendous 8
incentive for that Carmel study to be a reason.
9 MR. REED:
This is all one item.. It's there based on 10 the criteria given at 10 C.F.R.
550 (Appendix A, G.E.C.
4, 11 S.R.A. 223) " Staff Cont.ingent Plans Added to Protected Added to 12 Operations Acceptable
.o this Safety as a Result of a 13 Transportation Transport or Military Transport."
That's for a g_
14 particular item standard of review.
15 That paragraph is probably spelled out in the 16 Standard Review Plan.
17 MR. REED:
That's boilerplate.
18 DR. SIESS:
That's probably spelled out in the 19 Standard Review Plan.
That's what criterion they've examined 20 it against and they've concluded that it's adequately 21 protected.
22 MR. REED:
Then there's the old 23 DR. SIESS:
That C.F.R.
is three feet thick.
It's a 24 yard wide. That's regarding the public health.
It'll be 1
25 Supplement 14.
That's the original.
O)
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1 MR. MICHAELSON:
This is also, yes, this is the 2
original.
Volume 2.
That's a lot safer then.
3 MR. REED:
Well, it'd be -- I thought now that -- my 4
position will always be that somebody other than the utilities 5
should take the responsibility for unflawed, reasonable design.
)
1 6
DR. SIESS:
That'd be nice.
7 MR. REED:
And what has been going on has been dumped 8
off on the utilities, who are the least qualified to accept 9
that responsibility.
10 DR. SIESS:
The responsibility rests with them.
They 11 depend on the NRC to see that they get a good plan that's 12 operationally advised -- that's stupid.
The NRC is only 13 interested in operating safely.
7s\\'h 14 MR. REED:
Well, that's just a legal euphanism.
15 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
So then you want to make a motion we 16 include someting?
17 MR. REED:
Well, my position if it's not included in 18 the letter then I would try to write something in addition on 19 it.
Now apparently we can:t get the majority vote to include 20 it in the letter.
21 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, with this translation of where 22 the utility's responsibility is, let's take a break?
23
[A short break was taken.]
24 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Reesume the meeting.
25 We were looking for a letter, Chet, where SECC asked
[x Reporting Corporation Heritage (202) 628-4888
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HRS to do certain things this, year.
' 2.
DR..SIESS: 1This is.only one page of it.
'3 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, this is not the letter'here.'
l4' This is the old one.
We are looking for the new one. :He wrote 5.
one since this.
6
.DR.
SIESS:
Yeah, I.think so.
J7 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I don't remember one-since this.
8 DR. SIESS:
Well, but they start talking about IUu) 9 waste.
"10 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, we commented back to them-that 11 they left RAD waste out of this, and somebody said, oh, that's 12 just an oversight.
13 MR. MICHELSON:
No, but during the RAD waste O
14-discussions, I though there was a piece of correspondence came
'15-up in which they reiterated what they-thought we'should be 16 working on, and:they didn't include all the items that were on 17 this list at that time.
18 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I don't remember that at-all.
19 MR. MICHELSON:
And it's a vague recollection on my' 20 part.
21 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Ray is looking for it.
Maybe he 22-will find it'.
23 DR. SIESS:
This is the one I remember.
24 MR. MICHELSON:
Yeah.
25 DR. SIESS:
Spent quite a bit of time on.
In fact, O
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the generic things are what I am working on now.
And we 2
commented that he didn't mention research which was fine.
We 3
plan to get out of it. And it didn't mention RAD waste, and 4
somebody said, oh, that's just an oversight.
5 MR. MICHELSON:
The second question that came up, 6
when you use the word " charter" in your proposed draft, what 7
did you mean?
What charter?
8 DR. SIESS:
We've got a charter somewhere, but'--
9 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, I was thinking you meant the 10 Atomic Energy --
11 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Oh, here it is here.
12 DR. SIESS:
No, I meant the committee's charter.
13 MR. MICHELSON:
Okay, where was it.
~b-7 "r
14 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
It's in July 24,
'87, advice to the 15 Commission on RAD waste management.
He say's --
16 MR. MICHELSON:
Who is he now?
17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE This is from Chilt to,Stello, 18 Harley.
19 MR. MICHELSON:
He's writing for the chairman.
20 CllAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yeah.
l t
21 THE WITNESS:
Writing for the Commission.
22 MR. MICHELSON:
Or for the Commission, rather.
23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
He says, "The commission expects the 24 ACRS will continue his present role, including waste management 25 activities until the Unit Advisory -- following the l
/""A
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1 establishment of the new committee, the HRS-should focus their 2
activity on operating reactor safety.
Support of the 3
Commission licensing process, resolution of safety issues 4
including the review of related research.
The Commission is 5
willing to meet the ACRS to discuss the facts and the decision.
)
6 DR. SIESS:
He hasn't mentioned future reactors.
7 MR. MICHELSON:
No, so there he didn't.
I knew there 8
were some items-that were on this list that's not on that --
9 DR. SIESS:
That's probably an oversight, too, just 10 like he didn't mention --
11 MR. MICHELSON:
Yeah, we didn't know.
At that time 12 we didn't know whether that was narrowing the list or just an
)
13 oversight.
l"'s 14 DR. SIESS:
He renounced that letter at the last 15 meetings.
16 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Okay.
17 DR. SIESS:
I don't know whether he renounced 18 everything in it.
But he says forget about that letter.
We
]
I 19 are starting over.
]
1 20 MR. MICHELSON:
I assume this letter is the only one 21 then that counts.
22 DR. SIESS:
I don't think it counts for much.
j 23 MR. MICHELSON:
the reason I raised the question on 24 the charter, if you read the Atomic Energy Act, if you want I 25 can read it.
It's short.
i l
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1 DR. SIESS:
I can probably recite it.
2 MR.,MICHELSON:
This is the Advisory Committee on 3
Reactor Safeguards.
4 There is hereby established an Advisory Committee on 5
Reactor Safeguards consisting of a maximum of 15 members 6
appointed by the Commission for terms of four years each.
The 7
committee shall review safety studies and facility licensed 8
applications referred to it and shall make reports thereon.
9 Shall advise the Commission with regard to the hazards of 10 proposed or existing reactor facilities and the adequacy of 11 proposed _ reactor safety standards, and shall perform such other 12 duties as the Commission may request.
13 That's our charter.
Now this is a duty that the 7_s U-14 Commission requested.
So the letter from --
15 DR. SIESS:
Yeah, so I guess it's not helpful to say 16 I charter --
17 MR. MICHELSON:
Yeah, and so I don't think we can 18 object to doing it because --
19 DR. SIESS:
By charter, I was using a broader term.
20 When I was hired, I wasn't told I was to do reactor designs and 21 I never presented myself in reactor design and -- but, you 22 know, my original wording was competence resources.
23 MR. MICHELSON:
Yeah, and that part's true.
1 24 DR. SIESS:
And I don't think it's in our charter to 25 do things beyond our competence, but I had to bring that up to 1
1 Heritage Reporting Corporation
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i 2
MR. MICHELSON:
But the Chairman did ask us to do 3
this, and we would -- by the Atomic Energy Act, I think we are 4
required to do it, i
5 DR. SIESS:
But we also have the right to say, you 6
know, you are asking us to something we can't do.
7 MR. MICHELSON:
We are not best equipped to do that.
8 DR. SIESS:
Yeah.
In the old days if he insisted, we 9
were trooped out to the capitol building and go talk to the 10 joint committee and say, look, the Commission.is trying to get 11 us to do things that we don't want to do.
Now you can't do 12 that.
13 MR. MICHELSON:
Just a small alteration of the 14 letter.
i 15 The other question was, is this letter that we got 16 that Kerr wrote for us.
I think -- I don't think we should 17 ignore it.
It was written and he got it and --
A 18 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, it's in this package here.
19 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, I don't like to say that 20 because the committee told him to write it.
21 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
What did he say?
22 DR. SIESS:
That we would make an estimate of the 23 resources required, prepare a reply that we believe will be 24 responsive.
If we followed that strictly, we would have to 1
25 write and say we made an estimate of the resources required and l
(
l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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we' find that we don't have'them either in people, or dollars, 2
or. money or whatever to do.what you asked us.
'3 And then he says, after we formulated a plan'of 4'
action, specific goals -- inform you of our plans-and tell me 5
whether they would be responsive to your request -..That was 6
just promises.
7 MR. MICHELSON:
And I realize, but I think we ahould 8
somehow fit into those promises now and -- we either wipe it 9
.out and start over or leave --
.0-DR. SIESS:
I don't consider that a commitment by the 11 committee.
12 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, the committee told him to write 13 the letter.
Therefore I
'O 14 DR. SIESS:
If I were SICC and I got this letter that 15 we are talking about, I would say they have responded to me and 16 I' don't like the response, I'm satisfied, and I wouldn't worry 17 about what they said they were going to do.
18 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, it makes our chairman look like 19 he's been acting unilaterally or something, and'that was 20 certainly not the case.
He did what we asked him to do.
-21 DR. SIESS:
Well,' I --
22 MR. MICHELSON:
And now we are ignoring the fact that 23 he --
24 DR. SIESS:
He went a little farther than I think he 25 had a right to go in the letter.
He anticipated that we were C:)-
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l' going.to come up and recommend something that we would do.
2 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, I think it's the polite thing L
3 to do is to try to somehow weave it in,cand then weave it out 4
again, but not ignore it..
j i
5
.MR.
REED:
We ought.to include some sort of 6
statement --
7 MR. MICHELSON: 'This is our-further thinking now on 8
this subject.
9 MR. REEDS. That graciously takes it out of the 10 record.
11 DR..SIESS:
You can always say that instead of 12 starting off with a reference to Hoyle's memo, which you can 13 attach, you can say -- start off by saying in accordance with
.O 14 the assignment noted in Kerr's letter,-do you --
15 MR. REED:
The ad hoc subcommittee --
16 DR..SIESS:
Subcommittee has been appointed.and their 17 recommendations were discussed.
This is now a. formal letter --
18 start off during the 29th meeting --
19 MR. MICHELSON:
Yeah, that would handle it.
20 DR. SIESS:
We discussed the matter and attached this 21 to it, and say the subcommittee has recommended that we don't 22 have the resources and so forth and so forth, you know.
23 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, I think it would be the full i
24 committee letter, of course.
25-THE WITNESS:
Yeah, but --
)
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'l MR. MICHELSON:
The committee is now the --
I i
2 DR. SIESS:
If you bring in the subcommittee, you 3
have got to at least say they met.
j 1
4 MR. MICHELSON:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
No, I think that is 5
the way I would do it.
Our standard boilerplate'first 6-paragraph indicating the history, and then that's where we 7
would put Kerr's memo in.
8 MR. REED:
Charlie is going to -- don't look at me.
9 Charlie is going to write that for you.
10 DR. SIESS:
I wouldn't spend an awful lot of time, 11 gentlemen, on -- I would put some words down on a draft letter.
12 When the committee gets through with it on Saturday, it ain't 13 going to look anything like this.
14 MR. MICHELSON:
That's probably right, but you need l
15 something for them to start with.
16 DR. SIESS:
I would get down something that we think 17 ought to be in it, some kind of words, and I'll guarantee you, 18 it ain't going'to fly.
Somebody is going to want to change 19 several things, but they might come up with some better words 20 or better paragraphs.
21 MR. REED:
All right, now you are ready for the 22 fourth paragraph.
~
23 DR. SIESS:
Always have to put one in that we can 24 take out.
25 MR. MICHELSON:
This is the dissenting paragraph that O
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goes in.the letter.
'2 MR. REED - Either this goes in the subcommittee 3
letter or --
MR. MICHELSON:
Or the. additional comments --
4 5
MR. REED:
-- or whatever comes out.
6' MR. MICHELSON:
That's a thought though, one way to 7
do it.
L
.8 MR. REED:
Fourth paragraph,.beyond manufacturers 9
, future reactor proposals and claims to'have included ACRS 10 recommendations in their future LWRe.
We consider thattin view
-11 of the subjectivity involved and the importance of form l
12
' designer input that the NRC should sponsor an in depth study as l
13
.a follow on to TAP 45 projects.
14 This follow on study should address decay heat 15 removal, in brackets, perhaps the most important safety aspect, 16 close brackets, for future LWRs and the systems and their L
17 redundancy and diversity for achieving with certainty the core 18 melt risks which has previously been decided upon for future 19 reactors.
.20 '
DR. SIESS:
I'll accept that with one modification.
21 You change NRC to DOE.
I don't that NRC has the right to 22 sponsor design study, and it's DOE's job to promote the use of 23 nuclear power.
24~
MR. MICHELSON:
If it's a safety issue, then NRC --
25 DR. SIESS:
It's not a safety issue.
We have O
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).
I written -.to say what the safety. issues are.
The staff says 2
'it's not a safety issue.
They can't: require it.
You are 3
looking for optimize improved designs to protect the utilities.
4.
MR. REED:
-- said to meet the decided upon core melt 5
' risk with certainty.
6 DR. SIESS:
All right, but this is what DOE'is doing 7
right now with some designs, and EPRI is doing, and industry 8
and the promotional people.
9 Who is NRC going to get to do this, it's objective.
10.
The same people that designed FFTF?
11 MR. REED:
I would say Dr. Erickson & Company.
12 DR. SIESS:
Who?
13.
MR. REED:
Erickson & Company out of San --
'O 14 DR. SIESS:
Are they experienced water reactor 15-designers?
16 MR. REED:
Well, they have developed a lot of 17 experience in doing the TAP 45 project.
18 DR. SIESS:
That's mostly a PRA. type study type 19 thing.
20 MR. MICHELSON:
They are great with PRAs.
21' MR. REED:
-- proposed design backfits.
.22 DR. SIESS:
If you want somebody to take all of these 23 options on our list and design them and put them into a plant 24 in various combinations and permutations, and do a PRA and look i
25 at the exposure and human factors and maintenance requirements O
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1 and stuff he asks, but if you want somebody to come up with 2
designs that are going to be not only safe and reliable and not 3
get the utilities into trouble, that's DOE's job to come up 4
with commercially viable systems.
That's what they are doing.
5 Look at what they are doing now.
They have got 6
Westinghouse, and who are all involved in the -- they have got 7
an LWR program going on.
Well, that's the one Westinghouse 8
mentioned, right?
AP 600 or something?
9 MR. MAJOR:
APRI of Westinghouse.
10 DR. SIESS:
No, Westinghouse -- mentions --
11 MR. MAJOR:
There is two.
There is the 600 and a 12 1200 or 1300.
13 DR. SIESS:
They talk about their AP 600, and they 7s\\
- ~#
14 are working with DOE in the design of the AP 600.
15 MR. REED:
We're talking about safety systems, 16 concepts and core melt risk.
That's what we are talking about.
17 That's what we want to be reviewed in depth.
18 DR. SIESS:
Well, that's what they are doing.
19 MR. REED:
Well, I think it's --
20 DR. SIESS:
There are lots of people out there doing 21 PRAs, and they are going to be doing them on the IPE.
But you 22 are looking at new designs you want -- right?
23 All right, now listen to the people who are talking 24 about doing PRAs on design that haven't been made yet.
Look at 25 the questions that have been ra.ised about GESSAR and the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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'l-advance reactors:on.trying to do a PRA before you have got the P
~
'2 design.. You have got :to. design the plant.to do a. PRA on it.
'3 MR. MICHELSON:
I think the thoughts:are good, Glenn.
4 I~just really:'believe though it's such a' shift in. subject SL within-this'1etter.that the reader ~1s going.to wonder what the'
~
6 Lhell does the fourth paragraph has got to do with.with the 7
~first three paragraphs.
l 8
MR. REED:
Want me to read it again?
9 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
. Yeah, read it again.
10
..MR.
REED:
Beyond, and that. refers to the previous 11 paragraph three.-
Beyond manufacturers future-reactor proposals-12 and claims to have included ACRS. recommendations in their
-13 future-LWRS, we consider.that in view of the subjectivity g_g
.V~
-14 involved and the importance of foreign designer import, that i
15
-the NRC should sponsor an in depth study as a follow on-to the 16 TAPL45 project.
17 This-follow on study should address decay heat 18 removal,Lin brackets, perhapsithe most important safety aspect, 19 close brackets,,for future LWRs and the systems and their 20 redundancy and diversity for achieving with certainty the core
-21 melt risks which has been previously decided upon for future 22 reactors.
23 And I believe.that's 10 to the minus 5, or 10 minus 24 6, which is.it?
25
-DR.
SIESS:
I think that's a separate letter.
.O fleritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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, MR ^. MICHELSON-Well, I think what you should do,is 2
let's; prepare the draft with the first three paragraphs and 3
then have.this one' ready.for full committee consideration as a
-4~
fourth' paragraph.
I couldn't support it'I don't think, but-I 5
think.this full committe" would want --
6 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, you could put it down and then 7
.they could vote it out.
8 MR.. REED:
Sure.
9 DR;-SIESS:
My problem is that if we have to debate 10 that, we'll never get to the other part.
I think that's 11' another issue.
NRC sponsoring more risk base studies, we'd 12 have to talk quite a bit to understand what that involves 13 beyond what they have done so far, and beyond the PRAs and the O
14 IPEs and all of that stuff to understand it.
15 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, it's part'of the A-45
-16 discussion, I.think, and such time as they get to the final' 17 decision making point.
What do we do about future reactors?
18 That's what this is about.
19 DR. SIESS:
It seems to me --
'20 MR. MICHELSON:
The A-45 letter would be I think the 21 place I would think it belongs.
22 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, you are assuming that it ever 23 comes about.
24 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, I think what Glenn is worried 25 about is so far in the future and he's probably quite right, i
i.
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and he's not going to be arour d and he won't get a chance to 2
words in.
3 DR. SIESS:
There will be some money also around.
4 MR. MICHELSON:
You can always write a separate 5
letter out that's a little more self-standing.
I don't think 6
that paragraph will stand with the other paragraphs without 7
some more transition.
8 MR. REED:
As I said before, I will polish it and 9
there will be additional comments to the letter.
10 MR. MICHELSON:
That you can always do.
11 DR. SIESS:
I think the issues there about --
12 MR. MICHELSON:
The real issue is whether we want to 13 work on this or not any more than we had already planned.
And 14 I.think the answer that Chet is suggesting is, no, we're not 15 going to go beyond what we had already planned.
16 MR. REED:
In very short words, he has said we don't 17 have the resources.
He said the manufacturers are looking into 18 some of it, and I want to say, furthermore, we want to have an 19 objective study for the rest of it.
20 MR. MICHELSON:
We're going to watch what the 21 manufacturers are coming in with.
22 DR. SIESS:
I think the issue of future reactors, the 23 NRC's policies on it would deserve a better look by this 24 committee some time.
I admit I don't get that much comfort out 25 of looking at that policy statement on these reactors.
I guess I't Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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we approved it.
2 MR. MICHELSON:
We must have.
3 DR. SIESS:
And if we did, you know, and that's all 4
we have said we really want, then this letter comes on top of 5
that.
I still think the Commission is not trying to do that 6
much influencing future designs.
They have gotten themselves 7
tied up with standardization, which I am all in favor of, and l
8 certification, which I'm all in favor of; both of which have 9
probably much greater economic significance than they have 10 safety significance.
11 MR. MICHELSON:
Could we find out --
12 DR. SIESS:
Tremendous increment in cost, -- cost on 13 standardization, I think the -- safety fall.
14 MR. MICHELSON:
Could you find out quickly if the 15 ACRS did indeed review 1070, Reg 1070?
I don't recall --
16 DR. SIESS:
I recall a letter or --
17 MR. MICHELSON:
Apparently it was back somewhere 18 in --
19 DR. SIESS:
I read a comment that got in the letter 20 about the inconsistency in some of the requirements, asking for 21 more redundant features in one place, and more simplicity in 22 another, and I remember --
23 MR. MICHELSON:
So we did comment in detail on the 24 Reg 1070.
25 DR. SIESS:
I'm pretty sure we did.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 VOICE:
Two years ago?
2 MR. MICHELSON:
It must have been at least.
It was 3
some time between August of '84 and July of '85.
4 DR. SIESS:
About two and a half pages of it as I 5
recall.
6 MR. MICHELSON:
-- look at it again and see if there 7
is anything that we need to say now in this letter.
8 DR. SIESS:
Because that stands as their policy.
9 MR. REED:
I don't understand how the ACRS -- what 10 happened to Three Mile Island which was a breakdown of decay 11 systems.
Knowing that, how we can pass up an opportunity to 12 try to get research or studies going forward to improve upon or 13 find the flaws in decay heat systems.
T t
~
14 DR. SIESS:
Do you think Three Mile accident'would 15 have occurred if they had turned off the pumps and --
16 MR. REED:
It was bound to occur some day.
It --
17 occurred at Davis-Bessie.
Davis-Bessie slumped it off.
18 MR. MICHELSON:
Oconee had a pretty close call with 19 it too.
At the time though, they just didn't realize how close 20 they were coming, and then Three Mile island came later.
21 MR. REED:
You see, Mr. Wiley has told me what Oconee 22 did.
It wasn't called for as lessons learned from Three Mile 23 Island.
The public is not informed about what Oconee did in 24 addition.
25 MR. MICHELSON:
What did they do?
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1 MR. REED:
Somebody -- and it's different from the 2-other techniques,.in my opinion, that ought to be looked at, y
3 addressed and sought for decay heat removal,'the best approach.
4 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, nothing wrong with all these 5
arguments.
The question is, is this the place to put them.
6 MR. REED - Well, why don't --
7, DR. SIESS:
-- decay heat' removal at TMI?
8 MR. REED:
Sure.
We melted core; it must-have been.
9 DR. SIESS:
Well, you turned of the.ECCS which is 10 supposed to keep the core from melting.
11 MR. REED:
Hey, but I think it --
12 DR..SIESS:
-- reactor down.
If you bleed to death, 13 you die, too, of course.
It's a question of --
14 MR. EBERSOLE:
I'm fascinated'by your discussion 15 here.
What you did was you violated a very simple principle.
16 You get the core get uncovered, and the reason you did'this is 17 you had no visibility of what the cover was.
18 VOICE:
Pres &arized was full.
19 DR. SIESS:
ECCS was shut off.
20 MR. EBERSOLE:
They had no inventory measuring system 21 that was --
22 DR. SIESS:
As such.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
-- that sort of indirect measurement.
24 MR. REED:
My point is it goes beyond that.
25 MR. EBERSOLE:
Look, in 1974, we tried to give l
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' Westinghouse.-- to put an inventory measurement system.- That.
2 was74.
Mr. Peacock of Westinghouse says, why do it.
We'll.
3 always INr full.
There was a big fracas about it.
4 MR. REED:
If you put the pressurize in the right j
5 location and don't have it mislocated, that's true --
6 MR. EBERSOLE:
What the hell about.the pressurizer.
7 I'm talking about~the water measurement above the core.
I 8
didn't say anything about pressurizer.
9 MR'.
REED:
But on the BMW the pressurizer --
10 MR. EBERSOLE I don't care.about the --
11 MR. REED:
-- is mislocated.
12
.MR. MICHELSON:- It turns out that other plants would l
13 have had the same problem on the --
14 MR. EBERSOLE:
Doesn't matter.
1 15 MR. MICHELSON:
-- under different circumstances.
i 16 MR. EBERSOLE:
Pull the pressurizer out.
It's not a 17 valid place to measure water above the core.
18 MR. REED:
It's very difficult to measure water.
19.
level --
20 DR. SIESS:
If you had known what Carl had written, 21 they would never have gotten into that mess in the first place.
22 MR. MICHELSON:
They know that.
23 DR. SIESS:
No, I mean if the operators had known.
24 The operators are so deathly scared of over -- of going solid 25 about four previous instances, i
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Well, let'd say you hav,e, loss of AC.
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Whatever.
c 18 MR. REED:
You are on natural circulation --
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I think that will happen some day.
This is one
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.22.' objective -- competent parties ma to the whole' process.
You 23 are so proud of your BWRs, and I say the trade ' of f is --,
24 criticality control.
i 25-CHAI NAN WYLIE:
We really,naver, Larl, we really W,
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1 never approved that, did,we?
2 MR. MICHELSON:
- Which now?
3 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
We. commented on it.
1070.
,4 MR. MICHELSON:
Oh, that's what I am trying to find J
pr 5
out.
j 6)
CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, I think that's right.
7 Accordj,ng t,o -- that Summe/ Stello put in this letter is -- he 1
0 says -- the HRS comments were repeated in Appendix C.z j
P' MR. MICHELSON:
It's in class 9, you think?
Go 10 ahead.
11 CHAIRMAN WYLIEt Well, it was included as part of i
12 Appendix C, our commenth.I And the staff's response was 13 included in Section 5 of the new reg.
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A 14 MR. MICHELSON:
But the question is what letter were
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16 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
It says the ACRS met with the 17 commissioners on November 2,
'84 to discuss the changes made.
"< 18 DR. SIESS:
What are you reading from?
19 dMIRMAN WYLIE:
I'm reading from Stello's letter.
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7 I
20 He outlines -
21 MR. MICHF.LSON :
But he doesn't refer to what "ommittee letter contained those comments.
22 c
23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yeah, I think so.
He says -- no, 24 no, no, he didn't.
j 25 MR. MICHELSON:
That's what I was trying to find, I
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DR. SIESS:
Appendix C, copies of the ACRES reports 3
with Appendix C of new reg 1070.
4 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
That's what he said.
5 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, maybe I can find the reference 6
in here.
7 DR. SIESS:
No, you haven't got Appendix C.
I think 8
Rich may have gone looking for it.
9 MR. MICHELSON:
Then maybe that will be -- then I can 10 tell what letter to look in.
Have to guess otherwise.
11 DR. SIESS:
I used to file my letters in categories, 12 and I quite that.
They are all filed chronologically.
It's a 13 hell of a lot easier to find 7'(
14 Did you find Appendix C to the new reg 1070.
15
-MR. MAJOR:
I'm tell you in a second.
16 DR. SIESS:
Oh, you got it there?
Okay.
17 No, chronological makes sense.
Everybody always 18 refer to a letter by date, not by subject.
19 VOICE:
Yeah, but if you don't have the date, don't 20 know --
21 DR. SIESS:
You always get the date.
22 MR. MICHELSON:
Or if you don't know if we wrote a 23 letter on that subject --
24 DR. SIESS:
I know we --
25 MR. MAJOR:
September 2nd and July 18th.
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One is '83 and one is '84.
2
'3 MR. MICHELSON:
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4 DR. SIES:1:
September '83 and July '84.
Here is a
' letter.
5 s
6 MR. MICHELSON:
Oh, you got/ a copy of the lettor?
"~
t Oh, that's even easier.
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DR. SIESS:
Op 'Is on severe a7Cident policy, and this i
.9 ir, on 1070.
$a ly.'
30 MR. MIChELSOUt Okay,.that's tire one on 1070, 5-
'a*
11 DR. SIESS:
My God, it's four pages with another four f%
12 pages of additional remarks.
How read it and weep.
13 CHAIRMA14 WYLIE:
Have you got enough information to 14 put together a draft using thin and his and an opcning 15' pyre. graph?
36 MR. MAJOR:
Sure.
17 DR. SIESS:
That's just summarizing.
We are going to
!b disagree on that.
Here is decay heat removal systems mentioned 19 for tuture reactors, electrical s.upplies, source term research, f:t 20 hent core, -- nupport cost effectiveness.
1rs view of the 21 uncertainties, don't pay touch attontion to it.
We have several 22 recommendations.
-- to new p nnts producing less -- than the
' i-23 old ones, i
24 MR. MICHELSON:
Now that one I remember.
That may 25
.have boon in other letters h
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DR. SIESS:
Heavy reliance on PRA, and should be 2
' guidance.- Speak to balance between prevention and mitigation.
3
-Effectiveness of human performance, sabotage.
-- present form 4-that:part of the policy statement that deals with new plants 5?
need strengthening in the areas that we have indicated.
6.'
Additional comments by Axtmann. He doesn't think there is going 7-to be any future plants.
-8 MR. MICHELSON:
Was that the lead balloon one?
No, 9-that wasn't the - -
10 DR. SIESS:
It just says don't worry about it since i
I.
L 11' 11t's in the; future.
Wait 15 years and pick up.
Lewis'wants a 12' safety goal.
13' MR. MICHELSON:
Yeah,. yeah.
.O'
.14 DR. SIESS:
Okrenth agrees with the letter and adds a-
'15 few comments, Doesn't think that the present plants are safe 16 as the commission says they are.
He doesn't think that the L
17
-rest of the world believes that they are-safe enough.
He 1
18 thinks they should be safer.
Uncertainty.
The general 19' aegis -- aegis disagreement with the comment that existing 20 plants are safe enough.
l 21 MR. MICHELSON:
Really not much help from there 22 relative --
23 DR. SIESS:
We added a few things to this.
I mean i
L l-24 thore is nothing in that letter that is contradictory to our 25-coming up with a list of 12 other things.
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CHAIRMAN WYLIE: ' Well, I guess we have got enough.
2 Do we' include.Glenn's paragraph in the letter?
3 ;...
3 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, I think it's, in all fairness, 4
still -- whether you put it in the letter or not, the better 5
way to do.it because they you would figure out how to make a 6
good transition into it.
And somehow there has got to be a 7
continuity between that particular paragraph and the rest of 8
the subject of the letter.
Maybe when I see it, it will fine, 9
but just listening to what Chet had written and fitting it on 10 didn't -- there seemed to be a need for more transition as to 11 why -- why this issue, why was this paragraph in there.
What 12 does it go to do with the problem, and there has got to be some' 13 kind of'a transition.
14 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, let me ask a question.
~15 Suppose,'for example, they go ahead and they do say a study on 16 decay heat removal for future plants, and they say, hey, yeah, 17 or even then say, you know, the vendors come in and they say, 18 we're going to provide a dedicated decay heat removal perfected 19 system.
Then how do you get the trade offs with that?' I mean 20 the staff is not going to give up anything.
21 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, that's part of what you have to 22 find out, whether the staff will allow something to be given up 23' like fire protection.
24 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Will they?
I, 25 MR. MICHELSON:
And that depends on --
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1 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I've never seen them give up 2
anything.
3 (R. REED:
Quite frankly, gentlemen, because I know 4
some of the things that goes on in the thinking process of 5
designers J.n utilities.
One of the reasons they don't. propose 6
new and improved systems is they think it's do something more 7
and they'll never --
8 MR. EBERSOLE:
Yeah, but that's a bureaucratic --
9 that's a bureaucratic process that's got to be killed.
The 10 idea that 11 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, how do you do that?
1 12 THE WITNESS:
-- their domain of the work, whatever 13 it may be, fire protection needs to be protected as an involute
,.~)
t
14 asset that's got to be thrown out.
15 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Let's say, for example, that the 16 advance boiler water reactor that GE is proposing has dedicated 17 to decay heat removal redundant and everything.
What would you 18 relax in say fire protection?
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, it's a delicate question, I 20 think, because the degree of adequacy of that dedicated system, 21 unless you are going to challenge it; how good is it?
Is it 22 really going to work?
23 VOICE:
It's going to be separated and fire protected l
24 itself.
25 MR. EBERSOLE:
Yes, but is it going to work without i
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1 extensive damage?
2 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, say you look at it and it 3
does.
4 MR. EBERSOLE:
And you are sure it will work every 5
time.
6 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yeah.
7 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, I would think say you would l
8 reduce it to commercial level --
9 VOICE:
The rest of the plant can be commercial.
10 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:. All right, but how does that work?
11 That
's my point.
12 DR. SIESS:
Oh, you say our business is safety.
This 13 plant is safe with this system.
7s
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14 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
You think the staff will relax it?
l 15 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, I think the bureaucrats that run l
16 the fire protection sector would not.
l 17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, that's what I am getting at.
18 How do you get them to do this?
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, that's exactly what's wrong with 20 TVA.
These little domains down there that lock themselves in 21 and secure themselves against intrusion by some sort ofra 22 master process.
That's where the problem is.
l 23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, don't you think that's l
24 something that the commission should look at?
25 MR. EBERSOLE:
Yeah, it takes a high level form of Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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. leadership that says, you are through down there that's working.
i 2-in the ATB section, making safety --
3 MR. REED:
Making wagon wheels.-
4-MR. EBERSOLE:
Right.
5 MR. MICHELSON:
But this is a whole new philosophical 6
question.
'Maybe it belongs on our list of nine --
7 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, it require a.high level 8
management decisions overriding the minor -.i 9
CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
-- letter.back in January said that 10 if you do certain things, you are going to be able to trade off 11 some thing.
12
. DR. SIESSt Well, you should be able to.
O
- MR. EBERSOLE:
That's fine.
13 14 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
You should be able to.
15 DR. SIESS:
If.you've got four systems andithey are 16 separated where a pipe breaks in one of those systems can no l
17 way affect another system.
18 CHAIRMAN.WYLIE You should be able to trade off.
19 DR. SIESS:
Or if a fire in one of those systems 20 affects another, and I'll admit on South Texas, and I didn't 21 give you much comfort on the oil tank.
.22 MR. MICHELSON:
Well, we saw that one immediately, of 23 course.
24 DR. SIESS:
Yeah, but now it has to fall -- all three 25 oil tanks have to fail.
But that could happen due to an O
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1 --
earthquake presumably, for instance.
But it's hard to' 2
visualize a fire starting simultaneously _with --
3 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, there's another thing, Chet, 4-sometimes oil fires eventually erupt into explosive type -- for 5
which there is no barrier structural protection.
6' DR. SIESS:
Concrete --
7 MR.=MICHELSON:
Depends on what all is provided.
8' ThisLis getting into a lot of detail.
9 DR. SIESS:
-If you have got separation --
10 MR. MICHELSON:
-- concrete.
11.
DR. SIESS:
-- fire protection -- pipe' break, some of-12
'the environmental qualification.
If it's qualification against
~1 13 a pipe breaking, that's automatic
- O.
14 MR. MICHELSON:
In another --
15 DR. SIESS:
In another area, you know.. There have 16 got to be things you improve by just -- after all --
17 MR. MICHELSON:
But that we have said already in our 18 first letter.
19 DR. SIESS:
Yeah.
' 20' MR. MICHELSON:
Now why are -- what are we trying to 21 say new or different or something in this letter?
What's the 22 mission of that paragraph?
What's the message we're trying to 23 get across.
24 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, I guess the thing that the 25 first letter really didn't say, in my opinion, is it didn't Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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Il i l really come out very strong -- well, Zech got the letter.
He 2
read it, and the obvious question lis,what do I do with'it..
- 3 What do I do with this thing.
So he said another one.
4 MR. MICHELSON:
He sends us back a letter that say do 5
. something with it.
6.
CEAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, it sent it to Stello..See, he
.7 sent-it to the staff, and they looked at it, and they?sent him
'8 a reply.
And the reply said, well, some of these things we
~9 agree with, some we don't, and they did a very cursory look and 10 made those comments, and go them back.
And then he turns 11' around to us and he said, hey, how about giving us all.this 12 other stuff, and really why he asked that question was so he 13
.could make up his own mind as to who was right.
- ^ -
14 DR. SIESS:
Sure we didn't say something in the.
15-meeting that would have inspired him to ask that?
11 6 MR. MICHELSON:
No, we didn't have a meeting with him 17-before we wrote that letter.
18 MR, MAJOR: 1 Yes, we did.
19 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yeah,'we had a meeting, I think.
- 4 -
20 MR. MICHELSON:
Oh, that's right.
Excuse me.
21 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:- Well, we did.
22 MR. MICHELSON:
Yeah.
23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
We had a meeting and it was a-24.
meeting at which the -- well, this. letter was discussed.
25 DR. SIESS:
Yeah, I know it was, and are you suro
'O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 thereiwasn't something'said in the meeting that --
2 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yeah,,it was'said because he said-3:
right, the'last thing he said'was just what he said --
4 DR. SIESSL Something said by the committee.
5 CHAIRMAN WYLIE Well, Okrent --
6
'DR.
SIESSt- -- that suggested to him'that maybe~we 7
ought to do something further.
'8 DR.'SIESS:
No, Okrent made a big pitch about the 9
foreign. reactors.
10 DR. SIESS:
you.know, this effectiveness,.
11 efficiency, cost-benefit.
12-LMR. MICHELSON:- Reliability.
13 CHAIRMAN KYLIE:
Oh, I don't know whether.we talked.
1;:)
14
'about that at all.-
15 MR.:MICHELSON:
I don't think we gave him all those 16 words.
17 DR. SIESS:
-- if he thought all that up by himself,
- 18 or whether we gave him a hint that it ought to be done and he 19 said, well, you do it.
20 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, see, Stello's letter when he 21 rame back, he brought up this. issue of these things were too 22 costly and all this kind of stuff, not cost and unofficial and
- 23 so forth.
And I think when he got Stello's letter, then turned 24 around and wrote this other one.
25 DR. SIESS:
Well, usually
-- this letter was written O
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1 almost in the form of the kind of thing that comes out right
?
2 after the meeting.
You know, after every meeting there is a 3
staff requirements memo if there was any staff requirements.
4 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, I don't know.
Let's see.
i 5
This.says --
6 DR. SIESS:
See, this is a staff requirements for the 7
periodic meeting of ACRS.
It starts off with a brief by the 8
ACRS -- commission's brief by the ACRS.
Zech recommended these 9
three thinga.
Now those are usually oral recommendations that 10 were made in the meeting, and the secretary simply formalizes 11 and transmits.
12 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Oh, okay.
13 DR. SIESS:
I suspect that was made by Zech right on fsb 14 the site.
Go back and look at the transcript and it wasn't 15 inspired by Stello.
16 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yeah, okay.
You may be right.
17 MR. REED:
Might have been inspired by --
18 DR. SIESS:
-- dated three days later?
19 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yeah.
His letter was dated --
20 DR. SIESS:
No, it was 10 days earlier 21 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Was it?
22 DR. SIESS:
Stello's letter was dated the 13th.
23 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yeah, but that's three days after i
24 our ACRS meeting.
25 DR. SIESS:
Oh, after the meeting, yeah, yeah.
You Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 o
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(, _)s J
'1 are right.
So I don't think this came out of Stello's letter.
2 This is something -
check the transcript.
I'll bet you he 3
said it right there.
4 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Maybe.
5 DR. SIESS:
That's what usually comes out on these l
6 staff requirement memos.
It's what somebody said.
Now if Zech 7
said it, does it carry more weight than if say Fred Berkthal 8
had asked for it?
9 MR. MICHELSON:
Sure.
10 DR. SIESS:
Is this a commission requirement?
It's a 11 staff requirement, so I guess the commission agreed or 12 something.
Yeah, they must have agreed to it.
13 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yeah, I guess so.
7-
'~
14 MR. MICHELSON:
I think the secretary doesn't send it 15 out unless the commission agrees.
16 DR. SIESS:
No, sometimes they identify particular 17 commissioners asking for something.
18 MR. MICHELSON:
I guess if they are clear who was 19-asking, then it would be all right.
20 DR. SIESS:
Yeah.
21 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, basically, Jim, if I were Zech 22 and I got our letter, then I get this one, all I would know is 23 that the ACRS had mentioned several things to me that were 24 important.
25 MR. MICHELSON:
Yeah, but don't want to spend any Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
154-
.l)
I time doing anything more on it.
2 CHAIRMANLWYLIE:
.And it doesn't.suggest --
3.
MR. MICHELSON:
For whatever reason.
4
' CHAIRMAN'WYLIE:
And it doesn't really suggest that 5
the commission spend any more time on it.
6 DR. SIESS:
My paragraph --
7 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
I'm not talking about your 8
paragraph.
I'm talking about the --
E 9
DR. SIESS:
-- say in a letter that we don't have the 10 resources, the competence to do it, and go on to say thatfI 11 don't think the' commission has it either.
12 Now the' industry is --
13 MR. MICHELSON:
The commission can hire better --
.O.
14 DR. SIESS:
-- go out with a design competition, and 15 have GE and Westinghouse and Combustion compete with each other
-16.
on a design, or DOE does maybe'.
17 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, yeah, but you know, I guess in 18 talking to'the vendors about doing certain things, what you get 19 back out of them is that they don't do anything more than their 20
' competition --
21 DR. SIESS:
Of course not.
22 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
-- for commercial reasons.
And they 23 are not going to volunteer any of these damn things for 24 commercial reasons unless it's a requirement.
If it's a 25 requirement, they will do it.
O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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k,/
1 DR. SIESS:
They assume, rightly or wrong, that the 2
NRC will tell them when it's safe enough.
3 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, let me say what the --
4 MR. MICHELSON:
Even the Germans said that to some 5
extent on their convoy design.
A foreign convoy won't look 6
like a German convoy.
Remember he said, we may have to back 7
off to lower capacity trains and so forth for competitive 8
reasons.
9 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yeah, well, the are doing that.
10 DR. SIESS:
But, you know, get back to the basic 11 question here, the request from Zech that we do this.
It's 12 ridiculous.
13 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Oh, I agree with that.
c
(
14 DR. SIESS:
For him to ask this committee to do 15 it --
16 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Oh, I don't argue with that, Chet.
17 DR. SIESS:
-- it just doesn't make sense.
That's 18 why I think we have been more than polite, more than generous 19 in the kind of reply we are offering.
20 MR. MICHELSON:
Yeah, I think we want to be careful.
21 DR. SIESS:
If he had done that in the meeting i
22 orally, I would have spoken up and said, just what I said; it's i
23 ridiculous.
We can't do that sort of thing.
We're not a bunch l
l 24 of designers.
We don't have all the capability that General 1
25 Electric and Westinghouse or Bechtel does.
We are advisors.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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o l
es l,_)
1 We work part-time.
And if you gave us the money and told us to 2
go out and contract for it, we haven't got the time to monitor l
3 a contract.
4 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, I guess -- you know, when we 5
reviewed the GESSAR --
6 THE WITNESS:
Eleven million man hours to design a 7
nuclear power plant.
8 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
When we reviewed the GESSAR plan, I 9
guess we heard from General Electric so many times during that 10 review, it wasn't required.
And I mean you say why didn't you 11 do so and so.
It's not required.
12 DR. SIESS:
But if you're dealing with a regulatory 13 agency that tells you how to tighten a bolt and which e~
f 14 screwdriver to use, pretty soon you are going to accept'the 15 idea that they are the experts and they are going to tell you 16 when it's safe enough.
You can't help but do that.
17 If somebody is going to look over your shoulder and 18 review every single drawing and question everything and --
19 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, I'm not asking that.
20 DR. SIESS:
-- you're asking 28 questions, pretty 21 soon you get the idea that there is nothing that I can do to 22 improve safety.
I just have to do whatever they tell me and 23 it's going to be all right.
24 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Well, but what --
25 MR. MICHELSON:
That's the basic argument that DMW i
~
b)
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1 gave on trying to sue the government.
2 DR. SIESS:
I brought in an article out of the Wall 3
Street Journal that. points out that the aircraft industry seems 4
to do a great deal more than the FAA requires.
It says'the 5
market is driving them.
If planes crash, they ain't going to 6
sell them, and it showed some studies showing that both the 7
builders of airplanes, Lockheed, MacDonnell and Boeing, how 8
much their stock values went down every time there is a. crash j
9 involving one of them planes, and to some extent, the airlines.
10 And it was saying that the market was doing more for safety l
11 than the regulators were.
It also had some things to say about 12 designated representatives.
13 MR. MICHELSON:
It's bad for business to have L'-
14 crashes, so they take care of their of their own problems.
15 DR. SIESS:
But again, I'm not sure the nuclear 16 utilities realize how bad for business it is to have a core 17 melt.
j 18 MR. MICHELSON:
That's right.
19 DR. SIESS:
Even if nobody is hurt.
20 MR. MICHELSON:
But it's a low probability of that.
21 MR. REED:
I think the utilities after Three Mile 22 Island understood it.
They didn't before.
23 DR. SIESS:
They didn't do very much.
{
l 24 MR. REED:
They were caught up in the -- but what the 25 utilities still don't have is the competence to review and Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 1
138
[h
(_)
1 judge design for its safety aspects.
2 DR. SIESS:
NRC does that.
3 MR. REED:
And there is a gap in there.
4 DR. SIESS:
They depend on NRC.
5 MR. REED:
But the NRC is not responsible.
6 DR. SIESS:
And there are a couple of utilities that 7
do.
I see letter after letter from Northeast Nuclear that is 8
arguing with the NRC about a safety design.
9 MR. REED:
Just a minute.
10 DR. SIESS:
And they usually lose it.
11 MR. REED:
Just a minute.
Northeast Nuclear, is that 12 the same company that put a rubber boot around a reactor vessel 13 and --
'"~
14 DR. SIESS:
Nobody said they are perfect.
15 MR. REED:
-- water out the refueling cavity?
16 DR. SIESS:
But they think they are competent to 17 argue with NRC.
18 MR. REED:
Okay, that's different.
You can say 19 think.
20 DR. SIESS:
And I would be surprised if they aren't.
21 I have found some of their arguments very compelling.
I found 22 their argument about putting the shutdown for the hurricane in I
23 the licensing condition a fairly good argument.
NRC thought 24 they were going to improve safety a great deal by making it a 25 license condition that they shut down for hurricanes.
i O
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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1 MR.-REED:
'I think on those kind of things which are f.
L 21.different from real detailed technical design --
3-DR..SIESS:
Only in your mind.
14 MR. REED - -- exercise good: judgment' But real' 5
detailed technical. design, I don't think they.are as capable'as 6'
the NRC ought to be or as manufactures-ought to be.
'7.
MR. MICHELSON.
NRC is not' capable of judging'--
8 DR. SIESS:
I just wonder --
9 MR. MICHELSON:
-- I'm not sure they should be i-
'10 either.
11 DR. SIESS:
. Yeah, I'm not sure they --
12 MR. REED:
Well, l'n the aircraft' industry, the
.13
-designers are responsible'foritheir product.
.14 '
'MR. MICHELSON:
But the FAA isn't.
15 MR. REED:
The designers are responsible for their 16 produc t '.
-17 DR. SIESS:
That's'right; not the FAA.
L18 MR. REED:
Why can't it.be -- either we change the 19-whole licensing basis, or we make the NRC responsible.
12 0 DR. SIESS:
FAA has got 350 people enforcing it.
NRC 21 has got 10 times that many.
FAA uses designated
'22 representatives and gives the manufacturers responsibility.
23 NRC doesn't give them any -- they give it to them but don't let 24 them exercise.it.
25 MR. MICHELSON:
There might be some merit in the idea Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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160 p
1 that the' manufacturer be licensed so that you --
i.
2
'MR.
EBERSOLE:
He might though invoke or have a fear 3-of product liability as are many people now days, and say.I'm
'4 not going to. touch.that business.
5 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
There is one big difference.
The
-6 airline business is an active,. going' business.
This one isn't.-
7 DR. SIESS:
-- don't have much regard for their
'8 judgment.
9 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
You'd have a hard time right now 10 licensing.
11 MR. REED:
Why is this one not a going business?
12' CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
That's a good question.
r 11 3 DR. SIESS:
Nobody knows what's --
- 1 44.
MR. REED: 'Because the. regulatory organization and
~'
15 structuring of design, construction,. opec tion is flawed.
The-16!
whole structuring.is flawed.
-17 DR. SIESS:
Well, they are turnkey jobs.
18 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, turnkey jobs would have: saved
'19 the day, I think.
j i
20 DR. SIESS:
Well, you have got the same incompetence l
21 that --
22 VOICE:
You'd have flawed design.
23-MR. MICHELSON:
Could argue that all right.
24 MR. EBERSOLE:
Well, it wouldn't have been a divided 25 responsibility though, Chet.
(- ()
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,/^(_g) 1 MR. MICHELSON:
Surprisingly, though, and you know, 2
Jesse, the NSS vendors were not that competent when it came to 3
system design.
They were very competent on components, the 4
ones in particular they manufe.ctured, but when it came to 5
system design, they were way ahead; way behind of a. number of 6
the utilities in their capability of integrating components for 7
use in designs.
8 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Do we have to do anything else on 9
this subject?
10 MR. MICHELSON:
You're going to write the letter.
11 CRAIRMAN WYLIE:
Yes.
12 MR. MICHELSON:
I don't think we have to do anything 13 else.
'~#
14 CHAIRMAN WYLIE:
Nothing else.
I'll call the meeting 15 adjourned.
16 (Whereupon, at 5:03 p.m.,
the meeting was 17 concluded.)
18 19 20 21 j
l 22 1
23 24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
______________________O
162 1
j 1
CERTIFICATE-
]
2' i
~
3-This is.-to certify that the attached proceedings before.the 4
United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
j
'~
5
'Name: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards
)
6-Subcommittee Meeting on Future LWR Designs 7
' Docket Number:
1 i
8 Place: Washington, D.C' 9
Date:
September 9, 1987 10
'were held as herein appears, and that this is the original 11 transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear 12.
Regulatory Commission taken stenographically by me and, 13 thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or.under the direction
- 14 of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a
(
15 true and accurate' record of the foregoing. proceedings.
- 16
/S/
nuas s/M1bW V f/
f l
17' (Signature typed): Irwin coffenberry 18 Official Reporter 19 Heritage Reporting Corporation 20 21 22 23 24 25-f Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4880
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