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O' OCT 0 21984 Mr. Mark Kerrigan l i
Room 8002 New Executive Office Building Office of Management and Budget l Washington, D.C. 20503
Dear Mr. Kerrigan:
This letter is in follovup to our September 17, 1984, discussions regarding both the NRC's role and capability in responding to a radiological energency at a licensed nuclear facility.
Under the existing regulatory framework, licensees are primarily responsible for ensuring safe operation of their facilities. The NEC is responsible to assure that licensees oparate their facilities safely and in accordance with regulatory requirements. This responsibility is carried out by a system of licensing, standards setting, regulations., and inspections. During emergencies, l
O the NRC monitors licensee activities and assures appropriate protective action is being taken with respect to offsite recommendations based on understanding the overall plant condition. The NRC also provides support to the licensee and l offsitt officials, as well as serves as a conduit of technical information to '
other Federal agencies. The Commission has the authority to order */ a li.censee
-i during an emergency to promptly take any number of possible protectTve actions, ranging from obtaining NRC concurrence before the licensee takes certain actions, to taking specific Commission-ordered actions, to permitting actual operation of the facility by the Commission in an extreme case.
Under the Administrative Procedure Act, Section 186c, the general rule applicable to all NRC orders is that in ordinary circumstances the Commission is required to afford the licensee notice and an opportunity to be heard before the licensee is bound to take the ordered action. Notwithstanding the general regpirement that a licensee be given a prior opportunity to be heard, the Commission can issue orders th4t are effective upon issuance to require a licensee to take certain actions in circumstances compelling immediate action to protect public health and safety. See Administrative Procedure Act S 9(b), 5 U.S.C. S 558(c);
10 CFR 2.202(f) and 2/204. The use of immediately effective orders must be justified by the emergency nature of the situation and by an overriding need t'o protect public health and safety by immediate action.
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[/ Orders would be issued by the Commission or specified staff officers as provjd 9d in 10 CFR 2.202 and 2.204.
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Mr. Kerrigan OCT 0 2 884. l O i In addition, Section 3.(a) of the Ret, organization' Nu No.1 of 1980 transfers "to the Chairman all the functions vested in the Comission pertaining to an i emergency concerning a particular facility or materials licensed or regulated by the Commission, including the functions of declaring, responding, issuing i orders, determining specific policies, advising the civil authorities and the public, directing, and coordinating actions relative to such emergency inci-dent." The background on this language is that Congress recognized that decisionmaking by a collegial body is not t!@ ly enough under " emergency- !
conditions." l l
I believe the above paragraphs provide a basis for the Nyclear Regulatory I Commission to respond to radiological incidents involving licensed nuclear i activities in real-time. The Comission has acknow1 Edged and accepted that role in the NRC Incident Response Plan, NUREG-0728 Revision l', April 1983.
The Plan emphasizes tha2 the licensee has the immediate and primary continuing responsibility for limiting the consequences of an incident at a nuclear power reactor. Limiting the consequences to public health and safety should take j clear precedence over limiting financial loss or adverse publicity. During a .i radiological emergency, the licensee should take whatever action is deemed necessary to limit the r. consequences to public health and safety, even if that .
action violates the NRC license technical specifications. If time does not I permit in an emergency, notification of and consultation with NRC is not ;
required prior to the licensee taking action he deems. appropriate. '
O Further, the Plaa state , that the licensee is respopeible for keeping local, State and Federal authorities (i.e.,, the NRC under the Federal Radiological ;
Emergency Response Plan) informed on the status of the emergency as it relates i to protection of the public health and safety. The licensee.should recommend I to local, State, and Federal authorities (i.e., the NRC) specific protective actions to 1:imit, the danger to the public, including evacuation. i 1
The Plan recognized that the NRC staff at the Operations Center is limited in !
its ability to provide detailed recommendations to plant personnel or overrule l plant managers at the site. It is the Comission's policy that the emergency '
should be managed from the site. The NRC Chainnan (or his or her designee) may transfer authority for managing the NRC's emergency response efforts to a senior onsite NRC reertsentative, Pirector of Site Operations (DS0), when the ,
Chairman is confident that tite onsite NRC representative is prepared to receive ,
the authority, and if the Chairman deems it appropriate. . !J Once the NRC response is activated, however, there is generally a 2-6 hour '
period until the Regional Administrator arrives at the site and is designated Director of Site Operations. During that 2-6 hour period, the NRC Operations ;,
Center will be the primary location where this agency will monitor and evaluate g licensee actions. The normal response roles for the NRC Oppations Center during that time will be to monitor, inform, and, upon request, advise licensees and other local, State, and Federal authorities.
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Mr. Kerrigan CCT 0 21984 O' Although the Chairman has the authority to issue orders and directives to the licensee, this authority need not be exercised by the Chahman but may be delegated to the D50 if the situation warrants. The reason for this is that there may be more complete information available to the 050 at the site, and therefore there may be a firmer basis for such orders or directives.
once the D50 is designated, the role of the NRC Operations Center becomes one l
of support to the 050 and his Site Team. Specific problems are identified and i passed, along with the supporting data, back to the Operations Center for analysis by the experts that are available at headquarters. The completed analysis is then provided to and discussed with the Site Team. The process is i constructed to restrict the number of NRC staff that are necessary in the vicinity of the site to support the 050.
For the NRC to fulfill its role and respond effectively, it needs a timely, reliable set of key parameters (about 67) from which to assess and project the i ov'erall condition of the facility in an emergency. The four types of parame-ters needed to make these assessments and projections are: (1) core an6 coolant system conditions must h3 known well enough to assess the extent or i
likelihood of core damage; (2) conditions inside the containment building must j be known well enough to assess the likelihood of its failure; (3) radioactivity !
release rates must be available promptly to assess the immediacy and degree of !
public danger; and (4) the data from the plant's meteorological tower 'is necessary to assess the distributions of potential or actual impact on the public.
O The assessments and projections performed using these types of parame-ters are the basis for any advice or recommendations made by the NRC to the }
offsite authorities (often at their request) as well as to the licensees.
Experience with the voice only emergency communications link, currently uti-lized for data transmission, has demonstrated that excessive amounts of time 4 are needed tion for the of data that routine appear transmission of data and for verification or correc-questionable. l Error rates have been excessive; initiations have been slow; frequency of updates have been unreliaDie. In j addition, the current system creates an excessive drain on the time of valuable experts. When errors cccur, they frequently create false issues which, at best, divert experts from the real problems for seriously long periods of time.
At worst, incorrect data may cause the NRC to respond to offsite officials with inaccurate or outdated advice that results in the impleme6tation of inappropri-ate protective actions. j The staff has considered a number of methods for upgrading the agency's ability to acquire the necessary emergency information. The staff has determined that automatic transmission of selected parameters from licensees' existing elee '
I tronic data systems is the method that is most capable of providing acceptably complete and reliable data on a timely basis at reasonable costs with the l
minimum potential for burdening the licensee in an emergency. Most licensees l either already have developed or are developing electronic data systems for their emergency response facilities (ERFs). Because the role of the licensees' ERFs is similar to the role of the NRC during emergencies, the licensees' data systems already include most of the parameters desired by NRC. Those few l
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i Mr. Kerrigan -4* OCT 0 2 G34 O' parameters which are not included in any particular licensee's system can be communicated by voice over the existing Emergency Notification System (ENS),
thus avoiding backfitting requirements on the licensee to include additional !
parameters on their electronic data systems. Data would be accepted in whatev-er format the licensee uses and reformatted at the Operations Center, as {
neces sa ry. Because of tha wide diversity of data systems utilized by the licensees, the best means for extracting the NRC's parameters from each system )
would be determined on a case-by-case basis. The 1icensees would have control l
over transmission and would use the system only during emergencies. i I believe the above described frethod of acquiring emergency information is most l
appropriate for the agency to fulfill its role. We have tested the method in l an exercise with Duke Power Company's McGuire Plant. The test proved that {
l regular, time-tagged electronic updates of a Selected set of parameters would satisf actorily support NRC's role, minimizing the potential for providing ,
erroneous advice to offsite officials who seek NRC's recommendations for protective measures.
This method of acquiring emergency information emphasizes compatibility with licensees' systems and is expected to reduce the licensees' !
burden for gathering and transmitting data by voice during the early stages of 4 events. '
I would be very pleased to provide you and Mr. Palmirie a demonstration of this l
system at the NRC Operations Center and at the McGuire site. In that way, you p will be able to see that it is unobtrusive and uses of f-the-shelf hardware. I v
would like to schedule this demonstration during this October. We could fly down to McGuire one evening and back the next afternoon. I believe upgrading our ability to acquire emergency information is essential and that it warrants the time you would spend in seeing this method demonstrated. Please contact me at 492-7361 with respect to your availability for the demonstration.
Respectfully, l
' Drfeh!r' "d !'y Keasth E.Pe2s Kenneth E. Perkins, Chief Incident Res;)onse Branch Division of Emergency Preparedness and Engineering Response Office of Inspection and Enforcement cc: Thomas Palmirie bec: DISTRIBUTION:
Len Barry DCS Jim Blaha IRB File Steve Long DEPF.R Rdg.
Don Marksberry EJordan John Hickman S5chwartr KPerkins IRB:D :IE D R:IE O KEPe (6/(/84
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